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Old 07-11-07, 09:04 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Join Date: May 2001
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - November 10th, '07

Since 2002


































"Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted. It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it." – Noël St-Hilaire


"People should have dominion over their computers. The current 'don’t ask, don't tell' in online tracking and profiling has to end." – F.T.C. commissioner Jon Leibowitz


"Even if BitTorrent encryption can be defeated somehow, there's another P2P protocol on the horizon. It's being specifically designed to dodge monitoring systems." – Chris Williams


"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project. Against all the naysayers, and thanks to great partners such as Quanta, we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children." –Nicholas Negroponte


"When you start a church, you don’t decide who you’re going to reach and then pick a music style. You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come." – Tom Mercer


"Stop making me laugh, it doesn’t look good to people who drive up. They will think we’re not serious." – Striking screenwriter


































November 10th, 2007





Demonoid: Down…and Out?

Splash page announcement:

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.
http://demonoid.com/





More High-Profile P2P Busts: Topsite Seized as Demonoid Shuttered
Nate Anderson

The international music industry may be playing Whac-A-Mole with P2P hubs, but it has been whacking some rather large moles lately. Shutting down all illicit P2P traffic is obviously not a realistic goal, and it's not one that groups like the RIAA or the IFPI hold; instead, they just want to make it difficult enough for the average ‘Net user to snag a file that legal alternatives start to look better in comparison. Putting some fear into file sharers is also part of the plan.

Music trade groups in Canada and Poland have taken another step down this road with the apparent closure of the BitTorrent tracker Demonoid and a Polish pre-release music site operating from Wroclaw.

Demonoid is one of the largest torrent sites in the world, but demonoid.com now shows only a single line of text: "The CRIA [Canada's RIAA equivalent] threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

CRIA has actually been leaning on the site for weeks. In late September, Torrentfeak reported that Demonoid had banned access to all Canadian IP addresses after legal threats from CRIA. Now, it appears that the CRIA has been able to get Demonoid's hosting company to pull its support.

In Poland, police raided Wroclaw Technical University and a private home to confiscate material used to host HPN. HPN, like the now-busted OiNK in the UK, specialized in leaking albums before their official release date. Police took six servers and 37 hard drives. Two people have been arrested.

The raid came after investigations from the IFPI, music's international trade group, and ZPAV, which is its local Polish affiliate. Wroclaw police acted after both groups supplied them with information on HPN.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...shuttered.html





Prosecutor Announces Charges Against The Pirate Bay
Ernesto

Prosecutor Håkan Roswall announced that he plans to press charges against 5 people involved with The Pirate Bay before January 31, 2008. The 5 are suspected of facilitating copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay team does not believe that Roswall will be successful in his attempt to take down The Pirate Bay. They keep repeating that they are just running a search engine and did not store any copyrighted material on their servers.

On top of that, information that leaked earlier this year showed that the Swedish police couldn’t find any usable evidence on the servers they confiscated during the raid last year.

One of the biggest surprises is that the prosecutor plans to press charges against the well-known Swedish neo-fascist Carl Lundstrom, who is only remotely related to The Pirate Bay. Tobias Andersson, one of the Pirate Bay admins, admitted that Lundstrom’s hosting company Rix Telecom offered them cheap bandwidth in the past. However, this was only because one of the Pirate Bay founders used to work for Rix Telecom, nothing more, nothing less.

It is not unlikely that Roswall decided to include Lundstrom in the list of suspects to manipulate public opinion. Lundström did confirm to IDG.se that he is under investigation, but refuses to be interrogated by the police.

At this point we only know that Peter Sunde (aka Brokep) and Carl Lundstrom are identified as suspects, but the complete list will be published here as soon as it is known.

Whatever the outcome of this case will be, The Pirate Bay have already announced that they’re here to stay. They told us that they will simply move to another country if they are outlawed in Sweden, without downtime!
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-c...ounced-071108/





MediaDefender Emails Disprove MPAA Claims
Ernesto

Last Month The Pirate Bay filed complaints against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. The MPAA has now responded to these claims and deny that they worked with MediaDefender. Unfortunately for the MPAA, we have proof that they did.

MPAA attorney Espen Tøndel told the Norwegian newspaper Dageblatet that the companies represented by the MPAA never requested MediaDefender to do the things The Pirate Bay claims. This is a lie of course, and there is an archive of leaked emails to back this up.

To give an example, Universal Pictures - a company represented by the MPAA - contracted MediaDefender to protect movies, which basically means that they pollute BitTorrent sites with fake files to make the real files harder to find. There are several emails that prove this, and quotes such as “can you jump all over this swarm and try to kill it?” leave little room for speculation.

Universal Pictures is not the only MPAA movie studio MediaDefender worked for, the emails clearly show that they were also hired by Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures. I would suggest Tøndel to go through these emails before making ungrounded claims like this again.

Brokep, one of the Pirate Bay founders told TorrentFreak earlier that they decided to file complaints because they want to make these big media companies aware of their own wrong doings: “I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how this case develops. One thing is for sure, it will be hard for these media companies to deny their involvement with these emails as evidence.
http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefende...claims-071104/





OiNK’s New Piglets Proof Positive that Big Content’s Efforts Often Backfire
Ken Fisher

It took investigators two years to infiltrate and bring down UK-based OiNK, an invite-only music sharing site that was much loved by its smallish community. As we reported at the time, the IFPI and the BPI lauded the takedown as a major victory against piracy.

After the echoes of OiNK's final snort dissipated, one could hear the virtual rumbling of a new stampede: the post-OiNK explosion. The closure of OiNK has led directly or indirectly to the establishment of nearly half a dozen new file-sharing sites. Is this what the IFPI and BPI had in mind? Somehow we doubt it.

The theory is that "busts" will eventually drive such sites out of existence, as they need to go deeper and deeper "underground" to avoid being busted. What appears to actually be happening is something quite different: the free advertising for P2P that comes from these closures not only helps spread the word about the existence of such sites, but it also appears to motivate more folks to step up their involvement in setting up, running, and supporting such sites. In short, it's a call to arms.

It's also not hard to find out where the OiNK action has moved to, either. In the last three days, Ars writers have been able to gain access to nearly all of the new sites to pop up in the wake of OiNK, and the reasons why are so simple, yet utterly elusive to those who are working day and night to close these sites: it's not the supply of "P2P sites" that drives this, it's the demand from users online, across the globe.
Supply is not the same as demand

The Romans had a funny way of looking at social disorder. In general, they viewed leaders as far greater threats than those they led. This gave way to the kind of social "management" school that preferred to brutally punish or kill a leader, while letting everyone else go. The Romans, as you may know, had more than their share of uprisings, riots, and all-out revolts as a result.

The focus on shutting down popular P2P/BitTorrent tracker sites operates under the same philosophical strategy: cut off the head, and the body should die. Shut down the site, and now you have thousands of users who can't be pirates anymore. Of course, never was there such a silly—or obviously wrong—idea.

The response to the death of OiNK was not a withering of the file-sharing community. Instead, what happened was the establishment or planned launch of three major new P2P sites and at least two underground networks. The Pirate Bay did its usual thing and announced their plans to resurrect OiNK as the cleverly-named BOiNK; TorrentFreak brought news of The Pirate Bay's plans to everyone several days ago, but BOiNK is still nowhere to be seen. Given the fact that these guys brought Suprnova back, there's little reason to doubt them, though.

Meanwhile, both What.cd and Waffles.fm have stepped into the void created by OiNK's closure, as have two underground services claimed to have been started by former members. dAiMeSeL, an administrator for one of the DC++ hubs who corresponded with Ars Technica anonymously, said that plans for their hub were already under way when OiNK was shut down, but that the closure only helped feed the demand for a new site. dAiMeSeL said that the demand to admit new users was too high, and that the big worry is that "another mole could slip in."

Waffles.fm is also having growing problems. The site has had to ask its members to refrain from selling invites to the invitation-only service. The invites are in high demand, but someone could also risk the community's security by selling invites off to a mole. Then the site pulled the plug on all new registrations, as the admins found it difficult to keep up with demand. In an interview with Threat Level, a site admin said the site was also the target of a DoS attack in its earliest days, apparently from a disgruntled OiNK member who didn't get an invite.

By and large, however, the story is one of cooperation and recovery. It's not professional site admins who really make any of this possible. It's the throng of users who will, at a moment's notice, become site admins or contribute in other ways to rapidly bring up not one, but a handful of potential replacements in a time of "need." This is the reason why you can't kill the OiNKs and Suprnovas of the world, and expect change. The demand is there, and so is the technology to keep this game of cat and mouse going for a very long time.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-backfire.html





Swedish Pirates Stand Up Publicly To Stay Anonymous
Ben Jones

The Swedish Pirate Party (piratpartiet) held rallies across Sweden in an attempt to bolster support for strengthening personal privacy. The events, in Malmö and Stockholm, were aimed at raising awareness of a new bill due next week.

The bill is part of Sweden’s implementation of an EU directive aimed at reducing privacy, for the oft touted aim of ’security’ – the security of the intangible State, that is, rather than the individual securities of the citizenry.

In short, every communications network operator will have to log and store data about all of their users. Whilst the contents of the messages are not currently expected to be stored, everything from the IDs of either end of the communication, anything to identify the type of equipment used, the time and length of the call, and, perhaps most importantly, the location of cellular telephone handsets when used.

The Piratpartiet’s Rick Falkvinge stresses this last point as a large privacy concern. “We’re rapidly descending into a surveillance society. We know exactly where this road leads - we’ve seen it in Europe’s recent history. When the Berlin wall came down, we were rejoicing that the oppressed Eastern bloc would become like Western democracies. It was never supposed to be the other way around.”

What makes things even more uncertain, is that at present no-one knows how long the Swedish bill will require information to be held. The EU Directive states anywhere from 6 to 24 months. Of equal uncertainty is the legal threshold for obtaining information stored under these measures.

Speakers at the Malmö rally included Swedish IP entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson, CEO of ISP Bredband2, as well as the annonymiser Relakks, whilst Stockholm had Falkvinge, and other Pirate Party board members.

The demonstration echo’s similar protests in other European countries, such as the 15,000 that marched in Berlin in late September. More demonstrations are due in Germany on the 6th in more than 30 cities. With information like this being stored, it will potentially magnify the guilty until innocent approach already being used in file sharing trials. If the jury in the Thomas trial had been shown a record of a communication logged through such a system, they may have pressed for even higher damages per song. The major drawback with these systems, however, was pointed out in a recent court motion by the Oregon Attorney General – whilst you can identify the technological devices used, that still doesn’t identify the person using it. Furthermore, in any well planned criminal incident (which covers terrorism) it’s not unknown to use equipment which does not belong to you. Stolen credit cards, false numberplates, cloned cell phones. As with DRM, it only causes problems, without solving any.
http://torrentfreak.com/swedish-pira...nymous-071104/





Canadian Police Tolerates Piracy For Personal Use
Ernesto

The Canadian police announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use. Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations.

Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the Canadian police made clear that Demonoid’s users don’t have to worry about getting caught, at least not in Canada.

According to the Canadian police it is impossible to track down everyone who downloads music or movies off the Internet. The police simply does not have the time nor the resources to go after filesharers.

“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,” Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police, said in an interview with Le Devoir. “It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.

St-Hilaire explained that they rather focus on crimes that actually hurt consumers such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances.

A wise decision, especially since we now know that filesharing has absolutely no impact on music sales. On the contrary, a recent study found that the more music people download on P2P-networks, the more CDs they buy.
http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-pol...piracy-071110/





PIRATE Act Dons Eye Patch, Swashbuckles Back into Senate
Nate Anderson

The PIRATE Act is back, and this time it means business.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) yesterday introduced the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act (PDF), with Leahy saying, "The PIRATE Act has passed the Senate on three separate occasions; this should be the Congress in which it becomes law."

Like previous incarnations of the PIRATE Act, this one tries to force the Department of Justice to bring suits against individual file-swappers, something that could save the recording industry plenty of money and could also displace some of the "bad guy" stigma that the labels have acquired after suing people like Jammie Thomas.

The bill would give the Department of Justice authority to bring civil (not just criminal) cases against infringers, though it does limit penalties to those that could be imposed in criminal proceedings. The Attorney General can also bring such civil suits only when the act in question constitutes a crime (such civil suits can be easier to win).

Leahy and Cornyn want Justice to start prosecuting file-sharers, which sounded like a bad idea the first time we heard it and hasn't gotten any better since. Since the No Electronic Theft Act passed in the late 1990s, the DoJ has actually had the authority to bring criminal cases against file-swappers under certain situations; to date, it has not filed a single one.

The Department would no doubt rather be busting gangsters, child molesters, and even actual counterfeiting rings, but it seems like some members of Congress are intent on pressing Justice to get involved in the P2P lawsuit game—something that Big Content would dearly love to see happen.

The bill also provides more funding to counter intellectual-property crimes involving both computers and Internet, along with more FBI agents to investigate such crimes.

"Copyright infringement silently drains America's economy and undermines the talent, creativity and initiative that are a great source of strength to our nation," said Leahy. "When we protect intellectual property from copyright infringement, we protect our economy and our ideas."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...to-senate.html





Surge in Encrypted Torrents Blindsides Record Biz
Chris Williams

The legal crackdown and publicity blitz aimed at people who share music, videos and software online may be having an unintended consequence for the troubled record industry. The number of file-sharers disguising their BitTorrent activity with encryption is skyrocketing.

Figures from a large UK ISP obtained by The Register show that the portion of BitTorrent traffic encrypted by file-sharers has risen 10-fold in the last 12 months, from four to 40 per cent.

This time last year, unencrypted torrents accounted for about 500Mbit/s of bandwidth, while files that had been scrambled by uploaders swallowed just 20Mbit/s.

The latest data shows that bandwidth used by unencrypted torrents has fallen to 350Mbit/s. Sharing of masked music, video and software has meanwhile exploded to average more than 200Mbit/s.

Matt Phillips, spokesman for UK record industry trade association the British Phonographic Institute, told The Reg: "Our internet investigations team, internet service providers and the police are well aware of encryption technology: it's been around for a long time and is commonplace in other areas of internet crime. It should come as no surprise that if people think they can hide illegal activity they will attempt to."

"When encryption is used to cloak torrent traffic it tends to be to hide something, and attracts greater attention for that reason. If certain ISPs are experiencing disproportionately high volumes of encrypted torrent traffic we expect it is partly in response to a combination of effective ISP abuse teams the enforcement efforts of the police and industry."

The last year has seen a significant escalation of the movie and music industry campaign against copyright infringement. The RIAA secured its first jury trial (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...ng_jury_trial/) against Jammie Thomas, popular tracking site TorrentSpy was ordered to collect user data (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06...spy_on_users/), and the supposedly private UK-based OiNK network was busted (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/oink_raids/).

The file-sharing public's response has been revealed by analysis of data from deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, such as that made by Ellacoya and Cisco's P-Cube. Many ISPs, including BT here and Comcast in the US (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...usting_again/), have now deployed the kit to help throttle the amount of bandwidth consumed by P2P and other greedy net applications. Some BitTorrent encryption is certainly an effort to avoid such restrictions.

While DPI is able to identify and manage encrypted file-sharing packets, it is unable to look inside those packets for copyright infringement.

The trend towards encryption means current efforts by music publishers and government to cut a deal with ISPs to create a monitoring system to boot persistent copyright infringers off the internet, which we revealed last month (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...an_isps_music/) is likely to be rendered pointless.

Neil Armstrong, products director at BT-owned ISP PlusNet, said: "It isn't possible for us to tell if a customer is downloading a copyright file or not unless we specifically 'snoop' every packet on the customer's line.

"We would obviously only do this where we have a proper request from the relevant legal authority to do so, and even then it is unlikely we would be able to see inside encrypted payloads."

The most popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent, can be configured to use RC4 encryption (http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2250) to obscure torrent streams and header information. Armstrong said that although future DPI gear may be able to grab some header detail, the music or movie itself is likely to remain inaccessible.

So-called content filtering software from Audible Magic cannot peer inside encrypted packets, either.

The rapid acceleration in encryption isn't limited to BitTorrenters. Estimates say torrent traffic accounts for about between 50 and 60 per cent of all file-sharing. Usenet, which the RIAA recently said (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10...senet_dot_com/) is a bigger offender than Kazaa-type services, accounts for about another 25 per cent. It's set to see more scrambled files shared over it, too, as providers including Giganews now offer SSL encryption.

Paul Sanders, part of the team of music and ISP veterans behind PlayLouder, the first "Media Service Provider", which will let subscribers share music freely and legally in exchange for a small premium on the monthly broadband bill, sounded the alarm. "I think this trend is absolutely a warning to those people in the music industry who believe they can win this war," he said.

"There's got to be a commercial settlement. Both sides [ISPs and the record industry] are destroying the value in music." Sanders believes the much-debated (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06...sac_interview/) blanket licence and download services that are "better than free" are one the way out of the arms race with determined freeloaders.

Even if BitTorrent encryption can be defeated somehow, there's another P2P protocol (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11..._new_protocol/) on the horizon. It's being specifically designed to dodge monitoring systems.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11...ion_explosion/





BitTorrent Encryption Confuses the BPI, ISPs and Journalists Who Don’t Research
Ernesto

A recently published article by The Register claims that an increase in encrypted BitTorrent traffic is due to the fact that people want to hide or scramble the files they are sharing. Apparently some tech journalists, and in particular the anti-piracy organizations, have no clue what BitTorrent encryption actually does.

Encrypted BitTorrent traffic now accounts for 40% of all BitTorrent traffic in the UK according to the article. The Register claims that filesharers use encryption to scramble their data so they can protect themselves from being caught, and the comments from a music industry representative make it seem like people can indeed hide what they are sharing. Unfortunately, none of it is true

This is what Matt Phillips, of the record industry trade association the British Phonographic Institute told the Register: “Our internet investigations team, internet service providers and the police are well aware of encryption technology: it’s been around for a long time and is commonplace in other areas of internet crime. It should come as no surprise that if people think they can hide illegal activity they will attempt to.”

So if it’s not hiding anything, why do people use BitTorrent encryption then?

I’ll try to explain it once more to the BPI, IFPI and RIAA and some tech journalists, just so they don’t embarrass themselves again in the future. BitTorrent encryption has nothing to do with hiding the data you’re sharing, it only hides the fact that you’re using BitTorrent to do so.

Encryption was designed to prevent ISPs from throttling BitTorrent traffic, which they started doing approximately 2 years ago. ISPs use so called traffic shaping devices to identify and slow down BitTorrent traffic because it takes up a lot of bandwidth (read: costs a lot of money). BitTorrent encryption, which is now supported by all the popular BitTorrent clients, hides the protocol header. As a result, these devices can’t detect that someone is using BitTorrent and you can download at full speed.

So, encryption does not hide the actual data people are sharing, everyone can still connect to a BitTorrent swarm, record your IP-address, and send you an infringement notice.

Now back to the claim that 40% of the BitTorrent traffic is encrypted in the UK. My first question would be, how do they know that it’s BitTorrent traffic if it’s encrypted? Apart from that I think 40% is a little too high, unless the ISP that reported the data is throttling BitTorrent traffic of course. We’ve been tracking the number of people who actually use encryption and it is currently slightly below 10%. It could be of course that these people are responsible for 40% of the traffic, but I seriously doubt that.

Bottom line is, anti-piracy organizations should take some time to read up on what filesharing actually is before they are going to accuse people of something, but I guess that’s wishful thinking.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-e...-myths-071108/





The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs
Ernesto

There has been a lot of fuss lately about Comcast’s efforts to throttle and interfere with BitTorrent traffic, but they are by no means the only ISP involved in such efforts. Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all around the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks, time to give an overview, the war is on.

The degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some only limit BitTorrent traffic during some times of the day or throttle in specific regions, others take a more aggressive approach and prevent their customers from seeding or even downloading .torrent files. The fact is, all the ISPs listed here have been caught - one way or another - messing with BitTorrent transfers.

BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers.

Some people might wonder why ISPs throttle their connection. The argument most often used is that all the BitTorrent traffic on their network slows down other customers’ connections. An argument that makes sense (if it is true), but the real problem is that ISPs tend to be secretive about their throttling efforts. My advice to them, if you decide to limit BitTorrent traffic, be open about it and don’t advertise unlimited bandwidth.

So who are these ISPs? Here’s a brief overview of some of the bad guys, take a look at the Azureus wiki for an regularly updated list of throttling ISPs (worldwide).

Canada

The Canadian ISPs Shaw and Rogers were the early adopters of BitTorrent traffic shapers. The first reports date back to 2005, and earlier this year Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic, just to make sure that BitTorrent protocol encryption didn’t work.

Other Canadian ISPs that are known to throttle or limit BitTorrent traffic are Bell Sympatico, Cogeco, Eastlink and Explornet. Rogers and Cogeco are the only ISPs that actively prevent people from seeding files on BitTorrent, similar to Comcast.

UK

There haven’t been a lot of reports on British ISPs that mess with BitTorrent traffic, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t. Pipex, one of the largest ISPs in the UK, is notorious for it’s war against BitTorrent. They throttle BitTorrent traffic, especially during peak times, and they also throttle all encrypted traffic. Other UK ISPs that throttle BitTorrent traffic are BT Broadband, Freedom2Surf and TalkTalk. Virgin Media does not specifically target BitTorrent traffic, they simply throttle all traffic during peak times.

US

Hundreds of sites have reported on the Comcast throttling/interference issues, but Qwest and Atlantic Broadband do just the same thing. RCN/Starpower, Adelphia Cable Communications and Cablevision’s Optimum Online have found to prevent seeding, but do not throttle BitTorrent traffic.

The Solution?

As mentioned before, The developers of uTorrent, Bitcomet and Azureus added support for protocol header encryption to their clients. Encryption seemed to work for well in most cases, more details can be found here. If encryption isn’t working you might want to try one of the alternatives described in this article.
http://torrentfreak.com/war-against-...g-isps-071106/





BitTorrent Blocking Goes North: Canadian ISP Admits to Throttling P2P
Ryan Paul

In response to consumer complaints posted in the company's official forum, Canadian ISP Bell Sympatico has admitted that it uses bandwidth throttling technologies to impose limitations on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing during peak hours. This revelation is further evidence that net neutrality—the principle of equal treatment for all traffic through a network—is eroding.

"[W]e are now using a Internet Traffic Management to restrict accounts that are using a large portion of bandwidth during peak hours," a Sympatico forum administrator wrote in response to a user complaint. The forum administrator also provides a list of affected applications, which includes BitTorrent, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazaa, and other widely-used P2P applications. Readers of Broadband Reports had been suspicious for some time that the ISP was throttling traffic.

"Bell Sympatico has launched a solution to enhance the online customer experience and improve Internet performance for all our customers during peak periods of Internet usage with the introduction of Internet Traffic Management," another response says. "There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world, and Bell is using Internet Traffic Management to ensure we deliver bandwidth fairly to our customers during peak Internet usage."

The rhetoric issued by Sympatico in defense of bandwidth throttling resembles Comcast's recent defense of similar practices. The ISPs claim that bandwidth throttling leads to a better Internet experience for customers. As numerous advocacy groups have pointed out in response to such claims, bandwidth throttling and other kinds of discriminatory content filtering fundamentally change the nature of the Internet to the detriment of consumers. Selectively blocking transmission of content hardly constitutes a valid means of improving the Internet experience.

The bandwidth throttling practices used by these companies are made more egregious by the secrecy surrounding the precise nature of what gets blocked and when. In the official Sympatico forum, the company representatives who admit that bandwidth throttling is occurring are declining to respond to questions about the extent of the throttling or the conditions that Sympatico uses to determine whose connectivity to degrade. Some ISPs, like Comcast, actively punish employees for disclosing such information to the public.

P2P is thought to make up between 30 and 50 percent of all Internet traffic. Many consumers who pay more for faster Internet connectivity do so because they want faster P2P service. The increasing number of foreign and domestic Internet service providers that use bandwidth throttling is sure to provide ammunition to those who believe some sort of government intervention will be necessary to ensure that broadband subscribers have full and unfettered access to any application, any site, any time.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...tling-p2p.html





Alleged MPAA Harrassment Causes aXXo / Pirate Bay Rift
enigmax

Sometime during the last 24 hours there was a mass deletion of aXXo torrents from The Pirate Bay’s tracker. It appears that a dispute between aXXo and The Pirate Bay about how to best handle alleged MPAA torrent meddling got way out of hand - with aXXo deleting lots of his torrents and leaving The Pirate Bay.

An estimated one million people download aXXo rips every month, so although there are conflicting opinions in respect of the quality of his work, there can be no dispute that he’s very popular indeed. While some see him in an almost religious light, others have been quick to take advantage of his popularity for nefarious purposes.

Today, aXXo fans visiting his page on The Pirate Bay were in for a shock, summed up this Pirate Bay user:

C01eMaN - 2007-11-07 00:19 CET:
Whats going on with tpb, all of axxo’s vids are disappearing, any1?

One by one, all torrents released after 7th September 2006 were deleted. But why?

A message on the Pirate Bay comment section seems to sum up the situation and this version of events has been confirmed by aXXo himself, in a couple of places.

hunter1980 - 2007-11-07 12:23 CET:
**************************NOTE**************************

Since the Piratebay staff doesn’t care for their VIP uploaders, then aXXo decided not to use TPB and he deleted his own torrents.

aXXo was constantly exposed to assaults and harassments from possible members of MPAA. Their strategy was to harass aXXo by posting absurd and accusing comments on aXXo’s torrents.

The latest assault incident was especially noticed on aXXo’s last torrent ‘The Simpsons’.
Hunter1980 and aXXo were involved in direct argue with possible members from MPAA.

Unfortunately, this strategy was a success. The strategy was based on rumors and the intention was to spread rumors and all this have had a negative side effects on naive people ( downloaders ).

Since PirateBay did not take any action towards ‘Organized attacks’, aXXo decided to delete his torrent on TPB. aXXo is continuing posting his torrents on mininova or other torrent sites since they care for their VIP uploaders.

***************************END*************************

In a show of protest, Hunter1980 says that he has also deleted all of his torrents from Pirate Bay.

The aXXo world isn’t going to end with the deletion of torrents from The Pirate Bay because they can be found on a number of other torrent sites but it’s never nice to see disputes in the torrent community, especially between great ‘brand’ names.

The deletions have sparked quite a lot of debate on various forums. Some people are angry at The Pirate Bay for allegedly not giving enough support to aXXo while some are wondering if deleting lots of torrents is an appropriate response. Others feel that all uploaders should get the same treatment at The Pirate Bay and that aXXo shouldn’t get special attention. Maybe the Pirate Bay crew simply don’t have time to give anyone special treatment?

Interestingly, not many people seem to be pointing the finger at those who may have made the metaphorical bullets for others to fire - the “possible members of the MPAA” deemed to have taken the original actions which ultimately lead to this (hopefully temporary) breakdown in communication.

If the original MPAA plan was to reduce the availability of aXXo torrents by taking direct or indirect action against them at The Pirate Bay, that sadly seems to have worked, albeit via a strange turn of events. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with the MPAA after all and this is just one big misunderstanding?

Either way, hopefully this aXXo head will be re-attached to the Pirate Bay section of the BitTorrent hydra before it becomes completely severed. Undivided, unconquered.
http://torrentfreak.com/axxo-pirate-bay-rift-071107/





SUMOTorrent: The New BitTorrent Juggernaut?
Ernesto

In just a few months SUMOtorrent managed to grow from 0 to 350,000 visitors a day, which makes it one of the most widely used BitTorrent sites. Impressive statistics but how did they accomplish this, and what are their plans for the future? Let’s find out.

SUMOtorrent is currently ranked 1,052 on Alexa, which means that they are close to entering the list of 1000 most visited websites on the Internet. In addition, SUMOtorrent is running a much needed - as well as one of the biggest, BitTorrent trackers.

This is pretty exceptional if you take into account that the site only had a dozen visitors 6 months ago when it just started.

We are glad that the administrator of SUMOtorrent agreed to answer some of our questions, so we can learn a bit more about his success story.

TorrentFreak: How many visitors does SUMOTorrent have at the moment?

