Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 23rd, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"The movies we love belong in some profound way to us, and part of us lives inside them. Sweding is Mr. Gondry’s way of making that rather abstract sense of connection literal, of suggesting that even if we are not strictly speaking the owners and authors of the movies we like, well, then, perhaps we should be." – A. O. Scott


"We have the usual small army of stupid lawyers that think we will piss our pants because they send us a scary letter. We are used to this sort of situation." – Gottfrid Svartholm


"The mainstream media doesn't believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they've never been more wrong." – Chez Pazienza


"Control. Corporations and governments have an insatiable appetite for it. But I think we're all better off when they go hungry." – Robert X. Cringely


"The RIAA reminds me most of the Godfather. Support the independent labels, but the big ones–fuck’em." – Jello Biafra


"This is the end of the music industry as we know it." – James McQuivey


"I didn’t survive to sit home on the couch and cry." – Linda Fisher



































February 23rd, 2008




Digital Sales Predicted To Pass CDs By 2012
FMQB

A new study from Forrester Research Inc. predicts that half of all music sold in the U.S. will be digital sales by the year 2011, with digital music surpassing the CD in 2012. The Massachusetts-based research firm says that digital music sales will increased with a compound annual growth of 23 percent over the next five years, bringing in $4.8 billion by 2012. However, CD sales figures will continue to decline to $3.8 billion by 2012.

"This is the end of the music industry as we know it," stated James McQuivey, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research. "Media executives eager to stay afloat in this receding tide must clear the path of discovery and purchase, but only hardware and software providers can ultimately make listening to music as easy as turning on the radio."

Forrester adds that although major music chains such as Tower and Sam Goody have shuttered stores, when retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart give music less floor space, it will truly signal the end for CDs. The company also predicts that "experiments in ad-supported downloads will be silenced by the powerful combination of DRM-free music and on-demand music streaming on sites like imeem.com.:

McQuivey says that ad-supported Web music services are not the future and that ad-supported music should be "on the radio where it belongs." He also concludes that artists should be even more open to getting in bed with advertisers. "Artists who used to pretend that their platinum album success was really about their "art" will no longer have that luxurious pretense because labels won't sign them unless they agree to a barrage of sponsorship opportunities," McQuivey concludes. "There will eventually come a day when Chips Ahoy will contend with the Keebler Elves over who can be the official cookie of the Taylor Swift world tour."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=589911





War on Music Piracy
Heath Gilmore and Kerrie Armstrong

AS THE internet threatens to kill the established music industry, the Rudd Government is considering a three-strikes policy against computer users who download songs illegally.

The Government will examine new legislative proposals being unveiled in Britain this week to target people who download films and music illegally. Internet service providers (ISPs) there might be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material.

The music industry estimates 1 billion songs were traded illegally by Australians last year.

Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender's internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender's internet access.

The policy would mirror legislation being introduced in Britain, which would require ISPs to police the activities of users.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the Government was aware of the views put by the music industry for a code of conduct for ISPs to address file-sharing by subscribers.

"We will also examine any UK legislation on this issue [including any three-strikes policy] with particular interest," he said.

Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Sabiene Heindl said her organisation had been lobbying for the policy for 12 months.

She said action had been taken to remove illegally downloaded tracks from blogs, Cyberlocker and BitTorrent sites but this had failed to stem the estimated 2.8 million Australians downloading music illegally last year.

"Because P2P file sharing involves these music files sitting on individual people's computers, there is very little that MIPI can do to remove those files or stop them being shared," she said. "That's why we have been pushing a proposal to internet service providers for a commonsense system of warning notices which, if unheeded, would ultimately result in a user having their account suspended or disconnected."

National Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Corones said his members' reservations over the three-strikes and code of conduct proposals would be discussed with Mr Conroy this week.

He said present legislation provided severe penalties for dealing in pirate sound recordings that infringe on the rights of artists, composers, record companies and music publishers. Yet there was no action to date.

Penalties include injunctions, damages and costs, fines of up to $60,500 for individuals and up to $302,500 for corporations per infringement and up to five years' jail.

"Internet service providers are not the enforcers of copyright," Mr Corones said. They are "a mere conduit" for internet connectivity.

Any action by the Government is likely to displease young broadband users. Quantum Market Research YouthSCAN released the findings of a new study this month showing 63 per cent of young Australians felt there was no point in paying for music that was freely available.

It asked 600 Australians aged between 10 and 17 across NSW and Victoria in August and September about accessing music.

Consultant Nick Dawes said a no-pay attitude had developed among young people because they did not fear any retribution.

Their attitude is: "If we can get it for free, why not?"
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/...760662778.html





Whitehall Gives ISPs Piracy Deadline
Jean Eaglesham

The government will on Friday tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films.

Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted.

Andy Burnham, culture secretary, told the Financial Times on Thursday that the deadline was a “clear signal” of the government’s determination to tackle rampant piracy, which the music and film industries blame for the slump in CD and DVD sales.

“Let me make it absolutely clear: this is a change of tone from the government,” Mr Burnham said. “It’s definitely serious legislative intent.”

The move is a significant escalation in efforts to make internet providers take action against the estimated 6m UK broadband users who download files illegally every year.

A creative industries strategy paper published on Friday commits the government to consulting on anti-piracy legislation this spring “with a view to implementing it by April 2009”.

ISPs say it would be almost impossible to check and stop illegal downloaders. The industry has cited data-protection curbs that prevent them from inspecting the contents of data files.

The strategy paper will not set out a blueprint for how the legislation would work. “We’re saying we’ll consult on legislation, recognising there are practical questions and legitimate issues,” Mr Burnham said.

“We’re not saying ‘here’s one we made earlier, here’s a bill’.”

The concept of a “three strikes” regime of escalating sanctions, referred to in reports of a leaked early draft of the strategy, had “never been in the paper”, he said.

The Department for Business, which will lead the bill’s development, said on Thursday night that the proposal raised “difficult legal issues”, particularly in relation to European laws on online privacy and e-commerce.

But the government is adamant that the complexity of the issues involved will not prevent it from legislating if necessary. Ministers are frustrated by the slow progress of talks between ISPs and the music and film industries.

Mr Burnham said there was “no burning desire to legislate”. But he warned that ISPs could forestall statutory sanctions only if there were “considerable moves forward ... a change in the nature of the dialogue [with] good and innovative business solutions that can address the problem in a different way”.

The anti-piracy proposals are part of a series of measures set out by the government on Friday and designed to support the creative industries. These include the creation of 5,000 apprenticeships a year, involving the BBC and Tate Modern among other employers, and an annual Davos-style “world creative business conference” in the UK.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26765228-e...0779fd2ac.html





Booty Call: Music Has-Beens Line Up to Sue The Pirate Bay
Ken Fisher

The Pirate Bay is no stranger to intrigue. We reported last November that the captains of the Bay were being pursued by none other than Prince, and they even told us they were being spied on by strange people in foreign cars. Agents of the Purple One?

Prince wants his day in court, but as recently as November, Prince's gameplan was to go after The Pirate Bay's revenue source. The copyright crusader formerly known as an artist has inspired others to consider battling the Bay, as it looks like The Village People, ABBA, and other has-beens are considering using The Pirate Bay's recent indictment in Sweden as a chance to grab headlines and some cash. The news was first reported by Swedish news site E24.

Prince and The Village People are committed to pursuing a legal decision against The Pirate Bay for substantial sums of money. In a statement, John Giacobbi of Web Sheriff, who would work with these artists in securing local representation in Sweden, said, "We're looking at damages of millions of dollars, and we will file in both US and Swedish courts." Giacobbi is also reaching out to ABBA, Van Morrison, and others to join the quest for "damages."

The quest for damages may be misguided, however, as The Pirate Bay likely does not have millions to pay out. Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay told Ars that prosecutors' claims that the site earns more than US$3 million year are false. Sunde suggested that the site operates at a loss owing to the substantial cost of bandwidth, hardware, and powering servers. If you ask us, ads for human pheremones (the only kind we ever see on the 'Bay these days) can't be bringing in that much money (can they??). It's hard to imagine a Swedish court serving up millions in damages when the Swedish prosecutor leading the government case against The Pirate Bay is only seeking approximately $180,000 in damages, according to the BBC.

TorrentFreak, which is strangely down right now, suggests that the attempt to recruit ABBA into litigation is really aimed at providing a Swedish "counter" to The Pirate Bay on their home turf. We agree with TorrentFreak's analysis: such a move won't work.

In fact, we'd go a bit further. All of these artists/bands risk a backlash, and for what? No one can deny them their right to get their day in court, but such public, high-profile lawsuits are always about more than the application of law. One has only to think of Metallica to realize that damaging one's business is easy to do if the anti-piracy rhetoric isn't carefully managed. Fans can react negatively, so artists have to weigh the risks of looking like they're out to punish fans. This is why industry groups like the RIAA usually lead the charge: they do the dirty work while (most) artists stay aloof.

Prince and The Village People won't stop piracy with their suit, and they might not even recoup any damages. In that respect, this is a "booty call" that carries with it a great deal of PR risk for only a small chance of meaningful reward. It's their battle to wage, but a victory would be pyrrhic at most. Remember, there's already litigation pending against The Pirate Bay.

In related news, we could find all of these artists' music on Tagoo, which just launched. If all of these lawsuits are supposed to be discouraging the opening of new torrent and search sites, it's obviously not working.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...irate-bay.html





Music Publishers Sue MediaNet Over Copyright Flap
FMQB

Members of the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) have filed a class action copyright infringement lawsuit against MediaNet, a company that powers digital music services for Microsoft, Yahoo, MTV and others. The suit claims that MediaNet failed to obtain proper licenses for the use of songwriters' and publishers' works, according to Digital Media Wire. The plaintiffs in the suit include Sony/ATV Songs, Peer International, Frank Music Corporation and MPL Publishing.

MediaNet Digital was formerly called MusicNet and was originally formed in 2001 by several major record labels in partnership with AOL and RealNetworks. The company was later sold to Baker Capital in 2005, and the publishers in the lawsuit claim that MediaNet's new owners have refused to enter into a similar licensing agreement that its previous owners did.

"This is a flagrant and egregious violation of the agreements music publishers were willing to make in order to allow new business models to flourish to the benefit of music fans," said NMPA President/CEO David Israelite. "These companies are now jeopardizing these services and acting not only in a manner harmful to songwriters and music publishers, but to consumers as well."

MediaNet fired back with its own statement, saying, "This complaint is completely without merit. In an age of rampant piracy, MediaNet is one of the few companies, along with Napster and RealNetworks, that pays copyright holders and artists for their work. The suit is contrary to the core beliefs and business model under which MediaNet (aka MusicNet) has operated since its inception."

The company added that, "MediaNet and others were licensed by the NMPA to distribute musical works until a final publishing rate was established, and this remains the case. NMPA's suit and PR push is a transparent political move during the Copyright Royalty Board hearings to establish an industry-wide standard. This is nonsense, and we look forward to the CRB reaching a final conclusion on rate standards."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=586122





RIAA Sends 13th Wave of Pre-Litigation Letters
Susan Butler

The RIAA has sent another wave of pre-litigation settlement letters to universities this week for its member labels. Another 401 letters went to administrators of 12 universities, who were asked to forward them to the individuals associated with certain specified IP addresses.

Recipients of the letters have the opportunity to avoid a potential copyright infringement lawsuit by settling out of court for a reduced fee.

Formal lawsuits have been filed against 2,465 letter recipients since the campaign first began last year, according to the RIAA. These individuals either chose to not settle the claim or were not given the option to settle early because the university failed to forward the letters. Of the 5,005 letters sent in prior rounds, the RIAA has reached settlements with more than 2,300 of those individuals.

The letters cite individuals for online music theft over the universities' computer networks via peer-to-peer services such as Ares, BitTorrent, Gnutella, Limewire and Morpheus.

The RIAA’s 13th wave of letters went to the following colleges: Boston University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters); Columbia University (50); Drexel University (33); Indiana University (40); North Carolina State University (35); Ohio State University (30); Purdue University (28); Tufts University (20); University of Maine System (32); University of New Hampshire (32); University of Southern California (50); and the University of Virginia (16).

The pre-lawsuit letters, sent to individuals at more than 150 schools, are one piece of a multi-faceted industry campaign to encourage fans to enjoy music legally. Despite years of warnings, educational campaigns and the availability of multiple legal options, online music theft, especially on campuses, remains a major problem for the music community.

"One year into our legal campaign, we’ve seen an emerging legal marketplace that would have struggled to gain traction were it not for our efforts to clamp down on online music theft,” says Cara Duckworth, RIAA director of communications.

According to the IFPI, there are now more than 6 million tracks available on 500 different licensed services.

The letters are in addition to the lawsuits that the RIAA-member labels continue to file on a rolling basis against those engaging in music theft via commercial Internet accounts.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...1a5777e49ff2ed





RIAA Expert Witness is “Borderline Incompetent” Says P2P Expert
enigmax

In a major file-sharing legal case in the United States, a renowned P2P expert has offered his critique of the expert witness report offered by the RIAA. Prof. Johan Pouwelse’s testimony will be a devastating blow to the music industry as he labels RIAA expert Doug Jacobson’s report as “borderline incompetent”.

In file-sharing cases, the prosecution always claims to have irrefutable, cast-iron, even forensic-quality evidence, with which to batter alleged pirates into defeat. Organizations such as the RIAA claim to carry out their investigations using sophisticated equipment and software which, unlike every other piece of equipment and software in the known universe (especially operated by humans) never, ever goes wrong.

In order to prove they ‘got the right guy’, in UMG v Lindor the RIAA offered an expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, a director of the Iowa State University Information Assurance Center. Now, according to Recording Industry vs The People, Marie Lindor is fighting back and has served a report from her own expert, critiquing the RIAA’s witness. Internationally renowned P2P expert “Assistant Professor” Johan Pouwelse, agreed to take on the RIAA expert back in May 2007 having previously been a witness in a high profile case in the Netherlands.

His findings in this case aren’t pretty.

Pouwelse notes that there are certain procedures that need to be taken in order to be certain that a specific computer had been uploading copyright works. These steps were not taken.

He further states the the RIAA’s expert witness’s work lacked “in-depth analysis” and “proper scientific scrutiny” while reports were described as “factually erroneous”. Furthermore, in his report, Jacobson made statements which were contradicted by those in his deposition testimony.

Turning to MediaSentry - the company used to track alleged infringers - Pouwelse says that their systems and techniques have not been properly tested, are “overly simplistic” and “fail the test for accurate peer to peer file sharing measurement”. Additionally, many institutions have received false claims from them, seriously throwing their claimed accuracy into doubt.

Pouwelse states that the subpoena used to identify Ms. Lindor’s account was flawed and that due to the fact that there is no hard drive available to corroborate the ‘evidence’, this “further demonstrates the unfounded nature of Jacobson’s conclusions.”

And he doesn’t stop there in his criticism of Jacobson’s testimony.

He further states that no other alternative explanations were investigated and no tests were carried out to determine a margin of error. Jacobson’s methods are “self-developed”, “unpublished” and not accepted by the scientific community. Jacobson’s investigative process is stated as “unprofessional”.

In conclusion, Dr. Pouwelse’s expert opinion is that Jacobson has shown “borderline incompetence” and that the “allegations of copyright violations are not proven”.

It would be interesting for me to see what Pouwelse makes of the tracking system used by Logistep in Europe. Sadly, at this stage TorrentFreak has learned that lawyers Davenport Lyons are refusing to allow people to see the code and examine the system to check its accuracy. I wonder why?
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-expert-...petent-080221/





Judge Dismisses Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit Against RIAA
Eric Bangeman

Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen ran into a bit of a roadblock yesterday in an attempt to pursue her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA and MediaSentry. After a hearing, a federal judge dismissed Andersen's complaint, giving her 30 days to refile it with more specifics as to which laws the RIAA and MediaSentry are alleged to have violated.

Andersen filed her lawsuit this past August after the RIAA voluntarily dismissed its own file-sharing lawsuit. Andersen, a disabled single mother, was sued in February 2005, and the resulting case became one of the most closely-watched battles between the RIAA and suspected copyright infringers. After the case was dismissed, Andersen won an attorneys' fees award, which was reaffirmed last month.

Andersen's complaint recounts a litany of misdeeds allegedly perpetrated by the record labels in the course of their lawsuit. Those include trying to contact her young daughter at school and her apartment building without Andersen's knowledge or permission. The RIAA was also accused of libel, negligence, and fraud.

The RIAA hailed the judge's ruling. "The court's decision to dismiss all of the claims in their entirety merely serves to confirm our view that the claims were meritless when they were filed," an RIAA spokesperson told Ars.

In her ruling, Judge Anna J. Brown said that Andersen had "not adequately stated claims for relief," but gave her until March 14, 2008, to file an amended complaint. Lory Lybeck, Andersen's attorney, told Ars that he plans to refile and move ahead with the lawsuit. "The judge spent about 45 minutes to an hour discussing exactly what she was looking for in an amended complaint," Lybeck said.

In particular, Judge Brown is looking for more specificity around the slander claims, according to Lybeck, who also noted that the judge was "very knowledgeable" about the RIAA's legal campaign. He still believes that Andersen has a very strong case against both the record labels and MediaSentry. "The real case is that they blundered by misidentifying Andersen," he told Ars.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...inst-riaa.html





Copyright Tough Guys, Tories Face the Music for Using Song

Party in hot water after using tune in video without permission
Glen McGregor, with files from Andrew Potter, The Ottawa Citizen

As the Harper government prepares to introduce tougher new copyright rules, the Conservative party is being accused of using the theme song from the reality TV show The Apprentice without permission of the record company that owns it.

At a press conference on Sunday, the Conservatives presented an election-style attack video about the alleged costs of Stéphane Dion's spending promises, set to the musical refrain of "money, money, money, money, mo-ney."

The video was presented to support the Tories' claim that the Liberal leader would run up $62.5 billion in new debt if elected. It splices together video clips of Mr. Dion citing financial figures, accompanied by a segment of the 1974 hit song, For the Love of Money.

The press conference was led by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who is also responsible for overseeing reforms intended to strengthen Canada's copyright laws. Copies of the video were broadcast by media organizations on national television, but have not been broadcast by the Tories.