SUMO: SUMOTorrent is now getting about 350 000 daily unique visitors, while SUMOTracker is now tracking 2 million peers, and is probably the largest public BitTorrent tracker hosted on a single server! We recently launched a second public tracker that we hope will be used as much by BitTorrent users as the main tracker.

TorrentFreak: What did you do to grow this fast?

SUMO: I believe the reason why we grew so fast is experience, ideas and support of countless people!

TorrentFreak: So, with all the traffic you’re getting you must be driving a really expensive sports car now right?

SUMO: I don’t have a car but I advise you all to drive safely, put your safety belt on and respect speed limits.

Many webmasters do not communicate about money and torrents. Truth is that, just like any other popular site with high traffic, torrents sites make an income with 4 zeros, SUMOTorrent included. However, we’re not rich: at the end of the month, with all our expenses (hosting of 6 servers for SUMOTorrent/SUMOTracker), developers, partners, backup servers, services… we have actually just enough cash to purchase new servers next month. Our partners could tell you that we often ask them for a delay to pay them every month

We also support various sites and donate to them when we have some extra cash (Filesoup, IndianMP3 …)

TorrentFreak: Are you running the site on your own or do you have a team of moderators helping you out?

SUMO: We are running the site on our own and looking for moderators to help us removing the spam and fake torrents that get through our filters.

TorrentFreak: SUMOTorrent is one of the few BitTorrent sites that has their own tracker, do you think we need more public BitTorrent trackers?

SUMO: Of course we do need more public BitTorrent trackers! Many BitTorrent sites do not have their own tracker, and will tell you that it is to avoid legal troubles. I believe this is only an excuse. When you come to think about it, a public BitTorrent tracker generates a lot of traffic that cannot be monetized as it is not seen by anybody. SUMOTracker costs about $500 per month and we feel like this money is well spent as we are doing it for the community!

TorrentFreak: The Pirate Bay announced that they are working on a new BitTorrent protocol, what is your take on this?

SUMO: I have quite bad memories of the Suprnova/Exeem project, but I believe the SecureP2P project launched by PirateBay will be a great improvement to BitTorrent as it is based on experience of what is not working good in the current protocol and trying to improve it. They have received dozens of suggestions from users all around the world, and I wish the best to them in this enterprise.

We have contacted the head of this project and will provide them with any resources they might need to achieve it. SUMOTorrent will of course support the new protocol, promote it to our users and provide additional trackers on SUMOTracker for the new tracker protocol.

TorrentFreak: Can you tell us something about features you want to add to SUMOTorrent in the future?

SUMO: We will add more languages and buy new servers to scale site architecture with our growth. We will also work on content partnerships, and invite any filmmaker, music group or artist who is interested in sponsoring of his production and free distribution of his content through our site to contact us.

Just like PirateBay and Mininova, we would like to promote groups and help artists getting known through the power of peer-to-peer!

TorrentFreak: Do you have a message for all the anti-piracy organizations out there?

SUMO: Yes, take a look at the 100 first sites according to Alexa ranking! P2P and BitTorrent websites are here to stay, and they are the major means of online content distribution nowadays. This is a fact. Instead of trying to block the highway that leads to your customers, you should put your strategy into question. When the time will come that P2P sites will get better organized (and this time is soon, you know it) and ran by smart structures instead of simple individuals, you will understand you have missed the last opportunity you had to jump on the bandwagon of the digital revolution!

Meanwhile for all torrent users, we are happy to give you a free drive to where you want on www.sumotorrent.com

TorrentFreak: Thanks SUMO and good luck in the future!
http://torrentfreak.com/sumotorrent-...ernaut-071107/





Downloaders Confuse Ozzy Osbourne to Go on Tour
enigmax

When he isn’t biting the heads off live animals or starring in a hugely popular reality show, Ozzy Osbourne is still making music. Unfortunately, he’s had to go on tour because people keep downloading his music: “I’ve been suffering terribly” he mumbled, while counting his next million dollars.

Everyone seems to like Ozzy Osbourne, the Birmingham (UK) born ex-frontman of mega-group ‘Black Sabbath’, reality TV star and now, hugely successful solo artist. Since getting kicked out of Black Sabbath for his drink and drugs habits, Ozzy has sold a a staggering 50 million albums so it’s probably safe to say he has a few dollars hidden away. However, Ozzy is not happy.

In a great interview with Herald Sun he covers many issues but of course we’re interested in his views on file-sharing. Talking about his music, he said:

“I’ve been suffering terribly from people downloading it. If they don’t find something to stop it, people won’t be able to make records. There won’t be any new bands. How are they going to survive? I’m an old-timer, I’ve been doing it 40 years now, but new bands are going to suffer. It’s ridiculous, you could be doing it for nothing.”

Maybe bands will have to innovate with new ideas - such as that from Radiohead which appears to be catching on now that it became clear that they made a fortune. Or maybe take the Prince approach and give your music away in a newspaper? Either way, bands realize that if the fans hear their music, they’ll come to the gigs and happily spend money on the merchandising.

You can’t beat ‘live’ and Sharon Osbourne - Ozzy’s wife and business manager and creator of Ozzfest - explained this to him:

“Sharon said I’d be astounded to find out how many bands are touring because you can download a record but you can’t beat a rock show.”

Absolutely true. Every person who downloads Ozzy’s material is yet another potential fan and more likely to help in the aim of filling his live gigs, and judging by the number of shows he’s performing in ‘to make ends meet’, that assistance will be well received:

“I’ve never done in a long time as many live shows as I’m doing now. This year I’ve done 90 shows.”

Despite being heralded as a ‘God-Like Genius’ in 2004 by NME magazine, Ozzy has been known to show more human traits, such as bewilderment and confusion - and this interview is no different. Despite ’suffering terribly’ at the hands of downloaders, Ozzy isn’t ready for retirement yet and appears happy with his record sales:

“I did try that but I’ve still got life in my bones. I’m still selling lots of records.”

But what about his future prospects?

“It seems to be getting bigger and bigger” says Ozzy.

Don’t ever change Ozzy, things just wouldn’t be the same.
http://torrentfreak.com/downloaders-...n-tour-071102/





Radiohead's Web Venture Spooks Wall Street
Greg Sandoval

Wall Street is taking record labels to task for lackluster Web sales, spiraling CD revenue, and the defections of marquee acts such as Madonna and Radiohead.

Two analysts downgraded Warner Music Group last week, leading to a sharp drop in the company's stock price. One of the analysts, Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, penned a gloomy report about why he thinks the sector is headed for even greater losses.

"No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free," Greenfield wrote.

Proof of this was provided last month by Radiohead fans. The British supergroup offered the digital version of In Rainbows, the band's latest album, for whatever fans wanted to pay. According to research firm ComScore, which conducted a study of the groundbreaking promotion, 62 percent of those who downloaded the album paid nothing.

To Greenfield, what's more disturbing is that Radiohead and a growing number of top acts perceive the Internet as an attractive alternative to record labels. Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor has indicated that he plans to distribute his music online. Madonna announced last month that she was leaving Warner Music for Live Nation, a music promotion company.

"The paradigm in the music business has shifted," Madonna said in a statement announcing the switch. "For the first time in my career, the way that my music can reach my fans is unlimited."

Like Greenfield, Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Cohen downgraded Warner Music's stock from "neutral" to "sell." Both also reduced next year's earnings estimates for the company.

Following the reports, Warner Music's stock hit a 52-week low ($8.78) on Friday. The company's shares, which were trading above $27 a year ago, closed Tuesday at $9.50.

What could be unsettling to those in the music business is that Warner Music was supposed to be faring better than the other three majors--Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Group--according to Greenfield. Earlier in the year, his view on the stock was slightly rosier.

"Over the past couple of years," Greenfield wrote in his report, "(Warner Music) has done an impressive job, outperforming the industry weakness."

The main cause for concern continues to be spiraling CD sales. Download revenues are growing--but not fast enough to ease the pain. Greenfield expects CD revenue to drop 22 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. He said retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Target, and Best Buy are rapidly reducing the floor space dedicated to discs.

How vulnerable is the music industry?

Consider that the sector generated revenues of $14.3 billion in 2000, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA. This year, it's expected to report revenue of $10.3 billion. Had sales growth only kept pace with the U.S. economy, it now would be worth $17 billion, Greenfield wrote.

This illustrates "how dramatically the music industry is continuing to underperform," Greenfield said in the report.

Greenfield urges music executives to embrace a new ad-supported business model, one that dramatically scales back the size of record companies and doesn't saddle songs with digital rights management. He doubts that this will happen any time soon.

The industry is "not ready to endorse such a move at this point" Greenfield wrote. "Even if it was, the...transition will be incredibly painful."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-981...?tag=nefd.blgs





Radiohead, Saul Williams and the Inevitable Rise and Liberation of the Music Industry
Matt Buchanan

While Radiohead basked in adulation for dipping its toe into the digital future with the pay-what-you-will In Rainbows pre-release, it wasn't the first major act to toy with the internet model, and certainly wasn't making a genuine move toward disruption. Had it truly boldly gone where a few have gone before, it potentially stood to lose boatloads of revenues the traditional distribution model guarantees an A-list act. On the other hand, Saul Williams, someone with a lot less to lose, took a dive into the deep end with his release of the Trent-Reznor-produced Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.

Pearl Jam and The Doors have been offering direct DRM-free MP3 downloads of material for a while now in a mix-and-match format, though not with the highest ease of use factor; Prince just gave his last album away (though not digitally); and Public Enemy's giving away How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul for free on P2P networks, albeit loaded with ads. And loathe as I am to credit Phish for anything, they directly sold MP3s way back in the Stone Age of 1999.

Ultimately Radiohead was only wading around the kiddie pool wearing floaties, those being its plans to distribute the album on vanilla CDs next year, possibly through one of the Big Four in North America, ensuring their experiment held little possibility of sinking them (or their cash haul).

The release was brilliant: Fanboys latched onto the $80 superfan package, casual or sympathetic fans threw a couple bucks its way for middling but DRM-free MP3s, and the band cleaned up on positive press, only to have another shot to do it again in a couple months with a regular release riding a wave of hype.

Saul Williams proves to be an interesting test case for independent digital distribution: He's not a household name, but he is forcefully backed by someone who is. In truth, without Trent's involvement, it's doubtful many people would be writing about this at all. Regardless, the release strategy is bolder and closer to what people want out of digital distribution: no DRM, easy access, solid bitrates whether you paid or not, and choices (FLAC or MP3, free or flat, reasonable fee). And while there could be a CD release of Niggy Tardust, given Trent's stance on the major labels, it's highly doubtful it'll be through one of the Big Four.

It's been asked what's up with the hate for physical media and trumpeting of digital releases. I don't hate CDs. I buy a ton of them. The issue is choice. People can buy an album on CD, buy it DRM'd to hell and of mediocre bitrate from a number of online stores or grab it for free in whatever quality they want without DRM from an equally large number of quasi-(il)legal outlets. Trent Reznor and Saul Williams are simply recognizing that piracy is a legitimate, or at least a real consumer choice, and they are cutting out the middlemen—both the labels and the pirates.

What I'm arguing is that the future of the music industry is in offering up music in as many avenues as possible, as easily and cheaply as possible. It's not so much advice as it is inevitability—it's just where things are going. The hard reality is that people place a different value on that content now than they did before—it's absurd to me to pay for news, for instance, despite being in the industry—and no matter how many people the industry sues, that won't change.

To me, five bucks is reasonable for a digital copy of an album at a good bitrate, ten for a real CD. But it might be three bucks and six for the guy next to me on the bus. Or nothing at all, but he'll drop thirty bucks go to a concert. Maybe he just spreads the word to someone who will. The music industry fits in here by offering reasonable choices and formats to accommodate all of those situations—at prices people will pay (or not) in each of them—of which there are, actually, more of than ever.

Radiohead didn't go far enough because they didn't really believe in their online release as a genuine choice. (Witness the quote from their management, "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn't do what we are doing.") On the flip side, Trent told people to steal his music because CD prices are too high, and will probably release his next album in much the same way Saul did.

Radiohead gives samples away to try to keep people from stealing it. Saul is giving his album away so they don't have to. In that way, Radiohead's step forward is an almost equal one back, while Saul's is one that's firmly forward, even if he ends up stumbling along the way.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/feature/r...try-320302.php





UK Music Store: DRM-Free Music Outsells Protected Tunes Four to One
Jacqui Cheng

DRM-free music sells at a much higher rate online than protected music, according to UK-based digital music store 7 Digital. In fact, customers buy it four times as often as they do DRMed music. As a result, almost 80 percent of the store's sales are of DRM-free content. 7 Digital may not sound familiar to some, but it carries over 3 million songs and has many selections from major artists in addition to independent labels.

"MP3 is the only truly interoperable format that works with the iPod, most mobile phones (including the iPhone) and all MP3 players," said 7 Digital's Ben Drury in a statement. "Consumers are a lot savvier than some people think."

The availability of DRM-free music is not only good for track sales, it's doing favors for full album sales too. 7 Digital said that customers buying unprotected music are more likely to buy albums than those buying music with DRM, with some 70 percent of MP3 sales being part of full album downloads.

This should come as good news to the music industry, which has long seen album sales suffer since the proliferation of music stores that allow customers to cherry-pick tracks (which includes pretty much every music store these days). Music labels have been trying to come up with incentives to entice customers to buy more at a time, such as offering exclusive content that only comes with an album purchase. Some artists still stand by the album format, too, at the risk of selling fewer tracks overall. Hip hop artist Jay-Z recently made a decision to withhold his most recent album, American Gangster, from the iTunes Store because he didn't want the tracks to be sold individually.

So far, EMI is the only major music label to fully embrace DRM-free music sales. EMI now sells its music without copy protection on any music store that wants to participate, which includes the iTunes Store and Amazon's music store. Universal is still experimenting with DRM-free downloads on select music stores, but otherwise Sony BMG and Warner are still slow to catch up. With news like this, though, they might be more likely to give DRM-free music a try.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...es-4-to-1.html





Sony CEO Sees 'Stalemate' in Disc Fight

The head of Sony Corp., Howard Stringer, said Thursday that the Blu-ray disc format the company has developed as the successor to the DVD is in a "stalemate" with the competing HD DVD format, chiefly backed by Toshiba Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

"It's a difficult fight," said Stringer, speaking at the 92nd Street Y cultural center in Manhattan.

Toshiba has been selling its players for as low as $200 heading into the holiday season, while Blu-ray players cost more than twice as much. The HD DVD camp also scored a significant win in August, when it induced Paramount Pictures to drop most of its support for Blu-ray and put out high-definition movies exclusively on HD DVD.

"We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides," Stringer said.

At the same time, he played down the importance of the battle, saying it was mostly a matter of prestige whose format wins out in the end.

"It doesn't mean as much as all that," Stringer said. He added that he believed there was an opportunity of uniting the two camps under one format before he became CEO, and he wishes he could travel back in time to make that happen.

Stringer was more upbeat about the PlayStation 3, the game console that has so far had disappointing sales compared to the rival Nintendo Wii.

The CEO said the console is the best-selling console in Europe after a price cut three weeks ago. In the U.S., a recent price cut has doubled sales.

"We are coming back up again," Stringer said. The company aims to sell 10 million PS3s by the end of its fiscal year in March. Nintendo has already sold 13.2 million Wiis.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071109/...hi_te/sony_ceo





Major League Baseball Has Stolen Your $$$ and Claims "No Refunds"

If you purchased downloads before 2006, your discs/files are now useless
Allan Wood

Just got off the phone with a customer service supervisor.

"MLB no longer supports the DDS system" that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them "are no good. They will not work with the current system."

Great. Just effing great. ... As I told the supervisor, this is right in line with how wrong-headed and stupid and ass backwards MLB does everything.

I was told there is absolutely nothing MLB can do about these lost games. Plus, they said my purchases were all "one-time sales" and thus "there are no refunds".

No refunds? As Lee Elia would say: "My fucking ass!"

My info has been submitted to some other MLB department which will review things and see what they can do about either getting me the games I paid for or refunding my $280.45.

So if you have downloaded any games prior to 2006, get those discs out and try to watch them ... then call MLB at 866-800-1275 and demand they refund your money.

***

MLB continues to steal money from baseball fans who have downloaded full games through its digital download service.

I have blogged about this problem twice this year -- April 5 and April 16.

Background: Beginning in 2003, MLB offered fans the chance to download full games to their computer at $3.95 each. When you attempted to open the media file -- either on your hard drive or after it was burned to a CD -- it connected with a MLB.com webpage to obtain a license. Once the license had been verified, the game would play.

From MLB's FAQ:
2. Why is a license used for my downloaded video?

All MLB.com Downloads are encrypted with Microsoft Digital Rights Management technology. DRM security requires a valid license before viewing the material. You must have Windows Media Player (version 10.0 or higher) downloaded on your machine to view downloaded video.

3. What is DRM?

Digital Rights Management is a technology that allows for the secure management of digital media. This security protects the content provider from unauthorized distribution, viewing and use of the material.

At some point during 2006, MLB deleted that essential webpage. Since then, none of the videos that fans purchased will play.

FAQ:
7. Do I have to obtain a license every time I want to watch the downloaded video?

No. When you first try to play the video, a license will be distributed to you and stored by the player. Unless manually deleted, the license will exist forever and will be used when you try to watch the downloaded video on that machine. If you watch the video on a different machine, another license will be required.

This is a lie. Once MLB deleted the essential webpage, none of my CDs would play, even ones I had opened and watched previously.

By deleting the webpage and making it impossible for fans to watch the games they have paid for and downloaded, MLB has stolen $3.95 for every game from every fan. That must runs into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Since MLB started this download service, I have bought and downloaded 71 games -- many of them from the Red Sox's August-September 2004 hot streak -- which works out to a total cost of $280.45 (plus the price of the blank discs). Thanks to MLB, I now have nearly six dozen coasters.

When I contacted MLB in April, the people I spoke with expressed surprise at my predicament and claimed to have never heard of this problem before (naturally!). They said that MLB was overhauling its downloading system -- this was true -- and they told me to be patient because even though they had never heard of anyone with this problem, MLB was working on it.

More than six months have passed and nothing has changed. The essential webpage is still gone and my games will not play. I tried about 35 of them last night -- all with the same result.

And now MLB IS SELLING GAME DOWNLOADS AGAIN! Various 2007 playoff games -- and other games -- are available for $1.99. MLB is still using the DRM technology. Will the page fans use to watch these 2007 games be suddenly deleted in 2009?

Despite MLB's claim that I'm the only baseball fan on the face of the Earth with this problem, I know there are other fans out there who have been similarly ripped off -- because they read the April posts and either commented or emailed me.

I'm asking that if you also have discs that are now useless, call MLB at 866-800-1275 and complain.

It would also be helpful if some Boston or national sports media picked up on this.

Diehard baseball fans have paid tens of thousands of dollars to MLB to download games -- and MLB has pocketed the money and is now making it impossible for those fans to watch the games
http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2007/11...ccessible.html





PCs Being Pushed Aside in Japan
Hiroko Tabuchi

Masaya Igarashi wants $200 headphones for his new iPod Touch, and he's torn between Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 game consoles. When he has saved up again, he plans to splurge on a digital camera or flat-screen TV.

There's one conspicuous omission from the college student's shopping list: a new computer.

The PC's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders with terabytes of memory.

"A new PC just isn't high on my priority list right now," said Igarashi, who was shopping at a Bic Camera electronics shop in central Tokyo and said his three-year-old desktop was "good for now."

"For the cost, I'd rather buy something else," he said.

Japan's PC market is already shrinking, leading analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the first major market to see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it revolutionized household electronics — and whether this could be the picture of things to come in other countries.

"The household PC market is losing momentum to other electronics like flat-panel TVs and mobile phones," said Masahiro Katayama, research group head at market survey firm IDC.

Overall PC shipments in Japan have fallen for five consecutive quarters, the first ever drawn-out decline in PC sales in a key market, according to IDC. The trend shows no signs of letting up: In the second quarter of 2007, desktops fell 4.8 percent and laptops 3.1 percent.

NEC's and Sony's sales have been falling since 2006 in Japan. Hitachi Ltd. said Oct. 22 it will pull out of the household computer business entirely in an effort to refocus its sprawling operations.

"Consumers aren't impressed anymore with bigger hard drives or faster processors. That's not as exciting as a bigger TV," Katayama said. "And in Japan, kids now grow up using mobile phones, not PCs. The future of PCs isn't bright."

PC makers beg to differ, and they're aggressively marketing their products in the countries where they're seeing the most sales growth — places where residents have never had a PC. The industry is responding in two other ways: reminding detractors that computers are still essential in linking the digital universe and releasing several laptops priced below $300 this holiday shopping season.

And, though Sales in the U.S. are slowing too, booming demand in the industrializing world is expected to buoy worldwide PC shipments 11 percent to an all-time high of 286 million in 2007. And, outside Japan, Asia is a key growth area, with second-quarter sales jumping 21.9 percent this year.

Hitachi had already stopped making PCs for individual consumers since releasing this year's summer models, although the Tokyo-based manufacturer will keep making some computers for corporate clients. Personal computers already accounted for less than 1 percent of Hitachi's annual sales.

It's clear why consumers are shunning PCs.

Millions download music directly to their mobiles, and many more use their handsets for online shopping and to play games. Digital cameras connect directly to printers and high-definition TVs for viewing photos, bypassing PCs altogether. Movies now download straight to TVs.

More than 50 percent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same survey found that 30 percent of people with e-mail on their phones used PC-based e-mail less, including 4 percent who said they had stopped sending e-mails from PCs completely.

The fastest growing social networking site here, Mobagay Town, is designed exclusively for cell phones. Other networking sites like mixi, Facebook and MySpace can all be accessed and updated from handsets, as can the video-sharing site YouTube.

And while a lot of the decline is in household PCs, businesses are also waiting longer to replace their computers partly because recent advances in PC technology are only incremental, analysts say.

At a consumer electronics event in Tokyo in October, the mostly unpopular stalls showcasing new PCs contrasted sharply with the crowded displays of flat-panel TVs.

"There's no denying PCs are losing their spunk in Japanese consumers' eyes," said Hiroyuki Ishii, a sales official at Japan's top PC maker, NEC Corp. "There seems to be less and less things only a PC can do," Ishii said. "The PC's value will fade unless the PC can offer some breakthrough functions."

The slide has made PC manufacturers desperate to maintain their presence in Japanese homes. Recent desktop PCs look more like audiovisual equipment — or even colorful art objects — than computers.

Sony Corp.'s desktop computers have folded up to become clocks, and its latest version even hangs on the wall. Laptops in a new Sony line are adorned with illustrations from hip designers like ZAnPon. NEC is trying to make its PCs' cooling fans quieter — to address a common complaint from customers, it says.

Still, sluggish sales weigh on manufacturers.

NEC's annual PC shipments in Japan shrank 6.2 percent to 2.72 million units in 2006, though overall earnings have been buoyed by mobile phone and networking solutions operations. The trend continued in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 then there was a 14 percent decline from a year earlier.

Sony's PC shipments for Japan shrank 10 percent in 2006 from a year earlier. But it isn't about to throw in the towel — yet.

"We feel we've reached a new stage in PC development, where consumers are looking for user-friendly machines to complement other electronics," said Hiroko Nakamura, a Sony official in Tokyo.

Sony's latest PCs, for example, come with a powerful program that can take photos and video clips and automatically edit them into a slideshow set to music.

Even Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc., whose computer sales and market share are surging in the U.S., has seen Macintosh unit sales in Japan slip 5 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2007.

There are other reasons Japan is the first market to see PCs shrink, some analysts say.

"We think of Japanese as workaholics, but many don't take work home," said Damian Thong, a technology analyst at Macquarie Bank in Japan. "Once they leave the office, they're often content with tapping e-mails or downloading music on their phones," he said.

As Hitachi's shuttering of its household PC business demonstrates, making PCs has become less attractive. IBM Corp. also left the PC business in 2005, selling its computer unit to China's Lenovo Group Ltd.

But NEC's Ishii is persisting.

"We have to get the message out there that PCs are on top in terms of computing power," he said. "They always will be."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071104/...sF4pXbZMpk24cA





Mass Production Kicks Off for XO Laptops—Finally
Leslie Katz

Following a number of delays, the One Laptop per Child Foundation's much-awaited XO laptop for needy kids has finally gone into mass production. Early Tuesday (local time), Taiwan's Quanta Computer started producing the green-and-white computer in its new Changshu manufacturing center, two hours northwest of Shanghai.

The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)

"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project," MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the nonprofit One Laptop per Child, said in a statement Tuesday. "Against all the naysayers, and thanks to great partners such as Quanta, we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children."

Quanta has recently increased its manufacturing capacity, and says XO production will ramp up over time.

The XO laptop, while generally heralded by many for its good intentions and potential impact, has hit its share of snags on the road to adoption. In addition to production delays, which give competing low-cost machines time to gain traction, the price point, originally set for $100, has crept up closer to $200.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9812297-7.html





Military Technology Could Protect Mobile Phones from Moisture Damage

A technology originally developed to protect soldiers from chemical attack is set to become the latest weapon of electronics companies by preventing moisture ingress from high humidity, rain or accidental immersion in water. With the rapid growth in small electronic devices such as mobile phones that are required to work both indoors and outdoors, the risk of water ingress and damage to these high value items has grown enormously.

Their small size also means that conventional means of waterproofing such as gaskets or O-rings are not viable. ion-mask, as the product is known - modifies the surface of virtually any material, applying a protective enhancement, just nanometres thick, over the entire surface of the object by means of an ionised gas or "plasma". From mobile phones to PDAs, the treatment not only coats the external surfaces but also the inside without damaging precision electronics.

Invisible to the naked eye, ion-mask causes water to bounce off treated surfaces like beads of mercury by decreasing the surface energy of the component materials, and, by applying a coating just nanometres thick, other properties such as colour, texture and feel are completely unaffected. Electrical items that would normally have moderate levels of water protection can be taken straight from the production line or even high street store and treated retrospectively - with no change to the look, feel or electronic performance of the product and the level of water protection is greatly enhanced.

Ion-mask is not a "barrier technology" that can alter the performance of delicate items such as microphones or is susceptible to pin-holes or make re-work almost impossible. Apart from increasing the protection of smaller items, ion-mask can also be used to ensure that larger, more complex items that can accommodate gaskets and o-rings are given an additional level of protection and provide further assurance of performance to high performance items.

"ion- mask is extremely effective against the problem of moisture ingress as it can be applied to the most intricate electronic objects without damaging the precious circuitry," explains P2i's Business Development Director, Ian Robins. "The process is particularly well suited to high value applications such as MP3 players, which are required to perform outdoors in all weather conditions, or other small, lightweight electronic items which may be inadvertently worn in the shower or while swimming. Having demonstrated the technology to a number of leading manufacturers, many have been amazed and are considering ion-mask enhancement to improve the performance of their products," added Dr Robins.

P2i was established in 2004 to commercialise super liquid-repellent treatments developed by the UK's Ministry of Defence.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/27237.php





Mosh mad

Warner Stays Out of Online Store Deal
Alex Veiga

Nokia Corp.'s new Britain-based online music service launched this week with more than 2 million songs, including tracks from every major record label except one: Warner Music Group Corp., home to artists such as Green Day, Linkin Park and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

New York-based Warner refused to license its music for the service, taking issue with Nokia's operation of a file-sharing Web site called Mosh, an executive familiar with the negotiations between the two companies said Friday on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the talks.

Warner insisted that Nokia promise not to promote Mosh alongside its paid music offerings, the executive said.

Bill Plummer, Nokia's vice president of multimedia for North America, declined to comment Friday on the details of the company's negotiations with Warner, but said talks with the company were ongoing in "good faith and good spirit."

A Warner spokeswoman declined to comment.

Warner's decision to remain outside the Nokia Music Store highlights the increasingly uneasy relationships among record labels and other entertainment companies and online hubs for user-generated content.

YouTube and similar sites thrive from traffic created by computer users uploading all kinds of media files — including many copyrighted songs and videos.

Typically, media companies insist that files uploaded without permission by copyright holders be removed, and YouTube recently reached a formal agreement with major industry players on the issue.

The wrinkle this time is Mosh is entirely separate from Nokia's music portal.

Now, a major label that does have content for sale on the Nokia Music Store is prepared to pull out unless Nokia shows it can beef up its measures to keep unauthorized content off Mosh, said a different executive, who works for a music company and is familiar with the discussions with Nokia.

Nokia was to meet with several record labels as early as next week to discuss the matter, that executive said on condition of anonymity because details of the talks with Nokia were confidential.

Asked about those plans, Plummer said: "We have an ongoing dialogue with our partners."

Nokia launched a "beta" version of Mosh, which stands for "mobilize and share," in August. Computer users can upload music, video, software and other types of files geared to mobile phones on the site to be shared with anyone.

On Friday, audio clips from songs from all the major labels could be found on the site, including tracks by Green Day and Linkin Park; Universal Music Group's Rihanna and 50 Cent; Sony BMG Music Entertainment's Britney Spears; and EMI Group PLC's Robbie Williams.

The site uses technology designed to spot content that is not authorized for sharing, such as copyrighted songs. As it's often the case with such content filters, however, unauthorized content slips through and stays on the site until someone steps up and demands that it be taken down.

"With the exception of very isolated cases, we really haven't seen inappropriate content making its way through or being distributed via Mosh," Plummer said, adding the company removes most unauthorized content from Mosh within a couple of hours after it receives a takedown notice.

Representatives of Universal, EMI and Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG, declined to comment on their deals with Nokia.

Nokia, is based in Espoo, near the Finnish capital, Helsinki.

The Nokia Music Store launched on Thursday in the United Kingdom. The company plans to expand the portal to other European markets and elsewhere in coming months.
http://www.physorg.com/news113395222.html





As Citigroup Chief Totters, CNBC Reporter Is Having a Great Year
Bill Carter

The big story on CNBC all day today will undoubtedly be the fallout from the resignation of Charles O. Prince III as chairman of Citigroup — and Maria Bartiromo, one of the best-known names in business news on television, will surely be among the reporters covering it.

There may be some muted vindication in that for Ms. Bartiromo, who, after enduring accusations in the media of questionable interactions with Mr. Prince’s company, is now in the midst of what can be described as a turnaround year. She continues to score among the best ratings for CNBC, while also landing a string of interviews with major political and business figures.

It was only in January that Ms. Bartiromo’s name was tied — through leaks from Citigroup — to the company’s decision to oust its chief of global investment, Todd S. Thomson. Unidentified executives at Citigroup, which is both a CNBC advertiser and a frequent subject of its coverage, told several publications that among the reasons Mr. Thomson was fired was his decision to invite Ms. Bartiromo to speak to a group of Citigroup clients in Asia and to fly her to that event in the company jet.

During the episode, Ms. Bartiromo, who is married to Jonathan Steinberg, the son of the financier Saul Steinberg, saw her personal life and ethics battered in media commentaries, while CNBC took fire for permitting her to participate in what critics labeled an apparent conflict of interest. But unlike other media figures who have seen their careers derailed by becoming targets of that kind of criticism, Ms. Bartiromo has not only survived, she has thrived. During a recent lunch interview, she said, “My life has been taken up a notch in terms of busy-ness.”

Just a bit. Beyond “Closing Bell,” her daily two-hour live afternoon show on CNBC, Ms. Bartiromo anchors a weekly syndicated show called “The Wall Street Journal Report,” appears regularly on NBC’s “Today” and frequently on the “NBC Nightly News,” and writes a weekly question-and-answer column in BusinessWeek and a monthly column in Reader’s Digest. Last month, she had what she calls one of her career highlights, moderating (with Chris Matthews) the economic-issues Republican candidates debate.

“I really feel like I have had the year of my career,” Ms. Bartiromo, who is 40, said, “the best year of my career.”

That might not have been expected in January, when the heat from the Citigroup incident was turned up, though her bosses at CNBC defended her vigorously. Ms. Bartiromo has not commented on the Citigroup episode until now.

“I didn’t think I had to defend what I was doing,” she said.

Ten months later, she has some pointed words for members of the media who accused her of unethical behavior, and for Citigroup, including, by name, Mr. Prince. She suggested that professional rivalry might have been a motivation for the speculation and innuendo about her.

“Some reporters were upset because I kept scooping them and they felt, oh, this is perfect. This is a window. Let me, you know, bring her down,” she said.

And she said she had been unfairly caught up in a management upheaval at Citigroup. She suggested that her relationship with Mr. Thomson — which she conceded was friendly but said was a source-reporter association — was used as a diversionary tactic by Mr. Prince to cover whatever his underlying reasons were for ousting Mr. Thomson.

“Something happened between Todd Thomson and Chuck Prince, and somehow I got wrapped up in it,” Ms. Bartiromo said. “Clearly, there was another agenda going on.”

A spokeswoman for Citigroup said the company had no comment on Ms. Bartiromo’s account, referring to a statement the company released at the time of Mr. Thomson’s ouster (Ms. Bartiromo was not mentioned in the statement.)

Ms. Bartiromo does not appear to have been damaged professionally by the criticism. She still turns up daily on the stock exchange floor, to stand among the chaos, interviewing business leaders as traders run around her. Ms. Bartiromo, unfazed, only seems to talk a bit louder and maybe — though it hardly seems possible — a bit faster, in her distinctive Bay Ridge accent.

And, unlike other recent television figures buffeted by criticism, like Dan Rather and Rosie O’Donnell, Ms. Bartiromo has retained the full support of her network. “I don’t know if I could put a number on it,” said Mark Hoffman, CNBC’s president, about Ms. Bartiromo’s importance to the network, “but she’s right up there.”

She has become even more indispensable with the arrival of the Fox Business Network, a competitor for CNBC, which has dominated television business news while piling up enormous profits (estimated by analysts at about $300 million a year.)

Roger Ailes, the man who hired Ms. Bartiromo at CNBC, is now running Fox Business, aggressively hiring, among others, a host of female reporters with business credentials and, as Ms. Bartiromo put it, “beauty or whatever.” When he announced the start of the Fox channel in February, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox’s parent company, News Corporation, referring to Ms. Bartiromo’s nom de TV, pointedly said, “We have to recruit some Money Honeys.”

Ms. Bartiromo said she has never had a problem with the “Money Honey” nickname (tagged on her early in her CNBC career by Mr. Murdoch’s New York Post) — she has trademarked it for herself. She plans to use that trademark for a cartoon character called “Money Honey,” who will appear in a series of animated short pieces aimed at teaching children some basics about money.

Of the name, she said, “Let it roll off my back, and I’m flattered to have the notice.”

If Ms. Bartiromo’s striking looks and high profile in business circles have helped her draw viewers and land big interviews, they have also helped attract the kind of attention that male television figures — like, say, Larry Kudlow and Jim Cramer of CNBC — never seem to draw. Most recently, there have been items in the gossip columns about a supposed rivalry with a new CNBC star, Erin Burnett.

“You know, people love to see some kind of controversy,” Ms. Bartiromo said. “I think Erin’s terrific; she’s doing a great job. And frankly, we have, at this point, several women who are beautiful and very smart. What’s not to love?”

(For her part in the mutual admiration society, Ms. Burnett said, in an e-mailed comment, “Maria is the hardest-working person I know. She’s raised the bar in business news and it’s invigorating to work with her.")

That is not to say the women do not compete.

“Sure there’s competition,” Ms. Bartiromo said. “Don’t kid yourself. We all want the best interviews. But I think at the end of the day, we’re saying: O.K., we have a competitor out there.” She admits to ramping up her own interview schedule in anticipation of the Fox channel. “I did want to have the president on the week Fox launched,” she said. (He came on a week earlier.)

Still, she acknowledged that she was upset by the criticism she took for being too closely associated with Mr. Thomson and specifically for the trip to China to speak to Citigroup clients. She argued that she had benefited professionally by being able to meet wealthy investors in Asia “and find out what they’re doing with their money.”

John Levine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, said that for him the significant issue was the promotional appearance on behalf of Citigroup, a CNBC advertiser and a frequent subject of its coverage.

"I don’t think it’s egregious," Mr. Levine said. "But the trade-off is not the best when you do a promotional appearance for a company you are then going to turn around and cover."

CNBC executives, and even Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman of its parent company, General Electric, rose to Ms. Bartiromo’s defense, saying she had permission to attend the event and ride on the Citigroup plane.

Other aspects of Ms. Bartiromo’s relationship with Mr. Thomson, including his decision to put $5 million into a television show she was at one time supposed to have a role in and his efforts to get her on an advisory board of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, added fuel to speculation that they were more than business associates.

In the interview, Ms. Bartiromo acknowledged that the speculation had been “definitely uncomfortable,” but said, “Everything was above board.”

She summed up her participation as: “One of our customers asked me to do a speaking engagement. I did it. We paid for it,” adding, “I don’t really have to defend it. I have my husband on one side and my company on the other supporting me.”

Officially, the Citigroup incident has not changed any policies at CNBC, nor has it changed Ms. Bartiromo’s approach to her job. CNBC says she has no limitations and still reports on Citigroup. The Citigroup spokeswoman, Leah Johnson, said the company had no issues with Ms. Bartiromo’s coverage. She conducted a prominent interview recently with the Citigroup senior vice chairman, William Rose.

Mr. Hoffman said one of the keys to Ms. Bartiromo’s success has been her relentless “source building” and he did not expect her to change at all.

Ms. Bartiromo cited her recent pursuit — through rounds of breakfasts and lunches — of Angelo R. Mozilo, the chief executive of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, which is in the middle of the national mortgage crisis. That paid off with an exclusive interview with him, she said.

“What should I be changing?” she said. “I don’t see what I need to change. I will always have relationships.”

Having weathered the Citigroup storm, Ms. Bartiromo said, she is free to pursue the thing she most loves to do: talk to business people about what is about to move the market.

“I love this thing now called sovereign funds,” she said, meaning the large pools of capital amassed by governments in Asia and the Middle East, and managed by groups like Cutter Associates, an international investment firm. “I had the head of Cutter on and he said: ‘Look, we have $60 billion we want to put to work.’ I find that kind of stuff so exciting. I find it so sexy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/bu...bartiromo.html





Cable Channel Nods to Ratings and Leans Left
Jacques Steinberg

Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.

Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.

During the nine months she spent on “The View” before departing abruptly last spring, Ms. O’Donnell raised viewership notably. She did so while lamenting the unabated casualties of the Iraq war and advocating the right to gay marriage, among other positions.

Under one option, Ms. O’Donnell would take the 9 p.m. slot each weeknight on MSNBC, pitting her against “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News.

But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.

Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”

Fox News consistently denies any political bias in its programming. But whether by design or not, MSNBC is managing to add viewers at a moment when its hosts echo the country’s disaffection with President Bush.

The channel has done so much as Fox News did beginning in 1996, when the president was Bill Clinton, a Democrat. On some nights recently, Mr. Olbermann has even come tantalizingly close to surpassing the ratings of the host he describes as his nemesis, Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, at least among viewers ages 25 to 54, which is the demographic cable news advertisers prefer. Most of the time, though, Mr. O’Reilly outdraws Mr. Olbermann by about 1.5 million viewers over all at the same hour, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Still, as its most recognizable face, MSNBC has marshaled behind Mr. Olbermann, who on July 3, in an eight-minute “special comment” at the close of his show, addressed President Bush directly and called on him to resign. Two months later, the channel chose Mr. Olbermann to serve as the principal host of its coverage of a major prime-time address by Mr. Bush.

Mr. Olbermann’s “special comments” — more than 20 in the last 12 months, and nearly all of them first-person editorials that find some fault with the administration — have helped increase the ratings of his program by 33 percent in just the last year, to about 773,000 viewers a night, according to Nielsen. With those ratings, Mr. Olbermann’s program surpassed “Paula Zahn Now” on CNN, which was canceled last summer.

Mr. Olbermann comes on after “Hardball” with Mr. Matthews, whose longtime opposition to the war — and to what he describes as Vice President Dick Cheney’s outsize role in the administration — has become only more pointed since he took on the title of managing editor of his broadcast over the summer.

Since then, he has talked, both on the air and off, about the “criminality” of the Bush White House, as epitomized, he says, by the role of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the vice president’s former chief of staff, in the C.I.A. leak case. Mr. Matthews’s overall ratings have edged up in the process, though not on the scale of Mr. Olbermann’s.

Even Joe Scarborough, once a conservative congressman from Florida who stood behind President Bush during a campaign rally in 2004, has seemed to have a change of heart about his fellow Republicans in recent months, as is obvious to viewers of “Morning Joe,” his new morning show on MSNBC. In recent weeks, he could be heard praising Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s outreach to the military and her husband’s accomplishments as an ex-president, sentiments that, he acknowledged, had surprised even him.

In a telephone interview yesterday morning, hours before the news of the O’Donnell negotiations surfaced, Mr. Scarborough sounded more like Mr. Olbermann than vintage Newt Gingrich.

“I’m just as conservative as I was in 1994, when everyone was calling me a right-wing nut,” he said. “I think the difference is the Republican Party leaders, a lot of them, have run a bloated government, have been corrupt, and have gone a very, very long way from what we were trying to do in 1994. Also, the Republican Party has just been incompetent.”

Asked if Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews in particular provided an outlet for the opinions of viewers unhappy with the current administration, Mr. Scarborough said yes.

“While I don’t agree with a lot of the things those guys say night in and night out,” he said, “I think it’s very important that those disaffected voices have a place to go when they think somebody out there needs to be speaking truth to power.”

Which is not to say that all of the channel’s hosts speak in one voice. On that same day last month when Mr. Scarborough spoke warmly of the Clintons, for example, he also referred to Democrats generally as “stupid people” and “morons.”

In an interview Friday, Mr. Matthews, who was once an aide to Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., the former Democratic speaker of the House, recalled that his criticisms of the Clintons in the mid-to-late 1990s made him an outcast within the party, and are still echoed in his skepticism about Mrs. Clinton today.

“I really do take on people with power,” he said. “Deceit is what drives me crazy, either by Bill Clinton or the hawks in this administration.”

That said, in a separate interview last week, Mr. Olbermann acknowledged that for MSNBC’s nighttime lineup to ultimately work, viewers needed to be able to follow at least some common themes from one show to another. He likened himself and his fellow hosts, collectively, to the menu of a hamburger restaurant with several variations of the same dish.

“If you go into a burger place, and you go in there for the fish, you might want the fish occasionally but it’s probably a mistake,” he said. “Could you be utterly different politically and succeed in this format? You’d basically be throwing your audience away.”

Bill Carter contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/bu...ia/06msnb.html





Big Executive of the Tiny Screen
Laura M. Holson

When CBS Mobile introduced the Daily Delivery, a short video for cellphones highlighting fashionable shops in Los Angeles and cool gadgets, it was a disaster.

CBS Mobile, a unit of the television network’s interactive division charged with developing content for the new third screen, noticed, though, that interest spiked when celebrities were featured. So they scrapped the original concept and came back with a twice-daily show focused on celebrity gossip and off-the-wall news. It is now one of their most frequently watched original programs on the hand-held screen.

“We are constantly forced to kill our own babies,” said Cyriac Roeding, executive vice president of CBS Mobile. Those words might seem harsh if the following two facts about Mr. Roeding weren’t true. First, he was hired by CBS in 2005 to create a mobile entertainment division where researchers track within minutes whether a made-for-mobile show is a hit. Second, he is an unapologetic entrepreneur who has less in common with Hollywood big shots than with his peers in Silicon Valley, who are equally willing to dump a strategy that doesn’t work.

That puts Mr. Roeding at the vortex of Hollywood’s new media revolution. Consumer attitudes toward viewing videos on the cellphone screen are changing. The debut of the Apple iPhone showed a wider, and older, audience that cellphones can be multimedia devices. And the software behind the Google phone is expected to enable more entertainment programming.

As a result, companies including Walt Disney and NBC Universal are hungry to exploit new technology much the way they did when DVDs became popular in the 1990s. Swirling in that vortex of experimentation and deal-making is the question of how anyone makes money on the new platform.

Studios and networks are under pressure to make money however they can. Actors, directors and writers want their cut, too. So much so that this week the Writers Guild of America is to go on strike against studios and networks demanding, in part, a stake in future earnings from online and mobile phone content.

An additional factor that makes Mr. Roeding’s job particularly hard is that the 34-year-old German-born mobile advertising executive must forge partnerships with phone companies that are hard-pressed to give up their financial grip on users of their networks.

“The difficulty with Cyriac’s job is getting successful but traditional companies to go down a path they wouldn’t otherwise go down,” said Ryan Hughes, vice president for digital media at Verizon Wireless.

Mr. Roeding is responsible for the unit’s overall strategy, negotiating complicated deals with CBS Mobile’s two dozen partners like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, as well as overseeing mobile advertising and games.

Take, for example, its broadcast version of “Big Brother.” In August, a made-for-mobile version of the CBS network program ran 24 hours a day on its own channel on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO network showing on Verizon Wireless phones.

Mr. Hughes from Verizon said he first met Mr. Roeding in San Diego in the summer of 2006, when Verizon was discussing what CBS shows would be carried on MediaFLO. Mr. Roeding was expected to present CBS’s proposal, but when he walked into the meeting he explained he had not yet secured the necessary rights.

“We knew it would be difficult,” said Mr. Hughes. Six months later, though, after months of silence, Mr. Hughes got a text message from a CBS executive saying Mr. Roeding had secured the rights in time for MediaFLO’s spring introduction. “It blew me away,” Mr. Hughes said.

Mr. Roeding acknowledges that the task is tricky. But he is pragmatic, too, seeking to apply the lessons he learned as an entrepreneur to a Hollywood culture marred by political infighting, one-upmanship and corporate backstabbing.

Senior CBS executives are now required to attend his “Wireless 101” presentation. He created a news division with mobile-specific alerts and news to appeal to young viewers. And Ashley Hartman, a 22-year-old Jessica Simpson look-alike who is the face of CBS Mobile entertainment, is gaining as much notice for her stint as CBS’s “Mobile VJ” as she did for her recurring role on the Fox hit “The O.C.”

Even recruits who were first put off at the idea of working at what some consider to be a musty network were struck by Mr. Roeding’s approach. At the mention of CBS, “I thought of ‘Murder, She Wrote,’” said Randy Ahn, a director at CBS Sports Mobile, before meeting Mr. Roeding. “Cyriac, though, talked about new ideas.”

Indeed, Mr. Roeding is unorthodox in his recruiting, choosing to look beyond traditional media or wireless carriers for talent. He has brought in other entrepreneurs, including Jeff Sellinger, a founder of GoldPocket, a mobile marketing and content firm, who now oversees daily operations.

And he is wooing top CBS talent. He has monthly dinners with Anthony Zuiker, executive producer of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” to discuss mobile games, including the new “CSI: Miami” offering. (Mr. Zuiker, though, is a bit skeptical of the new medium, and so far views mobile games and other content as promotional. “It should drive people back to television,” he said. “I don’t consume television on a cellphone, but I wouldn’t want to stop anyone else either.”)

Mr. Roeding, a former McKinsey consultant who bears a striking resemblance to Cary Elwes in “The Princess Bride,” is undeterred by the challenge, instead overwhelmed by the potential to reach consumers. “It doesn’t make sense to fight over a business that isn’t there yet,” he said. “First let’s create something that consumers want to see.”

To emphasize his point, he showed a photo of a young girl at the airport in San Jose, Calif. She was wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “Me, my cell and I.”

“The relationship people have with their mobile phones is very personal,” he said. “We can’t ignore that. If we do, generations will pass us by.” Or, as Quincy Smith, Mr. Roeding’s boss and president of CBS Interactive, put it: “We need to evolve from being a content company to an audience company.”

Mr. Roeding was born in 1973 and raised in a small town outside Frankfurt, the younger of two children. He graduated from the University of Karlsruhe where he studied business and engineering.

Mr. Roeding was a founder of 12snap Inc., a mobile marketing and entertainment firm started in 1999 whose clients include Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. The firm won awards for innovative marketing, including a campaign where children sent their parents mobile messages encouraging them to buy a PlayStation 2 for Christmas.

In 2004, though, Mr. Roeding grew restless and wanted to move to either Silicon Valley or Shanghai, where the markets for mobile media were emerging. A McKinsey alumnus offered to introduce him to Nancy Tellem, who oversees entertainment at the CBS network and production studios. At their first meeting Mr. Roeding took out his cellphone and showed her his personalized wallpaper and videos Europeans were already watching.

“Mobile wasn’t even on our radar,” said Ms. Tellem, whose office is near his at CBS’s Television City. “But there was a small group of us who thought something was there.” Mr. Roeding was hired in 2005 and went about creating an autonomous unit with the same start-up feel he thrived on at 12snap.

Mr. Roeding declined to discuss the unit’s financials except to say it is profitable, making programs for a fraction of the cost their peers in TV do. “It’s the Ikea model of content production,” he said with a laugh. But industry executives say CBS Mobile, like ABC and NBC, gets a small percentage of its revenue from advertising; the rest is from deals and partnerships. That percentage is expected to shift, though, when advertising on phones becomes more accepted.

Mr. Roeding’s focus is on making the mobile shows as personalized as possible. One of Mr. Roeding’s producers developed the animated series “Danny Bonaduce: Life Coach,” a twist on self-help talk shows that starts this month. His voice gravelly from too many Marlboros and hard-partying nights, Mr. Bonaduce said he agreed to the series because it seemed like fun.

Mr. Roeding did not want viewers to have a passive experience. So, as part of the show, viewers will be able to text message Mr. Bonaduce, who will answer questions and give advice.

“Are you going to help celebrities?” asked Mr. Roeding as Mr. Bonaduce settled into a chair before taping. The actor’s face and broad shoulders were the color of rare meat. “I have absolutely no interest in helping celebrities,” said Mr. Bonaduce, laughing. “I could go all day without helping celebrities.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/bu...dia/05cbs.html





Tracking of Web Use by Marketers Gains Favor
Louise Story

It seems that the Federal Trade Commission is not slowing down the online advertising party.

Just days after a commissioner at the agency expressed concern about consumer privacy on the Internet, two large social networking sites are showcasing new ways to use information about their members to deliver specialized advertisements.

MySpace will announce today that more than 50 large advertisers, including Ford and Taco Bell, are using its so-called HyperTargeting ad program, which scours user profiles for interests and then delivers related ads. And, within the next few days, Facebook is widely expected to announce a new advertising system that will be based on data from its members’ profiles.

The MySpace announcement is unrelated to the recent F.T.C. hearings on online advertising — rather, it was timed to the start of Ad:Tech, a digital advertising conference in New York, according to Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit of the News Corporation that includes MySpace. MySpace is also announcing a self-service site where small and midsize advertisers can buy custom display ads on the site.

Privacy advocates said they were surprised how quickly online companies came back to the market promoting their targeting programs.

“Despite all of the assurances that the industry gave to regulators and the public, it sounds as if their business plans sort of fly in the face of the promises to operate without exploiting young people,” said Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University and author of the book “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.”

“If you are hanging out with your friends and talking about who you are, what rock stars you like, and so on, you don’t assume that someone is sitting there and taking down every word you’re saying and putting it into some kind algorithm,” she said.

MySpace was notably absent from the panels at the F.T.C.’s forum on behavioral targeting held in Washington last week. Executives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, the AOL unit of Time Warner and Facebook discussed their privacy policies, but MySpace sent representatives onkly to watch the forum, not to speak. A spokeswoman from MySpace said the company would be active in discussions about privacy.

The forum was the agency’s first public workshop on online advertising in eight years, and officials from the agency expressed concern that marketers and Internet companies might be infringing on people’s privacy in some of the way they use online data to aim their ads.

“People should have dominion over their computers,” said Jon Leibowitz, an F.T.C. commissioner. “The current ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in online tracking and profiling has to end.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/te...05myspace.html





No Email Privacy Rights Under Constitution, Us Gov Claims
Mark Rasch

On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the government's request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case centering on the right of privacy for stored electronic communications. At issue is whether the procedure whereby the government can subpoena stored copies of your email - similar to the way they could simply subpoena any physical mail sitting on your desk - is unconstitutionally broad.

This appears to be more than a mere argument in support of the constitutionality of a Congressional email privacy and access scheme. It represents what may be the fundamental governmental position on Constitutional email and electronic privacy - that there isn't any. What is important in this case is not the ultimate resolution of that narrow issue, but the position that the United States government is taking on the entire issue of electronic privacy. That position, if accepted, may mean that the government can read anybody's email at any time without a warrant.
What is Privacy?

In a seminal case (Katz v. United States in 1963) the US Supreme Court, over the strenuous objections of the US government, upheld the right of the user of a payphone to claim a right to privacy in the contents of those communications. The Court held that the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in your "persons, house, places and effects" against unreasonable searches and seizures protected people, not just places. Thus, to determine whether you had a right against unreasonable seizure - a kind of privacy right - the court adopted a two-pronged test: did you think what you were doing was private and is society willing to accept your belief as objectively reasonable?

The method you use to communicate can effect both your subjective expectation of privacy and society's willingness to consider that expectation as "reasonable." Shouting a "private" conversation into a megaphone at Times Square would neither be subjectively nor objectively reasonable, if you wanted the conversation to be confidential. "Broadcasting" the conversation over the radio is likewise unreasonable.

But, what about "broadcasting" it over an unsecured Wi-Fi router, analog cell phone, or cordless telephone? While certain statutes may make the interception of such communications unlawful, absent such statutes is there a Constitutional prohibition on listening in? Put more narrowly, if the cops listen in on your baby monitor, do they violate your "right to privacy," or do you give up your right by knowingly putting the monitor in little Timmy's room in the first place?
Partial Waiver

Do you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the contents of email you send and receive at work, using a work computer, over a company supplied network, where the company has a "business use only" policy, and an employee monitoring policy that states that any communications may be monitored? Think about it. Indeed, the policy will go further and says "users have no expectation of privacy." But is this true? Or, is it even a good idea?

Remember Katz? The Constitution only protects reasonable expectations of privacy. If you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in your email, then the examination of the contents of your email by anyone for any purposes is not an invasion of privacy and raises no Fourth Amendment concerns.

What you really mean in your policy is that your employer (your supervisor, the IT staff, HR, legal, etc.) may examine the contents of your e-mail for legitimate reasons and if they choose to, disclose the contents to whatever third parties they deem reasonable. Fair enough. But, it also means that you can't read your bosses' email or your co-workers' email, just because you are curious. Why not? Because they have an "expectation of privacy" in their email.

Privacy is not like virginity - you either have it or you don't. You can have privacy rights with respect to some uses by some people and not with respect to other uses by other people. Right? Well, not according to the government.
No Constitutional Privacy

In arguing that the government did not necessarily need a wiretap order to obtain the contents of Mr. Warshak's email from his ISP, the government argued that the Fourth Amendment did not preclude a mere subpoena because users of ISPs don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The government argued:
... any expectation of privacy can be waived [citing case holding that a privacy disclaimer on a bulletin board "defeats claims to an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy."] Many employees are provided with e-mail and Internet services by their employers. Often, those employees are required to waive any expectation of privacy in their email each time they log on to their computers. [Court] orders directed to the email of employees who have waived any possible expectation of privacy do not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Now, we are not talking about cases where the employer reads someone's email and decides to give it to the government, or where the employer consents to the search by the FBI. Essentially, the Justice Department is arguing that when you give up your privacy rights in an e-mail policy vis-a-vis your employer, you waive any Constitutional claim to privacy if the government decides to just take it - even without the knowledge or consent of the employer. Once you give up privacy in an email policy, the game is over. Since the Fourth Amendment only protects legitimate privacy rights, and you have no privacy in email, theoretically (absent a statute that prohibits it) the government could constitutionally walk in and just take anyone's files.

Wow.

But then the government goes on: they note "some email accounts are abandoned, as when an account holder stops paying for the service and the account is cancelled." There "can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in such accounts." Oh really? So if I decide not to keep paying Comcast, then not only to I potentially lose Internet service, but the government can then read every email I ever wrote or received? Better pay the bill, then. When I terminate my service, I am terminating my right of use - not "abandoning" my privacy rights. A few years ago, when an US soldier was killed in Fallujah, Yahoo had to decide whether his parents could legally access the email in his account, an account that Yahoo's policy terminated at the soldier's death. The case was resolved with a consented to court order allowing such access, but the government's argument would be that when you die your account terminates and your email is up for grabs. In other words, don't die with email in your account and don't get any email after you die.

The government again goes on:
... hackers may obtain internet services and email accounts using stolen credit cards. Hackers maintain no reasonable expectation of privacy in such accounts.