Canadian rights to the song in the video are owned by Warner/Chappell Music Canada Ltd. A spokeswoman with Warner head office in New York confirmed that the company contacted the party to discuss its use of the song in the video.

"Warner/Chappell recently sent a letter to the Conservative Party of Canada confirming its unauthorized use of a song written by Warner/Chappell writers," wrote Amanda Collins in an e-mailed statement. "As a regular course of business, we contact parties that use our musical compositions without permission. We look forward to working with the party to resolve this matter quickly."

Conservative party spokes-man Ryan Sparrow declined to discuss the possibility the video violated Warner's intellectual property rights.

"I've checked with our lawyers and our position is that we don't comment on rumours of possible claims against the party."

He said the video produced by the party was not an advertisement.

"The Conservative party has not released any ads containing the music in question," he said.

The video comes as the Tories are preparing to introduce reforms to Canada's copyright laws. The legislation that the government has ready to be tabled is widely expected to be similar to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is strongly opposed by many culture activists because it emphasizes the ability of copyright holders to control and be remunerated for precisely these sorts of uses of their intellectual property.

A spokesperson for Mr. Prentice said the industry minister was not involved in the production of the video and referred inquiries back to the party.

The substance of the video clip has drawn fire from Liberals, who say it uses quotes from Mr. Dion that are taken far out of context. For example, it presents a clip of Mr. Dion saying "megatonnes of money" as if he were discussing the cost of his own proposals. In fact, the full quote, made in a speech last year, refers to money that Canadian companies could make by being leaders in environmentally friendly technology.

"Yes, Canada will cut megatonnes of emissions, but we will also make megatonnes of money," he told the Economic Club of Toronto.

For the Love of Money was performed by The O'Jays, a Philadelphia-based soul group. It entered the Billboard Top 10 in 1974 and was later heard in two Hollywood films, including New Jack City, according to Warner. Its distinctive chorus -- "money, money, money, money, mo-ney" is today associated with the opening credits of The Apprentice, hosted by New York real estate developer Donald Trump.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...913977&k=87483





Norwegian Police Deal Massive Blow to MPAA Lawyer
enigmax

Pirate-chasing lawyer Espen Tøndel has been told by the police that they will not spend their valuable resources chasing file-sharers. Undeterred, Tøndel wrote to the Department of Justice demanding a meeting about the police’s decision. They responded all right - and denied him a meeting.

Today, Norway appears to be a much safer country for petty file sharers. The Hollywood lawyer Espen Tøndel has been told by Kripos (serious crime police) that they will not be spending time investigating small-time pirates.

Like many lawyers in the anti-piracy arena, Tøndel tries to blur civil and criminal law to obtain leverage. The police are clear - their priority is investigating real crimes, such as murder and robbery and sadly for him, file-sharing does not fall into those categories. Tøndel must now make his claims against alleged pirates in a civil court.

Following this major setback, Tøndel wrote to the Department of Justice and demanded a meeting with them. He complained that copyright holders need to go through the criminal system as without the help of the police, all they have is an IP address. They cannot sue an IP address, they need a real name and identity.

Unfortunately for Tøndel, the response wasn’t what he’d been hoping for -the Department of Justice completely refused him a meeting- leaving him to start suing IP addresses, which he’s not allowed to do. Ouch.

On Sunday, Trond Giske, Minister of Culture in Norway told VG.no: “We have no plans to do anything similar to the Brits. To identify the users is quite a substantial process, so we plan to focus on only those who upload movies and music illegally. We are cooperating closely with the industry, and are well aware of the money they are loosing because of the illegal downloading.”

Norwegian political commentators are suggesting that Norway’s biggest political party and government, Arbeiderpartiet, aren`t going to change their policy on this because they are afraid of losing votes amongst the 18 to 30 year olds.

So can Norwegian file-sharers feel safe from prosecution now? “No, they can’t. I’m just saying that we will use most of our resources on those who uploads illegally” said Giske in a tone suggesting it’s only serious uploaders who need to take care.

Back in November 2007, Tøndel reported 14 people to the police for sharing the movie, ‘Kill Buljo’, even though the director of the movie didn’t agree with this course of action. I expect there are at least 14 BitTorrent fans smiling today, shortly to be joined by thousands more.

Norway joins Canada in a growing group of common-sense countries which refuse to waste public resources on petty file-sharers. Other countries - such as Germany and the UK are particularly weak. Although they don’t directly involve the police, they allow lawyers to blatantly (ab)use the system by claiming they are prosecuting a criminal case, simply in order to obtain a file-sharer’s identity. They then drop the criminal case, only to pursue a financially lucrative civil one, a tactic favored by lawyers Davenport Lyons to un-mask alleged BitTorrent pirates in the UK.

It’s uncertain at this point if the imminent raids suggested by Tøndel back in October 2007, will become more or less imminent following this statement by the police. Even though the Department of Justice won’t speak to Tøndel, we did, but sadly he doesn’t seem to have a statement for us right now.

Special thanks to RayJoha who made this article possible
http://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-po...lawyer-080220/





News Corp. Working On Music ‘Hulu’ For MySpace
Staci D. Kramer

paidContent has learned that News Corp (NYSE: NWS). is pursuing a music joint venture for MySpace—similar to Hulu, its video joint venture with NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), but with variations on the theme. The constant in both instances is content for equity. Under this scheme, MySpace would be the operator with the major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), EMI—as content providers and equity partners. MySpace would be a distributer but, like Hulu, the idea would be a mixed portal-distribution experience. Music would be DRM-free and ad supported. No label has signed yet but a source familiar with the situation said that could change in a matter of weeks. The theory is that once one signs on, the rest will follow. (EMI would seem a likely candidate but Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG already has an interesting deal with MySpace.) That doesn’t always work but, as Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has shown, it can.

MySpace, which claims more than 7 million bands with on MySpace Music, has explored and experimented with numerous ways to capture the full value of music to the site, including a recent limited test of ad-supported music downloads. Music has been at the core since the beginning and remains a major driver. Last fall, MySpace and Sony BMG set up a revenue-sharing partnership for sponsorships and ads with the label’s artists’ video and audio content within MySpace.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, to be sure. Among them, international. The future of MySpace relies on global distribution so how this could work globally eventually would be important. That brings in the European Commission and others.

Yahoo: This push continues despite the discussions between News Corp. and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), although the possible combo could give the labels pause. On the other hand, extrapolating the hypothetical, what would Yahoo bring? Yahoo was one of the first to sign on to Hulu and streaming DRM-free music would fit in with its efforts to revamp its strategy.
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419...u-for-myspace/





SXSW 2008 on BitTorrent: 3.5 GB of Free Music
Ernesto

The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the biggest and most popular in the United States. For the fourth year in a row, SXSW has released a DRM-less collection of songs that - thanks to Greg Hewgill - can now be downloaded for free via BitTorrent.

SXSW has embraced BitTorrent as a distribution method for showcasing artists since 2005, as they release a large collection of MP3s every year, a few weeks before the festival.

This year, for some reason SXSW decided not to release a torrent showcasing the artists (yet). However, all the mp3s are available for download on the SXSW website. Luckily, Greg Hewgill took the time and effort to put all the MP3s in one big torrent, which makes it much easier to download and share. It’s no OiNK, but it is certainly a good way to discover new artists.

Greg writes: “Since 2005, I have supported the annual South by Southwest music festival by operating a “seed” for the BitTorrent files they have created. From 2005 through 2007, SXSW created the torrents themselves and hosted them on their own tracker. I learned that this year, for whatever reason they won’t be doing that for us.”

“So, I took matters into my own hands and have created a torrent of the 2008 showcasing artists.” Greg adds.

The torrent of the 22nd SXSW edition features MP3s from 764 upcoming, as well as established artists who are scheduled to perform at the festival. In total almost 3.5GB of DRM free music. All the torrents previously released by SXSW are also available for download.

For those who are interested, this year’s SXSW music festival takes place from March 12-16, in Austin Texas.
http://torrentfreak.com/sxsw-2008-music-torrent-080222/





Pine Record Collector Selling 'History of Music'
Regis Behe

For sale: 3 million record albums and 300,000 CDs; rare and out-of-print titles, all varieties of American music from classical to hip-hop.

But it's much more than vinyl and jewel cases.

"It's the history of music," says Paul Mawhinney, the owner or Record Rama Sound Archives in Pine. "It's my life's work."

Mawhinney, 69, is reluctantly parting with a collection he started more than 40 years ago. Legally blind and fighting diabetes, he wants to spend more time with his five grandchildren.

The collection is worth millions of dollars -- Mawhinney's personal estimate is at least $50 million -- but he has received only one solid offer.

That bid of $28.5 million fell through. Other parties have shown interest, and Mawhinney says he continues to talk to a few interested parties. He has set of goal of selling the collection by March 1.

"I've had a lot of people that wanted it, but they don't have the right kind of capital," he says.

While Mawhinney's albums are a record collector's fantasy, they are beyond the financial reach of most vinyl enthusiasts. That's unfortunate, because there are a lot of desirable items, including:

• An unreleased, untitled Rolling Stones album of early singles. Originally recorded in mono, the songs were remastered in stereo for FM radio stations in the early 1970s. Mawhinney estimates the album is worth between $5,000 and $10,000.

• A rare original copy of Phil Spector's album "A Christmas Gift for You" that features Darlene Love, The Crystals and The Ronettes.

• 15 copies of the first edition of "Elvis' Christmas Album." Mawhinney says the original album, released in 1957, has a red gatefold cover and features Presley singing "Santa Claus Is Back in Town," "Blue Christmas" and 10 other seasonal songs. Estimated worth is $700.

Scott Neuman, president of Recordweb Communications LLC in Lakehurst, N.J., and owner of the online site www.forevervinyl.com, says Mawhinney is spot on with his evaluation of the collection. He agrees the Stones album -- especially if it is unopened -- could be valued at $10,000. "A Christmas Gift for You," in mint condition, could fetch between $700 and $800, and the Presley release might be worth as much as $1,000, Neuman says.

Without having inspected the collection, Neuman believes Mawhinney's estimate of its worth at $50 million "is pretty darn close," he says. "That sounds right."

Optimally, Mawhinney would like the collection to go to a major library or museum, or someplace that will keep it intact. He tried to contact local and national politicians about his dilemma, but he has not received any feedback.

"I can't seem to get any interest from the country in preserving this for history," he says. "I'm very concerned about that."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_547964.html





Put Another File in the Jukebox, Baby
Jason Turbow

IT’S only a mild case of audiophilia, according to the professionals, but it’s causing me significant discomfort.

Until recently I had considered my appreciation of good-sounding music more boon than bane, but the moment my wife and I decided to move, I acquired a harsh new perspective.

I possess a fairly nice stereo (not a problem) and some 2,500 CDs (a significant problem, according to my wife), but the biggest problem is the custom-built cabinet I commissioned to house my music. It sits on an astounding 20 percent of the usable space in our living room. I’m unwilling to subject our new house to that sort of treatment.

I have resisted converting my CDs to the MP3 digital format for two reasons. The thought of feeding discs into my computer, one by excruciating one (I believe this was the ninth labor of Hercules), not to mention organizing it once it is digitized, is painful just to contemplate. More important, I’m entirely unwilling to sacrifice sound quality in return for less clutter.

Recently, however, trends have been working in my favor. Data storage prices are in perpetual free fall — at 50 cents a gigabyte, even giant hard drives are within most budgets — and the FLAC (free lossless audio codec) audio format has gained widespread embrace by mainstream media hardware manufacturers. Like MP3, FLAC is a compression standard for music files, but unlike MP3, it is lossless, meaning it doesn’t degrade sound quality. With it, I could fit 3,000 CDs in a terabyte of storage.

These are details about which my wife does not care. What she is passionate about is floor space. I set about seeing how to help us both.

First stop was Logitech in Mountain View, Calif.

Logitech recently bought Slim Devices, which makes the Squeezebox, a handy little $299 unit about half the size of my desktop keyboard. It relays music from computer to stereo system and then, if the user so wishes, around the rest of the house.

It’s a viable solution, but it still puts me back at my computer, ripping my CDs while I grind my teeth down to the nerve. Even if I outsource the job, with ripping services like Ready to Play (www.readytoplay.com) and Riptopia (www.riptopia.com) that charge about $1.60 or so for each disc, that’s an extra $2,500.

Logitech makes three products — the Squeezebox, the $399 Squeezebox Duet and the $1,999 Transporter — which do more or less the same thing at varying levels of quality.

The first two items are extremely compact. The Duet receiver is just two-thirds the size of the Squeezebox. The Transporter offers a higher quality of sound from a typical size stereo component. All three connect wirelessly to the server — in most cases, a computer — and must be run through an amplifier or powered speakers.

A similar wireless audio-streaming device is the Zone Player 100 ($499) from Sonos, based in Santa Barbara, Calif. Unlike the Logitech devices, it has an integrated amplifier, so all one needs is an audio source and a pair of speakers. For those who prefer to power their music through an existing stereo system, the Zone Player 80 ($349) is an amp-free alternative. Each unit is commanded through a feature-laden remote control ($399), complete with scroll wheel and full-color screen.

While Sonos does a capable job of retrieving one’s own stored music, the company is banking on users obtaining music online, both from services like Rhapsody and Napster — which are essentially fee-based online jukeboxes — and Internet radio.

But I did not build a CD collection just to ignore it. More exploration was in order. Second stop was the high-end test drive.

There is little argument that McIntosh makes among the best — and most expensive — audio components. So when the company came out with the MS750 last year, my ears perked up. Knowing much of the $6,000 price tag was going toward a level of sound quality that may well be lost on my good-but-not-great stereo system, I proceeded with caution.

From an ease-of-use standpoint, the McIntosh was exactly what I was looking for. A simple interface allows for automatic CD ripping (into FLAC or a variety of other formats) in about four minutes.

“I have people write in all the time and say, ‘You know, I could do the same thing with a $400 computer and this program or that program,’ ” said Ron Cornelius, a McIntosh project manager. “And they’re absolutely right — they can. But try to use it every day. If you’re not a computer geek, forget it. It’s just not a friendly portal.”

The MS750 is named for its 750-gig hard drive, big by most measures but still only enough to handle about two-thirds of my music in FLAC format. And this is where my dreams of a McIntosh began to evaporate. I could buy another MS750, the pair connecting wirelessly as if they were a single machine.

Clearing a $6,000 piece of machinery with my wife will be tough enough; doubling that price tag would be akin to asking for a divorce. The fact that the MS750 needs a video screen to use its navigation fully — it can be run through a TV or a laptop, but I would more realistically have to buy a devoted L.C.D. screen — adds to the cost.

Third stop was Olive Media Products, San Francisco.

At first blush, Olive’s product line is not dissimilar from the McIntosh — internal hard drives, easy ripping of CDs and high-end circuitry. Like the others, Olive’s highest-capacity machine, the Opus N°5, comes with a 750-gig drive. Unlike the others, however, it has a U.S.B. 2.0 port with which to attach an external hard drive, letting users more than double its capacity for less than $200. Why doesn’t every system have this?

Additionally, the front-panel display is fully navigable, without need for an additional screen. The Opus connects to the Internet, allowing not only for online radio, but giving users remote control once its included software is installed on a touch-screen P.D.A.

The main downside is that Olive does not offer a device to deliver music into additional rooms, though industry whispers hint that could change within the year. Perhaps the biggest bonus is that Olive will rip my CDs for me. The first 300 are included in the price of the machine, and the rest can be done for as little as 50 cents each. I can send my CDs to Olive and the machine I order will be delivered with my music already on it.

If there’s anything closer to my pipe dream, I can’t imagine what it is. With the Opus N°5 priced at $3,999, even if I choose to outsource my ripping I can still be home free at just over $5,000.

Seems like a small price to pay for a happy marriage and a bigger living room.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/te.../21basics.html





TVT Records Set To File Chapter 11
FMQB

Independent label TVT Records is set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and according to reports, has let go of the majority of the label's staff. TVT has been more Hip-Hop oriented as of late and is currently the label home of Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz, Ying Yang Twins and Pitbull, as well as indie rock choir The Polyphonic Spree.

TVT was founded by its President, Steve Gottlieb, in 1985 and has released everything from compilations of TV theme songs to Nine Inch Nails' landmark debut record, Pretty Hate Machine.

It is unknown how the bankruptcy filing will affect TVT Music Publishing or any upcoming TVT releases, including Lil Jon's long-in-the-works record Crunk Rock. According to AllHipHop.com, rapper Pitbull recently spoke out against the label, saying, "I'm out here working like a slave, doing things that other artists don't even know how to do. A label's there to further and promote your career, but it feels like they just keep holding me back."
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=589590





Make Big Profits Illegally (and Maybe Keep Them, Too)
Floyd Norris

There is not much doubt that Oleksandr Dorozhko used inside information when he made a killing trading stock options last fall. Nor is there a dispute that he gained the information illegally. His lawyer, arguing before an appeals court this week, spoke of “a high-tech lock pick.”

But that does not mean that Mr. Dorozhko, a Ukrainian resident, will have to forfeit the $296,456 he earned in one day of trading, beginning just hours before the company in question announced disappointing earnings. The Securities and Exchange Commission blocked him from collecting the profits from his brokerage account, but a federal judge has ordered the S.E.C. to let him have the cash.

The hearing this week, before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, was on the S.E.C.’s request for an emergency order to keep the money frozen. If the commission loses, the case against Mr. Dorozhko will effectively be over. Even if the S.E.C. later won the case, the chances of collecting a judgment in Ukraine would be slim at best.

This situation exists because of a strange anomaly in American securities laws. A person who legally obtains insider information — as a corporate official or an investment banker, for example — will almost certainly break the securities law if he or she trades on the basis of that information before it is made public.

But it is far less clear that someone who illegally gets their hands on such information will have violated the securities laws by trading on it. The securities law used to bring insider trading charges — Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act — talks of “a deceptive device or contrivance,” and it is not clear that there is any deception involved in simple theft.

“Dorozhko’s alleged ‘stealing and trading’ or ‘hacking and trading’ does not amount to a violation” of securities laws, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of United States District Court ruled last month. Although he may have broken laws by stealing the information, the judge concluded, “Dorozhko did not breach any fiduciary or similar duty ‘in connection with’ the purchase or sale of a security.” She ordered the S.E.C. to let him have his profits.

She refused to dismiss the case, saying the S.E.C. could try to prove he got a tip from an insider, but there does not appear to be any evidence of that. Instead, the evidence indicates that on Oct. 17, 2007, someone hacked into a computer system that had information on an earnings announcement to be made by IMS Health a few hours later.

Minutes after the breach of computer security, Mr. Dorozhko invested $41,671 in put options that would expire worthless three days later unless IMS shares plunged before that. The next morning the share price did plunge, and Mr. Dorozhko made his money by selling the puts.

The S.E.C. argues there was deception involved in hacking into the computer system, which was designed to allow access only to authorized people.

That view drew scorn from Charles A. Ross, Mr. Dorozhko’s lawyer, at the appellate hearing Wednesday. “They want you to believe there is a deception of a computer,” he said. “All there is is a high-tech lock pick.”

That argument seemed to draw some sympathy from one of the three judges hearing the appeal. “You deceived a machine,” said Judge Sonia Sotomayor, invoking the image of Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel, “1984.” “We are treating a machine as a person.”

Judge Buchwald’s ruling was the first one to address the S.E.C.’s theory of deception by hacking from overseas. Two previous cases were filed, but one was settled and in the other the defendants chose to forfeit $1.6 million rather than fight the charges. If her opinion stands, it will be very hard for the commission to go after hackers in the future.

The judge appreciated the absurdity of the situation, and expressed disappointment that the Justice Department had not brought criminal charges for computer hacking. The government has offered no explanation for that, but it is possible the department saw no likelihood of ever being able to arrest Mr. Dorozhko, and did not think the case worth the trouble.

The judge also noted that case law could have developed differently, harking back to Justice Harry Blackmun’s dissent to the Supreme Court’s 1980 decision that reversed the insider trading conviction of Vincent Chiarella, a financial printer who learned of takeover targets from his work and traded on the information. The court, Justice Blackmun wrote then, was moving in a direction “that catches relatively little of the misbehavior that all too often makes investment in securities a needlessly risky business for the uninitiated investor.”

Donald Langevoort, a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of a treatise on insider trading law, said in an interview that he thought the S.E.C. should prevail in the case. “Did he commit fraud? Yes,” Mr. Langevoort said. “Was it for the purpose of obtaining a trading advantage? Yes. Why should that not reach the level of the statute?”

The appeals court will decide soon if the asset freeze stands, but a ruling on whether Judge Buchwald correctly interpreted the law, if it comes at all, is many months away. She would first have to dismiss the case.

In the meantime, Congress could clear all this up with a simple amendment to clarify the law. “The European Union revised their insider trading laws to make it clear that any gaining of inside information by criminal activity would be a violation of insider trading laws,” Mr. Langevoort said.

As Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote in his dissent in the Chiarella case, “A person who has misappropriated nonpublic information has an absolute duty to disclose that information or to refrain from trading.” If it is illegal to trade on information acquired legally, why should it be legal to trade on information that was acquired illegally?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/bu.../15norris.html





International Hacking Network Busted, Quebec Police Say

Computers in Manitoba, the United States, Poland and Brazil targeted in scam
CBC News

Quebec provincial police say they've dismantled a computer hacking network that targeted unprotected personal computers around the world.

Police raided several homes across Quebec on Wednesday and arrested 16 people in their investigation, which they say uncovered the largest hacking scam in Canadian history.

The hackers collaborated online to attack and take control of as many as one million computers around the world that were not equipped with anti-virus software or firewalls, said provincial police captain Frederick Gaudreau.

"That way, they were able to introduce some Trojans or worms in those computers, and that way they were able to take control of the computers from abroad," he said at a Montreal news conference on Wednesday.

The majority of computers attacked by the network were in Poland and Brazil, but some PCs in Manitoba and the United States were also hacked, he said.

Several government computers were also compromised, but investigators will not say in which country.

The computers were used to set up fake websites that solicited users to click on them and provide personal information, Gaudreau said.

Police won't reveal what the information was used for but investigators estimate that the network profited by as much as $45 million.

The 14 suspects arrested Wednesday are between the ages of 17 and 26, and face charges related to the unauthorized use of computers.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...ckers0220.html





Hackers Exploiting Facebook, MySpace Plug-ins
Brian Krebs

If you use Internet Explorer (versions 6 or 7) to browse the Web, listen up: Criminals are starting to exploit security holes in several widely installed IE plug-ins to plant invasive software when users are coerced or tricked into visiting one of several Web sites.

In an alert posted Friday evening, security software vendor Symantec said it is seeing malicious Web sites popping up trying to exploit vulnerabilities in a set of ActiveX controls produced by Aurigma, a technology company whose image transfer browser plug-in is licensed and distributed by a number of major Web sites to help IE users upload pictures. Currently, Facebook.com and MySpace.com are among the biggest distributors of this ActiveX plug-in, but they are hardly the only ones.

Symantec warns that if visitors don't have the Aurigma plug-ins installed, the sites will probe for other vulnerable IE plug-ins, including two recently discovered from Yahoo! and one for QuickTime (this one attacks a vulnerability Apple patched just last month). The sites also throw in an exploit against a six-month-old IE flaw.

The malicious Web sites identified by Symantec actually redirect visitors to a fake MySpace.com login page in an attempt to steal MySpace credentials, all while trying the various plug-in exploits quietly in the background. The URL used by this site would probably fool all but the most vigilant (see the included screenshot).

The sites all download a series of executable programs, including some that Symantec said appear to be placeholders for whatever nasties the bad guys want to stuff in there later. The company said it is still in the process of analyzing the programs to see what they do, but it's doubtful they will turn out to be harmless.

If you haven't checked out the free, easy-to-use fixit tool released by incident handlers at the SANS Internet Storm Center, please do so now. The simple, graphical program sets a marker in the Windows registry so that if the vulnerable ActiveX components are installed, then the operating system will not let anyone or anything make use or activate those components.

To use the tool, double click on the .exe file that you download from SANS (you will need to run this while logged in as "administrator"). In the program window that pops up, place check marks in all of the boxes, then hit the "set" button. The notation next to each entry should now read "CLSID Exists." Click the "x" in the upper right corner of the box. You're done. If you ever want to undo any part of what you just did, run the tool again and uncheck the relevant boxes and hit "set."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...cebook_my.html





Computer Programmer's Attorneys Use 'Geek Defense'

On trial for murder, man being portrayed as eccentric, difficult
Karl Vick

When Nina Reiser disappeared in September 2006, investigators suspecting foul play looked long and hard at her estranged husband, the computer genius Hans. Eccentric, awkward and notoriously difficult as a human being, Hans Reiser proved quite accommodating when it came to providing clues.

After taking no part in the massive public effort to search for the mother of his two children, he listed the reasons he was happy that Nina was gone in a phone call monitored by police. He discreetly purchased copies of "Masterpieces of Murder" and "Homicide" from a local bookstore. Police discovered his passport in his fanny pack along with $8,000 in cash and a cellphone that could not be tracked electronically because its battery was removed, just like the phone found inside Nina's minivan, which was found abandoned on a side street smelling of rotting groceries; she had been to the store before dropping the kids at Hans's house.

Police also found soaked floorboards in his car and an empty space where the passenger seat should have been.

In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, all this might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear.

"Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse," defense counsel William Du Bois said. "All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field."

And so this week, after a prosecution case that took almost three months, Du Bois launched what Wired magazine dubbed "the Geek Defense." In court, Du Bois has taken pains to portray his client as an irritating nebbish. He has repeatedly asked Alameda County Circuit Court Judge Larry Goodman to order his client to stop distracting him by talking in his ear at the defense table. He called Reiser "an inconsiderate slob" in front of the jury.

"We're leaving the right message," Du Bois said outside court. "He's a very difficult person. It's very difficult to represent a genius."

The effort will be watched and appreciated down the breadth of Silicon Valley, perhaps the only place a computer genius might find a jury of peers.

There, Hans Reiser's actions appear fairly reasonable, at least to people who spend much more time with computer code than with other humans.

"It strikes me that a lot of coders have a somewhat detached view of the world, and it's reasonable to assume that Hans might not even have stopped to think about how things looked," said Rick Moen, a local area network consultant in Menlo Park.

"I remove my cellphone battery periodically, and I've taught many people to do the same," noted John Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is challenging the Bush administration in court on wiretaps. "What can you do when the FCC mandates tracking capability to every cellphone? On the lame excuse that once in a while someone calls 911 and can't give the address."

On his LinuxMafia site, Moen maintains a timeline of the case culled from the posts filed from correspondents in the courthouse gallery 35 miles north, live-blogging the trial for the San Francisco Chronicle and Wired's Threat Level blog.

"I met Hans a couple of times socially, and he did not strike me as being all that peculiar for a technical person," Moen said. "A little bit intense, a bit highly focused. Quite bright."

Now 44, Reiser was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley at age 14. He wrote a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons and dabbled in science fiction. His signal adult achievement was ReiserFS, a file system he named for himself, unusual in the programming world. The system organizes data on Linux, the "open source" operating system.

After opening a company in Russia, he met Nina Sharanova, a striking obstetrician-gynecologist using a dating service to meet foreigners. They married when she became pregnant, but after the second child was born in 2001, Nina began an affair with Hans's best friend, Sean Sturgeon. The cross-dressing bondage and discipline enthusiast had been "maid of honor" at their wedding.

The ensuing divorce was ugly. Hans accused Nina of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, saying she made their son ill for her own gratification. Nina complained of Hans's avowed enthusiasm for violent video games, which he encouraged the boy to play as a rite of passage. Relations were so brittle that a police officer seeing them exchange the children one day advised Nina to "get a gun."

She was last seen at Hans's house, where she was dropping off the children for Labor Day weekend 2006. She was 31 then.

"His undergraduate thesis is on how if you change the perspective, the reality is different," said Ramon Reiser, the defendant's mathematician father, folding a pair of pants in the courtroom hallway as he waited to testify.

The thesis might apply to the evidence, which the judge in the preliminary hearing termed thin. Ramon Reiser argued that it's likelier that Nina is back in her native Russia with funds embezzled from her husband's business than in an unmarked grave she was carried to in the soaked, seatless Honda CR-X. The children are with Nina's mother in St. Petersburg.

"When you look at it, would Hans Reiser turn a hose on a car to wash it? Absolutely, his mother told him to get that car cleaned up," the elder Reiser said.

"I and my brother -- maybe it's genetic -- have driven our cars without the front seat. It's really convenient."

If Hans Reiser testifies in his own defense, his attorney said the risk is that "this guy is so weird, it's a little tricky to wrap yourself around it if you're a juror." He described his client as borderline for Asperger's Syndrome, a condition that self-described geeks call unusually common in the computer industry, combining as it does an exceptional ability to focus with an inability to read social cues.

Gilmore added that the unforgiving nature of computers demands of coders "a perfectionism that makes it hard sometimes in social situations. When I see something that's a little bit wrong, and I ought to just shut up and roll with it, but I comment and it causes trouble with the people around me. Back-seat driving and that sort of thing."

Yet not all the strangeness in the case arises from computers. Du Bois takes every opportunity to mention Sturgeon, who in addition to his role as Hans's friend and Nina's lover, told investigators that he killed eight people years ago. It's unclear whether the claim is true: Sturgeon remains free. But the judge forbade attorneys from mentioning the claim in court.

In any event, Sturgeon reportedly has insisted that whatever his crimes, he had nothing to do with Nina's disappearance. Wired quoted him as saying that, in the Reiser case, he is red herring, or rather, he said, "a red Sturgeon."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022300693.html





Trend Micro 2008 Forecast for Cybercrime.
Press release

Increasing trend in underlying criminality for financial gain in the area of cybercrime set to continue throughout 2008.

According to research from Trend Micro’s TrendLabsSM, hackers are intensifying their attacks on legitimate Web sites. It debunks the adage to “not visit questionable sites” – just because a user visits a gambling or adult-content site doesn’t necessarily mean Web threats are lurking in the shadows; the site with the latest sports news or links in a search engine result, however, could potentially infect visitors with malware.

An underground malware industry has carved itself a thriving market by exploiting the trust and confidence of Web users. The Russian Business Network, for example, was notorious all year for hosting illegal businesses including child pornography, phishing and malware distribution sites. This underground industry excludes no one. In 2007, Apple had to contend with the ZLOB gang, proving that even alternative operating systems are not safe havens for the online user. The Italian Gromozon, a malware disguised in the form of a rogue anti-spyware security application, also made its mark in 2007.

This past year, the NUWAR (Storm) botnet expanded in scope when Trend Micro researchers found proof that the Storm botnet is renting its services to host fly-by-night online pharmacies, dabble in stock pump-and-dump scams, and even portions of its backend botnet infrastructure. During 2007, the most popular communication protocol among botnet owners was still Internet Relay Chat possibly because software to create IRC bots is widely available and easily implemented and at the same time movement to encrypted P2P is being used and tested in the field.

Security threats are no longer limited to PCs. Mobile devices, as they become more sophisticated and powerful, are at risk for the same types of threats as PCs (viruses, spam, Trojans, malware, etc.) Gadgets with wireless capabilities such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as storage capability have become major sources of data leaks, as well as carriers of infections through security perimeters.

Other notable findings from the report:.

- The Windows Animated Cursor exploit (EXPL_ANICMOO) encompassed over 50 percent of all exploit codes to hit the Internet computing population. 74 percent of its infections this year came from Asia. The same holds true for TROJ_ANICMOO.AX, a related threat which embedded the exploit. 64 percent of computers infected with this were from China.

- The top malware finding was WORM_SPYBOT.IS and WORM_GAOBOT.DF. Both created botnets and worms that infected USB-connected devices.

- Nearly 50 percent of all threat infections come from North America, but Asian countries are also experiencing a growth -- 40 percent of infections stem from that region.

-Social networking communities and user-created content such as blog sites became infection vectors due to attacks on their underlying Web 2.0 technologies, particularly cross-site scripting and streaming technologies.

- Infection volumes nearly quadrupled between September and November 2007, indicating that malware authors took advantage of the holiday seasons as an opportunity to send spam or deploy spyware while users are shopping online.

- In 2007, the number one online commerce site attacked by phishers was still global auction site eBay and sister company PayPal. Financial institutions, especially those based in North America, also experienced a high volume of phising attacks.

Based on the emerging trends of this year, the following are Trend Micro’s forecasts for the threat landscape in 2008:

1. Legacy code used in operating systems and vulnerabilities in popular applications will continue to be attacked in the effort to inject in-process malicious code that criminals can exploit to run malware in efforts to breach computer and network security in the efforts to steal confidential and proprietary information.

2. High-profile Web sites that run the gamut of social networking, banking/financial, online gaming, search engine, travel, commercial ticketing, local government sectors, news, job, blogging, and e-commerce sites for auction and shopping will continue to be the most sought-after attack vectors by criminals to host links to phishing and identity theft code.

3. Unmanaged devices such as smart phones, mp3 players, digital frames, thumb drives, and gaming stations will continue to provide opportunities for criminals and malware to infiltrate a company’s security borders due to their capabilities for storage, computing, and Wi-Fi. Public access points such as those in coffee shops, bookstores, hotel lobbies, and airports will continue to be distribution points for malware or attack vectors used by malicious entities.

4. Communication services such as email, instant messaging, as well as file sharing will continue to be abused by content threats such as image spam, malicious URLs, and attachments via targeted and localised socially engineered themes due to their effectiveness in luring potential victims as criminals attempt to increase the size of botnets and steal confidential information.

5. Data protection and software security strategies will become standard in the commercial software lifecycle due to the increasing high-profile incidents. This will also put a focus on data encryption technologies during storage and transit particularly in the vetting of data access in the information and distribution chain.
http://www.prosecurityzone.com/News-...sp?NewsID=2581





Lawmakers Move to Grant Banks Immunity Against Patent Lawsuit
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the urging of the nation's banks granting them immunity against an active patent lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars.

Adopted with little fanfare, the amendment would prevent a small Texas company called DataTreasury from collecting damages from banks for infringing on its patented method for digitally scanning, sending and archiving checks. The patents were upheld last summer by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after they were challenged.

The provision, passed without dissent by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July and inserted into legislation scheduled for a vote by the full Senate this month, is a rare attempt by Congress to intervene in ongoing litigation, congressional experts say.

Although the amendment would not invalidate DataTreasury's patents, it would spare the banks from paying for infringing them should courts decide that's warranted. If DataTreasury collected a royalty of just a couple pennies per check, the cost would run into billions of dollars.

The federal government would have to pay $1 billion to DataTreasury over 10 years as compensation for taking its property under the amendment, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

Banks process more than 40 billion checks each year. At one time, those checks had to be delivered physically to be drawn upon. But five years ago -- in the wake of the grounding of aircraft laden with billions of dollars in checks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- federal law was changed to allow electronic transfers as well.

Some major financial institutions, notably Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase, have licensed DataTreasury's technology for the purpose. Lawsuits alleging infringement are pending against others, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Wachovia and Citigroup.

When the Judiciary Committee began to draft landmark legislation overhauling the country's patent laws last year, lobbyists for these banks jumped into action.

The Financial Services Roundtable, a lobby group that represents the nation's largest financial institutions, and the banks approached Sessions about sponsoring an amendment to protect them. They said they chose to work with Sessions because of his long-standing antipathy toward plaintiff's attorneys and his previous interest in the electronic check system.

Lobbyists for the Roundtable and the banks, including prominent free-lance lobbying firms Smith-Free Group, Bryan Cave Strategies and Quadripoint Strategies, conducted rush visits with Judiciary Committee members and their aides to advocate the measure. Sessions's staff produced a three-page description of the amendment and its background with the help of the Roundtable and distributed it to the committee.

Commercial banks are considered a potent force on Capitol Hill, in part because of their heavy contributions to lawmakers. They are the 10th-largest donor to federal candidates among the industry groups followed by the Center for Responsive Politics. They also spend millions of dollars a year on lobbying.

Political action committees of financial institutions were the largest single category of industry donors to Sessions, with $52,300 in the current election cycle, the center said. That represented nearly a quarter of PAC contributions he received as of midyear 2007.

Sessions said the banks' support for him was not a factor in his decision to sponsor the amendment. Stephen Boyd, a spokesman for Sessions, said the provision "is designed to protect banking institutions complying with post-9/11 security requirements from the abusive practices of patent trolling trial lawyers seeking personal enrichment, which ultimately will be paid for by checking account customers across America."