So the privacy of your communications may be determined by the legitimacy of the method by which you pay for such communications? Bounce a check to the phone company and the government can listen in to your phone calls? Or buy a cell phone with a stolen credit card, and the government can read your text messages?

The most distressing argument the government makes in the Warshak case is that the government need not follow the Fourth Amendment in reading emails sent by or through most commercial ISPs. The terms of service (TOS) of many ISPs permit those ISPs to monitor user activities to prevent fraud, enforce the TOS, or protect the ISP or others, or to comply with legal process. If you use an ISP and the ISP may monitor what you do, then you have waived any and all constitutional privacy rights in any communications or other use of the ISP. For example, the government notes with respect to Yahoo! (which has similar TOS):
Because a customer acknowledges that Yahoo! has unlimited access to her email, and because she consents to Yahoo! disclosing her email in response to legal process, compelled disclosure of email from a Yahoo! account does not violate the Fourth Amendment.
The government relied on a Supreme Court case where a bank customer could not complain when the government subpoenaed his cancelled checks from the bank itself and where the Court noted:

The checks are not confidential communications but negotiable instruments to be used in commercial transactions. All of the documents obtained, including financial statements and deposit slips, contain only information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their employees in the ordinary course of business.

In essence, the government is arguing that the contents of your emails have been voluntarily conveyed to your ISP and that you therefore have no privacy rights to it anymore. In a previous proceeding in Warshak, the government went even further, arguing that automated spam filters, antivirus software, and other automated processes that examine the contents of your email, establish that you cannot possibly expect your communications to be private.

What is silly about this is the fact that, at least for the government, the argument is unnecessary. The Fourth Amendment protects against "unreasonable" invasions of privacy interests. The government could effectively argue that, by obtaining a subpoena or other court order for the records which are relevant to a legitimate investigation, the search or seizure is reasonable, and therefore comports with the Fourth Amendment. All subpoenas and demands for documents infringe some privacy interest, and unless overbroad, they are generally reasonable. The statute which permits government access to stored communication pursuant to a mere subpoena may likewise be perfectly reasonable and may withstand constitutional scrutiny. But that doesn't mean that the Constitution doesn't apply.

No, the government is seeking to eliminate any Constitutional privacy interest in email. Under this standard, if the FBI walked into your employer or ISP, and simply took your email (no warrant, no court order, no probable cause, no nothing), you would have no constitutional argument about the seizure, because you had abandoned your expectation of privacy. This appears to be more than a mere argument in support of the constitutionality of a Congressional email privacy and access scheme. It represents what may be the fundamental governmental position on Constitutional email and electronic privacy - that there isn't any.

And that, frankly, scares me.

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/456





Beware! T-Mobile Owns the Color Magenta

I’m not sure I fully understand… should that have been written the color “Magenta™”? The absurdity is probably confusing to you as well. The total hue domination by T-Mobile and its bigger Deutsche Telekom (DT) has been going on for several years, but has gained more attention lately. DT not only trademarked magenta, they also have a trademark on the use of their two 2 color logo… More can be read at servicemarks.

Don’t worry trademarks only apply to the industry sector that they are registered under and since DT applied for their trademark in the tele-communications sector you just can’t use the color magenta around anything to do with phones, digital media… oh and just about anything on the internet.
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/200...color-magenta/





O2 Removes 200MB Fair-Use Policy for UK iPhone
Nik Fletcher

There's been a fair bit of debate (and disappointment) with the O2 200 megabyte 'Fair-Use' data transfer policy that was expected to appear with the U.K. iPhone contracts this Friday. Thankfully, it seems O2 has heard us: late last night, the Telegraph newspaper revealed that O2 has now scrapped the limit on just how much data we will be able to burn through. Although the Telegraph refers to a "200 megabit" limit, as far as we know the limit actually was measured in megabytes. O2's terms and conditions page now says:

"There is no limit on the monthly network usage. However if we feel that your activities are so excessive that other customers are detrimentally affected, we may give you a written warning (by email or otherwise). In extreme circumstances, if the levels of activity do not immediately decrease after the warning, we may terminate or suspend your Services."

Surprised that O2 has come full circle? We are too, but we're also very glad to see that they're listening to their potential customers (even if using the phone as a modem is unsurprisingly against the terms of your contract). If you're wondering about the story behind the Apple / O2 partnership, there's also a fascinating insight to the deal found on the Telegraph website.

The iPhone goes on sale at 6:02pm on Friday (seriously - did O2 really need another plug?).
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/04/o2-re...for-uk-iphone/





Google Enters the Wireless World
Miguel Helft and John Markoff

Google took its long-awaited plunge into the wireless world today, announcing that it is leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers that could accelerate the convergence of computing and communications.

Mobile phones based on Google’s software are not expected to be available until the second half of next year. They will be manufactured by a variety of handset companies, including HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung and be available in the United States through T-Mobile and Sprint.

The phones will also be available through the world’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile, with 332 million subscribers in China, and the leading carriers in Japan, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, as well as T-Mobile in Germany, Telecom Italia in Italy and Telefónica in Spain.

The 34-member Open Handset Alliance, as the group is called, also includes many of the leading makers of mobile phone chips, like Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, as well as SiRF Technology Holdings, Marvell Technology Group, Nvidia and Synaptics. EBay (which owns the Internet calling service Skype), Nuance Communications, NMS Communications and Wind River Systems are also members of the group.

The technology is expected to provide cellular handset manufacturers and wireless operators with capabilities that match and potentially surpass those using smartphone software made by Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Palm, Research in Motion and others. In contrast to the existing competitors, Google’s software will be offered freely under “open source” licensing terms, meaning that handset manufacturers will be able to use it at no cost and be free to add new features to differentiate their products.

As speculation about Google’s efforts trickled out over the last several months, expectations that the company would build what has been called a Google Phone or GPhone have mounted.

But for now at least, Google will not put its brand on a phone. The software running on the phones may not even display the Google logo. Instead, Google is giving the software away to others who will build the phones. The company invested heavily in the project to ensure that all of its services are available on mobile phones. Its ultimate goal is to cash in on the effort by selling advertisements to mobile phone users, just as it does on Internet-connected computers.

“We are not building a GPhone; we are enabling 1,000 people to build a GPhone,” said Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, who led the effort to develop the software.

Mr. Rubin said the open-source strategy would encourage rapid innovation and lower the bar to entry in the highly competitive handset market, where software accounts for an increasing share of the cost of making a phone.

Google’s long list of powerful partners illustrates the substantial inroads that the company has made in the highly competitive industry as well the challenges still facing the giant search engine firm. For example, the two largest cellular carriers in the United States, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which together account for 52 percent of the market, are not part of the alliance.

Still, alliance members, which contributed technology to the project, said they had high hopes for it.

“Just like the iPhone energized the industry, this is a different way to energize the industry,” said Sanjay Jha, chief operating officer of Qualcomm, which makes chips used in wireless phones. Mr. Jha said the Google technology would bring better Internet capabilities to moderately priced phones. He also said that innovation could accelerate, as developers would be able to enhance the software as they saw fit.

Users would have the ability to load up their phones with new features and third-party programs.

“Today the Internet experience on hand-held devices is not optimized,” said Peter Chou, chief executive of HTC, one of the largest makers of smartphones. “The whole idea is to optimize the Internet experience.” Mr. Chou, whose company makes several phones based on Microsoft’s software, which are largely aimed at business users, said the phones based on Google’s technology would probably be marketed primarily to consumers.

The alliance represents a bold move by Google and its partners that mirrors the company’s efforts in the desktop computing industry to give away software and services and gain revenue through targeted advertising. As such, the new software strategy is a potential competitive threat to Microsoft and other mobile software and hardware designers.

John O’Rourke, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile business, said he was skeptical about the ease with which Google will be able to become a major force in the smartphone market. He pointed out that it had taken Microsoft more than half a decade to get to the stage where the company now does business with 160 mobile operators in 55 countries around the world.

“They may be delivering one component that is free,” he said. “You have to ask the question, what additional costs come with commercializing that? I can tell you that there are a bunch of phones based on Linux today, and I don’t think anyone would tell you it’s free.”

Microsoft is expected to sell about 12 million Windows Mobile phones this year, accounting for about 10 percent of the smartphone market, according to IDC. Apple, which began selling its iPhone last summer, accounts for 1.8 percent of the market.

The Google-led alliance also presents a potential conundrum to cellular operators, who have invested billions to build their networks and acquire customers. As phones become more like computers, they fear they will miss out on the potential bonanza of mobile advertising as Google and others take their share of the revenue.

Mr. Jha, of Qualcomm, said he believes that Google is working with carriers to reach common ground.

Google’s entry into the phone software business could present prickly issues for at least one other person: Eric E. Schmidt, the company’s chief executive. Mr. Schmidt sits on the board of Apple, and while Google is not making or selling phones, it will be providing a phone operating system to Apple competitors.

A brief demonstration of the Google software recently suggests that phones made using the technology will have features and design similar to the Apple iPhone. Mr. Rubin demonstrated a hand-held touch-screen device that gave an immersive view of Google Earth, the company’s three-dimensional visualization software.

Mr. Rubin, who is 44 years old and is a veteran Silicon Valley designer, said the software system that Google has designed is based on the Linux operating system and Sun Microsystems’ Java language. It is designed so programmers can easily build applications that connect to independent Web services.

As an example, Mr. Rubin said the company’s StreetView feature of Google Maps could easily be coupled — mashed up, in technology speak — with another service listing the current geographical location of friends.

Mr. Rubin also said that a program like Gmail could attach a photo to an e-mail message, regardless of whether the photo was stored in the phone’s memory or on a Web site.

A week from today, the alliance plans to make available tools for third-party programmers, called a software developers’ kit, Mr. Rubin said. But the group’s core technology itself will not be made available under an open-source license until it is commercially ready sometime next year, Mr. Rubin said.

Mr. Rubin also said that in the future, the Google technology could be used in other portable devices, including small hand-held computers and car navigation systems.

Google’s phone software is named Android. Mr. Rubin, formerly an engineer at Apple and General Magic, was involved in the design for the Sidekick cellphone while running a company called Danger. Mr. Rubin later founded a company named Android, which Google acquired in 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/te...gphone.html?hp





Checking In on Radiohead’s Experiment
Mike Nizza

Fill in the blanks on Radiohead’s Web site.

“Way to go Radiohead!” was the first of many excited comments on news last month that Radiohead was letting its customers set the price of its new album. Industry observers were just as excited, heralding a game-changing moment. But what happened afterwards?

Setting the tone early was a British music site that put sales figures at 1.2 million after 10 days. That was seen as a huge success, with the middleman being unceremoniously kicked to the curb.

But a study released today doubts that huge figure, and also initial impressions that a surprising amount of customers were choosing to pay, even when they could legally get it for free. (As for illegal downloads, Forbes estimated about a half a million took place in the same time frame.)

Based on the internet activity of 2 million people in its database, ComScore said that about 1.2 million people visited Radiohead’s Web site during the entire month of October — not just the first 10 days — and “a significant percentage of visitors ultimately” downloaded it*.

And most decided against paying, with only 2 out of 5 people paying an average of $6 for the album, “In Rainbows.” Here are the statistics, from a news release:

–Paid Downloads: 38% (worldwide) | 40% (U.S.) | 36% (Non-U.S.)
–Free Downloads: 62% (worldwide) | 60% (U.S.) | 64% (Non-U.S.)

“That’s a large group that can’t be ignored and its time to come up with new business models to serve the freeloader market,” Fred Wilson, managing director of Union Square Ventures in New York, told Canada’s Financial Post.

Another commentator talking to Bloomberg News suggested that album sales weren’t the whole story:

“You could argue that it makes economic sense for the band to open up their music to new listeners, which may open up ticket sales and merchandise sales down the road,'’ Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at ComScore, said in an interview.

Still, the music world awaits the official sales figures from Radiohead, but its business representatives at Courtyard Management have refused to confirm anything until after the holidays.

And the ways that Radiohead was selling its music grew even more innovative earlier today, when EMI — one of the major record labels that the band apparently seeks to leave in the dust — announced that it would be releasing a Radiohead box set on a USB stick for about $166. It includes 7 albums, but not the one that most people are choosing to buy for free.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200.../index.html?hp





Plugging In to Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord
Ben Ratliff

Mike Day, singer and guitarist, gathered his rock band around him.

Dressed in a faded black T-shirt, jeans and skateboard sneakers, he bent his shaved head. “God,” he said, “I hope these songs we sing will be much more than the music. I know it’s so difficult at times when we’re thinking about chords and lyrics and when to hit the right effect patch, but would you just help that to become second nature, so that we can truly worship you from our hearts?”

A few minutes later the band broke into three songs of slightly funky, distorted rock with heaving choruses, and the room sang along: 1,500 or so congregants of High Desert Church here, where Mr. Day, 33, is a worship director. This was Sunday night worship for the young-adult subset of the church’s congregation, but it was also very much a rock show, one that has helped create a vibrant social world in this otherwise quiet desert town.

There has been enormous growth in the evangelical Protestant movement in America over the last 25 years, and bands in large, modern, nondenominational churches — some would say megachurches — like this one, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, now provide one of the major ways that Americans hear live music.

The house bands that play every weekend in High Desert Church — there are a dozen or so — scavenge some of their musical style from the radio and television. They reflect popular taste, though with lyrics about the power of God, not teenage turmoil.

They are not aiming for commercial success. Church-based Christian rock — often referred to as C.C.M., for contemporary Christian music — does not exist primarily to compete in mainstream culture; it exists first to bring together a community.

“When you start a church,” said Tom Mercer, 52, the senior pastor, “you don’t decide who you’re going to reach and then pick a music style. You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come.”

High Desert Church has a sprawling concrete campus that includes a lavish auditorium, a gym, classrooms and office space for its 70 employees. Once a traditional Baptist church, it moved toward nondenominational and evangelical Christianity in the mid-1990s and experienced steep growth. Now more than 8,000 people attend services here at least twice a month.

A number of factors encouraged the church’s expansion, Mr. Mercer and others say. For one thing, there are more people in Victorville to receive the gospel: since the early 1990s the region has been experiencing a population surge, as city dwellers have moved north from Los Angeles County, seeking lower real estate costs.

For another, in 1993 the church hired Jeff Crandall, the drummer for a Christian punk band called the Altar Boys, as its music director.

Mr. Crandall, 46, spent more than a decade crossing the country in vans, playing in churches, nightclubs and high school gyms, fighting the battle for a more progressive and aggressive worship music. “I knew that the future, even in the early ’80s, was with bands in churches,” he said. “I liked hymns as a kid, but I just didn’t see myself waving my arms and directing them. I’ve always been one of those guys who tries to figure his own way.”

A Band for Every Age Group

What he did was to pack the church with rock ’n’ roll. He organized a rotation of bands, so the volunteering musicians — drawn from the largely commuter population of Victorville and its surrounding towns — would not exhaust themselves by playing to multiple services. And then he let them play, loudly.

High Desert Church holds three different large services over the weekend for three different age groups, with music tailored to each audience: Seven (so named for the number’s positive associations in the Bible), the 18-to-30-year-old set that made up Mr. Day’s audience; Harbor, the 30-to-55 group; and Classic, for people 55 and over. The church also maintains even more bands for services at the junior high, high school and elementary school levels. Each band carefully calibrates its sound toward the pop culture disposition of the target age group.

Young people and future generations are in fact the fixation of High Desert Church, which has already broken ground on building a children’s ministry complex called Pointe Discovery, a $20 million project financed entirely by worshiper donations. “If I ask God’s people to give me $20 million,” Mr. Mercer said during an interview in his corner office, “when I stand before God someday, I don’t want to hear him say, ‘Dude, you wasted a ton of my money.’ I want him to say, ‘You did a good job.’ My definition of a good job is that it will impact people until Christ comes back.”

‘Hey God’

Praise-rock is at the heart of that impact. The teenagers and young adults at High Desert — those who haven’t been attending services since birth — tend to say they joined the church for the teaching and the community, and stayed because of the bands. But some are clearly more enthusiastic about the music itself.

“I started out in Harbor, but I moved to Seven because I liked the music more,” said Tony Cherco, 32, a recent arrival to the church who would not have been out of place in the East Village: he wore a long beard and large rings in his earlobes. “Between Pastor Tom and the music of Seven, I was like, yes!”

To generalize, the music tailored to the Seven service is modern rock, with a modicum of wired aggressiveness. (In its sets before and after the pastor’s sermon, the band does play some adaptations of hymns, including a power-chord version of the doxology. It was arranged by the worship minister Matt Coulombe to approximate the droning, locomotive style of the secular New York rock band Secret Machines, one of his favorite groups.)

The music for Harbor, meanwhile, resembles U2 from about 1985, while the Classic crowd gets a softer and more acoustic sound, like the West Coast folk-rock of the 1970s.

For the children, in both their Sunday school classes and youth group events, the music is pop-punk. The idea is to keep their attention with high energy, then to slide gradually toward contemplation.

On a Saturday afternoon in October a group for the junior high contingent, called Power Surge, which included four guitarists and two bassists, played in the church gym, rehearsing a version of the Jason Wallis song “Hey God.” Fifteen girls performed choreographed hand motions to the music, which sounded like pious Ramones:

Hey, hey, hey, God I love you

Hey, hey, hey, God I need you

I know there’s not anything you can’t do

I know there’s nothing you won’t see me through

Hey God!

These bands don’t need to take all their cues from secular rock. Since the ’70s there have been Christian versions of all kinds of genres, from folk-rock to metal to punk. But the music heard at this church descends more directly from other Christian music.

The fountainheads are artists like Lincoln Brewster, a singer, guitarist and songwriter who began as a touring rock guitarist in the mid-’90s and later became music minister at several churches, before starting his own recording career. His highly melodic songs, as well as those by other Christian-rock artists like Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman, are performed here in nearly constant rotation.

Then there is Air One, a national FM radio network with 164 stations that serves as an index of the current Christian-rock movement and provides a playlist for many of the bands here. For the most part the groups at High Desert Church don’t write their own songs; they are high-functioning garage bands, playing cover versions. But they operate in a large, modern auditorium with top-quality sound, lights and video operated by young volunteers; there are smoke machines and overhead screens that announce the title of each song and its lyrics.

Staying Humble

Still, showmanship has its limits in praise-rock music. The musicians don’t want to distract themselves, or their audiences, from the higher purpose of serving God; in interviews they talked about not exuding rock-star charisma but instead remaining humble. “We’re not up there to have people say, ‘Wow, what an amazing band,’” Mr. Day said. His goal, he explained, was to play with excellence but to remain “transparent.”

“There’s a constant tension,” he continued, “between the audience and the people on the stage, all thinking, ‘O.K., music is a great tool, but the ultimate purpose is worship.’ And riding that tension is tough.”

The congregants also tend to respond fairly chastely. A performance at a Seven service may look like a rock show, with the audience dressed as fashionably as the band, but in some ways it represents an inversion of one.

The tall, solemn bassist Zac Foster, 15, played twice over the weekend: with the in-house high school praise band Fuel on Saturday, and with the Sunday morning junior high group as well. He has a six-string bass and a guitar strap with a large white cross on the front. And he is adamant about the idea of music as merely a means to an end.

“It’s structured, and we play well, but we’re still allowed to worship,” he said with a serious face. “Worship comes first. Music just falls into place.”

Bobby Stolp, 39, a drummer in several different bands here, agreed. “It’s all about the heart of worship,” he said. “God can enjoy a distorted guitar as well as a clean guitar. Especially when you’re playing it for him.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/ar...c/07prais.html





On the Road to Spread the Word of Good, Old-Fashioned Evil
Kelefa Sanneh

On Tuesday night, in a plush tour bus parked in this city’s scruffy downtown, a couple of Norwegians were talking about world music. They were talking about the competing musical traditions of Norway and Sweden. They were talking about Icelandic linguistics and Viking mythology. They were talking about indigenous scenes in Canada, India and lots of places in between. In other words, they were talking about heavy metal.

The Norwegians were Ivar Bjornson and Grutle Kjellson, who founded their metal band, Enslaved, 16 years ago. They were once identified with the spooky — and, for a time, hugely controversial — subgenre known as black metal, but they have sloughed off one label after another while slowly building a worldwide following.

Not a huge one: They are rock stars, more or less, in Norway, but they are decidedly underground figures in most of the rest of the world. Still, that a hundred or so fans came out to see them at the Crocodile Rock Café, a cavernous Allentown club, says something about the tenacity of the genre and the band. The members hurtled through a typically eerie, riveting set, propelled by tricky rhythms, keyboard atmospherics, mutating guitar riffs and careful but cathartic explosions of noise and screaming.

This was the fourth date of a grueling five-week tour, and the unglamorous surroundings only underscored the mixed blessing of being in a band like this one. Being a working metal band often means touring the world indefinitely.

On a chilly night at the Crocodile Rock, that might not have seemed like good news to the band members. But it should be good news to adventurous listeners around the country, including those in New York: Thursday night the band is scheduled to play the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill. And you don’t have to be an expert in Scandinavian history — or even a metal fan, really — to enjoy getting lost in the group’s epic, elegant music.

Enslaved went from being called “black metal” to being called “Viking metal” to being called “progressive metal,” though the members prefer the catch-all term “extreme metal.” And in an Internet age especially, extreme metal both transcends national boundaries and, in a fertile way, emphasizes them. “Evil” imagery exists everywhere, inspiring scenes all over the globe. And as old-fashioned Satanic imagery has given way to subtler allusions to pre-Christian culture, obsessive fans have gotten used to doing online homework to keep up with the lyric sheets. If you like Enslaved, for example, you probably know that Mr. Kjellson used to sing in Icelandic because of that language’s similarity to Old Norse, and you may even know something about ancient runes.

Now Mr. Kjellson mainly sings in English, partly in an attempt to close the language gap with non-Norwegian fans, many of whom had been following the band’s evolving interests by reading the English translations included in some albums. Mr. Bjornson said the foreignness of English was a benefit too: “That dissonance helps, getting into character, removing ourselves from our daily lives.”

On the most recent Enslaved album — a great CD from 2006 called “Ruun” (Candlelight USA) — the English-language lyrics are more suggestive than bombastic. Hints of the old black-metal misanthropy remain (“I do not pity life/I follow not pathetic order”), but the mood is more melancholy than pugnacious. The title track, one of the highlights of Tuesday’s show, is a crashing paean to the old gods, building from a prog-rock introduction to a seething climax: “Reach for them, see them turn away.”

From listening to the latest CD, you might never guess that Enslaved was once associated with one of the most reviled music scenes of all time. In the early 1990s Norwegian black metal made headlines with a series of high-profile events: one musician’s suicide, a spate of church burnings and the conviction of two prominent figures — Faust of Emperor and Varg Vikernes of Burzum — for murder.

One of Enslaved’s first releases was a split album with Emperor, and Mr. Bjornson admits that the media storm helped draw attention to Norwegian black metal. “People still regard Norway with a certain respect,” he said. “Not only because of all the scary stuff that happened — well, ‘weird’ is a better word — but because of how the scene developed, on its own.” Then, having benefited from the controversy, many bands associated with black metal had to figure out a way to live it down.

Enslaved did it by persevering and by changing: The members view “Monumension,” an excellent and mysterious-sounding album from 2001, as the beginning of a new phase. And in Norway the members of Enslaved are settling into their unlikely roles as respected veterans. Oddly enough, the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs sponsored a collaboration between members of Enslaved and the noisy electronic duo Fe-mail. The hybrid group is called Trinacria (you can hear live tracks at myspace.com/trinacria), and a full-length album is due next year. Extreme metal, which once seemed like a threat to Norway’s cultural heritage, is inevitably coming to be seen as part of it. How long before the government finances an ad campaign, inviting black-metal fans from around the world to come to the most evil country on Earth?

Certainly some sort of cultural exchange program seemed to be under way at the Crocodile Rock on Tuesday, where Mr. Kjellson kept saying, “You having a good time, Allentown?” Or, “Thank you, Allentown, Pennsylvania.” Or, “This is the last song for tonight, Allentown.”

Before long, the city name was starting to sound like a curse word, or maybe just a reminder that the life of a touring extreme-metal band is hard work. But Mr. Kjellson surely knows that the genre’s popularity in a handful of European countries is the exception, not the rule. Around the world metal endures — and, in its own subterranean way, flourishes — in nooks and crannies.

It was now early on Wednesday morning in empty downtown Allentown, and the small crowd in the big club remained. As the band prepared to play the savage title track from “Isa,” Mr. Kjellson said, “I guess most of you already know this one.” And he guessed right.

Enslaved will perform tonight at the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; bbkingblues.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/ar...ic/08ensl.html





DVD Licensing Group to Vote on Closing Copying Loophole
Eric Bangeman

This week, the DVD Copy Control Association—the group responsible for CSS copy protection—is expected to vote on a Managed Copy Amendment that would close a loophole in the CSS license that allows home media server products like those made by Kaleidescape to legally rip DVDs and store encrypted copies on a hard drive.

The DVD CCA's vote is a belated response to a March ruling in which a judge ruled that Kaleidescape's home media server products do not violate the CSS license. In an opinion issued after a week-long trial, Judge Leslie C. Nichols found that the 20-page CSS spec was not actually included in the license agreement and that Kaleidescape had made good-faith efforts to ensure it was in full compliance with the license.

The centerpiece of the trial was the DVD CCA's often-confusing licensing agreement, which was birthed from a series of 100+ meetings involving entertainment industry lawyers and engineers. An amendment to the CSS license up for a vote this week would expressly prohibit licensees from selling systems that allow users to copy and store CSS-encrypted movies. A previous attempt to alter the license in June failed.

Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm is threatening the DVD CCA with a lawsuit if the amendment is approved. "You should be aware before you vote on the proposed amendment that you expose yourself, your employer, and the DVD CCA to serious and substantial antitrust liability if you vote for either amendment," Malcolm wrote in a letter to the DVD CCA seen by Video Business magazine. Malcolm believes the rules are anticompetitive and targeted at his company specifically.

Attorneys from the DVD CCA say that's not the case. Instead, they argue that the license change is to protect digital content on DVDs, according to the EE Times.

Malcolm also believes that the Managed Copy Amendment is pointless. "The only mandatory feature of the current 'Managed Copy Amendment' is... the prohibition on the making of persistent copies," says the letter. "All the rest is illusory and is nothing more than another shameless attempt by certain members of the DVD-CCA to put Kaleidescape out of business."

The proposed amendment is another indication of how out of touch Big Content is with the desires of consumers, and the DVD CCA's attempts to alter the license at this stage of the game seems rather absurd, especially given the fact that the CSS DRM in question has long since been defeated. It's like trying to close the barn door after the horses have left—and been replaced by the automobile.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-loophole.html





Alibaba Shares Nearly Triple in Debut
David Barboza

Shares of Alibaba.com, China’s biggest electronic commerce company, nearly tripled today in a spectacular opening day of trading, creating an Internet giant and one of the world’s wealthiest technology companies.

The company’s public stock offering raised more than $1.5 billion in Hong Kong, nearly equaling Google’s share sale in the United States in 2004.

Shares of Alibaba ended the day with a market value of $25.7 billion, making it the second richest Internet company in Asia, after Yahoo Japan, and not far behind Amazon.com, which is valued at about $35 billion.

Alibaba.com is already widely known here as a business-to-business Web site that connects small entrepreneurs in China with buyers or sellers of goods around the world. The company now joins Baidu, Tencent, Sina and Sohu as one of the biggest players in the world’s fastest-growing Internet market.

There are already more than 160 million Internet users in China, second only to the United States, and this country’s Internet tycoons are cashing in on the explosive use of the Web here for everything from search and social networking to delivering music tones for mobile phones.

Shares of Alibaba soared more than 193 percent today, to close at about $5.09 on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The shares opened trading at the equivalent of about $1.74 but were priced in Hong Kong dollars.

The highly anticipated offering had also helped shares of Yahoo rise in recent weeks as investors bet that the company’s prospect would give its partner a lift. Alibaba’s parent company operates Yahoo China and the Chinese auction site taobao.com, which competes with eBay in China.

Alibaba’s blockbuster debut came just a day after PetroChina, one of China’s biggest oil companies, listed its stock in Shanghai in the world’s biggest offering this year, raising nearly $9 billion.