In addition, bank lobbyists say they are working with senators to alter the amendment so that it would not cost the government money.

The provision introduced by Sessions did not name DataTreasury but was carefully tailored to apply to that company and its "check collection" system.

The amendment was approved by the committee in minutes and without opposition. The measure received little news media attention outside the banking trade press.

Even Claudio Ballard, the founder of DataTreasury, which holds the patents, said he did not hear of the amendment until days afterward. He said he had been unaware that the Judiciary Committee was considering it and engaged lobbyists to help him only after it had passed. Ballard did not know whom to turn to for help, so he relied on his law firm, Nix, Patterson & Roach, which recommended two prominent Washington lobbyists: John D. Raffaelli and Ben Barnes.

"I've always put my full faith in the courts and the patent office; that's all I thought I needed to do," Ballard said. "But we were blindsided" by the Senate committee.

"We had no notice, no opportunity to respond, to give our side of the case, nothing," he said.

The banks allege that DataTreasury bought up patents for the system that underlies electronic transfers and is trying to shake down companies for licensing fees. But DataTreasury asserts that Ballard is the inventor of the system and built a company to sell it before being squashed by banks that stole his idea. Court battles have raged between the two sides for six years.

The banks are emphatic about the need for the protection. "This is a glaring example of the abuse of the system," said former congressman Steve Bartlett (R-Tex.), president of the Financial Services Roundtable. "It's an example of what's wrong with patent law."

He called the Sessions amendment a priority for the banking industry.

The Commerce Department has objected to the amendment, including in a letter last week to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee chairman. "Limiting patent holders' rights and remedies in this instance could reduce innovation in this technology area," wrote Assistant Secretary Nathaniel F. Wienecke. "The Administration does not support exceptions to patent protection based on a particular technology."

DataTreasury's patents were upheld by the patent office after a challenge by First Data, a provider of merchant processing services. The patent office concluded Ballard's patents were not predated by other patents and documents, as First Data had alleged.
Ballard asserts that he developed the basic architecture for the system in the mid-1990s, and applied for patents in 1997 and '98. He said he realized at the time that paper would one day be obsolete for financial transactions but that paper and electronic images would have to coexist for a while. His system helped make that possible, he said.

Ballard has a long history of working with databases. He was an early reseller of Oracle database products in the 1980s and later developed a method of adapting Oracle's software to complex computer applications for government and large corporations.

He said he talked to some bank officials at an early stage of the check system's development and, despite having signed nondisclosure agreements with them, soon lost control over his invention.

"We've struggled mightily," Ballard said. "We almost went bankrupt at the end of 2001." He said he brought in investors to remain afloat and, as a result, now owns 2 percent of the firm he founded. The company, located in the technology corridor near Plano, Tex., once had 100 employees, he said. It now has two.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021303731.html





Patent Suits Target Operators, Broadcasters

Rembrandt’s choreographed litigation aims to paint green results
Todd Spangler

A suburban Philadelphia firm whose sole business is to buy up technology patents is trying to force large cable operators and major broadcasters to pay substantial license fees on the transmission of digital TV signals and Internet services.

If successful, the firm, Rembrandt IP Management, could pull in big money from the enforcement of patents related to the cable industry’s standard for connecting customers to the Internet and potentially throw a financial monkey wrench into the broadcast industry’s mandate to transmit all TV signals in digital form by a year from now.

In the worst-case scenario, Rembrandt’s litigation may undermine the ability of industry bodies to set technical standards whose uses are meant to be widely available for “fair and reasonable” patent-licensing fees.

In cases originally spread across federal courts in Delaware, New York and Texas, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, Cox Communications and Cablevision Systems face claims that their cable-modem services infringe eight patents now held by Rembrandt, and that their video services violate a ninth one related to digital-TV transmission.

Separately, ABC, CBS, NBC Universal and Fox — as well as manufacturer Sharp Electronics — face suits alleging infringement of Rembrandt’s patent on digital TV transmission.

Rembrandt is hoping to win hundreds of millions of dollars from the suits, which have been previously reported by Forbes, EE Times and others.

According to an attorney close to the litigation, the firm has sought to collect half of 1% of all revenue generated from services that allegedly infringe on the data and video patents.

From the broadcasters, that could start at $90 million per year or more. Beginning Feb. 18, 2009, all over-the-air TV programming will be transmitted in digital form. And, in 2006, broadcasters took in $18 billion in advertising on the shows they sent to company-owned and affiliated stations, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The impact could also be huge for cable operators, which provide broadband service to an estimated 36 million customers and retransmit digital TV signals from local TV stations.

For example, a half-percent cut of Comcast’s 2007 data revenue alone would have totaled $32 million, according to Multichannel News’ calculations.

Patent litigation is nothing new. Claims of infringement are regularly lobbed against big companies by “patent trolls,” a scornful term for companies that do not produce products or services, but acquire intellectual property and make money from other people’s inventions.

Rembrandt, however, has embarked on an especially sweeping assault. It is attacking two key technology standards used by the cable and broadcast industries, CableLabs’ DOCSIS and the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s digital-TV spec.

“If they’re successful, this could affect everything from the cost of cable service to the price of TVs,” said the attorney close to the litigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

There’s cause for concern: Rembrandt won its first significant legal victory earlier this month. A federal jury in Marshall, Texas, on Feb. 6 awarded Rembrandt $41 million after finding Novartis’ Ciba Vision eye-care unit had infringed on a patent — bought by Rembrandt — covering a treatment for contact-lens surfaces. Ciba Vision spokeswoman Amanda Cancel noted there has been no court order and declined to comment “on pending litigation.”

Representatives for the cable companies, broadcasters and technology manufacturers involved in the cases, as well as CableLabs, declined to comment for this story.

When Multichannel News requested an interview, Rembrandt executive vice president Barry Ungar replied in an e-mail: “Sorry, but I’m really swamped.”

But Ungar told Forbes magazine, regarding the Ciba judgment: “We are really gratified about the verdict. The jury verdict validates our business model.”

The firm, bankrolled by hedge funds to the tune of $150 million, has bought up more than 200 patents.

Rembrandt was founded in 2004 by CEO Paul Schneck, a former NASA engineer described by his company as “an internationally accomplished scientist.” The firm’s site says it offers “ample funding to pursue exploitation and licensing of intellectual property for companies and inventors that require solid resources.”

Since Rembrandt filed its original suits, equipment manufacturers have turned the tables on the patent litigator with legal actions of their own, as the targeted operators and broadcast networks requested indemnification protection from their vendors.

On the cable front, Motorola, Cisco Systems, Arris, Thomson, Ambit Microsystems and Netgear filed a complaint last November for declaratory judgment against Rembrandt, asking a federal court to affirm that their cable-modem products don’t infringe on the patents in question. They also assert that the patents are invalid, anyway.

“Rembrandt did not invent the technology in the patents,” the vendors said in their suit. “Rembrandt also did not invent DOCSIS or contribute to the development of DOCSIS.”

The suit is pending in Delaware’s federal district court, where a federal court panel consolidated the other Rembrandt cable and broadcast cases.

Digital broadcast-equipment vendor Harris, meanwhile, is fighting Rembrandt in Delaware state court in relation to its broadcast customers’ use of its ATSC-based gear.

When Harris approached the firm about licensing the patent, according to court documents, Rembrandt refused to provide fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms.

To Harris, that represents a breach of contract, because AT&T — the previous owner of the ATSC-related patent — in 1995 agreed to license intellectual property on FRAND terms to anyone employing the digital TV spec.

Rembrandt in December 2004 acquired that patent, along with others allegedly pertaining to DOCSIS, for a reported $1 million from communications-equipment maker Paradyne. Paradyne, once owned by AT&T, is now part of Zhone Technologies.

A win by Rembrandt in these cases could force manufacturers to pony up hefty fees for any ATSC-based and DOCSIS gear. Or, the firm’s victories could force anyone using the patented technology in the actual transmission of a digital-TV signal (the broadcasters) or redistribution of the signal (cable operators) to pay fees as well.

But, if Rembrandt’s trolling gets court support, the result would inflict serious problems on companies in any industry which relies on technology standards, according to the lawyer involved in the proceedings.

“If Rembrandt is allowed to succeed with their position,” the lawyer said, “the commitments people make to standards bodies become worthless.”

To date, no court has ruled for or against Rembrandt in any of its numerous suits involving the cable-modem and digital TV patents.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6532982.html





AT&T, TW, Verizon Make Case Against Net Neutrality
Chloe Albanesius

Regulation intended to ensure net neutrality will actually kill Internet innovation and crush an industry that has operated effectively through market forces alone, according to major telecom companies like AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable.

Net neutrality advocates have asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to "medicate the Internet with a preemptive cocktail of experimental regulatory tonics," lawyers for AT&T wrote in an FCC filing.

"Internet regulation proponents have asked that the commission wade into a competitive marketplace driven by a fierce pace of technological innovation and pick winners and losers by regulatory fiat," added attorneys for Qwest Communications.

At the request of Free Press, the FCC is investigating whether "degrading peer-to-peer traffic" violates FCC rules for reasonable network management. The move comes after an Associated Press article and subsequent Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) test last year concluded that Comcast was blocking user access to peer-to-peer networks. Comcast admitted to delaying traffic during peak hours, but denied blocking P2P applications completely.

The FCC is also examining a petition from file-sharing company Vuze that asks for clarification on what constitutes "reasonable network management."

Telecoms like AT&T and Qwest submitted their comments on February 13, the last day the FCC was accepting public comments on the matter.

AT&T took aim at Google, which has sided with Free Press and Vuze on the issue. Google and Amazon last week issued their support for a net neutrality bill that would require the FCC to examine how Internet service providers manage their networks.

"It would be wholly arbitrary to regulate Comcast's purported 'traffic shaping' but not the content-shaping practices of Google within the search and online advertising markets it monopolizes," AT&T wrote.

Free Press complained that only Comcast knows the algorithm they use to shape traffic within Comcast's network. "But Free Press might just have easily been complaining about Google, which alone knows the secret algorithms it uses to order its search results," AT&T said.

None of the companies would address the accusations against Comcast directly, but they all supported the company's attempt at network management.

"Internet backbone service providers have no economic incentive to engage in the traffic management practices that Vuze fears [because] backbone service providers are fully compensated for the use of their network by their direct customers," according to the Global Crossing filing.

"Broadband providers must retain the flexibility to employ traffic management practices to protect their networks," Time Warner Cable's filing said.

The FCC should not expect telecom companies to publicly share its network management secrets, AT&T insisted. "There is no surer way to compromise the integrity of a given network than broadcasting the technical details of how that network is managed," the company said.

AT&T and Verizon have emerged recently as competitors to Comcast, as both phone providers have moved into the video space. Nonetheless, both companies came to Comcast's defense.

Network management is "appropriate and necessary," Verizon wrote in its filing.

Free Press and Vuze ignore the fact that network management is key to stopping threats like viruses and spam, Verizon wrote.

These issues are "best left to network engineers who must respond to real world concerns" and not regulatory agencies like the FCC, Verizon said.

The lone dissenter among providers was Vonage. Given that Vonage's service rides on cable and telecom carriers' services, Vonage is "critically interested in ensuring that its competitors do not use 'reasonable network management' as a pretext to degrade the performance of Vonage's service," the company wrote.

Vonage expressed concern that unchecked network management might impede its customers' ability to access 911 service. It called on the FCC to make sure access to emergency services was guaranteed.

Four years ago, the FCC mandated that VoIP providers like Vonage provide access to 911 after several unfortunate incidents with VoIP customers who were unaware that their Internet-based phone service did not connect to emergency services.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2265133,00.asp





BitTorrent Busts Comcast BitTorrent Busting

As Comcast ignores reality
Cade Metz

Unhappy that Comcast is busting BitTorrents, BitTorrent has decided to bust this BitTorrent busting.

On Friday, as reported by TorrentFreak, a quartet of BitTorrent developers - including three staffers at BitTorrent Inc. - proposed a new extension to the popular P2P protocol that would circumvent Comcast's self-described "reasonable network management."
Last May, an independent researcher named Robb Topolski revealed that the big-name American ISP is preventing users from "seeding" BitTorrents and other P2P files. When one machine finishes downloading a file and promptly attempts to upload that file to another machine, Comcast sends out a duped "reset flag" that breaks this peer-to-peer connection.

The proposed BitTorrent extension would use encryption, or "obfuscation," to keep Comcast from pulling this trick. "The goal is to prevent internet service providers and other network administrators from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections," the proposal reads.

Will Comcast come back with a new system that works around this workaround? We wouldn't be surprised. The company continues to insist that its BitTorrent busting is merely an effort to "manage" its network, arguing that such "management" is well within the rules laid down by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

"We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications," the company once told us.

But don't let Comcast fool you. The BitTorrent community should do everything it can to bust Comcast's BitTorrent busting. And so should the FCC.

Smoke, Mirrors, and FCC filings

Just last week, in a new filing with the FCC, Comcast said that it only "manages" P2P uploads - and that it only "manages" uploads "when the customer is not simultaneously downloading."

This has led some to wonder why Comcast has received such harsh criticism for its behavior. "Who cares if Comcast prevents P2P uploads?" these voices say. "Users can still download whatever they want." But clearly, these voices don't understand BitTorrent.

For one thing, if Comcast prevents its users from uploading files, that prevents all sorts of other people from downloading. "In a peer to peer network, for every single byte being uploaded, there is someone immediately downloading that byte. If Comcast stops or delays an upload, then somebody else's download is also stopped or delayed," Topolski says. "If every ISP immediately decided to block P2P uploads, then all P2P downloads immediately stop."

But that's the small point here. If Comcast prevents its users from uploading, it also throttles the downloads of those very users. "BitTorrent communities often require a byte-for-a-byte exchange to ensure that its members give at least as much as they take," Topolski continues. "A download may take 10 minutes to complete, but it takes 60 minutes to 'pay back' those bytes because of the slower upload speeds provided by most ISPs.

"By cutting off connections once they have finished downloading, Comcast is preventing these community members from maintaining a fair '1:1 ratio' standing in these communities. Because these community members have not yet 'paid back' the bytes that they previously downloaded, they cannot start any new downloads."

Define download

What's more, Topolski insists, Comcast isn't telling the truth when it says that it only interferes with uploads when users aren't simultaneously downloading. "Comcast starts interfering as soon as any of your downloads switches to an upload mode," he explains. "It doesn't wait until all your downloads are done.

So, let's say you're downloading two files: File A and File B. Once File A has finished downloading, Comcast will immediately prevent it from being uploaded - even if File B is still downloading.

Yes, some will say that Comcast has a right to manage its network, to keep traffic flowing smoothly. But that doesn't mean it has no choice but to bag BitTorrents.

"The question is what does management mean?" Topolski says. "Does it mean not selling more accounts than you're able to supply with your available bandwidth? That's definitely a form of management."

You could also argue that Comcast is a business, that it has to make money. Fine. But at the very least, it should tell its customers what's what.

When Robb Topolski first told the world that Comcast was bagging BitTorrents, the company vehemently denied the allegation. A good eight months passed before it admitted to "delaying" P2P traffic - and even this was half a confession.

Here's hoping that new BitTorrent extension arrives tout de suite.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02...ck_at_comcast/





EU Invests $22 Million in Open-Source P2P Technology
Matt Asay

It's ironic how different Europe can be from the United States. While the U.S. continues its mindless rampage against the future of digital distribution with DRM, RIAA, MPAA, and other acronyms designed to stuff the 21st century back into the 20th century's ideas of how to package and sell property, Europe is actually investing in that future. To be exact, it's putting $22 million toward peer-to-peer technology, in a BitTorrent-minded project called P2P-Next.

Surely European broadcasters are against the move, right? After all, research suggests that 50 percent of those using BitTorrent are doing so to steal TV shows. As one TorrentFreak blogger noted, however, European broadcasters believe this situation presents an opportunity rather than a threat:

One of the biggest names taking part is the BBC, who will use the new BitTorrent client to stream TV programs. Other partners in the P2P-Next project are the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The main goal is to develop an open source, BitTorrent-compatible client that supports live streaming.

The current project will help broadcasters to find better ways to reach th[e TV-downloading] online audience, and offer high quality on-demand television.

Now if only we could work on U.S. industries threatened (and potentially enriched!) by digitization and downloading. The software industry might actually more fully embrace open source. The entertainment industry would find ways to monetize the heavy demand for its products, as evidenced by file "sharing."

The EU apparently recognizes that the way to monetize P2P is to get out in front of it and enable it on superior terms to those available by more illicit means. Imagine that.
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9....html?tag=more





AMPAS Launches YouTube Channel

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences launched a YouTube channel Thursday that will provide highlights and exclusive video interviews with members from each of the Academy's branches.

The collaboration marks the first time that the Academy has partnered with an online video community. Participants featured in the clips include Quincy Jones, Alfred Molina, Sidney Poitier and John Travolta.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...235ca5dae31cca





'A-Team,' 'Kojak' Get New Life on NBC Sites

NBC Universal said Tuesday it will stream full episodes of old TV shows, including The A-Team and Kojak, on its Web sites. Beginning this month, the shows will be available on NBC.com and on network-owned niche sites SciFi.com, ChillerTV and SleuthChannel.com. The NBC.com additions are A-Team, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Miami Vice, Buck Rogers, Emergency, Night Gallery, and the original Battlestar Galactica.

Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica also will be available on SciFi.com, along with Tek War and Night Gallery. Hitchcock, Swamp Thing, Tremors, Cro, and Night Gallery will be featured on ChillerTV.com. And SleuthChannel.com will present the Telly Savalas-starring Kojak, Miami Vice, A-Team, Night Gallery, and Simon & Simon. The content also will be available on Hulu, the online-video joint venture that NBC Universal launched with News Corp. last year. Through Hulu, the shows will be syndicated to Yahoo, News Corp.'s MySpace.com, MSN, Comcast, Time Warner's AOL, and other Web destinations.
http://www.news.com/A-Team%2C-Kojak-...3-6231229.html





Ad Spending on Web Music Radio Tripled, Report Says

Advertising on Internet music radio stations almost tripled last year as listening grew 26 percent, according to a report by AccuStream iMedia Research. Ad sales increased 194 percent to $80 million in 2007, AccuStream said in a statement Thursday. Shoutcast, a unit of Time Warner's AOL, had the biggest market share of listening hours, with 48 percent. Shoutcast provides music for free, taking revenue from advertising, as do Clear Channel Communications's online unit and Yahoo's music site, the second- and third-ranked online radio sites by hours of listening. Traditional radio companies are suffering from declines in ad spending as marketers transfer part of their budgets to the Internet. U.S. Web users spent 4.85 billion hours listening to music on radio sites last year, up from 3.85 billion in 2006, according to Salinas-based AccuStream.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci_8322409





One Year Later, Still No Timeline For Satellite Merger
FMQB

Today (February 19) is the one-year anniversary of the official announcement of the proposed merger between XM and Sirius. However, there has still not been any government approval of the proposed merger. At the NBA Tech Summit recently, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said there is still no timetable for the Commission's approval.

According to PaidContent.org, Martin told reporters, "Traditionally the commission doesn’t act on those after the Department of Justice --99 out of 100 times the Department of Justice goes first and the Department of Justice hasn’t acted yet on that merger. We have some more information we requested at the beginning of the year from the companies so that we’re trying to finalize our conclusions but we’re coordinating with Department of Justice. I don’t have a timeline."

Late last week, the NAB filed new comments with the FCC opposing the merger, on the grounds that both satcasters had violated several terrestrial repeater rules.

Last year, the two satcasters announced their $13 billion "merger of equals" with Mel Karmazin set to be named CEO and Gary Parsons as Chairman.
http://fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=589538





Winners, Losers in Digital TV Transition
Seth Sutel

TV's big switch from analog to digital broadcasts will be complete in just one year, on Feb. 17, 2009, and many consumers are puzzling over how the shift will affect them: Do they need a new converter box, a new TV, a better antenna?

But it's pretty clear which business interests stand to gain.

Cable and satellite TV companies could see a wave of new subscribers as people with older TVs pass on hooking up converter boxes to older televisions or buying new sets. Local stations are already using some of the extra capacity digital broadcasting frees up by launching auxiliary TV channels with weather and traffic reports, and they're looking for ways to bring programming to portable devices.

The Federal Communications Commission began the switch many years ago to free up a large chunk of U.S. airwaves, which the government is in the process of auctioning off, a process that will net billions of dollars for public coffers. Making all UHF broadcast spectrum above channel 52 available will allow for powerful new wireless services, and possibly for a new network for public safety officials to use during disasters.

Most U.S. TV stations already broadcast digital signals as well as analog. What's happening a year from Sunday is they'll switch off the analog signals. No one with cable or satellite service will be affected, nor will anyone who gets stations over the air with a newer TV with a digital tuner.

Those who will be affected are the 13 million or so households that get TV broadcasts exclusively over the air and have a TV more than a few years old — or even a newer TV that's relatively small. Also affected are TVs not connected to cable, even if a home has cable.

A Nielsen Co. study released Friday found that 16.8 percent of all U.S. households have at least one analog television set that would not work following the switch. And Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be without TV reception.

Affected households can get a digital converter box, buy a new television or sign up for cable or satellite service or one of the newer cable-like services being offered by phone companies.

A government program said Friday that it will begin sending out coupons Tuesday worth $40 each to any U.S. household that requests them to subsidize buying a box. Each household is entitled to two coupons for the boxes, which are just coming into stores now, start at $40 or $50, making this option easy and practically free. The government says it has funds for 33 million coupons. To get one, go to http://www.dtv2009.gov. or call 1-888-DTV-2009 (1-888-388-2009).

All TVs being made and shipped as of March 1 are required to have digital tuners, which are sometimes called ATSC tuners, after the technical standard used to make them (the analog standard was known as NTSC). Retailers can still sell analog-only TVs from existing inventory as long as they are clearly labeled as such.

If your current TV has the initials "DTV" appear somewhere on its front, or its screen is rectangular, you're probably OK. If you still have the owner's manual, check there whether the tuner is digital.

The new signal could mean the picture on some televisions will improve, but it doesn't guarantee high-definition visuals. That depends on whether a particular TV is set up to receive high-definition programming and whether a program is broadcast that way.
The switch could give an economic boost to retailers and manufacturers, who would benefit from selling the boxes and new TVs. And cable providers could get a boost over the next year or two from consumers who sign up for new service rather than deal with the other options.

According to a report Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. released Friday, an estimated 1.4 million households will likely switch to pay TV service as a result of the digital TV transition — enough to significantly lift the growth rates for the cable industry in 2009, compared to recent years.

Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, says his organization is watching that pay TV operators don't take advantage of confusion over the digital transition to push people into buying cable to view digital TV broadcasts. It isn't necessary.

So far he hasn't seen any abusive behavior, but he said: "We want the folks in the marketplace to know that we're watching."

Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a cable TV industry group, notes that cable's educational ads about the transition don't say consumers have to switch to cable.

For retailers, Bernstein analysts say the economic boost is likely to be incremental. The market for the converter boxes is likely to be about $1.4 billion, and for new TVs about $1.7 billion, for a total of $3.1 billion — still a relatively tiny part of the $150 billion U.S. consumer electronics market.

The cost to broadcasters of new digital equipment is relatively small. Tim Thorsteinson, president of the broadcast division of Harris Corp., a major manufacturer of broadcasting equipment, says it costs about $500,000 to upgrade a typical TV station.

The transition comes at a tough point for local TV stations, however, because they are seeing live viewership erode amid a proliferation of ways to watch video — over the Internet, on iPods and DVDs.

Mark Aitken, director of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., a major broadcaster based near Baltimore, says digital technology gives TV owners several important ways to hold onto viewers, mainly high-definition broadcasts, which can be a lot more pleasant to watch than YouTube videos.

Aitken calls using HDTV broadcasts the "low-hanging fruit" for TV stations to take advantage of. He points to another big possibility: sending live TV broadcasts to portable devices like cell phones. Adapting the handsets would be simple technically; the far bigger issue is getting broadcasters, programmers, mobile device makers to agree on a standard.

Just next week, a preliminary field trial for three competing technologies for portable TV viewing is getting under way in San Francisco, Aitken said. The industry could have a candidate for the a new mobile TV standard in place by the third or fourth quarter of this year.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080217/..._tv_transition





Web Movies Show Why DVDs Sell
David Pogue

Ten days ago, Netflix announced that it would abandon HD DVD, Toshiba's entry in the high-definition DVD format war. Six days ago, Wal-Mart dropped HD DVD, too. Then two days ago, Toshiba surrendered, marking the end of the most pointless format war since Betamax-VHS.

Man, if they have Friday beer bashes over at Toshiba, this week's will be a real downer.

Why did so many companies dump HD DVD so fast? Intriguingly, one often-cited reason is the approaching era of Internet movie downloads. The logic goes like this: as long as there's a format war, consumers won't buy DVD players of either type. By settling on a single format - it doesn't really matter which one - the movie and electronics industries can at least start milking the remaining years of the DVD's life.

In fact, though, the Internet movie download era is more distant than pundits think, for four colossal reasons.

First, downloadable movies require high-speed Internet connections - and only about half of American households have them. That number won't change much for years.

Second, downloaded movies don't include the director's commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings, alternate language soundtracks or other DVD goodies. It's just not as rich an experience.

Third, movie downloads don't deliver the audio and video quality of DVD discs - even standard-def ones. Internet movies are compressed to download faster, which affects picture quality, and offer older, more compressed audio soundtracks than modern DVDs. (Check out the astounding quality-comparison photos at http://tinyurl.com/3e488m for details.)

Finally, today's movie-download services bear the greasy policy fingerprints of the movie studio executives - and when it comes to the new age of digital movies, these people are not, ahem, known for their vision.

For example, no matter which movie-download service you choose, you'll find yourself facing the same confusing, ridiculous time limits for viewing. You have to start watching the movie you've rented within 30 days, and once you start, you have to finish it within 24 hours.

Where's the logic? They've got your money, so why should they care if you start watching on the 30th day or the 31st?

Then there is the 24-hour limit. Suppose you typically do not start a movie until 7:30 p.m., after dinner and the homework have been put away. If you do not have time to finish the movie in one sitting, you cannot resume at 7:30 tomorrow night; at that point, the download will have self-destructed.

What would the studios lose by offering a 27-hour rental period? Or three days, or even a week? Nothing. In fact, they'd attract millions more customers. (At the very least, instead of just deleting itself, the movie should say: "Would you like another 24-hour period for an additional $1?")

Then there's the fact that to protect their cash cows, most studios don't release their movies on the Internet until a month after they've been available on DVD.

Despite these limitations, plenty of companies are staking out property on the digital-download frontier. Some deliver movies to your computer screen, which will never appeal to anybody but nerds; virtually nobody gathers the family 'round the old Dell on movie night.

Several boxes, however, deliver movies straight to your TV, usually for $3 to $5 each. Here are their report cards.

Apple TV ($230). Thanks to a free software upgrade, Apple's sleek little box has taken on a whole new life. It now connects directly to the iTunes store - no computer needed. Movies are stored on the Apple TV's internal hard drive.

Standard-def movies begin to play only a few seconds after you've selected them; you watch the beginning while the rest is downloading. High-def movies take several minutes to begin playing.

In a couple of years, Apple TV may be the box to beat. The movie store is fun to navigate, picture quality is high and wireless networking is built-in, unlike its rivals. You can buy episodes from any of 650 TV series on demand (usually $2 an episode, no ads), which its competitors can't touch. Finally, of course, the Apple TV does a lot of other stuff; it can display all the music, pictures and movies from your Mac or PC and play podcasts and videos from the Web.

But the Apple TV movie store's shelves look a little bare. Fewer than 1,000 movies are available, and only 100 are in high definition; compare with the 90,000 titles offered by Netflix on DVD, 900 in high-def. (Apple points out that its store's music catalog started out tiny, too - 200,000 songs, compared with 6 million today.) There are some silly bugs in the debut software, too.

Instant gratification: A-. Selection: D. Overall movie joy: B.

TiVo/Amazon Unbox ($100 and up, plus monthly fee). Here's another box whose original purpose was something other than movie downloads. But among its blossoming portfolio of video features, TiVo lets you rent or buy movies downloaded from Amazon.com's Unbox service.

At least you no longer have to order these movies at Amazon.com (although you can, using your Mac or PC, if you prefer to type movie titles with a real keyboard instead of fussing with on-screen alphabets). You can do the whole transaction right from the couch.

Show time is not instantaneous, either; on high-def TiVos, you can't start watching until 10 minutes after you order, and on older models, you have to wait for the whole movie to download (1 to 5 hours). Selection is still slim: 3,200 movies are available to rent; 4,700 available to buy. None are in high definition.

Instant gratification: B-. Selection: C. Overall movie joy: B-.

Xbox 360 ($350 and up). Yet again, here's a box whose movie service isn't the primary attraction (here, it's games). In this case, though, the movie thing isn't just secondary - it's way, way down the list.

You have to watch movies within 14 days, not 30. The remote control isn't designed for video playback. You pay using a confusing system of Microsoft "points," which you must buy in $5 increments. And although there are plenty of TV shows available, only 300 movies are in the catalog at any given time, about half in high definition.

Instant gratification: A-. Selection: D. Overall movie joy: D.

Vudu ($300). This compact black box comes loaded with the beginnings of 5,000 movies. When you rent or buy one, therefore, playback begins instantly. About 20 new movies arrive on the box each week, pushing older ones off the 250-gigabyte hard drive.

Vudu is the only dedicated movie box . The interface is pure and clean, picture quality is tops and the remote has only four buttons (plus a terrific scroll wheel).

On the downside, many of those 5,000 movies are pure direct-to-video dreck (anyone for "San Franpsycho" tonight?). Confusingly, movies on the list come and go according to Vudu's deals with the studios. And you need a pretty fast connection; basic DSL subscribers need not apply.

Instant gratification: A. Selection: B+. Overall movie joy: B+.

When competing with the humble DVD, Internet movie boxes do poorly on price, selection and viewing flexibility (that is, how much time you have to watch). Their sole DVD-smashing feature is the convenience; you get the movie right now.

Meanwhile, other sources of instant movie gratification are emerging. Comcast, the nation's largest cable TV company, offers 1,000 on-demand movies each month, many of them free; by year's end, it intends to increase that number to 6,000 (half in high-def) - and you don't have to buy a special box.

The point is that the whole Internet-movies thing is still in its fumbling, bumbling infancy; someday, we'll look at these limited-selection, limited-time services and laugh.

In the meantime, congratulations to Blu-ray, the winning next-generation DVD format. Clearly, spinning silver discs will remain the dominant movie-delivery method for years to come.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/te...h/21pogue.html





Sony to Sell Chip Facility to Toshiba for $835 Mln

Sony Corp said on Wednesday it will sell its microchip production facilities in western Japan to Toshiba Corp for 90 billion yen ($835 million), in their latest move to focus on their core businesses.

The equipment will be used by their semiconductor joint venture that will make high-performance Cell chips and RSX graphic chips, both used in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console, as well as other microchips that go into Toshiba products.

The venture will be established on April 1.

Sony, which is focusing on image sensor chips for digital cameras and pulling away from heavy investments for cutting-edge chip production equipment, said in October it would sell production facilities for making key microchips used in the PS3 to Toshiba, but the price has been unavailable.

The announcement on the selling price comes on the heels of Toshiba's decision on Tuesday to abandon its HD DVD high-definition DVD format, ending a prolonged battle with the Sony-led Blu-ray camp.

Toshiba twinned the HD DVD exit with an announcement that it and partner SanDisk Corp would spend $16 billion on two new flash memory plants.

Shares in Sony were up 2.8 percent at 5,150 yen in afternoon trade while Toshiba fell 2.8 percent to 801 yen. The Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index was down 2.1 percent.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Editing by Michael Watson)
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv...28617520080220





Stringer Makes His Mark
Matt Hartley

Sony's CEO led his company to victory in the high-definition sweepstakes by convincing the major studios to come aboard
Barrie Mckenna and Matt Hartley

Howard Stringer made history in 2005 for being the first non-Japanese executive to take the helm at Sony Corp. But he may be better remembered as the one who won the high-definition war, erasing the stain on the electronics firm's image ever since it lost the videotape war two decades earlier.

Although celebrated yesterday, the victory was sealed last month when Sony swayed Warner Bros. to back Sony's Blu-ray technology and quit producing movies using Toshiba Corp.'s rival HD DVD format.

What remains a mystery is just how big a push Warner needed to pick sides. Analysts say Sony only prevailed following a heated bidding war against Toshiba, with the reward reaching as much as $400-million (U.S.). Neither side has confirmed the size of any bids or payments.

It was supposed to be the technology equivalent of First World War trench warfare: A prolonged battle to the death between Toshiba and Sony for global domination in high-definition DVDs.

In the end, the denouement was more like Germany's swift 1940 end run of the Maginot line.

Less than two years after its first HD DVD player hit the market, Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida raised the white flag, declaring yesterday that it would stop making and selling the devices altogether within a month.

Toshiba's unconditional surrender leaves the spoils to Sony, maker of the rival Blu-ray disc player - a technologically superior format that had the backing of virtually all the major movie studies and retailers.

"We simply had no chance to win," Mr. Nishida acknowledged bluntly.

The final straw, he said, was Warner's decision last month to exclusively release movies in Blu-ray. The decision by Warner, with about 20 per cent of the movie market, put a critical mass of the industry in the Blu-ray camp.

With billions of dollars in global sales at stake, experts had predicted the Toshiba-Sony battle would go on for years - not unlike the 1980s battle of videotape formats between VHS (Matsushita) and Betamax (Sony). That war lasted a decade, leaving Sony battered and humiliated.

So how did this epic battle come to such an abrupt end?

The answer lies in part with the bruising Sony experienced with Betamax, which, like Blu-ray, was also the better product on paper.

For more that 20 years, Sony has been "haunted by Betamax" and was fiercely determined not to let history repeat itself, explained Xavier Drèze, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school.

"Sony was much smarter," Prof. Drèze said. "They understood this time they couldn't do it alone. They understood that they needed strategic partnerships with industry players."

The war was over when Sony managed to line up a critical mass of partners - in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and on Main Street.

The tipping point was Warner Bros. But Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. had already done the same - signing exclusive sealed deals with presumably rich royalty arrangements.

"This was heavy hitters in a back room talking about what the royalty structure was going to be and how much money they were willing to put on the table to be exclusive with one camp or the other. That was the determining factor here," concluded Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc.

Until last month, Warner had been backing both technologies.

Last Friday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it would sell only Blu-ray DVDs. Officials said "customer feedback" prompted its decision.

Netflix Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Target Corp. had earlier done the same.

"Everyone was tired of the format war, the retailers were tired of it, the consumer electronics vendors were tired of it and they just wanted this thing to get settled," Mr. Baker said.

"Consumers and the industry learned the hard way with Beta and VHS that a prolonged format war was disastrous. There was a lot of motivation to get one or the other to win and the only thing that protracted it was the amount of money flying around."

The groundwork for Sony's stunning victory, however, came months, even years ago. Prof. Drèze said Blu-ray had several things going for it that helped it to build loyalty with consumers and the industry.

Six years ago yesterday - and years before the first Blu-ray disc or player was sold - Sony had lined up most of the other computer and electronics makers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Apple and Dell.

Sony also owned a major movie studio. So it could push its own technology.

Third, the company sold Blu-ray to rival movie studios with the promise of superior digital copyright protection.

Sony also used its PlayStation video game console, which also works as a Blu-ray player, as a sort of "Trojan horse," Prof. Drèze said.

Sony has already sold 10.5 million of its PS3 consoles, compared with roughly one million HD DVD players. PlayStation buyers, he said, unwittingly embraced Blu-ray and undermined HD DVD.

Ultimately, the technology is superior. Blu-ray can hold up to three times more data (200 gigabytes versus 60) and offers higher resolution.

In the end, it could be a pyrrhic victory for Sony. The age of hard copy discs is already giving way to digital downloads, stored and played from PCs, iPods and other portable devices.

"I don't think the heyday of DVD is going to return," said Mr. Baker, the analyst. "For most consumers, digital downloads are going to be very appealing."

How Sony lost Betamax

1QUALITY OVER

QUANTITY Despite better picture quality, Sony's original Betamax tapes could record only one hour of video, while rival VHS tapes could store double that.