Indeed, for the last two years, China has dominated the financial markets with huge stock offerings by state-owned energy companies, bank, private real estate companies and high-flying technology companies, like Giant Interactive, the Shanghai-based gaming company that went public on the New York Stock Exchange last Thursday.

Although analysts have warned that the China’s stock markets, particularly in Shanghai and Shenzhen, may be a bubble, investors continue to pile in, particularly for initial public offerings in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Alibaba, though, was perhaps in even higher demand because only a handful of Internet companies have gone public in China in recent years, and Alibaba is one of the country’s biggest new brands.

The company was founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, about two hours from Shanghai, by a former English teacher named Jack Ma, one of this country’s best-known entrepreneurs.

Shares of the company were in heavy demand partly because Alibaba has brought a unique model to the market that appears to be a kind of proxy for this country’s hungry entrepreneurs, tracking their deals with global suppliers of every kind of product, from textiles and agriculture products to trinkets. The company has about 25 million registered members.

Like China’s other big Internet companies, Alibaba is being richly valued by investors based on the size of its prospective earnings, now selling for about 300 times this year’s earnings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/te...d-alibaba.html





Yahoo C.E.O. Defends Company in China Case
AP

Yahoo Inc.'s chief executive and top lawyer on Tuesday defended their company's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist. Irate lawmakers accused them of collaborating with an oppressive communist regime.

''While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,'' House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from the two men.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan offered apologies and promises to do better but no specific commitments. Lawmakers insisted that Yahoo along with other companies must use its market strength to change China, not just comply with the government's demands in order to gain access to tens of millions of Internet users.

''I deeply regret the consequences of what the Chinese government has done to the dissidents. My heart goes out to the families,'' said Yang.

''We have to do a whole lot better and improve in the future,'' he said. ''I don't think anyone was trying to do anything wrong.''

Journalist Shi Tao was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities requested by the Chinese authorities in 2004.

Lantos indignantly urged Yang and Callahan to apologize to Shi's mother, who was sitting directly behind them.

Yang and Callahan turned around from the witness table and bowed from their seats to the woman, Gao Qinsheng, who bowed in return and then began to weep.

After the hearing, the Yahoo officials met with Gao Qinsheng for the first time to hear her concerns.

Callahan was summoned before the committee to explain testimony he gave Congress last year. He said then that Yahoo had no information about the nature of China's investigation when the company handed over information that ended up being used to convict Shi.

Callahan subsequently has acknowledged that Yahoo officials had received a subpoena-like document that made reference to suspected ''illegal provision of state secrets'' -- a common charge against political dissidents.

He reiterated Tuesday that he regretted his failure to inform the committee of this new information once he learned of it months after his congressional testimony.

But Callahan continued to insist that Yahoo did not know the real nature of the Chinese investigation because the order was not specific.

''I cannot ask our local employees to resist lawful demands and put their own freedom at risk, even if, in my personal view, the local laws are overbroad,'' Callahan said.

Lantos interrupted him.

''Why do you insist on repeating the phrase 'lawful orders'? These were demands by a police state,'' Lantos said.

''It's my understanding that under Chinese law these are lawful,'' Callahan responded after some hesitation.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., compared Yahoo's cooperation with the Chinese government to companies that cooperated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Lawmakers demanded to know what Yahoo would do to help Shi's family and reacted with derision when there was no concrete answer.

No one on the committee came to the company's defense.

Yang and Callahan declined to outright endorse legislation approved by the committee that would prohibit U.S. Internet businesses from providing user information to Internet-restricting countries.

Lawmakers couldn't get the pair to commit to settling a lawsuit filed in California earlier this year on behalf of Shi and another journalist jailed after Yahoo provided information to China.

Callahan also couldn't say whether there were outstanding demands for information from the Chinese government to Yahoo, or how Yahoo would react today for an information demand from Beijing.

In 2005 Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in China's biggest online commerce firm, Alibaba.com, which has taken over running Yahoo's mainland China operations. So Callahan said Yahoo no longer controls its operations in China.

Smith dismissed that as ''plausible deniability.''

Callahan did say that in going into future markets such as Vietnam, ''I would hope to have a structure in place ... that we would be able to resist those demands.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...ess-Yahoo.html





IBM Predicts the End of Advertising as We Know It
Press release

Global Business Services unveiled its new report, "The End of Advertising as We Know It," forecasting greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50.

To examine the factors influencing advertising and explore future scenarios, IBM surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives globally. The IBM report shows increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked.

Traditional advertising players risk major revenue declines as budgets shift rapidly to new, interactive formats, which are expected to grow at nearly five times that of traditional advertising. To survive in this new reality, broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments, and distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

"Digital entertainment is experiencing faster adoption than anyone had previously anticipated. The advertising community needs to dramatically re-orient its business to serve consumers who increasingly access content in non-linear formats," said Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services. "Companies must re-look at how they serve content to consumers with business models based much more on engaging consumers in a relationship."

The report observes four change drivers tipping the advertising industry balance of power: control of attention, creativity, measurement, and advertising inventories. As shown in IBM's global digital media and entertainment consumer survey released in August, consumers' attention has shifted, with personal Internet time rivaling TV time. Consumers have tired of interruption advertising, and are increasingly in control of how they interact, filter, distribute, and consume their content, and associated advertising messages. IBM's survey findings demonstrated that half of DVR owners watch 50 percent or more of programming on re-play, and that traditional video advertising doesn't translate online: 40 percent of respondents found ads during an online video segment more annoying than any other format. Amateurs and semi-professionals are increasingly creating low cost advertising content that threatens to bypass creative agencies, while publishers and broadcasters are broadening their own creative roles. Advertisers are demanding accountability and more specific individual consumer measurements across advertising platforms. Self-service advertising exchanges are attracting revenues that were once exclusively sold through proprietary channels or transactions.

Advertising Experts' Expectations in Line with Global Consumer Trends

IBM's research found that advertising experts recognize the changing nature of consumers and also anticipate dramatic changes on the horizon. More than half of ad professionals polled by IBM expect that in the next five years open advertising exchanges (currently led by companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL) will take 30 percent of current revenues now commanded by traditional broadcasters and media. Nearly half of the advertising survey respondents anticipate a significant (greater than 10%) revenue shift away from the 30-second spot within the next five years, and almost 10 percent of respondents thought there would be a dramatic (greater than 25 percent) shift. Two-thirds of advertising experts surveyed by IBM expect 20 percent of advertising revenue to move from impression-based to impact-based formats within three years.

Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader, said, "Advertising remains integral to pop culture and continues to fund a significant portion of entertainment around the world. But it needs to morph into new formats and offer more intrinsic value to consumers, who will have more choices. The wealth of new advertising outlets means consumer analytics will have a more prominent role than ever regardless of where you reside in the value chain. Young people in particular have grown accustomed to not paying for content. Despite greater consumer control over content and advertising, we envision a world where consumers will continue to prefer to view advertising rather than pay for content directly."

The report indicates by 2012, the landscape of the industry will change so profoundly that to survive, advertising industry players need to take aggressive steps to innovate in three key areas:

• Consumers: making micro-segmentation and personalization paramount in marketing;
• Business models: how and where advertising inventory is sold, the structure and forms of partnerships, revenue models and advertising formats;
• Business design and infrastructure: All players need to redesign organizational and operating capabilities across the advertising lifecycle to support consumer and business model innovation: consumer analytics, channel planning, buying/selling, creation, delivery and impact reporting.

IBM believes that all players will need to invest heavily in consumer analytics and automation to gain more insights about the consumer and how to reach them. For example, interactive advertising paired with consumer analytics provides compelling knowledge of who viewed and acted on an ad rather than estimates of impressions, allowing advertisers to maximize revenue and yield management. Industry players will also need to examine if they have right resources and capacity to handle increased marketing promotions and integrated advertising sales. Finally, IBM observes that the dramatic increase in both the number and variety of promotions is leading to greater investment in tools to digitally transform and reduce the cost of companies' workflows including content management, creative development, production and sign-off processes.

The complete report with detailed recommendations for broadcasters, distributors and advertising agencies can be found at: www.ibm.com/media/endofadvertising
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pr...ease/22570.wss





Facebook to Turn Users Into Endorsers
Saul Hansell

Facebook wants to turn every member into a spokesman for its advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of the superhot social network, today announced what the company calls “social ads.”

The ads expand what has been one of the most powerful features of Facebook, the news feed, where members see a list of what their friends are doing — photos from their parties, new friends, favorite bands and so on.

Facebook now will give advertisers the ability to create their own profile pages on its system that will let users identify themselves as fans of a product. Each user’s news feed will contain items like “Bobby Smith is now a fan of Toyota Prius.”

News feeds can be linked to outside Web sites as well, so users can tell friends about what they rented at Blockbuster or are auctioning on eBay.

Facebook will offer all of those features to advertisers free. What it will charge for, however, is appending an advertisement to these news items. Toyota could buy the right to put a photo and a short message under every news-feed post that links to the Prius.

In addition, Friends of Bobby, to continue this example, will see banner ads for Toyota throughout Facebook’s site. At the top of each of these ads will be a photo of Bobby and the fact that he likes the Prius.

“Nothing influences a person more than the recommendation of a trusted friend,” said Mr. Zuckerberg.

In addition, Facebook will allow advertisers to tap into the vast stores of data that its users provide. They can display ads limited to people with certain interests, location, political views, favorite media, education and relationship status.

Mr. Zuckerberg did not discuss the prices for these advertisements. But he did say that they would be enabled tonight. The company announced an initial roster of advertisers including Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Travelocity and Condé Nast.

James W. Keyes , the chief executive of Blockbuster, said his company wanted to take part in a low-key way.

“There is a fine line we walk,” he said. “We debated long and hard about whether to put the Blockbuster logo on the Facebook site. We are not trying to induce a particular behavior. If users accept us as a place to share ideas with their friends about their favorite movies, over time that will stimulate purchase behavior. “

Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook had had 50 million users in the last month. And 25 million users visit Facebook each day. The company displays 65 billion pages on which advertisements can be displayed each month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/bu...-facebook.html





Facebook Employees Know What Profiles You Look at

"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed -- a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

Facebook has a history of protecting profiles from outsiders. The site once sent cease-and-desist letters to two of Valleywag's sister blogs for publishing certain student profiles.

The site does not allow regular users to see which profiles other users have seen. While one third-party application lets users voluntarily make their profile-visiting known, no application allows one to "spy" on the activity of an unknowing user.

Checking who's viewed a profile may be how Facebook found the tipster who violated their terms of service by sending Valleywag Steve Ballmer's profile. But were they violating their own terms?

Well, Facebook's privacy policy doesn't explicitly reserve or waive employees' right to check out your profile for any reason. Of course, the practice still reeks of skunkery -- it's one thing to check profiles in the course of business, but these people are looking up records for kicks. This is a company with $150 million in projected revenues this year and a gigantic ad deal with Microsoft, not a corner video store. The privacy of millions is at stake. Google clearly promises not to crawl through mail or search records with anything but a computer program, and even AOL apologized for releasing semi-anonymous search data and violating its privacy policy.

We have no idea what else employees can see. Do they look at your messages? Your private gifts? Who knows? (Really, who knows? Email me or the tipline. Unlike some, we'll protect your identity.)
http://valleywag.com/tech/scoop/face...-at-315901.php





Facebook: More Popular Than Porn
Bill Tancer

When I wrote last week's column comparing the social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook, I included a line after my signature stating that I had only 124 friends on Facebook, and urged readers to add me as their friends. As of today I have 261 new Facebook friends, the majority of which are Generation Y college students.

I turned to Hitwise data to find out more about them. By examining which websites social-network users visit after logging into their profiles, we can gain a bit of insight into how sites like Facebook fit into their members' daily online lives. The data showed that after other social networks, the most clicked-on category of sites was search engines, with 11.6% of all downstream visits. Web-based e-mail services were next with 8.5%. Blogs came in third in popularity at 6.1%, claiming more than four times the number of visits to traditional news sites, which logged 1.5% of downstream visits.

Perhaps a more interesting — and more accurate — way to figure out where college students are going online is to assess which of the 172 web categories tracked by Hitwise get the most hits from 18- to 24-year-olds. Here's a shocker: Porn is not No. 1. I've actually been puzzled by the decrease in visits to the Adult Entertainment category over the last two years. Visits to porn sites have dropped from 16.9% of all site visits in the U.S. in October 2005 to 11.9% as of last week, a 33% decline. Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth. If you chart the rate of visits to social-networking sites against those to adult sites over the last two years, there appears to be a strong negative correlation (i.e., visits to social networks go up as visits to adult sites go down). It's a leap to say there's a real correlation there, but if there is one, then I'd bet it has everything to do with Gen Y's changing habits: they're too busy chatting with friends to look at online skin. Imagine.

This reshaped online landscape leaves me feeling old and out of the loop. It seems that social-networking sites have not only usurped porn in popularity, but they've also gobbled up time Gen Y-ers used to spend on traditional e-mail and IM. When you can reach all of your friends through Facebook or MySpace, there's little reason to spend time in your old-school inbox. So, if social networking is becoming e-mail 2.0, then perhaps Microsoft's recent $240 million dollar payout for such a small stake in Facebook isn't that ridiculous.

The reality is that Facebook isn't just for kids. Last week — and this was a highlight — my dad, who just turned 75, added me as a friend on Facebook. I considered sending him a virtual beer to celebrate the occasion, but I didn't think either of us would see the point. Back in my day, we drank beers out of bottles and cans — we didn't have these new-fangled virtual beers. But, then again, I think that's something I probably still have in common with the younger generation, something I don't need Hitwise data to back up: the love of a good old-fashioned beer.

Let the messages roll in.
http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...678586,00.html





From last year

How Much Do Male Porn Actors Make?
Fox Salehi

Question
How much do male porn actors make, and how are they paid? I mean when you first get interviewed, do they pay by the inch, or by how attractive you are in general or by how much prior "profesional" experience you have in the industry. Do you get paid royalties for every dvd sold or every pay per view porn site visited? The reason I'm asking is that I'm just getting my feet wet in this business and thus far I've recieved a few "low-ball" offers and one offer where I could make over $1,000.00 per scene; but I have no frame of referenc to know what I should be getting for my perfomance.

Answer
James... you can make anything from $50 to $1500 per scene. You get paid per scene, and nothing more. No royalties, no inches, nothing to do with your attractiveness.

Here are some more ideas about how to get involved.

Getting into the porn industry is very very difficult if you are a man. You must be able to get it up, keep it up, and then cum within 2 or 3 minutes of being asked. That is a given. You have to be at least 7 inches and very thick, preferably over eight. You have to be in some kind of physical shape, and you have to have stamina. You have to be willing to work with any girl in any situation, and be prepared for stop-start sex.

Sending pictures will get you nowhere. You have to actually GO to the studios and introduce yourself and then they will take naked polaroids of you and get back to you. But even then, your chances are minimal.

There is always a market for porn actors, regardless of your background and personal requirements, but at the same time you have to have (a) talent, (b) luck, and (c) you must be in a good location. New York, Miami, San Fran, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Prague, Budapest, Montreal, Toronto, Vegas, even Minneapolis all have decent porn-producing studios, but 95% of the top adult movies in the world today are produced in Porn Valley. That is the San Fernando Valley in NorthWest Los Angeles, California. If you don't live in or near that valley, your chances are automatically significantly smaller.

Once you're in the Valley, go to VCA Platinum, Elegant Angel, Metro or Wicked (in Chatsworth), Vivid (in Van Nuys) or Sin City (in Canoga Park). But as I said, your chances of getting hired as part of a walk-in are extremely low.

If you're looking for low-budget internet porn jobs, they are out there, and searching on yahoo and google and excite can be productive. Instead of looking for advertised jobs, look for actual sites which offer the kinds of porn you'd like to be involved in and think you have a chance of being involved in). Then, make sure the porn is made by and for the website itself, then contact the webmasters and owners of the site and try and strike up a negotiation for an appearance in a movie for them. Of course, you need to have your photographs and details online.

Now assuming you go to the Valley, or somewhere similar, the best advice is always to find a stunning girl who wants to be a pornstar, and go to a studio with her. The girl should specify that she wants to work with you and the - ouila - you have a job. They'll always hire a hot girl, and if she's only willing to work with you, you just received a free ticket into porn superstardom.

If you're looking to do gay porn, the girl is unneccessary and it will be ten times easier for you to get a job. Gay porn stars are always needed and if you're willing to do that, unless you're completely unattractive to most men, you will get work in LA.
The old/young/kinky/hardcore thing is vital, especially if you are not bringing a new female into the industry, as they call it. You have to be willing to do ANYTHING and they will often start you off on something gross. Naturally, you'll have to perform very well in your first few movies particularly, and then you'll also have to work for small amounts until you're well known.

If you're thinking of mainstream acting or what not, you almost certainly will be exposed by the paparazzi. Once you do porn, your ENTERTAINMENT career is permanently red-flagged. Just come up with an alias and make it clear that your identity is to be kept a secret. Many pornstars do that.

If you're looking to get into gay porn in particular, it's simple. Move to LA. Go to the gay porn studios (they're in the book, they're all over the place), and walk right in and audition. They'll know within five minutes if you're what they're looking for and they're ALWAYS hiring.

Agents and agencies are sometimes OK but usually not, be very careful. The best thing to do is to write to a few male porn stars and ask them how they got involved, and how to get involved, agency/agent/studio wise. They'll tell you. It will probably even be in their online bios.

If you have a girl with you, and she's hot, and she wants to do porn with you, I suggest you go to JIM SOUTH at World Modelling on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California. He's in the phone book.

Anyway... bottom line is... if you like the sun, go to Los Angeles. If you don't, go to Germany, the Czech Republic or Hungary. Because you're not going to find work anywhere else unless a miracle happens.
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Adult-Fil...orn-actors.htm
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Old 07-11-07, 09:05 AM   #2
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New DVDs
Dave Kehr

Animation

Is the filmed image a flat canvas to be covered with lines and colors, or is it a window that opens onto a pre-existing world?

That was a central question for many early film theorists, and with the rise of computer-generated imagery (or CGI, to use the film industry acronym), it has become one again.

Brad Bird’s computer-animated “Ratatouille,” one of this year’s CGI triumphs, arrives on DVD today, accompanied by Volume 1 of “The Pixar Short Films Collection,” featuring 13 shorts from the studio that gave us Mr. Bird’s meticulously made film.

Last week Warner Home Video released the fifth volume of its “Looney Tunes Golden Collection,” containing some 60 cartoons from the glory years of the Warner Brothers animation department. You couldn’t ask for a better match of new school and old, of bleeding-edge digital technology and antediluvian pen and ink.

Digital animation has come a long way since “The Adventures of André & Wally B.,” a 1984 experimental short animated by John Lasseter when he was still an employee of Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division, the unit that would eventually become Pixar. “André & Wally B.” runs one minute and 51 seconds and shows off — to what was stunning effect when the film was first released — the new sense of volume, depth, shading and texture that CGI offered.

Twenty-three years later the technology is far more sophisticated and efficient, able to create complex textures and elaborate shading where the first images largely consist of shiny spheres. With each new short in the Pixar collection, something seems to be added: a vivid sense of character in the 1986 “Luxo Jr.” (its timid young desk lamp continues to serve as Pixar’s corporate mascot); multiple characters, depth effects and reflective surfaces in “Tin Toy” (1988) and “Knick Knack” (1989); a first step toward animating human figures in “Geri’s Game” (1997); and with “For the Birds” (2000), animation blended with comedy and musical performance that suggests Walt Disney’s breakthrough “Silly Symphonies” of 1929 to 1939.

Mr. Lasseter, who would become Pixar’s chief animator when Steve Jobs purchased the company (and later, the director of “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life” and “Cars”), served his apprenticeship and then some at the Walt Disney Company. Like the Disney studio, Mr. Lasseter has used shorts to push the technological envelope, testing the techniques (in Disney’s case, sound and color) that would later shape features. And Pixar, under Mr. Lasseter’s creative direction, has developed in a Disneyesque direction (as Disney acknowledged when it acquired Pixar in 2006).

Like Disney, Mr. Lasseter has moved his studio’s product toward an ever-greater illusion of realism, achieving the dream of moving animation away from the two dimensions of the single drawing board that Disney began with its depth-producing multiplane camera, invented by William Garity and first used in the Silly Symphony “Old Mill” of 1937. This is not a world that stops at the screen’s surface, but beckons the viewer to enter, with its carefully worked out perspectives, fully rounded volumes and elaborate camera movements.

And with increased realism has come, as it did for Disney, a turn away from the violent, anarchic, anything-goes tradition of the early shorts. Pixar has placed its charm and skill in the service of fables in which characters learn to overcome their shortcomings and insecurities and realize their fondest dreams, just as Remy, the rodent hero of “Ratatouille,” overcomes his dubious origins and becomes the most celebrated chef of Paris.

As delightful as “Ratatouille” is, you can almost hear the Bronx cheers echoing from the ghostly halls of Termite Terrace, as the pioneering Warner Brothers animators not so affectionately called their dilapidated facilities. Here, led by directors like Frank Tashlin, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, the cartoonists took a punkish pleasure in shattering the pretensions of the Disney films. One entire disc in the new “Looney Tunes” collection is devoted to Warner parodies of Disney’s fairy tale films, with titles like Mr. Avery’s 1938 “Little Red Walking Hood” (a Hollywood wolf tries to pick up a formidably self-possessed little girl with a Katharine Hepburn voice) and Mr. Freleng’s “Foney Fables” (1942).

Although some of this anti-Disney irreverence lives on in the CGI animations that DreamWorks has produced (its “Shrek the Third” comes out on home video next Tuesday), it’s hard to rock the boat too vigorously when the enormous budgets of computer animation are at stake. The cheaply produced Warner shorts, many of which weren’t in color in the 1930s, suffered from no such constraints, and the new volume contains one of the most defiantly Dada products of Termite Terrace, Avery’s 1941 “Porky’s Preview,” a crudely scrawled desecration of Disney’s most artistically ambitious film, “Fantasia” (1940).

Both Mr. Lasseter and Mr. Bird had the opportunity to work in hand-drawn animation (probably doomed to be known as 2-D animation) and clearly profited from the experience. Alas, none of the giants of the cel animation era were able to work in CGI, and you can only wonder what Warner Brothers’ most visually sophisticated director, Chuck Jones, might have done with the new technology.

Some clues are contained in “The Chuck Jones Collection,” an anthology of six films that he made for television relatively late in his career, from “A Cricket in Times Square” (1973) through “Mowgli’s Brothers” (1977). Jones seemed to be reaching toward a grander, more mythic scale in these films, of which the best is “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” (1975), an adaptation of a Kipling “Jungle Book” tale. But the budget and the backup (the voice work of Mel Blanc, the music of Carl Stalling, the background designs of Michael Maltese) are not there, and the results fall short of what Jones, a giant in the field, was capable.

Moving completely outside the Hollywood tradition, Facets Video has released “Fantastic Planet,” the 1973 French-Czech co-production, directed by René Laloux from a novel by the writer Stefan Wul. With its trippy production design by Roland Topor, the film enjoyed a long run as a midnight show in the 1970s.

The film is set in a distant galaxy, where a race of self-absorbed giants (read: adults) treat humans as disposable pets, an anti-establishment theme that perhaps resonated more strongly then than now. Although the simple, stark design and minimal but expressive animation continue to catch the eye, here’s one film that CGI would almost certainly improve, giving weight and depth to its airy metaphors.

“Ratatouille,” Disney DVD, $29.99, G.

“Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1,” Disney DVD, $29.99, not rated.

“Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5,” Warner Home Video, $64.98, not rated.

“Chuck Jones Collection,” Lionsgate, $14.98, not rated.

“Fantastic Planet,” Facets Video/Accent Cinema, $24.95, not rated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/mo...eo/06dvds.html





CBC Chided for Pulling Falun Gong Show
AP

A Canadian broadcaster's decision to pull a heavily promoted documentary on the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement after objections from Chinese officials was criticized Friday by members of the group and the filmmaker.

Both questioned whether the move was influenced by the fact that Canadian Broadcasting Corp. will be the main Canadian broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics next summer. The CBC denied there was any connection. criticize

The CBC's 24-hour news channel had scheduled ''Beyond the Red Wall: The Persecution of Falun Gong'' for Tuesday night, but the piece did not appear after the CBC advertised it for several days. It already had been shown on the CBC's French-language channel and an English version was shown late last year with little fanfare.

A CBC spokesman said Tuesday's showing was canceled after phone calls from envoys of China, which banned Falun Gong in 1999 following a mass demonstration staged by the movement's followers outside government headquarters to demand official recognition.

Spokesman Jeff Keay, who said none of the Chinese officials had viewed the documentary, said it would be shown after a review of its content.

''We want to make sure it's an absolutely rigorous piece of work because it's become clear ... that there's a lot of interest in the thing. We want to make sure it's a solid piece of work that will stand up to intense scrutiny,'' Keay said.

The Falun Gong Association of China expressed outrage that the national news broadcaster would give in to pressure.

''The Chinese government has been trying to silence the media about Falun Gong for years in China, so we're not surprised they contacted the CBC, but we are surprised the CBC bent to their demands -- that they gave in to the communist pressure,'' said Joel Chipkar, the association's spokesman.

The show about Falun Gong, which China's leadership is trying to eradicate, deals with Chinese news reports about four Falun Gong followers setting themselves on fire in Beijing.

The documentary's producer, Peter Rowe, argues that the story was a hoax, set up by the Chinese government to make the spiritual movement seem cult-like and unstable.

Rowe said he was surprised the piece wasn't broadcast, saying it had been licensed by the CBC in 2004 and reviewed by senior CBC editors and the broadcaster's lawyers.

''If the American government had tried to put this pressure on the CBC not to run this kind of documentary, you can imagine what kind of reaction they would have had internally,'' he said. ''With China, it's felt like we have to treat them in a very special way.''

Both Rowe and Chipkar suggested the CBC's decision was influenced by its contract to carry the Beijing Olympics. Keay denied that.

Falun Gong has attracted millions of followers with a mix of traditional Chinese calisthenics and doctrines drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi. China banned it as a threat to public safety and communist rule, calling it an ''evil cult.''

Human rights organizations have reported executions and torture of Falun Gong members in China. The State Department says practitioners face arrest, detention and possible torture.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...alun-Gong.html





Screenwriters on Strike Over Stake in New Media
Michael Cieply, David Carr and Brooks Barnes

This article was reported by Michael Cieply, David Carr and Brooks Barnes, and was written by Mr. Cieply.

Hollywood writers took to the sidewalks, if not quite the streets, on Monday, as last-ditch bargaining failed to avert the first industrywide strike in more than 19 years.

Just after midnight, about 12,000 movie and television writers represented by the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West went on strike against Hollywood producers represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

Picket lines went up at more than a dozen studios and other production sites on both coasts. And at least a handful of television shows — including the CBS series “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” — quickly shut down.

But it was not immediately clear how much damage the writers’ actions would inflict on a sprawling industry that performs its labor in thousands of workplaces in America and abroad.

At the Fox lot in Los Angeles, about three dozen picketing writers were still getting the hang of things at 9:30 Monday morning. “Who’s got the power?” a strike captain bellowed through a bullhorn, as the answer mostly got lost in the traffic sounds on Pico Boulevard.

They laid in bottled water by the case, and came equipped with BlackBerrys and backpacks for what promised to be a long day in the sun once the morning fog burned off.

Yet studio vans, transportation trucks and construction vehicles freely crossed the picket line as Fox shows like “24” and “Prison Break” remained in production, at least for the moment — perhaps quelling the writers’ hope that a strong show of support by Hollywood’s blue-collar workers would heighten the strike’s effect.

In a telephone interview shortly afterward, J. Nicholas Counter III, president of the producers’ alliance, said he expected the strike to be a long one. “We were on strike for five months in 1988,” Mr. Counter said. “The issues this time are more difficult and more complex.”

Mr. Counter said companies were prepared to use alternative programming like reality shows, reruns and movies to fill broadcast and cable networks during a walkout that might last, by his estimation, 9 or 10 months. Late-night talk shows have immediately turned to repeats, but most prime-time comedies and dramas have about half a dozen episodes already filmed.