2SECRET RECIPE

Sony initially failed to license its Betamax technology to a sufficient number of manufacturers, thinking it could go it alone. This led to a situation where VHS players competed against one another for share, driving down prices and making the format more attractive to consumers.

3BUYING V. RENTING When both systems arrived in the United States in the mid-1970s, VHS machines were less expensive to rent. When consumers began to purchase rather than rent their video players, they tended to go with VHS machines.

4PORN CONUNDRUM Sony refused to license the Betamax technology to adult film companies, who turned to VHS tapes and ended up creating a multibillion-dollar industry.

How Sony won Blu-ray

1BIGGER IS BETTER

Sony's Blu-ray discs can store upward of 50 gigabytes of data on a single disc, while HD DVDs hold about 30 gigs.

2PLAYSTATION 3

By including a Blu-ray drive in its next-generation video game console, Sony was able to drive sales of both the PS3 and its new DVD format.

3SOLID PARTNERSHIPS Not wanting to duplicate the Betamax mistake, Sony took the initiative to license its Blu-ray technology with as many partners as possible. When Blu-ray was first announced in 2002, Sony had already signed up eight partner companies committed to producing players.

4CONTENT IS KING

By signing exclusive deals with more studios and content providers than Toshiba, Sony was able to squeeze its competitor to the sidelines. Warner's defection to Blu-ray was the fatal blow.


*****

Dead technologies

Media formats we have used, loved and discarded for the next best thing

The cassette tape

A Walkman and roller skates, anyone? Tapes were the original portable format and made music pirates of us all. (Can I tape your Fleetwood Mac Rumors?) But they were hated by record companies. The sound quality tended to go tinny after a few dozen plays, and many tapes wound up melting in a car on a sunny day.

Eight tracks

Developed by plane maker Bill Lear, eight-track tapes were large and couldn't be rewound. And because of their high tape speed, didn't sound great. Nevertheless, they were popular in the 1970s, thanks to the auto industry, which installed thousands of eight-track players. When sales slipped, companies eager to pare formats quickly dropped the eight track.

Vinyl

Cumbersome to play and easily damaged, albums faded out in the late 1980s. But album covers managed to become a genuine art form and another way to grab music buyers' attention. Lately, albums have a enjoyed a comeback, thanks to collectors, club DJs and scratching (ask your kids).

Compact discs

CDs are dead? They will be soon. Who needs all those plastic cases and discs when you can fill your hard drive and iPod with thousands of songs? Using a credit card, of course. Downloading music for free is wrong, isn't it?

Staff
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...?query=Toshiba





Deadline in Viacom, Google Copyright Suit Extended

A deadline for Google Inc to turn over documents in Viacom Inc's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against the Web search leader has been extended by two months by a federal judge.

Google's attorneys had asked that a March 7 deadline for both sides to turn over documents be postponed by three months because it was wading through 4.5 million documents.

"It's a daunting task," Andrew Schapiro, an attorney for law firm Mayer Brown which represents Google, told the New York Southern District Court.

Judge Louis Stanton agreed on Friday to a new deadline of May 9.

Last March, Viacom sued Google for copyright infringement on its popular YouTube online video sharing service, demanding over $1 billion in damages.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li, Editing by Toni Reinhold)
http://www.reuters.com/article/hotSt...62726720080223





A Look at the State of Wireless Security
Soulskill

An anonymous reader brings us a whitepaper from Codenomicon which discusses the state and future of wireless security. They examine Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and also take a preliminary look at WiMAX. The results are almost universally dismal; vulnerabilities were found in 90% of the tested devices[PDF]. The paper also looks at methods for vendors to preemptively block some types of threats.

Despite boasts of hardened security measures, security researchers and black-hat hackers keep humiliating vendors. Security assessment of software by source code auditing is expensive and laborious. There are only a few methods for security analysis without access to the source code, and they are usually limited in scope. This may be one reason why many major software vendors have been stuck randomly fixing vulnerabilities that have been found and providing countless patches to their clients to keep the systems protected.

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/02/17/1628210.shtml





$10 Chip Puts Australia on the Fast Track
Nick Miller

A new silicon chip developed in Melbourne is predicted to revolutionise the way household gadgets like televisions, phones and DVD players talk to each other.

The tiny five-millimetre-a-side chip can transmit data through a wireless connection at a breakthrough five gigabits per second over distances of up to 10 metres. An entire high-definition movie from a video shop kiosk could be transmitted to a mobile phone in a few seconds, and the phone could then upload the movie to a home computer or screen at the same speed.

The "GiFi" was unveiled today at the Melbourne University-based laboratories of NICTA, the national information and communications technology research centre.

"I believe in the longer term every consumer device will have this technology," said project leader, Professor Stan Skafidas, who with his team spent almost a decade developing the chip.

Hotly contested area

Short-range wireless technology is a hotly contested area, with research teams around the world racing to be the first to launch such a product.

Professor Skafidas said his team is the first to demonstrate a working transceiver-on-a-chip that uses CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology - the cheap, ubiquitous technique that prints silicon chips.

This means his team is head and shoulders in front of the competition in terms of price and power demand. His chip uses only a tiny one-millimetre-wide antenna and less than two watts of power, and would cost less than $10 to manufacture.

It uses the 60GHz "millimetre wave" spectrum to transmit the data, which gives it an advantage over WiFi (wireless internet). WiFi's part of the spectrum is increasingly crowded, sharing the waves with devices such as cordless phones, which leads to interference and slower speeds.

But the millimetre wave spectrum (30 to 300 GHz) is almost unoccupied, and the new chip is potentially hundreds of times faster than the average home WiFi unit. However, WiFi still benefits from being able to provide wireless coverage over a greater distance.

Victoria's minister for information and communication technology, Theo Theophanous, said it showed Victoria was at the cutting edge of IT innovation.

He praised the 27-member team which worked on the development of the chip. The high-powered team included 10 PhDs students from the University of Melbourne and collaborated with companies such as computer giant IBM during the research.

"This new technology will dramatically change the way data and content-rich information is managed in the office and the home, as well as enabling new applications," Mr Theophanous said. "The possibilities are endless."

'Several breakthroughs in one'

For Professor Skafidas, the chip is several breakthroughs in one. It includes a world-first power amplifier that is only a few microns wide, with a micron being one 300th the width of a human hair.

It also has world's first signal mixing and filter technology, and a switch that isolates the transmitter and receiver so they do not interfere with each other.

There is about another year's worth of work on the chip before it is ready to be marketed to the public, he said, and the team still needs to develop technology that injects data into the transceiver.

Professor Skafidas said he sees several ways the technology could be put to use.

It could be used to transfer data-rich content such as video around the home between different storage and display devices, and it could help turn a mobile device into a "shopping cart" for data.

A mobile device could also become a fully-fledged computer through the GiFi, simply by placing it near similarly-equipped peripherals such as a screen, extra storage, optical drives, a keyboard and mouse
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...467349733.html





Smugglers Return iPhones to China
David Barboza

Factories here churn out iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe. Then thousands of them are smuggled right back into China.

The strange journey of Apple’s popular iPhone, to nearly every corner of the world, shows what happens when the world’s hottest consumer product defies a company’s attempt to slowly introduce it in new markets.

The iPhone has been swept up in a frenzy of global smuggling and word-of-mouth marketing that leads friends to ask friends, “While you’re in the U.S., would you mind picking up an iPhone for me?”

These unofficial distribution networks help explain a mystery that analysts who follow Apple have been pondering: why is there a large gap between the number of iPhones that Apple says it sold last year, about 3.7 million, and the 2.3 million that are actually registered on the networks of its wireless partners in the United States and Europe?

The answer now seems clear. For months, tourists, small entrepreneurs and smugglers of electronic goods have been buying iPhones in the United States and then shipping them overseas.

There the phones’ digital locks are broken so they can work on local cellular networks, and they are outfitted with localized software, essentially undermining Apple’s effort to introduce the phone with exclusive partnership deals, similar to its primary partnership agreement with AT&T in the United States.

“There’s no question many of them are ending up abroad,” said Charles R. Wolf, an analyst who follows Apple for Needham & Company.

For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is both a sign of its marketing prowess and a blow to a business model that could be coming undone, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts.

But those economic realities do not play into the mind of Daniel Pan, a 22-year-old Web site designer in Shanghai who says a friend recently bought an iPhone for him in the United States.

He and other people here often pay $450 to $600 to get a phone that sells for $400 in the United States. But they are happy.

“This is even better than I thought it would be,” he said, toying with his iPhone at an upscale coffee shop. “This is definitely one of the great inventions of this century.”

Mr. Pan is among the new breed of young professionals in China who can afford to buy the latest gadgets and the coolest Western brands. IPhones are widely available at electronic stores in big cities, and many stores offer unlocking services for imported phones.

Chinese sellers of iPhones say they typically get the phones from suppliers who buy them in the United States, then have them shipped or brought to China by airline passengers.

Often, they say, the phones are given to members of Chinese tourist groups or Chinese airline flight attendants, who are typically paid a commission of about $30 for every phone they deliver.

Although unlocking the phone violates Apple’s purchase agreement, it does not appear to violate any laws here, though many stores may be avoiding import duties.

Considering China’s penchant for smuggling and counterfeiting high-quality goods, the huge number of iPhones being sold here is not surprising, particularly given the popularity of the Apple brand in China.

Indeed, within months of the release of the iPhone in the United States last June, iPhone knockoffs, or iClones as some have called them, were selling here for as little as $125. But most people opt for the real thing.

“A lot of people here want to get an iPhone,” says Conlyn Chan, 31, a lawyer who was born in Taiwan and now lives in Shanghai. “I know a guy who went back to the States and bought 20 iPhones. He even gave one to his driver.”

Negotiations between Apple and China Mobile, the world’s biggest mobile-phone service operator with more than 350 million subscribers, broke down last month, stalling the official release of the iPhone in China. Long before that, however, there was a thriving gray market.

“I love all of Apple’s products,” said a 27-year-old Beijing engineer named Chen Chen who found his iPhone through a bulletin board Web site. “I bought mine for $625 last October, and the seller helped me unlock it. Reading and sending Chinese messages is no problem.”

An iPhone purchased in Shanghai or Beijing typically costs about $555. To unlock the phone and add Chinese language software costs an additional $25.

For Apple, the sale of iPhones to people who ship them to China is a source of revenue. But the company is still losing out, because its exclusive deals with phone service providers bring in revenue after the phone is sold. If the phones were activated in the United States, Apple would receive as much as $120 a year per user from AT&T, analysts say.

But there are forces working against that. Programmers around the world collaborate on and share programs that unlock the iPhone, racing to put out new versions when Apple updates its defenses.

While Apple has not strongly condemned unlocking, it has warned consumers that this violates the purchase agreement and can cause problems with software updates.

Some analysts say abandoning the locked phone system and allowing buyers to sign up with any carrier they choose, in any country, could spur sales.

“The model is threatened,” Mr. Wolf, the analyst, said. But “if they sold the phone unlocked with no exclusive carrier, demand could be much higher.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the proliferation of iPhones in China. When asked about the number of unlocked iPhones during a conference call with analysts last month, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said it was “significant in the quarter, but we’re unsure how to reliably estimate the number.”

The copycat models are another possible threat to Apple. Not long after the iPhone was released, research and development teams in China were taking it apart, trying to copy or steal the design and software for use in knockoffs.

Some people who have used the clones say they are sophisticated and have many functions that mimic the iPhone.

In Shanghai, television advertisements market the Ai Feng, a phone with a name that sounds like iPhone but in Chinese translates roughly as the Crazy Love. That phone sells for about $125.

Some of the sellers of the copycats admit the phones are a scam.

“It’s a fake iPhone, but it looks nearly the same,” said a man who answered the phone last week at the Shenzhen Sunshine Trade Company, in southern China’s biggest electronics manufacturing area. “We manufacture it by ourselves. We have our own R. &D. group and manufacturing plant. Most of our products are for export.”

Most people here seem to want the glory that comes with showing off a real iPhone to friends.

“My friends envy me a lot,” says Mr. Pan, the Web designer. “They say, “Wow, you can get an iPhone.’ ”

John Markoff contributed reporting from San Francisco.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/bu...iphone.html?hp





After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser
Maria Aspan

Facebook.com, stung last week by the wrath of members who want to sever their relationships, tripped again when it tried to let them do so.

But the company said over the weekend that it had fixed the problems, making it possible — and not too difficult — to delete an account from the site entirely.

The problems, which Facebook described as technical, had to do with a form it introduced last week for users who want to obliterate their accounts. Until then, deleting an account was a fairly cumbersome procedure.

But as a few departing users found out, Facebook — a social networking site that lets people create profiles of themselves and identify other people as “friends” — still had a few bugs left. Some people who used the form discovered that only certain parts of their accounts had disappeared.

Katie Geminder, Facebook’s director for user experience and design, said internal adjustments to the tool used to delete accounts had created a technical snag that affected “a small percent” of Facebook users. “None of their information was exposed, but the empty account continued to exist even though all of its data had been removed,” she said by e-mail. The bug was fixed within 24 hours, she said.

One such partially deleted user was Matt Dauphin, a 22-year-old office manager for an interior design firm in Tempe, Ariz., who tried to delete his account after reading about the new form last week. He received confirmation by e-mail of the deletion from Facebook’s technical support team.

But even after he received that confirmation, a working link to his empty Facebook profile was the first result in a Google search for his name. While his name, photo and profile information had been deleted from the Facebook page, his friends who still used the service could see his lists of friends and the external applications he had added to his profile.

“It’s a little disturbing that you can see people that I used to talk to — that’s not right,” Mr. Dauphin said Friday. He said he was annoyed at Facebook’s refusal to create a one-step “delete account” button instead of the form.

By Saturday, Facebook had removed the remaining traces of his account from the site.

Still, such experiences have done little to quiet the jitters of many users, who see Facebook’s adjusted policy as an inadequate response to their demand for an easy opt-out button and to their larger concerns over the network’s efforts to profit from the private information they volunteer to the site.

In November, Facebook introduced an advertising program called Beacon that tracked its users’ activities on other Web sites and sent reports to their friends. Users complained that it was intrusive, leading Facebook to scale back the program.

Magnus Wallin, the founder of a Facebook group called “How to permanently delete your Facebook account,” posted a warning on Friday.

“Users who have requested to be deleted via the recently introduced form are only partly deleted, even though the deletion is confirmed by Facebook staff,” Mr. Wallin wrote.

On Saturday, after the partially deleted profiles disappeared, Mr. Wallin said in an e-mail message, “Now there seems to be a way to completely remove yourself from Facebook, without having to delete items individually.” But he does not plan to retire from his group.

“It’s pretty obvious that Facebook are scared of losing loads of members if they made the delete option easily available,” Mr. Wallin said.

Mr. Wallin also posted the message that Facebook sends to people to confirm their deletion, which says in part, “We have deleted your profile information and removed your e-mail address from our login database.” But, as Mr. Wallin added, “if you are paying close attention, you can see that they’re actually not saying that they delete your profile, only that its information and your login is removed.”

In response to these concerns, Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, confirmed that deletion “removes all personal information from the account.”

Many Facebook members use an application called “the wall,” which lets them swap graffiti-like messages with friends in their network; Mr. Kelly said the wall posts of deleted members also disappear, though traces remain.

“After deletion, there may still be a record in Facebook’s archives that a user made a particular wall post in a group on a particular date, but Facebook’s servers no longer contain the information needed to connect that user ID (e.g., name, e-mail address, networks, etc.) to the person associated with that account,” he said in an e-mail statement on Friday.

Some people said they found it much easier to leave Facebook last week. John Keefe, a 52-year-old freelance financial writer in Manhattan, said that he contacted Facebook on Tuesday asking to be deleted “and got back a satisfactory answer in a few hours.”
Nipon Das, a Manhattan business consultant who had gone so far as to threaten legal action in order to quit Facebook, also got some satisfaction: After resubmitting his request to be deleted from Facebook on Wednesday and reconfirming it on Thursday, Mr. Das received a confirmation e-mail from Facebook on Friday.

“This started around October,” he recalled in an e-mail message, adding that now, in mid-February, “we may have closure.”

Mr. Das may be in distinguished company. On Feb. 8, a British newspaper, The Sun, reported that Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, had deleted his Facebook account not out of privacy concerns, but because he got “more than 8,000 friend requests a day and spotted weird fan sites about him.”

A post on a Wall Street Journal blog later reported that Mr. Gates had stopped using the profile instead of fully deleting it; a Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/bu...8facebook.html





The Power of Whimsy
Phyllis Korkki

SANDRA BOYNTON’S studio, in a converted barn next to her Connecticut home, bears the milestones of her singular career: a long rack of greeting cards featuring quirkily drawn animals; a room full of small, sturdy children’s books, with names like “Snuggle Puppy!” and “Barnyard Dance!”; and, upstairs, where she does much of her work, old-time radios and jukeboxes representing her more recent foray into music CDs for children.

Ms. Boynton’s CDs have garnered three gold records and one Grammy nomination. These accomplishments, on top of the hundreds of millions of cards and tens of millions of books she has sold, are all the happy — and profitable — results of an unconventional approach to business.

As an entrepreneur, Ms. Boynton maintains a firm grasp on market realities and her finances, but she says she has succeeded by refusing to make money her main objective. Instead, she says, she has focused on the creative process, her artistic autonomy, her relationships and how she uses her time.

“I don’t do things differently to be different; I do what works for me,” she says. “To me, the commodity that we consistently overvalue is money, and what we undervalue is our precious and irreplaceable time. Though, of course, to the extent that money can save you time or make it easier to accomplish things, it’s a wonderful thing.”

While Ms. Boynton may make all of this sound relatively straightforward, she has overcome hurdles in three industries that have routinely tripped up or roundly laid low legions of would-be entrepreneurs.

MS. BOYNTON, 54, describes what she calls an “absurdly happy childhood” in Philadelphia. The third of four daughters, she attended Germantown Friends, a K-12 Quaker school famed for its arts education and interdisciplinary teaching. Her father, Robert Boynton, was an English teacher at the school. “The best English teacher I ever had,” she says.

She was fascinated by business at an early age and remembers selling pretty yellow flowers door to door for a dime when she was 8. Later, she discovered that they were weeds, but she still had takers. “I always liked selling things,” she says. “It gives you a sense of self-sufficiency.”