The final breakdown in talks came on Sunday night, at a session convened by a federal mediator at the Sofitel hotel in Los Angeles. By Mr. Counter’s account, producers made a number of steps toward the writers in the course of an 11-hour session, and writers countered by abandoning their demand that DVD residuals be doubled.

But guild negotiators, Mr. Counter said, refused a request to delay the strike by “stopping the clock” while the bargaining continued. The strike thus began at 12:01 a.m. by prearranged plan in New York, even as negotiators were still talking in Los Angeles. Immediately, Mr. Counter said, the companies ended the talks with no plans to reconvene.

Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast guild, said in a telephone interview, “If we had decided not to strike when we said we were, I think we would have sent the wrong signal.”

The guild said the companies had dug in their heels by, among other things, refusing to grant the unions jurisdiction over most writing directly for new media, and insisting on the right to offer promotional showings of movies and television shows in new media and elsewhere without paying an additional fee.

The companies have also insisted on pegging residuals payments for downloaded movies and shows at the same rate historically used for DVDs and videocassettes — a formula writers have regretted almost since the moment they negotiated it two decades ago. In effect, the sides finally got down to what they were really fighting about: who will get what from the media of the future.

This led to the curious spectacle of a glamour strike.

In Manhattan, about 75 picketers (including Tina Fey, the creator of “30 Rock” on NBC) set up a line in Rockefeller Center and chanted: “No money? No downloads. No downloads? No peace.”

But for a time, the chanting was drowned out by the roar of a crowd that was assembled for the “Today” show.

All of the trappings of a union protest were there — signs, chanting workers, an inflatable rat and a discarded bag of wrappers and cups from Dunkin’ Donuts. The rat commuted from Queens, where it was borrowed from Local 79, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. laborers’ union. But instead of hard hats and work boots, those at the barricades wore arty glasses and fancy scarves.

“A lot of the public probably feels like we are brats,” said Sarah Durken, a writer for children’s programs. “But I think everyone understands the issue of corporate greed versus the needs of workers and their families.”

(At least one presidential candidate saw it that way. In a statement, Barack Obama declared, in part: “I stand with the writers. The guild’s demand is a test of whether media corporations are going to give writers a fair share.”)

Some New York writers tried a gentle approach in talking to passers-by. “Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you,” said Andrew Smith, who writes for “The View.”

“Writers going on strike sounds like shepherds staging a walkout,” Mr. Smith said afterward. “The general public has no understanding of the issues that we are facing, but we are here because the producers will take as much as they can unless writers stand up for themselves.”

Things got feistier a few hours later in Burbank, Calif., where about 60 pickets greeted executives arriving at the Walt Disney studio’s primary gate with a boisterous display of solidarity. “Union!” the strike captain shouted. “Power!” the writers responded.

Walking the line were writer-producers from some of the biggest hits on television. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the lead writers and show runners on “Lost” on ABC, marched in front of Greg Berlanti, the writer and producer of the same network’s “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Brothers & Sisters” and the coming “Eli Stone.”

“I hope that the studios see this turnout, which is great,” said Steven Peterman, a guild member who is an executive producer of “Hannah Montana” on the Disney Channel.

First-day enthusiasm notwithstanding, writers will find it no small task in coming weeks to block a production apparatus that in the Los Angeles area alone is spread across more than 100 studio facilities, several hundred post-production houses, and numerous location shoots that move from day to day.

As at Fox, trucks loaded with what appeared to be equipment for location shoots exited gates at Paramount’s Hollywood lot and at Television City, which houses CBS offices and soundstages for the reality shows “Dancing With the Stars” and “American Idol.”
The mood was somber outside Paramount’s stately wrought-iron gates, where striking workers angrily talked about how a driver entering an adjacent production site had struck and injured a picketing writer.

Tom Johnson, head writer for “Talkshow With Spike Feresten,” suffered a broken leg, according to a Writers Guild spokeswoman, adding that the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating the matter. But elsewhere, strikers struggled to find the day’s tone. At NBC’s main campus in Burbank, one writer, who declined to give his name, said it was not easy picketing with people who churn out comedies for a living.

“Stop making me laugh,” the writer told his buddy. “It doesn’t look good to people who drive up. They will think we’re not serious.”

Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes reported from Los Angeles and David Carr from New York. Edward Wyatt contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/bu.../06strike.html





Glamor Belongs to Only Part of Hollywood
AP

''Jeopardy!'' writer Andrew Price lives in a modest home, makes mortgage and car payments and describes himself and fellow scribes as ''meat and potatoes people.''

Movie art director Sean Duggan, 38, rarely wears a tux and leads a life that's more regular than regal. ''When they roll out the red carpet, they call me to do it,'' he says.

To most of the world, Hollywood is all about glitz and glamor and beautiful people -- some behaving badly. But Price and Duggan belong to what might be called the real Hollywood: its industrial other half, where folks live paycheck to paycheck, drive Toyotas and stay out of trouble.

The current Writers Guild of America strike has cast a rare, international spotlight on this workaday culture of behind-the-camera jobs -- known as ''below the line'' in production parlance.

Most WGA members lead far from glamorous lives, and seldom earn beyond five figures each year. Yet like their colleagues who build sets, apply makeup and lay cable, they're the ones who keep Hollywood cranking the content.

Or not.

Since it began Monday, the writers strike has shuttered nearly a dozen TV shows, including such popular series as ''The Office,'' ''Desperate Housewives'' and ''24.'' The feature-film pipeline could be next.

''The stars are who they are ... as a function of all those people who are unknown and keep the system going,'' said Elizabeth Currid, a professor at University of Southern California who studies art and culture in Los Angeles. ''Stars wouldn't define Hollywood if there weren't these regular people doing their jobs behind the scenes, day in and day out.''

The average salary for entertainment industry employees is $73,000 a year, a handsome income that's 80 percent higher than the national average, according to a 2006 study by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Yet most workers in Hollywood earn far less -- when they even have jobs -- because the MPAA's average includes multimillion dollar salaries paid to executives.

Most of the 6,000 carpenters, welders, set decorators and prop masters represented by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 44 earn $50,000 to $80,000 a year, said secretary-treasurer Elliot Jennings.

It's ''decent money'' that allows for a middle-class lifestyle, he said. But work is spotty and 10 to 15 percent of the membership are not regularly employed -- a situation worsened by the increasing loss of film and television shoots to foreign locations, and now the writers strike.

''Most of our members work paycheck-to-paycheck. They get eight months of work in a 12-month period,'' he said. ''The amount of money we make doesn't afford most members to keep their wives home from work. We're middle-class people who get up and go to work every day and can't afford not to.''

Having a Screen Actors Guild card isn't necessarily a ticket to Hollywood success, either. Members can spend more time hustling gigs than working them. That's why so many have side jobs tending bar or waiting tables.

''They're not living in mansions,'' said USC business professor S. Mark Young. ''They're probably living in modest apartments.''

Writer Diana Ljungaeus was lured by the glamor of Tinseltown when she moved from her native Sweden. Yet she quickly learned Hollywood is a place where ''everyone is something else.''

''You take a cab and the taxi driver is really a director and the cashier is really an actor, just doing this to get over a poor stretch,'' said Ljungaeus, 48, who works two jobs to support her playwriting pursuits. ''Very few people can live off the arts of TV, theater and film. It's a few that can and they live well. The rest of the hopeful are just struggling.''

Glitz and glamor elude even those industry workers who do draw a reliable salary.

Bruce Grayson has been a Hollywood makeup artist for nearly 20 years. He lives in a condo, not a mansion. He has one car, not a fleet. And he wears some designer duds, ''but the articles are few and far between.''

After two decades in the business, Grayson said he's still ''amazed'' by the level of wealth and luxury the industry provides to the stars who put a face on Hollywood for the rest of the planet.

''It's not my world,'' he said. ''It's their world.''

And they know it.

''The difference between the upper echelon in our business and the lower echelon is so striking,'' actor William H. Macy said as he walked the picket line with writers this week. ''It's tough for me when I'm on set. It makes me feel bad when (the studios) are being so stingy with craft services (catering) people and writers, when they're trying to cut costs on that level.''

Ricky Blitt straddles both sides of Hollywood. A writer of television shows such as ''Family Guy'' and feature-length screenplays, he's successful enough that he doesn't have to look for jobs like many in the industry, but not so successful that he routinely rubs elbows with A-listers.

His lifestyle is ''100 percent opposite from `Entourage,''' he said, referring to the HBO series about the entertainment business.

''This is my Hollywood glamor life: getting up early, writing, petting my two cats and watching NHL sports packages on TV,'' said Blitt, who works from an office at his Hollywood Hills home. ''Nobody quite knows who you are or what you do. You can afford certain privileges, but there's nothing exciting about it.''

------

Associated Press Writer Solvej Schou contributed to this report.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts...-the-Line.html





Lesson Learned from Finland Cold Shoulder
Mark Halper

For a peek at how the writers strike might end, look away for a minute from the glitz of Los Angeles and New York. Look instead several thousand miles north and east to Helsinki, Finland, where, despite the descending winter dreariness, an ongoing, year-old mobile TV travail shines light on what will happen in the big-time world of late-night talk shows and multimillion-dollar sitcoms.

Late last year, a TV transmission company owned by French media group TDF named Digita launched a commercial mobile-TV broadcasting service in Finland via DVB-H networks. Digita licensed a dozen or so channels and got them to participate in a successful trial. The plan then would be to then sell access to Finnish cellular carriers, which would resell access to consumers outfitted with broadcast-equipped phones.

Sure as saunas and reindeer steaks, mobile TV would fly in Finland, a land that invented the ringtone business and whose economy relies on the world’s largest mobile phone vendor, native son Nokia. After all, trial participants had said they would be willing to pay about $14 per month for the service.

There was only one problem. Someone forgot to check with the folks who sold the rights to the broadcasters in the first place. One by one, the dozen or so broadcasters that had participated in the trial said they could not provide content to Digita because they did not have rights to provide the content for commercial mobile TV.

Digita was left with a total of one video channel, Voice TV, a music video station. Things turned so downbeat that Nokia even decided at the time to withhold its broadcast-equipped handset from Finnish stores.

‘It totally stopped the market,’ recalls Tarja Rautio, Digita’s service manager for mobile TV. That should resonate with anyone looking at kissing goodbye to live Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jon Stewart.

In Finland, it wasn’t necessarily the writers who intervened. Copyright groups representing writers, musicians and actors said that if their stuff was going out on the new platform of mobile TV, they wanted a cut.

But the principles are the same as what the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers now face in Hollywood. Broadcasters worldwide are so busy rebranding themselves as content providers ready to sell programs to the world’s plethora of gadgets, gizmos and PCs, that they’re forgetting about those who supply them.

Any independent TV production that’s churning out product in half the time for half the budget knows the squeeze. I remember going to MIPTV a few years ago, when all things digital were really starting to move center stage. The first conversation I had upon arrival was with an indie TV producer. I gushed about the lively new world of mobile and Internet video. He practically went for my jugular.

‘They want all this stuff from us, but they’re not paying us,’ he growled.

Now writers understandably want their fair cut. And they deserve it.

In Finland, the parties talked. Slowly, broadcasters went back to their suppliers and offered more compensation.

Digita’s still smarting. It doesn’t expect to offer a full-blown commercial service until the spring, a year and a half behind schedule.

If CBS, NBC and others really believe they are content companies, they should heed the lesson that Digita provides, but not take 18 months to do so. They should start honoring their content creators with a bigger slice of the action, rather than taking goods from them as if writers were some off-the-shelf provider of an all-in-one tonic.

I’ve seen what happened in Finland. The American broadcasters will give in. If they don’t, I’ll jump in an arctic lake next time I’m in Lapland.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...c3a8e33803a9a4





Finland Defends Gun Laws
Jari Tanner

A teenage killer's deadly school rampage has put Finns on the defensive about their relationship to guns.

With 1.6 million firearms in private hands, the Nordic nation is an anomaly in Europe, lagging behind only the U.S. and Yemen in civilian gun ownership, studies show.

The government said Friday it would raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18, but insisted there was no need for sweeping changes to gun laws shaped by deep-rooted traditions of hunting in the sub-Arctic wilderness.

"If you look at the rate of homicides with firearms (in Finland), the figure is very low," Interior Ministry spokesman Ilkka Salmi said. "People using guns are hunters. They live in rural areas. It's part of the life over there."

According to a government study in 2002, 14 percent of homicides in Finland are gun-related.

International gun control activists have urged the Finns to rethink their laws in the wake of Wednesday's tragedy.

Finns are sensitive to their international image, and often complain their country is portrayed as a gloomy northern outpost of Europe, where long dark winters drive people to binge drinking, suicide or random outbursts of violence.

Wednesday's bloodshed did little to help. Pekka-Eric Auvinen, described by police as a bullied 18-year-old outcast, opened fire at his high school in southern Finland. He killed six students, a school nurse and the principal before ending his own life with a gunshot to the head.

"There are all kinds of people living in Finland, like everywhere else," said Tero Aaltonen, a customer in a Helsinki gun shop. "But I rather think it's the influence of the media and all the things people are exposed to that might make someone do a thing like that."

Auvinen, who had no previous criminal record and belonged to a shooting club in central Helsinki, shot the victims with a .22-caliber pistol that he bought from a local gun store days before the attack.

Police revealed Friday that Auvinen had settled for the pistol after being denied a license for a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.

"The application was rejected because a 9 mm gun is considered too powerful ... for target practice shooting," Detective Superintendent Tero Haapala told The Associated Press. "He was recommended to get a .22-caliber gun."

After Wednesday's shooting drew international attention to Finland's gun culture, the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying firearm sales were "strictly controlled."

Before granting a weapons permit, police "assess the applicant's suitability to posses a firearm, his or her way of life, behavior and possible mental health problems," the statement said. Applicants must prove also they have a legitimate need for a gun, such as hunting or target practice. Self-defense is not a valid reason.

Following the school shooting, police found Internet postings by Auvinen that seemed to predict the massacre.

Gun control activists said the shooting at the Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of Helsinki, proved the need for stricter gun laws in Finland.

"Compared to other European countries, Finland has a serious gun problem," said Rebecca Peters, director of the London-based International Action Network on Small Arms.

Finland has some 650,000 licensed gun owners, about 13 percent of the population of 5.2 million, many of them hunters, the Interior Ministry said.

"Almost every Finnish family has a hunting gun at home," said William Wadstein, a gun shop owner in Helsinki. "We are used to seeing guns."

He added that Finnish children are brought up knowing that guns are not toys: "Guns are very, very dangerous things. They are used for hunting, not murdering."

Studies by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey rank the country third in the world in civilian gun ownership. In Europe, only Switzerland comes close — and each member of Switzerland's militia army is allowed to keep his gun after completing military service.

Efforts to tighten gun control started some years ago, led by left-wing and pacifist groups. But the anti-gun lobby in Finland is weak, and the country has been known to defend its traditions of widespread gun ownership in the European Union.

Finland had previously insisted on keeping an age limit of 15 years for gun purchases in discussions with other EU nations about common rules on firearms.

But a government committee proposed changing the law Friday to prohibit minors from buying guns, although they would still be allowed to use them under parental supervision, the Interior Ministry said.

"It's obvious that this kind of tragic incident has probably sped up the decision," Salmi said.

He noted, however, that the change could not have prevented Wednesday's massacre: Auvinen was 18.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...c1TGwD8SQDP1G1





Samsung Reveals High-performance 64 GB SATA II SSDs

“The 64GB SATA II SSD is based on Samsung’s cutting-edge NAND technology with dramatically improved performance specs that are taking system performance to a whole new level of efficiency,” stated Jim Elliot, who is the director of marketing for the NAND flash Department of Samsung Semiconductor inc.

Samsung has unveiled a Solid State Drive aimed at high-end PC and server storage markets. Up until now, the SSD options available to the average person were mostly for the mobile market. This is due to the enormous power saving advantages of not having moving parts. SSDs typically use a third as much power as their physical motion counterparts, which saves battery power while performing about the same. These new drives use slightly more power than its predecessors (0.7 W vs 0.4 w), but perform up to five times as fast as normal 1.8" HDDs.

As with each previous incarnation from the NAND flash leaders, the new 64 GB drive has improved greatly in almost all areas. The new technology has some amazing specifications that will give any techie butterflies. With sequential write speeds of 100 MBps and read speeds of 120 MBps, these new drives blow away the fastest consumer grade devices of today. The rest of PATA/SATA market sustains approximately 50-80 MBps read/write rates.

The drive employs a new 3.0 GBps Sata II interface and is available in 1.8" and 2.5" flavors. The storage medium utilizes 50nm Single-Level-Cell (SLC ) flash memory chips, which are 8 GB per chip. All of this fits into a rather sleek metal case. Fastsilicon.com can't wait to get our hands on a couple of these.

Comparison of 1.8" drives:

Product
1.8" HDD
1.8" SDD (PATA)
1.8" SSD (SATA2)

Density
60GB
64GB
64GB

Weight
61 g
40g/ 15g(Slim)
40g/ 15g(Slim)

Performance
Read/Write: 22~48MB/s
R: 64MB/s, W: 45 MB/s
R: 100MB/s, W: 100MB/s

Power (Active)
1.4 W
0.4 W
0.7 W

Vibration (Operating)
1.0G (22~500Hz)
20G (10~2000Hz)
20G (10~2000Hz)

Acoustic Noise
22dB
0dB
0dB

Endurance
MTBF: <300K hours
MTBF: 2M hours
MTBF: 2M hours
http://www.fastsilicon.com/index.php...=333&Itemid=60





GISD Moves Ahead With Threat to Sue Parent
Rhiannon Meyers

The public school district has officially demanded that parent Sandra Tetley remove what it says is libelous material from her Web site or face a lawsuit for defamation.

Tetley received a letter Monday from the district’s law firm demanding she remove what it termed libelous statements and other “legally offensive” statements posted by her or anonymous users, and refrain from allowing such postings in the future. If she refuses, the district plans to sue her, the demand letter states.

Tetley said she’ll review the postings cited by David Feldman of the district’s firm Feldman and Rogers. She’ll consider the context of the postings and consult attorneys before deciding what to delete.

“If it’s not worth keeping in there, I’ll take it out,” she said. “If in fact it is libelous, I have no problem taking it down.”

Libel Or Opinion?

Feldman said Tetley’s Web site — www.gisdwatch.com — contained the most “personal, libelous invective directed toward a school administrator” he’s seen in his 31-year career.

“It is not the desire of the School District, the Board, or this Firm to stifle free expression or inhibit robust debate regarding matters pertaining to the operation of the public schools,” Feldman wrote in the demand letter. “This is solely about the publication of materials that clearly go beyond that which is legally and constitutionally encouraged and permitted, and into the realm of what is legally offensive and actionable.”

Feldman cited 16 examples of what he says are libelous postings. Half were posted by Tetley; the other half were posted by anonymous users.

The postings accuse Superintendent Lynne Cleveland, trustees and administrators of lying, manipulation, falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for “personal gain,” violating the Open Meetings Act and spying on employees, among other things.

Tetley said the postings were opinions only.

“Everyone deserves to have their opinion,” she said. “I don’t think they have a right to make me, or anyone else, take down criticisms of them off the Web site. They’re not going to force us to take off our opinions because we have no other place to go.”

Tetley said she had not removed any of the postings as of late Tuesday.

Rare Move

One legal expert said the district’s move to sue Tetley is rare and unlawful. Under the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, government entities cannot sue for libel — any court would toss out the “threatening” suit as being inconsistent with U.S. law, said Sandra Baron, executive director of New-York based Media Law Resource Center. She called the district’s potential lawsuit an intimidation tactic and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Feldman said the district is only asking Tetley to remove a small percentage of postings on her site that he says accuse trustees and administrators of breaking the law. They’re not trying to shut down the blog or eliminate postings, he said.

“How can that be threatening or initmidating?” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of dialogue, if you will, on that Web log that we’re not touching with a pole ... What we leave is this huge field of free expression and discourse. There’s debate and then there’s libel. Debate all you want, criticize all you want, but don’t accuse people of committing crimes when you have absolutely no evidence to support that.”

More than 130 registered users post on Tetley’s site. Since trustees threatened legal action, more people have been visiting the site and posting, Tetley said. She said she planned to post Feldman’s letter on the site.

“People are very tired of what this type of government is doing,” Tetley said. “They are using our money to silence us.”

The law firm monitored the site for months before trustees took action. Board President David O’Neal said the postings deter potential employees from working at the district.

Tetley and her group, Galveston Alliance for Neighborhood schools, has long criticized the district for reconfiguring its middle schools, closing elementary schools, meeting in executive sessions some claimed were illegal, refusing to divulge the contents of a letter from a civil rights consultant and for issuing a budget forecast that was off by $10 million.

The district’s controversial reconfiguration, to go into effect in 2008-09, prompted Tetley to start the site.

It’s often difficult to prove a public official has been libeled. Aside from proving the libelous statements are damaging, public officials must also prove actual malice. Actual malice means knowing a statement is false or having reckless disregard for the truth.
http://blogs.galvnews.com/story109087.html





ACLU Quotes Anonymous Nat'l Security Letter Plaintiff in NY Court
Larry Neumeister

The U.S. government on Monday appealed a ruling striking down a key provision of the USA Patriot Act that prevents Internet service providers from telling their customers if the government has demanded private information from them.

The government's decision to appeal a September ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to put out a release quoting the unidentified plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging the law.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit argued by ACLU lawyers has been identified only as John Doe, the president of a small Internet service provider who has faced a gag order for more than three years because of the law regarding so-called national security letters, or NSLs.

The law lets the government acquire telephone, e-mail and financial records about Americans and foreigners without a judge's approval. It also lets the government impose gag orders on the recipients of the letters to prevent them from acknowledging the probes.

In the ACLU release, the plaintiff in the case complained that the statutes "give the government far too much power and that the secrecy surrounding the statutes is excessive."

The plaintiff said the gag provisions of the law "make it difficult or impossible for people like me _ people who have firsthand experience with the NSL statute _ to discuss their specific concerns with the public, the press and Congress."

The plaintiff added: "This seems to be counterintuitive to everything I assumed about this country's commitment to free speech and the value of political discourse."

The judge, in his ruling, said the NSL statute was so improper that to let the law stand might turn an innocent legislative step into "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values."

The judge had stayed the effect of his ruling so it could be appealed. The government provided notice of its appeal in a one-paragraph letter to the court and later had no comment.

In March, the government released a report showing the FBI issued approximately 8,500 national security letter requests in 2000, the year before the passage of the Patriot Act. The number of requests rose to 39,000 by 2003 and to 56,000 in 2004 before falling to 47,000 in 2005. Most of the requests sought telephone billing records, telephone or e-mail subscriber information or electronic communication transactional records.

The judge wrote that most recipients have little or no incentive to challenge the orders, and only two cases have been filed in federal court.

The judge said the NSLs let the government unmask the identity of Internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions and obtain itemized lists of all e-mails sent and received by people.
newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--patriotactlawsuit1105nov05,0,1396048.story





EU Could Collect Air Passenger Data

Part of a new anti-terrorism campaign, a commission proposal would allow member states to collect personal information and keep it for 13 years
Renata Goldirova

As part of a new EU counter-terrorism strategy, Brussels is to propose that member states collect 19 pieces of air passenger data, with the possibility to store it for up to thirteen years.

On Tuesday (6 November), EU home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini will kick off a lengthy legislative process, which at the end should see an EU-wide air passengers name recording scheme (PNR) similar to the controversial US database on European air travellers.

Mr Frattini argues in his paper that "the collection and analysis of PNR data allows the law enforcement authorities to identify high risk passengers and to take appropriate measures" such as secondary screening upon their arrival or a refusal of entry in the destination country.

"Almost all terrorist campaigns are trans-national", he points out.

However, the commission proposal does not foresee a centralised pan-European database, as run the risk of failure due to the vast amount of data received from the 27 individual member states.

Instead, it suggests that each member state sets up a passenger information unit responsible for collecting as well as analysing the PNR data from all carriers operating flights into or from the EU territory.

Member states' law enforcement authorities, entitled to receive and further process the information, should share them if "necessary" for the prevention and fight against terrorist offences and organised crime.

The scope

Under the proposal, European law enforcement authorities will gain access to details on the passenger's reservation and travel itinerary - for example name, address, passport data, telephone numbers, travel agent, credit card number, history of changes in the flight schedule, seat preferences.

Sensitive information such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership as well as health and sexual orientation should not be revealed.

EU capitals will be allowed to store all data for five years, however, with the possibility to extend this period for an additional eight years. Only then must member states' passenger information units delete them.

In order to "offer a higher degree of data protection", Brussels suggests that the so-called push method applies when it comes to collecting the data.

They should be transmitted by the carrier to the national authority instead of giving the national agency the right of direct access to the reservation system.

Criticism

Commissioner Franco Frattini will have to win the unanimous support of all EU capitals if the proposal is to become law.

But the toughest scrutiny is likely to come from the European Parliament, a frequent guardian of civil liberties and data protection, as well as from rights groups.

According to Tony Bunyan from UK liberties group Statewatch "this is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a suspect without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom".

"The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism", Mr Bunyan said, referring to the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data.

"There is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world", he concluded.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi..._top+st ories





No REAL ID, No Problem: DHS Backs Off On Deadline, Requirements
Nate Anderson

After running into significant state opposition, the Department of Homeland Security has tried to rescue the controversial REAL ID program by backing off provisions of the plan in order to lower costs and reduce privacy concerns. Now, the ACLU is claiming that DHS is ditching key standards and will allow Americans to board airplanes even without a REAL ID.

DHS held a conference call with the states last month to address lingering concerns about the program. According to the ACLU, which talked to participants on the call, DHS announced that the national standards were being relaxed, that REAL ID wouldn't be required to board planes, and that the deadline for compliance could be extended to 2015 or later.

"In discussions I participated in with the Department of Homeland Security, they were asked point blank, 'What will happen to states that don't participate?'" said Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, who was on the call. "The response was, 'Nothing will happen. There will be no penalty. You can still get on a plane.'"

The ACLU, which opposes the plan on civil liberties grounds, says that the many changes made since the Act was passed nearly "negate the original intent of the program." A DHS official told the Washington Post that the changes have been adopted in a spirit of compromise designed to save the states money.

DHS is at pains to point out that REAL ID is not a national identity card program but a set of regulations that direct states how to create their drivers' licenses and state ID cards. The program mandates digital photos, bar-coded information, and more stringent document checks, and it directs all states to link their databases with one another. It passed in 2005 as part of a necessary appropriations bill to fund the Iraq war and prompted our own Jon Stokes to think about faxing a picture of his own backside to REAL ID sponsor Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). The official word is that this did not, in fact, happen.

REAL ID has spawned outrage in other corners. Groups on both the left and the right of the political spectrum have been up in arms over the privacy implications of the linked databases and the machine-readable information, and many states have been worried by the (unfunded) cost of the upgrade, which could run into the billions of dollars.

States began defying the feds, passing laws saying that they had no intention of complying with the REAL ID requirements. The federal government retorted that this was fine, but citizens from those states could not use drivers' licenses to enter federal buildings or board aircraft (which are screened by federal personnel).

In the face of this sort of opposition, DHS extended the deadline for compliance to 2009, and then again to 2013. Now, it could be extended again, and states could get even more time to issue cards for older drivers (apparently less of a security threat).

Whether the new rules are an expedient compromise or a total backpedalling from the goals of REAL ID depends on who you ask. The ACLU, for instance, holds strong views on the matter.

"DHS is essentially whittling Real ID down to nothing—all in the name of denying Real ID is a failure," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "Real ID is in its death throes, and any signs of life are just last gasps."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...uirements.html





Congress to Vote on Open Access and NIH Funds

US investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) may soon be compelled to publish only in journals that make their research papers freely available within one year of publication.

Congress is this week expected to take final votes on a bill incorporating this directive. The measure is contained in a spending bill that boosts the biomedical agency's effective budget by 3.1%, to $29.8 billion in 2008.

President George W. Bush has vowed to veto the bill, which will fund the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies, because it includes what he calls “irresponsible and excessive” levels of spending.

But congressional Democrats have attached to the measure an unrelated but politically popular bill funding the Department of Veterans Affairs. They hope that this will generate the two-thirds support needed in both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

The open-access requirement in the bill would apply only during fiscal year 2008; it would need to be renewed in yearly spending bills in the future.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/0711...l/450148a.html





Cancer-Busters Tap Into Grid Computing
Robert Jaques

Canadian researchers have promised to squeeze "decades" of cancer research into just two years by harnessing the power of a global PC grid..

The research team is led by Dr Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute, and scientists at Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network.

The scientists are the first from Canada to use IBM's World Community Grid network of PCs and laptops with the power equivalent to one of the globe's top five fastest supercomputers.

The team will use the grid to analyse the results of experiments on proteins using data collected by scientists at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, New York.

The researchers estimate that this analysis would take conventional computer systems 162 years to complete.

Dr Jurisica anticipates that the analysis could be finished in one to two years, and will provide researchers with a better way to study how proteins function, which could lead to the development of more effective cancer-fighting drugs.

"We know that most cancers are caused by defective proteins in our bodies, but we need to better understand the specific function of those proteins and how they interact in the body," he said.

"We also have to find proteins that will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, before the symptoms appear, to have the best chance of treating the disease or potentially stopping it completely."

The research team now has more than 86 million images of 9,400 unique proteins that could be linked to cancer captured in the course of more than 14.5 million experiments by colleagues at Hauptman-Woodward.

Dr Jurisica said that this resource comprises the most comprehensive database on the chemistry of a large number of proteins, a resource that will help researchers around the world unlock the mystery of how many cancers grow.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/64560,...computing.aspx





NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad

NNSQUAD.ORG
A project of PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility

The Network Neutrality Squad (NNSquad) is an open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet's users to help keep the Internet's operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions.

The project's focus includes detection, analysis, and incident reporting of any anticompetitive, discriminatory, or other restrictive actions on the part of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or affiliated entities, such as the blocking or disruptive manipulation of applications, protocols, transmissions, or bandwidth; or other similar behaviors not specifically requested by their customers.

Other key aspects of the project are discussions, technology development and deployment, and associated activities -- fostering cooperation and mutually agreeable methodologies whenever possible -- aimed at keeping the Internet a maximally unhindered, useful, competitive, fair, and open environment for the broadest possible range of applications and services.

We invite individual, commercial, nonprofit, government, and all other Internet users and stakeholders (including ISPs) to participate in the Network Neutrality Squad.

Please join the moderated mailing list (choice of immediate distribution or digest) for project announcements and discussions, by sending a message (any subject or text) to nnsquad-subscribe@nnsquad.org, or by signing up at the mailing list Web page.

A searchable archive of past messages that have been distributed to the mailing list is available for your use.

For more interactive, real-time communications on related topics, please visit the NNSquad discussion and incident reporting forum.

Questions and comments are welcome at nnsquad-info@nnsquad.org, or feel free to contact Lauren Weinstein directly as shown below for project-related details.

Working together, we can help to keep the Internet an incredibly useful resource for everyone around the globe, unhampered by any efforts to skew its enormous capabilities in ways that could hinder the many while benefiting the relative few.

We hope that you'll join this cause. Thank you for your consideration.

Lauren Weinstein - lauren@pfir.org
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility
TEL: +1 (818) 225-2800

Peter G. Neumann - neumann@pfir.org
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility

Vinton G. Cerf

Keith Dawson
Slashdot.org

David J. Farber - dfarber@cs.cmu.edu
Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University

Bob Frankston - nn-Squad@Bobf.Frankston.com

Phil Karn
Vice President, Technology - Qualcomm, Inc.

David P. Reed

Paul Saffo

Bruce Schneier - schneier@counterpane.com
CTO - BT Counterpane
http://www.nnsquad.org/





Judge Forces Telcos to Retain Data in NSA Spy Case
Nate Anderson

In a victory for the EFF, Judge Vaughn Walker ruled today that AT&T, Verizon, Cingular (now part of AT&T), Sprint, and BellSouth (also part of AT&T now) must all maintain any data or papers related to the NSA spying case that Walker is overseeing in California. The EFF had requested the ruling out of concern that documents would be destroyed as part of routine data deletion practices before the case could even progress to discovery.

The move was opposed not only by the telcos but also by the federal government, which has repeatedly pursued the claim that the case involves "state secrets" and should not proceed.

A hearing on the matter was to have been held on November 15, but Walker decided after reading the papers submitted by both sides that no hearing was necessary. Instead, he ordered the telcos to retain all "documents, data and tangible things in the possession, custody and control of the parties to this action, and any employees, agents, contractors, carriers, bailees or other non-parties who posses materials reasonably anticipated to be subject to discovery in this action."

Counsel for each company are specifically told to make sure that no routine business practices result in the destruction of useful information. Walker also ordered the lead counsel for each telco to notify him in writing before December 14 that the order had been carried out.

The order comes a day before the AT&T whistleblower who bolstered the EFF's case, a technician named Mark Klein, holds a DC press conference to publicly discuss his claims of "secrets rooms" and optical splitters. He will also call for Congress to grant no retroactive immunity to the telcos for their part in the entire surveillance scheme.

While the order is certainly good news for the EFF, it does not require the telcos to say if they have any such evidence and it does not mean the case will necessarily move on to discovery.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-spy-case.html





AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up
Spencer Ackerman

Earlier today we flagged that Mark Klein, who uncovered a secret surveillance room run by the NSA while employed as a San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, is in Washington to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies. In an interview this afternoon, Klein explained why he traveled all the way from San Francisco to lobby Senators about the issue: if the immunity provision passes, Americans may never know how extensive the surveillance program was -- or how deeply their privacy may have been invaded.

"The president has not presented this truthfully," said Klein, a 62-year old retiree. "He said it was about a few people making calls to the Mideast. But I know this physical equipment. It copies everything. There's no selection of anything, at all -- the splitter copies entire data streams from the internet, phone conversations, e-mail, web-browsing. Everything."

What Klein unearthed -- you can read it here -- points to a nearly unbounded surveillance program. Its very location in San Francisco suggests that the program was "massively domestic" in its focus, he said. "If they really meant what they say about only wanting international stuff, you wouldn't want it in San Francisco or Atlanta. You'd want to be closer to the border where the lines come in from the ocean so you pick up international calls. You only do it in San Francisco if you want domestic stuff. The location of this stuff contradicts their story."

That's what's at stake in the telecom immunity provision, Klein believes. If the surveillance-related lawsuits are invalidated by a provision in the intelligence-committee-passed FISA bill, then the extent of the program -- at least between 2001 and 2006 -- will remain the exclusive purview of the Bush administration, the communications firms and the handful of Senators selected to review legal justifications for the program. "These are not babes in woods. They knew what they were doing," Klein said. "The violation of the Constitution is where they split off -- where the splitter splits off full copies of a datastream, and connects to other companies' internet stuff, like Sprint or GlobalCrossing. They don’t want people to understand that. They want to portray it like the president does, that it's a handful of international phone calls. That's the soundbite, and that’s not true. It affects millions of people domestically."

Klein has been public with his insider account for nearly two years, with precious little publicity to show for it, thanks to the relative paucity of national media in San Francisco. Coming to Washington might have changed that: his day was packed with press calls and face time with at least a half-dozen Congressional staffers, mostly from Democratic Senators Joe Biden, Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer. Press attention and one-on-ones in the corridors of power might be nice, he said, but it's not enough. "I'm not impressed by people with speeches pretending to be on your side," he said. "I want to see votes. In our favor."

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the surveillance bill tomorrow.
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004662.php





AT&T Gave Feds Access to all Web, Phone Traffic, Ex-Tech Says
Ellen Nakashima

His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts.

Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He carried no security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.

"If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — well, they should suffer the consequences," Klein said.

In an interview this week, he alleged that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the help of AT&T and without obtaining a court order. Contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he thinks the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns and for content.

He said the NSA built a special room in San Francisco to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing "peering links," or major connections to other telecom providers. Other so-called secret rooms reportedly were constructed at AT&T sites in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, Calif.

Klein's documents and his account form the basis of one of the first lawsuits filed against the telecom companies after the government's warrantless-surveillance program was disclosed by The New York Times in December 2005.

Claudia Jones, an AT&T spokeswoman, said she had no comment on Klein's allegations. "AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security," she said.

The NSA and the White House also declined to comment.

Klein is urging Congress not to block Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action suit pending in federal court in San Francisco, and 37 other lawsuits charging carriers with illegally collaborating with the NSA program. He and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed Hepting v. AT&T in 2006, are urging key lawmakers to oppose a pending White House-endorsed immunity provision that effectively would wipe out the lawsuits. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the measure today.

In summer 2002, Klein was working in an office responsible for Internet equipment when an NSA representative arrived to interview a management-level technician for a special, secret job.

The job entailed building a "secret room" in another AT&T office 10 blocks away, he said. By coincidence, in October 2003, Klein was transferred to that office. He asked a technician about the secret room on the sixth floor, and the technician told him it was connected to the Internet room a floor above. The technician handed him wiring diagrams.

"That was my 'aha' moment," Klein said. "They're sending the entire Internet to the secret room."

The diagram showed splitters glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One copy fed into the secret room. The other proceeded to its destination, he said.

"This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style," he said. "The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T's customers but everybody's."

One of Klein's documents listed links to 16 entities, including Global Crossing, a large provider of voice and data services in the United States and abroad; UUNet, a large Internet provider now owned by Verizon; Level 3 Communications, which provides local, long-distance and data transmission in the United States and overseas; and more familiar names, such as Sprint and Qwest. It also included data exchanges MAE-West and PAIX, or Palo Alto Internet Exchange, facilities where telecom carriers hand off Internet traffic to each other.

"I flipped out," he said. "They're copying the whole Internet. There's no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything."

Qwest has not been sued because of media reports last year that said the company declined to participate in an NSA program to build a database of domestic phone-call records out of concern that it may have been illegal. What the documents show, Klein said, is that the NSA apparently was collecting several carriers' communications, probably without their consent.

Another document showed that the NSA installed in the room a Narus semantic traffic analyzer, which Klein said indicated the NSA was doing content analysis.

Steve Bannerman, Narus' marketing vice president, said the NarusInsight system can track a communication's origin and destination, as well as its content. He declined to comment on AT&T's use of the system.

Klein said he went public after President Bush defended the NSA's surveillance program as limited to collecting phone calls between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the United States. Klein said the documents show that the scope was much broader.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._spying08.html





Lawmakers Delay Telco Immunity Vote
Roy Mark

The Senate Judiciary Committee delays a decision on whether telcos broke the law when they cooperated with the fed's warrantless surveillance program.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee delayed Nov. 8 a scheduled vote on whether telecommunications carriers should be granted immunity for cooperating with the White House's domestic spying program of telephone wiretapping and e-mail surveillance. The panel hopes to vote on the provision as soon as next week.

As part of the renewal of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the White House wants Congress to grant immunity to the carriers that agreed to turn over customer telephone and e-mail records—often without a warrant or subpoena—to the government. The White House launched the warrantless surveillance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

The House version of the FISA renewal currently includes no immunity for the carriers, but the Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation Oct. 17 that includes immunity. The Senate Judiciary Committee's working version calls for no immunity.

"A retroactive grant of immunity or pre-emption of state regulators does more than let the carriers off the hook," Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during an Oct. 31 hearing on the FISA bill. "Immunity is designed to shield this administration from any accountability for conducting surveillance outside the law. It could make it impossible for Americans whose privacy has been violated illegally to seek meaningful redress."

Read more here about the hearing on the FISA bill.

The New York Times first broke the story of the administration's warrantless wiretapping in late 2005, and USA Today later reported that the National Security Agency is using information provided by telephone carriers to mine tens of millions of calling records for data.

The carriers are under a federal court order to neither confirm nor deny their participation in the program. "Our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive branch relating to government surveillance activities," AT&T wrote to lawmakers Oct. 12.

Nevertheless, Verizon, AT&T and Qwest all contend they acted legally in reliance on existing federal, state and local laws.

"Current law … provides a complete defense to any provider who in good faith relies on a statutory authorization," AT&T wrote in its Oct. 12 letter. "If the government advises a private company that a disclosure is authorized by statute, a presumption of regularity attaches."

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden all oppose granting immunity to the carriers. Other Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have not stated a position on immunity for telecom carriers. Republican presidential hopefuls have also been mum on the issue.

"It is time to restore oversight and accountability in the FISA program, and this proposal—with an unprecedented grant of retroactive immunity—is not the place to start," Obama said in an Oct. 19 statement.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2214150,00.asp





Did Credit Card Companies Collaborate with the FBI's Grocery Data Mining Program?
Chris Soghoian

The Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein recently reported that the FBI went trawling through grocery store records in order to track down Iranian terror cells. In his article, he writes, "like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists." The program, however, was short lived and was quickly "torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous -- and possibly illegal."

Wired News' always excellent Threat Level blogger Ryan Singel, who highlighted Stein's article yesterday, [url=http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/fbi-mined-groce.htmlponders the methods through which the FBI got access to the records[/url]. Ryan writes, "It's not clear how the FBI got the records to sift through in the first place - did grocery stores volunteer the data or get served with national security letters or the dread[ed] Section 215 of the Patriot Act."

As I will outline in this blog post, I don't believe that the grocery stores gave up any customer data - the credit card companies did. But first, a disclaimer: I have no sources at all for my argument today. I have nothing to back it up other than a gut feeling. Thus, this blog post should be read as an editorial, and in no way as a solid piece of investigative journalism.

Before we get too deep into this, lets cover a few basic concepts.

First: ethnic shoppers, be they Mexican, Iranian, Indian or Chinese, generally do not buy the foods from their home countries at American grocery stores. They buy them at small, ethnic food stores specializing in foreign foods. The major grocery chains do not cater to these customers, and generally stock inferior (and overpriced) goods. No self-respecting Indian chef buys his spices from Safeway, just as Koreans seeking a kimchi fix do not go to Whole Foods. Most obvious of all, no Iranian, or any other religious Muslim buys their meat at major American grocery stores, for one simple reason: it's not halal.

Second: Small ethnic grocery stores generally do not track their customers' purchases. While the major chains all seem to have adopted evil tracking "store loyalty" cards, your average mom and pop Mexican market is likely to have a single cash register at the front of the store. No fancy computers through which to give consumers a five percent discount in exchange for having their transactions tracked.

While Whole Foods can go through their purchase logs to see which customers purchased specific middle-eastern food items, the small ethnic markets simply don't have this kind of data. All they could provide, if forced to, would be the names associated with every credit card used for any past transactions. The actual food items purchased, be it a candy bar, or a metric ton of terrorist-tahini, would remain a secret.

With that out of the way, lets re-examine the information presented by Jeff Stein. Did the FBI compel or politely ask Safeway and Whole Foods to trawl through their extensive purchase databases, and hand over the names of customers who bought falafel mix? Not likely. Ok, what about a different approach. Did the FBI go to every middle eastern market in the San Francisco bay area and ask the owners to hand over their credit card receipts? This too, is not so likely.

FBI agents are not stupid. What is far more likely, I believe, is that agents contacted the major credit card companies (Visa, Mastercard and American Express), gave them a list of all of the middle eastern markets in the Bay area, and asked for the names and addresses of every person who had purchased anything at any of the stores. This would be a far easier method, and frankly, would be less likely to cause alarm to the general public (as they most likely would never find out).

The FBI already pays three telecom companies, including AT&T and Verizon, about $1.8 million a year to process written "emergency" requests for telephone and internet records. The CIA and US Treasury Department have been getting access to data on every international financial transaction crossing the SWIFT network since 2001. Furthermore, a recent FBI audit found that in at least 14 investigations, counterintelligence FBI agents improperly gathered full credit reports from financial institutions, exercising authority provided by the USA Patriot Act but meant to be applied only in counter-terrorism cases.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely use financial records, including credit reports as part of their investigations. More than likely, every Visa and Mastercard transaction around the world goes through a US server at some point. This is a valuable source of data, and frankly, if the NSA doesn't already have access to this data, someone there should probably be fired. Given the fact that the telecom companies get paid to respond to FBI requests, it's quite likely that the major credit card networks also have streamlined processes through which they can respond to law enforcement requests (and get paid for their time and effort, of course).

If the credit card companies can already be forced to give up the purchase history of a legitimate suspect in an investigation, it is not too hard to imagine that they could be forced, or paid, to provide data with a more broad request.

The legality of such a program, if it exists, will make for a great debate amongst legal scholars. It would also seem, by my amateur reading of the current Senate proposals for telecom immunity, that the credit card companies would also be let off the hook if they did actually violate any laws in handing over vast amounts of customer data.

Interesting times, indeed
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9812473-46.html





German Bundestag Decides to Implement Data Retention

Starting next year, all communication providers in Germany will have to store all connection data for six months. This includes:
Phone calls: Date, time, length and involved numbers of all phone calls (landline, mobile or VoIP)
In case of mobile phones additionally the location of the phone at the time of the call, the IMSI code of the phone and SMS connection data
Internet access: IP address, date, time and length of the connection, and the line which was used
E-mail: e-mail-addresses involved and the header of each e-mail

The content of the communications is not stored.

The bill had been heavily criticized. Privacy advocated had organized demonstrations agains the bill in all major German cities at the beginning of this week. In October there had already been a large domonstration with thousands of participants in Germany’s capital Berlin.

All opposition parties voted against the bill. Several members of the opposition and several hundred private protesters announced a constitutional complaint.

This sucks…
http://www.kreativrauschen.com/blog/...ata-retention/





How Hackers Work
Jonathan Strickland

Thanks to the media, the word "hacker" has gotten a bad reputation. The word summons up thoughts of malicious computer users finding new ways to harass people, defraud corporations, steal information and maybe even destroy the economy or start a war by infiltrating military computer systems. While there's no denying that there are hackers out there with bad intentions, they make up only a small percentage of the hacker community.

The term computer hacker first showed up in the mid-1960s. A hacker was a programmer -- someone who hacked out computer code. Hackers were visionaries who could see new ways to use computers, creating programs that no one else could conceive. They were the pioneers of the computer industry, building everything from small applications to operating systems. In this sense, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were all hackers -- they saw the potential of what computers could do and created ways to achieve that potential.

A unifying trait among these hackers was a strong sense of curiosity, sometimes bordering on obsession. These hackers prided themselves on not only their ability to create new programs, but also to learn how other programs and systems worked. When a program had a bug -- a section of bad code that prevented the program from working properly -- hackers would often create and distribute small sections of code called patches to fix the problem. Some managed to land a job that leveraged their skills, getting paid for what they'd happily do for free.

As computers evolved, computer engineers began to network individual machines together into a system. Soon, the term hacker had a new meaning -- a person using computers to explore a network to which he or she didn't belong. Usually hackers didn't have any malicious intent. They just wanted to know how computer networks worked and saw any barrier between them and that knowledge as a challenge.

German hackers have hacked the European passport system and stolen biometric information. This video from Reuters shows how the network behind these passports works and how hackers have gotten inside it.

In fact, that's still the case today. While there are plenty of stories about malicious hackers sabotaging computer systems, infiltrating networks and spreading computer viruses, most hackers are just curious -- they want to know all the intricacies of the computer world. Some use their knowledge to help corporations and governments construct better security measures. Others might use their skills for more unethical endeavors.

In this article, we'll explore common techniques hackers use to infiltrate systems. We'll examine hacker culture and the various kinds of hackers as well as learn about famous hackers, some of whom have run afoul of the law.

Hackers and Crackers

Many computer programmers insist that the word "hacker" applies only to law-abiding enthusiasts who help create programs and applications or improve computer security. Anyone using his or her skills maliciously isn't a hacker at all, but a cracker.

Crackers infiltrate systems and cause mischief, or worse. Unfortunately, most people outside the hacker community use the word as a negative term because they don't understand the distinction between hackers and crackers.

The Hacker Toolbox

The main resource hackers rely upon, apart from their own ingenuity, is computer code. While there is a large community of hackers on the Internet, only a relatively small number of hackers actually program code. Many hackers seek out and download code written by other people. There are thousands of different programs hackers use to explore computers and networks. These programs give hackers a lot of power over innocent users and organizations -- once a skilled hacker knows how a system works, he can design programs that exploit it.

Malicious hackers use programs to:

• Hack passwords: There are many ways to hack someone's password, from educated guesses to simple algorithms that generate combinations of letters, numbers and symbols. The trial and error method of hacking passwords is called a brute force attack, meaning the hacker tries to generate every possible combination to gain access. Another way to hack passwords is to use a dictionary attack, a program that inserts common words into password fields.
• Infect a computer or system with a virus: Computer viruses are programs designed to duplicate themselves and cause problems ranging from crashing a computer to wiping out everything on a system's hard drive. A hacker might install a virus by infiltrating a system, but it's much more common for hackers to create simple viruses and send them out to potential victims via email, instant messages, Web sites with downloadable content or peer-to-peer networks.
• Log keystrokes: Some programs allow hackers to review every keystroke a computer user makes. Once installed on a victim's computer, the programs record each keystroke, giving the hacker everything he needs to infiltrate a system or even steal someone's identity.
• Gain backdoor access: Similar to hacking passwords, some hackers create programs that search for unprotected pathways into network systems and computers. In the early days of the Internet, many computer systems had limited security, making it possible for a hacker to find a pathway into the system without a username or password. Another way a hacker might gain backdoor access is to infect a computer or system with a Trojan horse.
• Create zombie computers: A zombie computer, or bot, is a computer that a hacker can use to send spam or commit Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. After a victim executes seemingly innocent code, a connection opens between his computer and the hacker's system. The hacker can secretly control the victim's computer, using it to commit crimes or spread spam.
• Spy on e-mail: Hackers have created code that lets them intercept and read e-mail messages -- the Internet's equivalent to wiretapping. Today, most e-mail programs use encryption formulas so complex that even if a hacker intercepts the message, he won't be able to read it.

Hacker Hierarchy

Psychologist Marc Rogers says there are several subgroups of hackers -- newbies, cyberpunks, coders and cyber terrorists. Newbies are hackers who have access to hacking tools but aren't really aware of how computers and programs work. Cyberpunks are savvier and are less likely to get caught than a newbie while hacking a system, but they have a tendency to boast about their accomplishments. Coders write the programs other hackers use to infiltrate and navigate computer systems. A cyber terrorist is a professional hacker who infiltrates systems for profit -- he might sabotage a company or raid a corporation's databases for proprietary information [source: Knittel and Soto].

Hacker Culture

Individually, many hackers are antisocial. Their intense interest in computers and programming can become a communication barrier. Left to his or her own devices, a hacker can spend hours working on a computer program while neglecting everything else.

Computer networks gave hackers a way to associate with other people with their same interests. Before the Internet became easily accessible, hackers would set up and visit bulletin board systems (BBS). A hacker could host a bulletin board system on his or her computer and let people dial into the system to send messages, share information, play games and download programs. As hackers found one another, information exchanges increased dramatically.

Super Phreak

Before computer hackers, curious and clever individuals found ways to manipulate the phone system in a phenomenon called phreaking. Through phreaking, these individuals found ways to make long distance calls for free or sometimes just played pranks on other telephone users

Some hackers posted their accomplishments on a BBS, boasting about infiltrating secure systems. Often they would upload a document from their victims' databases to prove their claims. By the early 1990s, law enforcement officials considered hackers an enormous security threat. There seemed to be hundreds of people who could hack into the world's most secure systems at will [source: Sterling].

There are many Web sites dedicated to hacking. The hacker journal "2600: The Hacker Quarterly" has its own site, complete with a live broadcast section dedicated to hacker topics. The print version is still available on newsstands. Web sites like Hacker.org promote learning and include puzzles and competitions for hackers to test their skills.

When caught -- either by law enforcement or corporations -- some hackers admit that they could have caused massive problems. Most hackers don't want to cause trouble; instead, they hack into systems just because they wanted to know how the systems work. To a hacker, a secure system is like Mt. Everest -- he or she infiltrates it for the sheer challenge. In the United States, a hacker can get into trouble for just entering a system. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act outlaws unauthorized access to computer systems [source: Hacking Laws].

Not all hackers try to explore forbidden computer systems. Some use their talents and knowledge to create better software and security measures. In fact, many hackers who once used their skills to break into systems now put that knowledge and ingenuity to use by creating more comprehensive security measures. In a way, the Internet is a battleground between different kinds of hackers -- the bad guys, or black hats, who try to infiltrate systems or spread viruses, and the good guys, or white hats, who bolster security systems and develop powerful virus protection software.

Hackers on both sides overwhelmingly support open source software, programs in which the source code is available for anyone to study, copy, distribute and modify. With open source software, hackers can learn from other hackers' experiences and help make programs work better than they did before. Programs might range from simple applications to complex operating systems like Linux.

There are several annual hacker events, most of which promote responsible behavior. A yearly convention in Las Vegas called DEFCON sees thousands of attendees gather to exchange programs, compete in contests, participate in panel discussions about hacking and computer development and generally promote the pursuit of satisfying curiosity. A similar event called the Chaos Communication Camp combines low-tech living arrangements -- most attendees stay in tents -- and high-tech conversation and activities.

Hackers and the Law

In general, most governments aren't too crazy about hackers. Hackers' ability to slip in and out of computers undetected, stealing classified information when it amuses them, is enough to give a government official a nightmare. Secret information, or intelligence, is incredibly important. Many government agents won't take the time to differentiate between a curious hacker who wants to test his skills on an advanced security system and a spy.

Laws reflect this attitude. In the United States, there are several laws forbidding the practice of hacking. Some, like 18 U.S.C. § 1029, concentrate on the creation, distribution and use of codes and devices that give hackers unauthorized access to computer systems. The language of the law only specifies using or creating such a device with the intent to defraud, so an accused hacker could argue he just used the devices to learn how security systems worked.

Another important law is 18 U.S.C. § 1030, part of which forbids unauthorized access to government computers. Even if a hacker just wants to get into the system, he or she could be breaking the law and be punished for accessing a nonpublic government computer [Source: U.S. Department of Justice].

Punishments range from hefty fines to jail time. Minor offenses may earn a hacker as little as six months' probation, while other offenses can result in a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail. One formula on the Department of Justice's Web page factors in the financial damage a hacker causes, added to the number of his victims to determine an appropriate punishment [Source: U.S. Department of Justice].

Other countries have similar laws, some much more vague than legislation in the U.S. A recent German law forbids possession of "hacker tools." Critics say that the law is too broad and that many legitimate applications fall under its vague definition of hacker tools. Some point out that under this legislation, companies would be breaking the law if they hired hackers to look for flaws in their security systems [source: IDG News Service].

Hackers can commit crimes in one country while sitting comfortably in front of their computers on the other side of the world. Therefore, prosecuting a hacker is a complicated process. The Week in Review is edited and published by Jack Spratts. Law enforcement officials have to petition countries to extradite suspects in order to hold a trial, and this process can take years. One famous case is the United States' indictment of hacker Gary McKinnon. Since 2002, McKinnon fought extradition charges to the U.S. for hacking into the Department of Defense and NASA computer systems. McKinnon, who hacked from the United Kingdom, defended himself by claiming that he merely pointed out flaws in important security systems. In April 2007, his battle against extradition came to an end when the British courts denied his appeal [Source: BBC News].

Hacking a Living

Hackers who obey the law can make a good living. Several companies hire hackers to test their security systems for flaws. Hackers can also make their fortunes by creating useful programs and applications, like Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page and Brin worked together to create a search engine they eventually named Google. Today, they are tied for 26th place on Forbes' list of the world's most wealthy billionaires [source: Forbes].

Famous Hackers

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computers, are both hackers. Some of their early exploits even resemble the questionable activities of some malicious hackers. However, both Jobs and Wozniak outgrew their malicious behavior and began concentrating on creating computer hardware and software. Their efforts helped usher in the age of the personal computer -- before Apple, computer systems remained the property of large corporations, too expensive and cumbersome for average consumers.

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, is another famous honest hacker. His open source operating system is very popular with other hackers. He has helped promote the concept of open source software, showing that when you open information up to everyone, you can reap amazing benefits.

Richard Stallman, also known as "rms," founded the GNU Project, a free operating system. He promotes the concept of free software and computer access. He works with organizations like the Free Software Foundation and opposes policies like Digital Rights Management.

On the other end of the spectrum are the black hats of the hacking world. At the age of 16, Jonathan James became the first juvenile hacker to get sent to prison. He committed computer intrusions on some very high-profile victims, including NASA and a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. Online, Jonathan used the nickname (called a handle) "c0mrade." Originally sentenced to house arrest, James was sent to prison when he violated parole.