When Ms. Boynton was 14, a local newspaper printed drawings from an exhibit of her school artwork. She used the $40 she earned from her first published work to invest in two shares of AT&T — though she mistakenly thought she was buying shares of I.B.M. She still has the stock but has no clue how much it is worth.

Stocks held a special glamour for her: Her grandfather worked at a silver company, rising from the mailroom to the vice president’s perch. “Family legend has it that the company offered penny-a-share stock to employees, and he bought as much as he could afford,” she says. “And he became a wealthy man. That stock eventually put most of his 17 grandchildren through college.”

In addition to her investing activity, she developed a strong interest in art, music, literature and writing — all of which were central to the Friends curriculum. The school was so stimulating, academically and artistically, she says, that her first year at Yale was a disappointment.

At Yale, she majored in English, became involved in drama courses and productions and met her future husband, Jamie McEwan, in an acting class. She also worked on her drawing. Ever the entrepreneur, she started illustrating gift enclosure cards that were precursors of her animal-populated greeting cards.

In 1974, Ms. Boynton met Phil Friedmann, a partner in Recycled Paper Greetings, a greeting card company based in Chicago, at a stationery trade show. After Mr. Friedmann and his business partner, Mike Keiser, saw Ms. Boynton’s work, they asked her to start making cards for their company.

They wanted to pay her a flat rate. Though she was only 21 and unknown, Ms. Boynton, who had learned a lesson or two from her father’s other careers as a writer and publisher, demanded royalties.

“We quickly relented,” Mr. Keiser recalls of the royalty negotiations. It was a shrewd move on his part, too. He says that over about a decade — from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s — revenue at Recycled Paper went from $1 million to $100 million, largely because of the popularity of Boynton cards. Ms. Boynton has made 4,000 different cards for Recycled Paper, including the still popular “Hippo Birdies 2 Ewes” birthday card.

By Mr. Keiser’s rough estimate, Ms. Boynton has sold around a half-billion cards, which, he says, makes her one of the best-selling card creators of all time.

Her cards have become such a part of the mainstream that it is easy to forget how radical they were when they were introduced. Dominated by powerhouses like Hallmark and American Greetings, the card industry in the 1970s relied on flowery, color-saturated art and equally flowery prose, written in flourishes and curlicues.

Ms. Boynton’s cards, on the other hand, were populated with cats, cows, hippos, ducks, sheep, dragons and various other beasts, humanized through the placement of a dot for a pupil, or a single, expressive arc for an eyelid or mouth. She was also among the first greeting card artists to use white backgrounds.

Her cards were thoughtful, wry and whimsical. While the sentiments may have been unconventional, they resonated with the public.

“Things are getting worse,” said one card that featured a bewildered hippo. On the inside it said “please send chocolate.”

Whimsy, it turns out, had been undervalued. And the big card companies eventually took some of their artistic cues from her.

“It’s a lot easier to start in this business today than it was when Sandra Boynton got started,” Patti Stracher, manager of the National Stationery Show, the country’s biggest annual greeting card showcase. “She fueled a trend in what were then called alternative greeting cards. Alternative cards helped people communicate about topics that were really hard to address or that you could poke fun at.”

AFTER the cards came the books. Continuing with the chocolate theme, in 1982 Ms. Boynton published a general market book titled “Chocolate: the Consuming Passion” that became a best seller. Its publisher, the Workman Publishing Company, went on to print some of her children’s board books — small books with thick, boardlike pages, with 5 to 10 rhythmic words per page.

The books feature some of the same furry and feathery characters that her cards do, presenting a world that her editor of 27 years, Suzanne Rafer, calls “safe, unexpected and pleasurable” for children.

The most popular board book by Workman, “Barnyard Dance!” (“Bow to the horse. Bow to the cow. Bow to the horse if you know how.”) was published in 1993 and has 2.3 million copies in print.

Wendy Rhein of Atlanta has been reading Ms. Boynton’s books to her son, Nathan, 2 1/2, since he was born. “The drawings are entertaining,” she said, “and there’s a lyricism and rhyming that goes on that’s very singsong, and they’re fun for me to read to him.”

Succeeding in the children’s book market is hard and becoming more so, said Michael K. Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, a market research firm. Technology is luring children away from books, and only a small percentage of children’s books wind up on families’ shelves.

“The market favors authors who have built up their brands over time,” Mr. Norris says. He says she also has an edge because “she knows exactly who her audience is and knows how to reach them.”

FROM books, Ms. Boynton decided to extend her rhythmic sensibility into song. She says she was helped along by “dumb luck.”

When she was working on the album “Philadelphia Chickens” in 2001, for instance, she told Mike Ford, her songwriting partner, that Meryl Streep (a fellow Yale alumna and a friend) was the only person who could do justice to the song “Nobody Understands Me.”

The very next day, Ms. Streep happened to stop by her studio. She recorded the song and then suggested that the actor Kevin Kline might want to record one, too. He sang “Busybusybusy.” Another friend of Ms. Boynton’s, Laura Linney, sang for the album, and Ms. Linney helped arrange for Eric Stoltz to put in an appearance.

Buoyed by her Hollywood supporters, Ms. Boynton approached some of the biggest names in the music industry — including Alison Krauss, Blues Traveler and the Spin Doctors — to contribute to her next album, “Dog Train.” From there, she was able to persuade some of her music idols — including Neil Sedaka, B. B. King, Steve Lawrence and Davy Jones — to sing on her most recent effort, called “Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Never.”

It was lucky, Ms. Boynton says, that many managers of the big musical acts were men in their 30s who had young children who loved her books. And there was another stroke of luck: she decided to use her longtime publisher, Workman, to package her CDs inside of books instead of selling them in music stores. In retrospect, that alternative form of distribution was a stroke of genius, because it came just as the music business seemed to be imploding.

Ms. Boynton’s studio is not far from the farmhouse that she and her husband, Mr. McEwan — also a children’s book author — bought 28 years ago. In addition to creating greeting cards and children’s books, the couple also raised four children there, now ages 18 to 28.

The studio and her five-bedroom home, built in 1728, sit on 100 acres of rolling northwestern Connecticut countryside — evidence of a life that is comfortable, but not lavish.

When she is working on her music, Ms. Boynton drives five miles across winding rural roads to Mr. Ford, her songwriting partner, who also works out of a studio next to his house. The two sit side by side in leather chairs in front of an electronic keyboard and a computer loaded with music software, working to find the right sounds for her lyrics.

One three-minute song, from writing to final recording, can take a month to complete. She and Mr. Ford put in 14-hour days when they are in the thick of a project. “You have to enjoy the process of making it happen,” she says.

BECAUSE she has made so much money from her cards and books, Ms. Boynton says, she doesn’t need to rely on her CD business for income. Although the CDs make money for her publisher, she says they don’t make money for her. Essentially, she views them as “loss leaders” — products that are valuable not because they are profitable but because they help her maintain contact with her audience.

That philosophy helped persuade the blues singer B. B. King to record “One Shoe Blues” on her most recent CD. The song is a soulful lament that captures a toddler’s anguish about not being able to find a missing shoe when Mama is ready to go.

“At the level of detail I think is necessary to make them what they are, they simply can’t pay for themselves,” Ms. Boynton says of the CDs. “In purely business terms, it’s an irrational enterprise. And it’s also the best work I do.”

Ms. Boynton doesn’t have an agent. She has just one employee: her assistant, Kathleen Sherrill. There is no Inc. or LLC after her name. She prefers to be an unincorporated business with an orbit of “licensees,” for lack of a better word, around her.

Whenever she has made products like stuffed animals, mugs, jewelry, sheets or towels, she has maintained control over the finished product so it doesn’t stray from her vision — or saturate the market.

“Theoretically, I could choose to trade artistic autonomy and pride in my work for increased income — say, by broadly licensing my characters to be used for television,” she says. But that would be foolish, she says.

“I love what I do, I love the people I work with, I care very much about the value of the work I create, and I don’t need more money than I have. This is not revolutionary philosophy. It’s just common sense.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/bu...17boynton.html





'Dilbert' Retells Story Of Iowan Fired Over Comic
Clark Kauffman

Is it a case of art imitating life, or life imitating art?

"Dilbert," the newspaper comic that routinely ridicules self-important office managers, is taking aim this week at an Iowa company that fired an employee for posting a "Dilbert" strip in the office.

In a bit of self-referential cartooning, "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams has penned a series of strips that indirectly describe the plight of Dave Steward, a former security supervisor for Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington. Steward, 50, a resident of Fort Madison, was fired by the casino last fall after seven years of employment. He had posted on an office bulletin board a "Dilbert" strip in which the protagonist compares his bosses to a bunch of "drunken lemurs."

Casino managers were not amused. By reviewing surveillance tapes, they determined that Steward was responsible for posting the cartoon. They fired him and accused him of not being a "team player."

The dismissal became national news after The Des Moines Register reported the outcome of a hearing at which the casino challenged Steward's claim for unemployment benefits. The casino's human resources director, Steve Morley, testified that "upper management" was offended by the cartoon. "Basically, he was accusing the decision-makers of being drunken lemurs," Morley testified.

The judge in the case sided with Steward and said his actions represented an error in judgment, not intentional misbehavior.

In a new series of "Dilbert" comics that begins today, Steward's bosses — represented by the strip's infamous Pointy-Haired Boss — are lampooned for their actions. Steward is depicted by Wally, the strip's bespectacled, coffee-swilling office drone. Steve Morley is portrayed by Catbert, the evil human resources director.

You can read today's "Dilbert" strip here.

In one of the strips, Adams gives his take on Steward's dismissal.

Catbert: "Wally, I have to fire you for posting a comic comparing managers to drunken lemurs. You won't be eligible for unemployment benefits unless you can prove you were stupid as opposed to malicious. Can you prove you're stupid?"

Wally: "Is there another explanation for working here?"

Another strip features a reporter from the "Dogbert Gazette" pursuing the story and searching for quotes to support his thesis that the man responsible for the firing is a "humorless stain on the soul of humanity."

Adams acknowledged in an interview that Steward's firing was the impetus for this week's series of comics.

"I know good comic fodder when I see it," he said, "and any chance to mock the humorless is worth the effort."

Asked whether he was amused, honored or embarrassed to be immortalized in "Dilbert," Steward said it was a combination of all those things. He said he is a big fan of Adams' work.

"I have five of his books," Steward said. "My wife and I both comment on how they relate to (the casino). She worked there from 1994 to 1998, so she knew what I was going through. The day I was fired, she went to work and the same comic was on several of the bulletin boards where she works. Nobody got fired."

Morley declined to comment on the new "Dilbert" comics.

Steward, who is still looking for work, said the news stories about his dismissal last year prompted a lot of people to get in touch with him.

"I received a lot of 'attaboys' from everyone," he said. "Ex-employees, current employees and patrons were not happy about me getting fired for something so trivial."

As for this week's comics, Steward said he probably will add them to his scrapbook.

But will he ever post a "Dilbert" at his workplace again?

"If I thought I would get the same results as I did that time, no," he said. "I hope to work somewhere that has a sense of humor — when I find something."
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/app...NEWS/802200382





For Publisher in Los Angeles, Cuts and Worse
Richard Pérez-Peña

The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,000 terrazzo-and-brass stars embedded in the sidewalk, bearing names from eminent to obscure (Strongheart the dog, anyone?). The walk attracts tourists, but most locals step over — make that drive past — without noticing.

When The Los Angeles Times received a star last year, it was met at the paper with shrugs, eye rolls and grumbling about money ill-spent (the local chamber of commerce charges $25,000 for the honor). But it meant something to the new publisher, David D. Hiller, who enthusiastically attended the installation and told editors that the newspaper should cover it. They protested that the idea amounted to using a news-free stunt for unseemly self-congratulation, and Mr. Hiller deferred to their judgment.

“You know what? I did get a kick out of it, and I thought it was great for the paper, and I thought it was fun,” Mr. Hiller said about the Walk of Fame ceremony. “And if that makes me star-struck, then I’m guilty as charged.”

Mr. Hiller never had much chance of getting the benefit of the doubt at The Times, one of a handful of newspapers with a claim to national standing: its daily circulation of almost 800,000 is the fourth-largest circulation of any American newspaper and the largest in the West, and it dominates the second-biggest market in the country, after New York.

But The Times has also been battered by years of flagging revenue, management turnover and newsroom cutbacks.

The paper’s owner, the Tribune Company of Chicago, sent Mr. Hiller to California in late 2006 to impose some discipline, fiscal and otherwise. He took the place of a popular publisher and promptly fired a popular top editor, both of them forced out for refusing to carry out the latest round of staff cuts ordered by Tribune.

Last week, after a very bumpy 16 months, he hired a new editor, Russ Stanton. He also has a new boss, Samuel Zell, a real estate billionaire who took the Tribune Company private in December, saying that he was giving more autonomy to Mr. Hiller and other chiefs of Tribune properties.

But with the company scraping to meet heavy debt payments, Mr. Hiller faces the daunting task of showing his new bosses that he can turn around a paper hit by an industrywide contraction, a California real estate slump and internal dissension.

Within The Times, however, many employees dismiss Mr. Hiller, 53, as a star-struck outsider, a meddler in the newsroom who does not understand journalism or Los Angeles.

The Walk of Fame episode became emblematic of the view at The Times of Mr. Hiller and Tribune generally, and it was cited repeatedly in interviews with current and former business executives, editors and reporters, nearly all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they said they feared retribution for speaking out.

He does not entirely disagree with the criticism of the old Tribune Company or even of him, though he says much of it is overstated.

“What we have to do is get beyond the history,” Mr. Hiller said in an interview on Friday. “And I’m really confident that we’re doing that. This is no longer about Chicago versus L.A. This is about how does The L.A. Times change.”

His first major act of the new Tribune era came last month, when he ousted yet another top editor, James E. O’Shea, who had gradually won the trust of his staff and, like his predecessors, refused to make more newsroom cuts. The newsroom has about 870 employees, down from a high of about 1,200, and Mr. Hiller says he expects to lower that number by 40 to 50 this year.

“If I had my way and if business were great, I wouldn’t cut anybody in the newsroom, or in most other departments,” he said, adding that he believes in the public service mission of newspapers. “We are stretched to the max trying to cover the complexity of our region the way we’d like to.”

The turmoil continued Monday, when John Montorio, one of two managing editors — the second-highest newsroom position — announced that he would leave the paper this month.

Mr. Montorio, who oversees the feature sections, said that Mr. Stanton “has just decided to take the features department in a new direction, that he wanted a new leader. And that is the right of every new leader, to choose his own team.”

Tribune does not report each property’s performance, but through November, the company said that 2007 newspaper ad revenue had fallen 8.5 percent (compared with about 7 percent in the entire industry) and that Los Angeles had among the sharpest declines in retail and classified ads. Mr. Hiller said he expected another drop in 2008.

A person who had been shown the numbers said The Times had earnings of $240 million in 2006 and $192 million in 2007 (before interest, taxes, amortization and depreciation), and projected about $150 million this year before the announced cuts — figures that Mr. Hiller said were roughly accurate.

Former executives say that the paper had an operating profit margin above 20 percent until two or three years ago and that it is in the midteens now. Some executives within Tribune said the company wants The Times to match last year’s cash flow, a tall order in this economic climate.

Mr. O’Shea has argued that focused newsroom investments, like a successful fashion section that was started last year, can generate more ad revenue. Mr. Hiller agrees that some of those ideas work, but he has also said that The Times cannot spend its way to profits and that Mr. O’Shea and his predecessor, Dean Baquet, had trouble accepting financial reality.

Mr. Hiller’s relationships with his top editors have been worsened by less-than-straight shooting, according to several people at the paper — fed, they said, by his aversion to direct confrontation. Mr. Hiller said that Mr. O’Shea left by mutual agreement; Mr. O’Shea, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said that he was fired, and after Mr. Hiller had already talked to others about dismissing him.

When he arrived in October 2006, Mr. Hiller said that he wanted to work with Mr. Baquet and that he did not have in mind specific numbers of jobs to cut. Some high-ranking officials at The Times say that he told them privately then that he did have specific targets, and a month into the job, he fired Mr. Baquet.

“It was a constant treadmill of cuts, and nobody ever said: ‘Let’s catch our breath. Let’s figure out some sort of long-term plan,’ ” said Mr. Baquet, who is now an assistant managing editor and the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times. “When you tried to have a conversation about where you’re going strategically, the answer was always, ‘Let’s just get past this next round of cuts.’ ”

Several other top editors and some business-side executives — some still at the paper, some not — voiced the same complaint.

“I think that’s been true in the past,” Mr. Hiller said. “We have spent the last six months putting together a long-range plan of just that sort,” though the plan is not complete. “I totally agree,” he said. “If you can’t paint that picture, you can’t take people there.”

But his statements and actions, like firing Mr. O’Shea, strongly suggest that the friction between him and his fractious paper will continue. Even Mr. Stanton, the new editor Mr. Hiller appointed, said in an address to the newsroom on Thursday that he was “hopping mad” about the seemingly endless cuts, and that they had to stop.

Top Times executives have discussed letting marketing executives control the monthly Sunday magazine, rather than leaving it to editors, though Mr. Hiller says no decisions about that have been made. The idea touches on the traditional tension in journalism, between profiting as a business and making independent judgments about what information to deliver, without concern for advertisers’ interests.

Mr. Hiller has sent notes to reporters suggesting or assessing articles, to the frustration of editors who see it as inappropriate.

Last Friday, Mr. Hiller put Jack D. Klunder, a well-regarded executive who joined The Times long before Tribune took over, in charge of the paper’s business operations. And he announced that the widely criticized chief of ad sales, a Tribune veteran sent from Chicago, would leave.

Colleagues doubt that Mr. Hiller could have made such moves under the old Tribune regime that promoted its own and mistrusted Times veterans.

The paradox of Mr. Hiller’s position is that, by all accounts, he is outgoing and wants to be well-liked. Within the company, he has been called “the class president” and “the cheerleader.”

A Harvard-educated lawyer, Mr. Hiller joined the Tribune Company 20 years ago. He oversaw its Internet operations from 2000 to 2004, then served as publisher of The Chicago Tribune for two years.

For years, as newspaper Web sites became deeper, richer and more complex, Tribune’s sites fell behind, limiting their ability to draw readers and advertisers. Just last week, the Times Web site added the ability to put hyperlinks in its articles, something other major papers have had for as long as a decade.