Kevin Mitnick gained notoriety in the 1980s as a hacker who allegedly broke into the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) when he was 17 years old. Mitnick's reputation seemed to grow with every retelling of his exploits, eventually leading to the rumor that Mitnick had made the FBI's Most Wanted list. In reality, Mitnick was arrested several times for hacking into secure systems, usually to gain access to powerful computer software.

Kevin Poulsen, or Dark Dante, specialized in hacking phone systems. He's famous for hacking the phones of a radio station called KIIS-FM. Poulsen's hack allowed only calls originating from his house to make it through to the station, allowing him to win in various radio contests. Since then, he has turned over a new leaf, and now he's famous for being a senior editor at Wired magazine.

Adrian Lamo hacked into computer systems using computers at libraries and Internet cafes. He would explore high-profile systems for security flaws, exploit the flaws to hack into the system, and then send a message to the corresponding company, letting them know about the security flaw. Unfortunately for Lamo, he was doing this on his own time rather than as a paid consultant -- his activities were illegal. He also snooped around a lot, reading sensitive information and giving himself access to confidential material. He was caught after breaking into the computer system belonging to the New York Times.

It's likely that there are thousands of hackers active online today, but an accurate count is impossible. Many hackers don't really know what they are doing -- they're just using dangerous tools they don't completely understand. Others know what they're doing so well that they can slip in and out of systems without anyone ever knowing.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hacker.htm





Three Backdoor Programs Hackers Use to Control Your Computer

There is a common misconception about security today, and it isn’t pretty. Most users would love to believe that their pricey consumer firewalls shield them from anything obscene. The sad part is they couldn’t be more wrong. We seek to prove this with three separate programs that can compromise your computers security before you have a chance to say “What’s a backdoor?” And yes, these programs were created in the 1990's, but still pose as a valid threat today. Namely the first two, which are still being developed.

Back Orifice / Back Orifice 2000

Back Orifice, or BO, is one of the more common backdoor programs- and one of the most lethal. The name may seem like a joke, but rest assured, the threat is real. Back Orifice was created by the Cult of the Dead Cow group. If you haven’t noticed, they seem to have a knack for a sense of off-the-wall humor. Aside from the bizarre name, the program commonly runs on port 31337- a reference to the “Leet” phenomenon popular among hackers.

Pictured above is Back Orifice Version 2000. Back Orifice uses the client-server model, whereas the server is the victim and the client is the attacker. What makes Back Orifice so dangerous is that it can install and operate silently. There is no need for user interaction whatsoever, meaning you could have it on your computer right now and not be aware of it.

Companies such as Symantec have taken steps in guarding computers against the program, as they have deemed it as dangerous. Still yet, more and more attacks are using Back Orifice 2000. This is due partly to the fact that it is still being actively developed as an open source tool. As stated in the BO documentation, the goal is to ultimately make the presence of Black Orifice 2000 unknown- even to those who installed it.

Back Orifice 2000 is being developed for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

Where Can I Download Back Orifice 2000?

Back Orifice 2000 may be downloaded at the following location: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bo2k/

I’m Infected! How do I remove it?

Removal of Back Orifice 2000 will require that you edit your registry settings. To remove it in 7 easy steps, refer to the diagram below.

How To Remove Back Orifice 2000

1. Click Start > Run, and then type “Regedit” (without quotes)

2. Follow the below path: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersio n\RunServices”

3. Now in the right window, look for the following: “umgr32 = 'c:\windows\system\umgr32.exe''

4. Right click on this entry, and click delete. Now restart your computer.

5. After the restart, only open Windows Explorer. Make sure you can see all registered extensions. To do so, go to View > Options, and configure the appropriate settings.

6. Go to the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, and find the "umgr32.exe" file. Once you've found it, delete it.

7. Exit Windows Explorer and restart your computer once more.

NetBus / Netbus 2.0 Pro

NetBus was created around the same time that Back Orifice was- the late 1990’s. NetBus was originally designed as a program to prank friends and family with- certainly nothing too malicious. However, the program was released in 1998- and was widely used as a backdoor for controlling a computer.

Just like Back Orifice, NetBus allows an attacker to do virtually anything to a victim’s computer. It also works just fine under Windows 9x systems, as well as Windows XP. Unlike Back Orifice, the latest version of NetBus is considered shareware- not freeware. NetBus has also implemented less stealthy operation, as a direct result of criticism and complaints of malicious use.

Where can I Buy and Download NetBus?

NetBus may be bought and downloaded at the following location: http://www.netbus.org/

Ok- I’m infected. Now What?

Luckily, the latest version of NetBus is a valid program. It can be removed just like any other program. Previous releases of NetBus are a little more difficult, however. If you aren’t lucky enough to have been attacked with the latest version, the removal process is much like Back Orifice’s.

How To Remove NetBus

1. Click Start > Run, and then type “Regedit” (without quotes)

2. Follow the below path: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersio n\RunServices”

3. Now in the right window, look for the following: “[Name_of_Server].exe'' Of course, you will have to find the actual name of the exe file. It is commonly “Patch.exe” or “SysEdit.exe”, but may differ.

4. Restart, and remove any traces of the actual program that may be left. Optionally, you may Install NetBus yourself, and then use its own removal feature.


SubSeven / Sub7

SubSeven, or Sub7, was created for the same purpose NetBus was- for pranks. Sub7 actually has support for more pranks, and also has a better looking user interface. Sub7 is also widely used by script kiddies, although it is caught by many firewalls and antivirus programs before initializing.

Since Sub7 has not been supported for several years, its threat is usually very low. Most security programs will not have any trouble in stopping Sub7 before it has a chance to be run. This goes to show that the importance for upgrades and security programs is vital, since these tools do still exist.

Nonetheless, it is commonly used by those who have physical access to your firewall or security programs. If proper access rights are granted, this tool will work without restriction.

Where can I Buy and Download Sub7?

Sub7 is not supported anymore, and thus, is not available for download on any legit websites. If you were to do a Google search, you would find links to download Sub7. However, these are not official sites, and should be considered shady or dangerous.

Sounds Harmless, How do I Remove It?

How To Remove Sub7

1. End the following processes via task manager: ”editserver.exe, subseven.exe”

2. Remove the following files: “editserver.exe, subseven.exe, tutorial.txt.”

Why These Programs Are Completely Legal

The entire basis behind these programs is that they are designed to help people- not do harm. While some such as NetBus were indeed originally created for pranks, they have switched routes to avoid legal troubles.

These programs claim to be legit remote desktop programs, although they are obviously easily used for malicious use. These programs are actually supposed to be used for helpdesk or customer support departments. Why every pre-teen has a copy of these programs is beyond us, but keeping them off your network and computer is a good idea.

The advent of newer technology has made these programs in some ways less effective. However, programs such as Back Orifice 2000 are still yet evolving, so don’t be surprised to learn that it is running in the background, waiting for instructions. Since the best defense is a good offense, be sure to keep a sharp eye on what is installed on network computers. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
http://www.learn-networking.com/netw...-backdoors.php





Computer Scientist Fights Threat of ‘Botnets’
Brian Mattmiller

Computer scientist Paul Barford has watched malicious traffic on the Internet evolve from childish pranks to a billion-dollar “shadow industry” in the last decade, and his profession has largely been one step behind the bad guys. Viruses, phishing scams, worms and spyware are only the beginning, he says.

“Some of the most worrisome threats today are things called ‘botnets’ — computers that are taken over by an outside party and are beyond the user’s control,” says Barford of UW–Madison. “They can do all sorts of nasty things: steal passwords, credit card numbers and personal information, and use the infected machine to forward spam and attack other machines.

“Botnets represent a convergence of all of the other threats that have existed for some time,” he adds.

One of the most menacing aspects of botnets is that they can go largely undetected by the owner of a personal computer. That feature has allowed botnets to grow exponentially online, with millions of infected computers bought and traded on an underground market that one security company estimates has surpassed $1 billion in activity, Barford says.

Motivated by this growing threat, Barford is developing a new technology that may head off hackers at the pass.

In June 2007, Barford and colleagues opened a spinoff company at the MG&E Innovation Center of University Research Park called Nemean Networks, LLC. The company is developing a new approach to detecting network intrusions that offers a significant improvement over the current state of the art. Nemean is based on four distinct patents that are either filed or are in process with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).

Most network-intrusion systems today are comparing traffic against a database, collected by hand, of previously recognized attack signatures. The innovation with Nemean is a method to automatically generate intrusion signatures, making the detection process faster and more precise.

The Achilles’ heel of current commercial technology is the number of false positives they generate, Barford says. Hackers have become so adept at disguising malicious traffic to look benign that security systems now generate literally thousands of false positives, which Nemean virtually eliminates.

In a test comparing Nemean against a current technology on the market, both had a high detection rate of malicious signatures — 99.9 percent for Nemean and 99.7 for the comparison technology. However, Nemean had zero false positives, compared to 88,000 generated by the other technology.

“The technology we’re developing here really has the potential to transform the face of network security,” says Barford, whose research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office and the Department of Homeland Security. “Our objective is to build this company into a world leader in network securty solutions.”

Nemean was developed and tested on the Wisconsin Advanced Internet Laboratory (WAIL), a unique test bed for examining complex behavior on the Internet. WAIL provides researchers with a microcosm of the Internet, allowing them to study security, speed, efficiency of transfer and other Internet issues. Funded by Cisco Systems CEO John Morgridge, WAIL is a computer science parallel to the model organism in biology.

While Barford has high hopes for Nemean, he says Internet security is a continuous process and there will never be a single cure-all to the problem.

“This is an arms race and we’re always one step behind,” he says. “We have to cover all the vulnerabilities. The bad guys only have to find one.”

Nemean is funded by an angel investment group composed of UW–Madison alumni who are working to foster technology transfer from the campus. The company also is working in close partnership with the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW–Madison to test and evaluate the research prototype version of its first product.
http://www.news.wisc.edu/14380





Security Consultant Admits to Hijacking PCs to Use in Crimes
Jessica Guynn

A Los Angeles man entrusted with making personal computers safer has admitted to hacking into them to create a rogue network of as many as a quarter-million PCs, which he used to steal money and identities.

Federal prosecutors Friday said that John Kenneth Schiefer, a 26-year-old computer security consultant, used an army of hijacked computers, known as a "botnet," to carry out a variety of schemes to rip off unsuspecting consumers and corporations.

Schiefer agreed to plead guilty to four felony charges in connection with the case and faces up to 60 years in prison and a $1.75-million fine, according to court documents filed Friday in federal court in Los Angeles.

His lawyer, Arthur Barens, could not be reached for comment.

The vast number of computers that Schiefer compromised -- as many as 250,000 -- highlights a stealthy online crime spree on the rise. These botnets, short for "robot networks," remotely harvest personal information, including user names and passwords, to give their operators access to credit card information and online bank accounts.

Federal law enforcement agencies have stepped up their pursuit of botnet operators in recent years as they have drained bank accounts, stolen identities and overwhelmed federal authorities, security experts say.

"We have seen a dramatic uptick in the last few years in the number of botnets being used to give their masters direct financial gain," said Jose Nazario, a senior researcher at online security firm Arbor Networks Inc.

Schiefer, who on the Internet went by the handles "acidstorm," "acid" and "storm," is the first person to be accused under federal wiretapping law of operating a botnet, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Krause in Los Angeles.

By intercepting electronic communications, Schiefer stole user names and passwords for EBay Inc.'s PayPal online payment service to make unauthorized purchases. He also passed the stolen account information on to others.

EBay spokesman Hani Durzy could not be reached for comment.

At one point, according to the plea agreement, a conspirator named "Adam" expressed concern about stealing money. Schiefer responded by reminding Adam that he was not yet 18 and should "quit being a bitch and claim it."

Schiefer's indictment caps a federal investigation that began in 2005 and uncovered a variety of schemes. Prosecutors said Schiefer and his cohorts, who were not named, used illicit software they planted on people's PCs to spirit account information from a storage area in Windows-based computers.

He also was paid by a Dutch Internet advertising company to install its programs on people's computers when they consented, but he installed it on more than 150,000 PCs without permission, earning more than $19,000 in commissions.

In all, the federal indictment includes four counts of accessing protected computers to commit fraud, disclosing illegally intercepted electronic communications, wire fraud and bank fraud. Federal authorities said they were still trying to identify victims and the scope of their losses.

Schiefer carried out the crimes using computers at his home and office, prosecutors said. Henry Park, president of Los Angeles-based 3G Communications, where Schiefer worked, could not be reached for comment.

"John Schiefer was an information security professional who betrayed the trust that both his employer and society placed in him," Assistant U.S. Atty. Krause said.

Krause would not say how federal authorities captured Schiefer or whether they planned to charge others in the case. Schiefer has agreed to make an initial appearance in Los Angeles on Nov. 28 and to be arraigned on Dec. 3.

He could face a long prison stretch. In May 2006, a Downey man, Jeanson James Ancheta, was sentenced to almost five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to four felony charges for using botnets to spread spyware and send spam.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...ck=1&cset=true





Buggy Game DRM Puts Windows Users at Risk
Gregg Keizer

Flawed antipiracy software now being exploited by attackers has been bundled with Windows for the last six years to protect game publishers, Macrovision Corp. said today.

The "secdrv.sys" driver has shipped with all versions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista "to increase compatibility and playability" of games whose publishers license Santa Clara, Calif.-based Macrovision's SafeDisc copy-protection offering, Macrovision spokeswoman Linda Quach said in an e-mail. "Without the driver, games with SafeDisc protection would be unable to play on Windows," said Quach.

"The driver validates the authenticity of games that are protected with SafeDisc and prohibits unauthorized copies of such games to play on Windows," she added.

The privilege elevation bug in the driver first surfaced more than three weeks ago, when Symantec Corp. researcher Elia Florio spotted the vulnerability being actively exploited. The presence of the file -- dubbed Macrovision Security Driver -- is enough to open Windows XP and Server 2003 machines to attack; users do not have to play a SafeDisc-protected game to be vulnerable.

Microsoft is working on an update, but it refused to commit to delivering an update for secdrv.sys by next Tuesday, its next scheduled patch delivery day. "Microsoft will provide a security update through its regularly scheduled monthly release process once that update is ready and has been fully tested," a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail.

Users can remove the vulnerable driver -- it's typically found in the "%System%\drivers" folder -- or update it with a more recent, and apparently safe, version by downloading it from the Macrovision site. "[But] if removed, Macrovision SafeDisc games will not run properly," the Microsoft spokesman cautioned.

Secdrv.sys is included with Windows Vista, but Microsoft's newest operating system is safe from attack, said Quach. "Microsoft and Macrovision worked together during the development of Windows Vista RTM [release to manufacturing] to review the security of the Vista version of the driver," she said. " Thanks to this security review, this vulnerability is not present in Windows Vista." Microsoft went a step further and credited its Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) approach for beefing up the driver.

The version Macrovision offers XP and Server 2003 users as an update is identical to the one built for Windows Vista, Quach said.

As for the three-week stretch between first disclosure of the Macrovision bug and Microsoft's advisory, Microsoft's spokesman denied the company had dragged its feet. "Macrovision and Microsoft immediately began investigating the vulnerability when proof-of-concept code was publicly posted Oct. 17," said the spokesman. The investigation wasn't the only thing that was a Microsoft-Macrovision joint effort: many of the responses the two companies gave to similar questions were word-for-word matches.

In a follow-up posting to the Symantec security blog, Elia Florio, the researcher who first disclosed that an exploit was on the loose said that home users are actually less at risk than business users -- an unusual turn-about. "The attacker has to be logged on to the computer with an account [which] mitigates risks for home users who often work with one account on their computers," he said. "The situation is more complicated for corporate networks, where multiple users with different privileges can log on to different computers."

Even so, everyone should apply Microsoft's fix or update the driver, Florio said. "Malware dropped on the system via some other exploit, [such as] a browser vulnerability or the recent PDF exploit, could potentially take advantage of the bug to take further control of the computer and bypass other layers of protection."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9045978





The World's Biggest Botnets

What makes three of today's largest botnets tick, what they're after – and a peek at the 'next' Storm
Kelly Jackson Higgins

You know about the Storm Trojan, which is spread by the world's largest botnet. But what you may not know is there's now a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow Storm away.

"We're investigating a new peer-to-peer botnet that may wind up rivaling Storm in size and sophistication," says Tripp Cox, vice president of engineering for startup Damballa, which tracks botnet command and control infrastructures. "We can't say much more about it, but we can tell it's distinct from Storm."

It's hard to imagine anything bigger and more complex than Storm, which despite its nefarious intent as a DDOS and spam tool has awed security researchers with its slick design and its ability to reinvent itself when it's at risk of detection or getting busted. Storm changed the botnet game, security experts say, and its successors may be even more powerful and wily. (See Attackers Hide in Fast Flux and Researchers Fear Reprisals From Storm.)

Botnets are no longer just annoying, spam-pumping factories -- they're big business for criminals. This shift has even awakened enterprises, which historically have either looked the other way or been in denial about bots infiltrating their organizations. (See Bots Rise in the Enterprise.)

"A year ago, the traditional method for bot infections was through malware. But now you're getting compromised servers, with drive-by downloads so prevalent that people are getting infected without realizing it," says Paul Ferguson, network architect for Trend Micro. "No one is immune."

Researchers estimate that there are thousands of botnets in operation today, but only a handful stand out by their sheer size and pervasiveness. Although size gives a botnet muscle and breadth, it can also make it too conspicuous, which is why botnets like Storm fluctuate in size and are constantly finding new ways to cover their tracks to avoid detection. Researchers have different head counts for different botnets, with Storm by far the largest (for now, anyway).

Damballa says its top three botnets are Storm, with 230,000 active members per 24 hour period; Rbot, an IRC-based botnet with 40,000 active members per 24 hour period; and Bobax, an HTTP-based botnet with 24,000 active members per 24 hour period, according to the company.

Here's a look at the world's top three biggest botnets.


1. Storm

Size: 230,000 active members per 24 hour period

Type: peer-to-peer

Purpose: Spam, DDOS

Malware: Trojan.Peacomm (aka Nuwar)

Few researchers can agree on Storm's actual size -- while Damballa says its over 200,000 bots, Trend Micro says its more like 40,000 to 100,000 today. But all researchers say that Storm is a whole new brand of botnet. First, it uses encrypted decentralized, peer-to-peer communication, unlike the traditional centralized IRC model. That makes it tough to kill because you can't necessarily shut down its command and control machines. And intercepting Storm's traffic requires cracking the encrypted data.

But this also makes Storm easier to detect, says Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher with SecureWorks, who closely tracks Storm. "Before, we had difficulty distinguishing Storm traffic from eDonkey and other peer-to-peer traffic on Overnet," Stewart says. "eDonkey/Overnet traffic is very fingerprintable in size and frequency of packets, so now we can rule it out because it's not encrypted." And Storm uses fairly basic encryption, he says, which can be reverse engineered.

Storm also uses fast-flux, a round-robin method where infected bot machines (typically home computers) serve as proxies or hosts for malicious Websites. These are constantly rotated, changing their DNS records to prevent their discovery by researchers, ISPs, or law enforcement. And researchers say it's tough to tell how the command and control communication structure is set up behind the P2P botnet. "Nobody knows how the mother ships are generating their C&C," Trend Micro's Ferguson says.

Storm is a complex combination of malware called Peacomm that includes a worm, rootkit, spam relay, and Trojan. Shane Coursen, senior technical consultant for Kaspersky Lab, says the worm component is the "gelatin" that compromises a machine and sends off STMP-based emails. "The rootkit is only activated when a person who receives the spam email clicks on the attachment and launches it, for example," he says.

It's also spread through malicious Websites, when a user visits an infected site or clicks on a link to one.

"At the risk of giving them accolades, they've got a great business model... It's criminals catering to criminals, and I don’t see any slowdown," Coursen says.

Storm has survived thus far with its supersized spam runs, and the fact that the casual user won't know he's infected with a rootkit. But researchers don't know -- or can't say -- who exactly is behind Storm, except that it's likely a fairly small, tightly knit group with a clear business plan. "All roads lead back to Russia," Trend Micro's Ferguson says.

"Storm is only thing now that keeps me awake at night and busy," he says. "It's professionalized crimeware... They have young, talented programmers apparently. And they write tools to do administrative [tracking], as well as writing cryptographic routines... and another will handle social engineering, and another will write the Trojan downloader, and another is writing the rootkit."

But the big worry is that Storm, which mostly has been used for spam, stealing credit-card information, and trafficking in stolen goods and fraud, will be channeled into more destructive uses. "The possibility exists that it could be used for more nefarious purposes," Ferguson says. "You can use your imagination."


2. Rbot

Size: 40,000 active members per 24 hour period

Type: IRC

Purpose: DDOS, spam, malicious operations

Malware: Windows worm

Rbot is basically an old-school IRC botnet that uses the Rbot malware kit. It isn't likely to ever reach Storm size because IRC botnets just can't scale accordingly. "An IRC server has to be a beefy machine to support anything anywhere close to the size of Peacomm/Storm," Damballa's Cox says.

The botnet mainly sends spam runs and executes DDOS attacks, but it can also be used for other criminal purposes. "It's difficult to predict the intent of it. It's a utility bot," he says. It self-propagates by scanning local networks for exploitable vulnerabilities, for instance, he says, as well as via DDOS attacks and email.

It can disable antivirus software, too. Rbot's underlying malware uses a backdoor to gain control of the infected machine, installing keyloggers, viruses, and even stealing files from the machine, as well as the usual spam and DDOS attacks. "The Rbot [malware] is readily available to anyone who wants try to apply some kind of criminal activity in the bot arena," Cox says.

Who's behind the Rbot botnet? "We've seen a lot [of activity] in the black market... for malware development," for instance, he says, adding that it's mostly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republic.


3. Bobax

Size: 24,000 active members per 24 hour period

Type: HTTP

Purpose: Spam

Malware: Mass-mailing worm

Botnets that communicate via HTTP are as difficult to detect as those like Storm that talk via P2P networks. Bobax ranks as the third biggest botnet, with over 20,000 active bots per day, according to Damballa. "It's been around a long time," Cox says. "And it's still in our top three."

Bobax is specifically for spamming, Cox says, and uses the stealthier HTTP for sending instructions to its bots on who and what to spam. "HTTP bots in general do provide an additional level of security to the bot armies because the Web is the predominant type of traffic on the Net," he says. "We look for locations where the C&C is hosted, and that's how we track" Bobax and other HTTP-driven botnets.

According to Symantec, Bobax bores open a back door and downloads files onto the infected machine, and lowers its security settings. It spreads via a buffer overflow vulnerability in Windows, and inserts the spam code into the IE browser so that each time the browser runs, the virus is activated. And Bobax also does some reconnaissance to ensure that its spam runs are efficient: It can do bandwidth and network analysis to determine just how much spam it can send, according to Damballa. "Thus [they] are able to tailor their spamming so as not to tax the network, which helps them avoid detection," according to company research.

Even more frightening, though, is that some Bobax variants can block access to antivirus and security vendor Websites, a new trend in Website exploitation. (See Honeynet Project: Attackers Know Where You Live.)

Meanwhile, size doesn't always matter with botnets. "Depending on your motivations, you can likely accomplish pretty much whatever you want with less than 50 bots -- 4-Gbit/s DDOS, millions of spam per hour, and entire phishing system, etc.," says Danny McPherson, chief research officer for Arbor Networks. "Of course, lifting things like CD keys, pulling data from keystroke loggers, or lifting addresses from address books is more interesting with larger numbers" of bots, he says.

And the more professional botnet operators are staging more targeted, purposeful attacks. They are less into DDOSing-for-hire and more into gathering personal data for profit, notes André M. Di Mino, a director of The Shadowserver Foundation, which researches botnet activity. "That's a new and disturbing trend," he says.

The key, of course, is getting to the faces behind these bot armies, which is no simple task. "We've been trying to fight botnets from the bottom up by updating AV and network detection methods, which is effective. But to really get to root of it, you need to go after the people pulling the strings," Trend Micro's Ferguson says. "This is a criminal trade and needs to be treated that way."
http://www.darkreading.com/document....WT.svl=news1_1





OMG!!! The End of Online Stupidity?

Finally, software developers are building a filter that blocks unintelligible comments, writes Fortune's Josh Quittner.
Josh Quittner

Internet veterans have long complained about the steady erosion of civility -- and worse, intelligence -- in online discourse. Initially the phenomenon seemed to be a seasonal disorder. It occurred every September when freshmen showed up for college and went online. Tasting for the first time the freedom and power of the Internet, the newbies would behave like a bunch of drunken fraternity pledges, filling electronic bulletin boards with puerile remarks until the upperclassmen could whip them into shape.

Things took a dramatic turn for the worse in 1993, when AOL (Charts, Fortune 500) loosed its tens of thousands -- and then millions -- of users onto the Net. The event came to be known as the Endless September, and true to its name, it continues to this day.
Irony and its sneering cousin, sarcasm, can fool the best filter.

It's a serious problem. Fools and bandwidth hogs have a way of driving traffic away from the most successful online destinations, a phenomenon that could ruin the emerging social networks and user-generated aggregators like Digg.

But there's still hope for intelligent life on the Internet. A team of software developers is hard at work on a "stupid filter" that promises to do to idiotic online comments what a spam filter does to junk and unwanted e-mail: put it in a place where it can't hurt anyone anymore.

Blackberry autism: a pandemic

That's the mission, anyway, of the cadre of techies toiling under the leadership of Gabriel Ortiz, a 27-year-old systems administrator in Albuquerque. Ortiz's team is readying a free, open-source version they hope to release by year's end and make available as a standard plug-in on the popular Firefox browser by early next year.

How does it work? Say a user wants to post a really, really dumb comment on, for example, cnnmoney.com, where some of you might be reading this now.

If cnnmoney had the filter installed on its servers, it would intercept the comment just before it was published and flash a little alert at the author that reads: "This comment is more or less unintelligible. Please try to restate it."

The writer would get another crack at it, and another, until at last he was able to muster a few words of intelligence, or in frustration wandered off to inflict those LOL!!!!!s and OMG!!!!s on some more tolerant site.

From a programming standpoint, not to mention a social one, building a piece of software that can separate intellectual wheat from chaff is tricky; it's far more difficult than building a spam filter, says Ortiz. That's because spam filters tend to do relatively simple pattern matching, searching e-mail for words that pop up frequently in junk mail.

Your spam filter sees V*I*A*G*R*A and without rolling its eyes flicks the offending missive into the junk folder, where it can be deleted along with the rest of its filthy brethren.

But thanks in part to irony and its sneering cousin, sarcasm, stupidity is tougher to spot. "Smart people are often ironic," says Ortiz, noting that irony, to a computer anyway, can sound stupid. Writers who are otherwise intelligent will intentionally misspell words or break the ironclad rules of grammar to make a point.

The stupid-filter team is trying to accommodate this behavior with a variety of rules of thumb. For instance, Ortiz, who studied linguistics as an undergrad, recently noticed a pattern in the way some writers use letter repetition. The clueless tend to repeat consonants: "This video is amazinggggg!!!" By comparison, says Ortiz, "when you repeat a vowel, you're being sarcastic -- 'Yeaaaaaah.' We'll be using several different methods to try to mediate this."

The first line of defense is context -- using well-established markers of standard English to judge a piece of writing. For instance, if the rest of the sentences in a comment are grammatical, and difficult words are spelled properly -- Ortiz mentioned "zucchini," which I had to look up -- the message ought to get by the filter. If the rest of the comment is unintelligible, it will be screened.

Perhaps the most interesting -- and ironic -- aspect of the project is the way Ortiz's team is tapping into the wisdom of crowds to debug its filter. They are encouraging readers to visit their site, http://stupidfilter.org/main/, where you can help them rate on a scale of one to five a selection of potentially dumb posts culled from -- where else? -- YouTube.

Ortiz has clearly hit a nerve. Offers of help have been rolling in from all over the world ever since the project was unveiled. He thinks there might even be a business in it, since staying current with pop culture and maintaining the corpus of stupidity is more or less a full-time job. To which I'd add, Yeaaaaaah.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...ion=2007110712


















Until next week,

- js.



















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