But The Times’s site has improved significantly since he arrived, adding video and dozens of blogs. It had 5.7 million unique United States visitors in January, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, fifth among newspaper sites, behind The New York Times (20.5 million), USA Today (12.3 million), The Washington Post (9.9 million) and The Wall Street Journal (7 million).

Mr. Hiller revels in the publisher’s traditional role (much diminished at most papers) as a prominent civic figure, meeting with elected officials and serving on the boards of nonprofit organizations.

His duty and the paper’s is to be “a very visible citizen in the community,” he said. “I’m a booster of things that are good in Los Angeles.”

Mr. Hiller clearly has a fondness for show business and enjoys life in his adopted home. Last year, he used the newsroom’s allotment of tickets to attend the Oscars. When The Times had a 125th birthday party, he took the microphone and sang “Hello, Dolly” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to several hundred employees.

He said, “I’m hoping the Dodgers or the Angels are going to invite me to sing the national anthem this year.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/bu...hiller.html?hp





A Plan to Offer 50 Sites on Politics in 50 States
Brian Stelter

In the middle of a media-saturated political season, Jared Kushner, publisher of The New York Observer, has been quietly nurturing an ambitious political journalism venture.

The plan is to pull together 50 Web sites, one for each state, into a political hub called Politicker.com. Each site will serve as an intensely local source for political articles, speculation and scandal, Mr. Kushner said.

Ten sites are online already, and the 11th, covering Kentucky, is scheduled to go up this week. Mr. Kushner hopes his multimillion-dollar investment — he would not be more specific — will attract an influential readership and, in turn, advertisers who want to reach those readers.

“Instead of taking out ads in five papers across the state, if you want to reach the most influential and politically active people, all you have to do is buy an ad package on the site,” he said.

The Observer Media Group, which owns both the namesake newspaper and the Politicker brand, has kept relatively quiet about the development of the state sites. They will most likely become more prominent when a national site aggregating the local content starts within the next few weeks.

“We view this as one of the most ambitious projects right now in journalism,” said Robert Sommer, the president of the Observer Media Group. “We’re basically creating 50 news bureaus with full-time reporters in each state.”

Mr. Sommer said that the company saw itself filling the political news niche that budget-strapped local newspapers are increasingly deserting. But the Politicker network faces some formidable challenges — primarily, figuring out who, exactly, will advertise on the sites.

Even in this early stage, some of the Politicker sites are performing better than others. The Oregon site broke the news of a congresswoman’s retirement two weeks ago, and the Maine site obtained an interview with Barack Obama ahead of the state’s caucuses. But other sites are drawing criticism because they are updated infrequently. An online magazine in Vermont said that the local Politicker had received “a whopping zero” comments from readers.

The company also has to prove that it can replicate the success of PoliticsNJ.com, a widely read and well-regarded guide to New Jersey politics that Mr. Kushner purchased in a private transaction last March. Mr. Kushner would not share traffic figures, but said that the New Jersey site had performed “much better than I expected” and had already become profitable.

The company has used the redesigned PoliticsNJ.com as a model for the expansion. The first states added to the portfolio — New Hampshire, Maine, Nevada, Oregon — were relatively small states with competitive Senate or presidential races. The company hopes to have sites in 20 states by Election Day before expanding to all 50 states by the end of 2009.

The company already employs 30 people, including James Pindell, a former political blogger for The Boston Globe who became managing editor of the site last month. The strategy is straightforward: Mr. Pindell will hire young journalists, send them to state capitals with little more than a laptop and a BlackBerry, and let them build each state site.

What the young reporters lack in experience, they make up for in passion about politics, Mr. Sommer said.

“They can quote what happened in a Congressional race in Arizona in 1952 even though their parents weren’t born yet, the same way I can tell you every pitch from Tom Seaver’s near-perfect game in 1969,” he said.

Mr. Sommer said that in the future, the company plans to require subscriptions for some parts of the Politicker sites, but until then will rely entirely on advertising revenue.

Most states will be covered by one or two reporters, one editor working on contract from inside the state, and an undetermined number of bloggers. The editors — who will remain anonymous, and will include lawyers, lobbyists and former officeholders — are the “secret sauce,” Mr. Sommer said.

Although their anonymity lends an aura of mystery, many of the editors will have partisan ties and political leanings. Mr. Kushner, whose father was a major Democratic fund-raiser, emphasized that the Web sites were not affiliated with any political party or ideological agenda.

Jay Rosen, a blogger and professor of journalism at New York University, said that sites like the Politicker are partly a consequence of declining investments in newsgathering by local newspapers and television stations. He said the venture’s success would depend on whether it stressed original reporting.

“If they can invest in people on a full-time basis digging up information and connecting with constituencies, then it can work,” he said. “If it’s just warmed-over news from elsewhere and snappy opinion, that’s not going to make much of a difference.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/te...8observer.html





Identity Cards 'Useless in Fight Against Terrorism'

Mass fingerprinting, biometric passports, identity cards and international identity databases will not protect Britain and other European countries from terrorists or criminals.

This startling admission comes in a leaked European Commission report prepared for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and other EU Home Affairs Ministers.

The report undermines Gordon Brown's claims about the need for controversial new passports and identity cards to protect the country from terror attacks.

It raises new questions about the true purpose of Government databases, which will store intimate details of everyone in Britain, including their picture, fingerprints and confidential personal information.

The EU report, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, says most people behind terror attacks in the UK and Europe were living in the EU legally and so would not be affected by increased security measures.

It says: "None of the policy options contribute markedly to reducing terrorism or serious crime.

July 7th tube bombing: The EU report says most people behind terror attacks in the UK and Europe were living in the UK legally and so would not be affected by increased security measures

"In view of the latest terrorist acts in the area of the EU... the perpetrators have mainly been EU citizens or foreigners residing and living here with official permits."

But it does say that the new technology could save money by using automated checks at borders.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770





Nursery Installs Fingerprint Scanner at Door

Fingerprinting students in school is controversial, and many parents object to it; less controversial is installing fingerprint scanners at nurseries' doors, to make sure that only parents and authorized personnel are allowed in

A growing, if controversial, trend: A nursery has installed fingerprint scanning at its entrance to increase the safety of its young pupils. The biometric security system at Mes Enfants nursery in Mumbles, Swansea, allows only authorized parents and staff to access the building. When registered people swipe their finger, their details also flash up on a computer so staff know who is there. Nursery owner Rebecca Treharne said the aim was to give parents and staff added confidence.

The nursery has been running for five-and-a-half years and has 100 children on its books, aged from four months to four-and-a-half years old. It believes it could be the first nursery in Wales to adopt such a system for staff and parents. Treharne said: "I like the nursery to be quite forward thinking and modern in approach. I think this is the way forward. Parents are automatically conscious of security, happiness and wellbeing. In nursery this has to be a priority. Security has to be on top of the list."

Feedback from parents had been positive, said Treharne, and the new system -- which also has video and audio -- was better than the buzzer and intercom they previously had. It also eased the workload on staff, she added, as they did not have to leave children to open the front door so can spend more time supervising their pupils. The system was installed by Newcastle-based UK Biometrics which also uses iris recognition and facial patterns in its security products. The scanner registers a fingerprint in seconds and then stores an encrypted version for future comparison, protecting the identity of authorised users. UK Biometrics director Ryan Hole said: "By fitting a biometric access system they now have the one key that cannot be lost, stolen, forged or hacked - the human fingerprint".
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=5569





China Asks Web Sites to Eradicate Porn and Violence

China has called on domestic Web sites to sign a voluntary pact governing online video and audio content, saying they should exercise self-censorship to ensure a "healthy and orderly" cyberspace.

The move is part of government efforts to exert greater control over China's rapidly growing Internet sector, and to prevent content deemed harmful or subversive from getting into the public domain.

Eight "central" Web sites on Friday signed the pact requiring them to eradicate pornography and violence, which had "seriously polluted the online environment and affected the growth of young people", the national broadcast watchdog said.

"The signatories should actively disseminate healthy, beneficial audio-visual programmes meeting socialist moral norms," reads the text of the pact drafted by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

"Decadent, backward thoughts and culture must be boycotted by all," according to a copy of the pact posted on the administration's Web site (www.sarft.gov.cn). Content related to gambling and "horror" were also targeted.

Signatories so far included the sites of official news agency Xinhua, Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily and other state media organisations.

China has seen robust growth of its Internet population -- 210 million by the end of 2007 -- in the past decade, fostering a dynamic, diverse and sometimes vulgar cyberspace which often defies the more puritanical official culture.

The Ministry of Information Industry unveiled new rules on online video and audio content banning violent, pornographic and fake material late last year.

The rules stipulate that Web sites offering broadcast or streaming services should be run by state-invested bodies. Sites that have a clean record would be able to reapply for independent operating licences.

The pact asked Web sites to use an online database (net.tv.cn) set up by the watchdog where there was a pool of recommended "excellent" audio-visual programmes and a list of illegal content that must be avoided.

Web sites were also obliged to delete improper content uploaded by ordinary Internet users and to protect intellectual property, according to the pact.

(Reporting by Guo Shipeng and Ben Blanchard; Editing by David Fogarty)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/200802...553508c_1.html





Penis Artist Enters Himself for Prize

'Pricasso', the Aussie artist who uses his penis as a brush, has entered a racy self-portrait for Australia's top art prize.

Tim Patch, who calls himself Pricasso, usually exposes his talents at sex product fairs around the world, but has decided to go upmarket by entering a painting for Australia's Archibald Prize - the nation's top award for portraiture.

In a unique painting style, Patch does not use paint brushes but rather his penis to apply paint to the canvas.

'I had to use my bum to paint in the background, because you have to have the occasional break,' Patch told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Wednesday.

Patch entered a painting of a plastic surgeon in last year's Archibald Prize, but failed to impress the judges. This year's entry depicts a nude Patch, wearing only a hat, holding a blank canvas to hide his 'brush'.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney expects up to 700 portraits to be entered for the 2008 Archibald Prize, with the finalists to be announced in March.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article...6&in_page_id=2





A Journey Shaped by a Guitar
Peter Gerstenzang

EVEN though Nazareth, Pa., isn’t quite the holy city its namesake is, pilgrims with a musical bent still go there every weekday in search of a potentially spiritual experience. They head to a quaint brick building, lured by the promise of taking a tour at the C. F. Martin & Company guitar factory.

More than 200 guitars are made at Martin each day, many more than when the company first opened in New York City in 1833 (it moved to Nazareth in 1839). But for any guitar player or music lover, getting to see the basic stages in the creation of a Martin moves them powerfully, putting some in touch with emotions they might have thought too inaccessible to be reached.

Martins are arguably the most coveted acoustic guitar on earth — satisfied customers include Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Freedy Johnston — and wherever pickers and grinners gather to resurrect time-honored chestnuts, from “Helpless” to “Sugarfoot Rag,” there’s a good chance that there will be a Martin chiming in. A trip to the factory could almost be considered a journey to the Lourdes of twang.

Given Martin’s humble origins, today’s factory is surprisingly large and modern, built in 1964. The barn-red Martin building replicates the facade of the first Nazareth factory, but from the outside it looks to be playing host-victim to an industrial plant large enough to churn out cars and trucks.

Inside, the Plek fret-dressing machine hums, lathes turn and sanders buzz as instruments are made in large numbers (81,000 last year). Plus, there’s a spanking clean lobby, a gift shop, a guitar museum and a sparkling white bathroom that pipes in, fittingly enough, a bluegrass radio station.

The tour itself also makes use of modern headsets, so you can hear the guide’s narrative above the impressive whine of guitars being birthed. But once the pilgrims make their way and start seeing guitars in various stages of completion, that holy look creeps back into their eyes. Sometimes, mixed with tears.

That was the case last October with Beverly Goskowski, from nearby Hellertown, whose horn-rims showed a studious side, but whose leather jacket whispered, “rebel.” Ms. Goskowski really did think of her trip to Nazareth and Martin as something, well, related to the soul.

“I came here seven years ago with my granddad,” she said. “He passed over the summer, and I guess I’m trying to recapture the fun we had when we first came. Or to say goodbye to him. I don’t know which, really.”

Ms. Goskowski said all this in a strangely amplified voice mangled by the headset. She wept a bit, removed her glasses, wiped her eyes and chuckled at the tender moment being distorted by a modern contraption.

“Granddad, whose name was George H. Giltenboth, didn’t play an instrument or anything, but he loved music,” she said. “When we went on the tour, he kept grabbing the tour guide’s arm, asking her to repeat certain facts, always calling her ‘honey,’ or ‘dear.’ He loved being here.”

THE tour guide on this day, a careworn but cheerful woman named Steph Tashner, who started here “11 years ago in the stringing department,” took the group of eight, mostly guitar geeks, on a sort of fast-forwarded version of the making of a Martin. The tour started with discussions and descriptions of types of wood — the tops are usually made with spruce, the sides and backs with mahogany and rosewood — and ended with a look at a few finished instruments.

In between, the faithful watched Martin employees soak wood so it could be bent into the sides of guitars; use clothespins to glue the interior linings; smooth frets; and stain bodies.

The employees number 560, ranging in appearance from old hippies with graying ponytails to women who would have fit right into a factory scene from “Norma Rae.” The once little company, which produced 368 guitars in 1898, now covers 200,000 square feet.

Covering the walls are pictures of some of its best-known customers, including Dylan, Young, Stephen Stills and Robbie Robertson. The 60s just might have been less groovy without Martin guitars.

Prices for the factory-made guitars range from $299 to many thousands of dollars. The most popular Martin model, the D-28, retails for $2,849. And Martin still makes custom guitars that can cost more than $100,000.

It’s also possible to take a guitar there for repairs. That was why Jeffrey Lyons, a Toronto musician, was there.

“The action on the fretboard of my D-28 is higher than I’d like,” Mr. Lyons said. “The guitar is buzzing too much when I play gigs. So, I thought, I’d bring the ax down here to have them fine-tune it, leave it and then take the tour.

“Aside from that problem, though, the guitar is great. It has a really bright and consistent tone, and it’s particularly good for ballads.”

Underscoring Mr. Lyons’s decision to bring in his imperfect guitar is a display on a wall near one of the factory’s many workstations. There are bits and pieces of broken Martins glued there, surrounded by the words “Don’t Let This Happen To You!”

Ms. Tashner nodded at the display and at Mr. Lyons. “We don’t recommend that you fix your guitar yourself,” she said with a wry smile.

Near the end of the tour it was also possible to see how technology had changed even the wooden-guitar industry. Behind a glass window, a long mechanical arm could be seen polishing the body of a nearly finished guitar.

“Yes, sometimes we have a robot do the work here,” Ms. Tashner said. “Not only does it do a great job, but it is smart, ergonomically speaking. Better that a robot arm hold up and polish a guitar all day than a human one.”

She didn’t say, though, whether it could play a Lester Flatt G-run.

HEADPHONES were collected and the pickers in the group assembled in the room where several sample Martins were available to play. Ms. Goskowski lingered there, still thinking about her grandfather.

Her cousin Scott Honeychurch, a Southerner wearing a black cowboy hat and boots, picked up a guitar. Almost on cue, as Ms. Goskowski started her story again, Mr. Honeychurch began playing random country licks that evolved into “Wabash Cannonball,” a perfect bit of scoring for Ms. Goskowski’s tale.

“The first time I came here with my granddad, seven years ago, was right after my grandmother, his wife, died,” she said. “Granddad wasn’t much for socializing or leaving the house, and I thought this would be a good place to start the process. Especially since he loved music so much.

“I think he started feeling better about things just after he came on the tour. After that, he started accepting invitations to people’s houses for dinner and, little by little, enjoying life again. I credit this place, in some small way, with keeping him alive.”

“So,” she added, “I think I’m going to do this every once in a while. Make my pilgrimage to the Martin factory and take the tour. It’s the best way I can think of to celebrate Granddad’s life.”
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/02/22...guitar.html?hp





A Wild Welcome to a German Teen-Pop Band
Kelefa Sanneh

If you had found yourself on Irving Place on Monday afternoon you might have noticed a few hundred amped-up fans — mainly young, almost exclusively female — standing in line. And you might have wondered what was going on.

And if you had shown up at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza a few hours later for the concert that drew such an eager crowd ... well, you might still have wondered what was going on.

The occasion was the first New York performance by Tokio Hotel, a German act that scrambles musical categories in a way that feels ideally suited to the current era. Why shouldn’t fans go nuts for a goth-punk boy band influenced by the darkly theatrical love songs of HIM (from Finland) and AFI (from California) and led by a sexy androgyne with spectacular hair? Why shouldn’t the members of Tokio Hotel be given a chance to bring their not-quite-idiomatic refrains — “We are here tonight/Leave the world aside” — to the United States?

Now they have that chance. In April they plan to release their first American album, “Scream” (Cherrytree/Interscope). And their Monday performance was one of a few concerts — including one in Los Angeles last Friday — designed to introduce the band in this country. (Tokio Hotel regularly tops the charts in Germany and has had hits throughout Europe.) On Monday night no introduction was needed; most of those fans had already discovered the band online.

To watch Tokio Hotel live is to gaze at that gender-bending singer, who answers to the disappointingly unglamorous name of Bill Kaulitz. He is 18, and he looks like an anime version of Christian Siriano, the precocious star of this season’s “Project Runway.”

In his soft, pleading voice you can hear some of the complications of life as a teen idol: to his fans he’s not only a sex symbol but also a potential confidant and maybe a role model; he is an intermediate figure, standing between the girls in the crowd and the men in the band. But compared with Mr. Kaulitz, those band members (including his identical but very differently styled twin, Tom Kaulitz) couldn’t help but seem underwhelming. As they trudged, sometimes clumsily, through a short set, they seemed a lot less sophisticated than the skinny guy in front, who looks as if he has been honing his stage act since birth. If this concert was oddly delightful from start to finish, thank Bill Kaulitz, who should, with any luck, be thrilling and perplexing young Americans for the rest of the year.

During the best songs — like “Monsoon,” one of the band’s biggest hits — the contrast between singer and band was charming. “Monsoon” is effective because it’s surprisingly restrained: the music stays quiet, and the band doesn’t really kick in until after the second chorus. And when the noise finally came, there was a pleasing sense of devolution, as a teen-pop juggernaut with eyes on an American prize regressed into an exuberant garage band, making a gleeful racket.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/ar...ic/20toki.html