Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 6th, '09

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"Creative destruction is an integral part of economic history. It may not be pretty, but the free market left to its own devices will come up with a model." – Tom Corbett


"It's equally telling, if not more important, on the copyright side. It's a very clear confirmation that the kind of policy laundering that many of us have been concerned about, where you get large U.S. and Canadian lobby groups trying to launder their positions through seemingly independent groups, is exactly what's taking place." – Michael Geist


"I am a great believer in proportionality and as a citizen I worry about the loss of my liberties...and while what happened on 9/11 was a dreadful and serious event, in no way did it threaten the integrity of western civilisation." – Sir Richard Dearlove


































June 6th, 2009




UK Web Pirates Placed in 'Slow Lane'
BBC

The government has all but ruled out using a "three strikes" law to tackle persistent net pirates.

Using warnings and disconnection to tackle pirates was thought to be in the final Digital Britain report due to be published on 16 June.

Cutting people off was not the government's "preferred option", said culture secretary Andy Burnham in a music industry conference keynote.

Instead, he said, the report will back "technical solutions" as a deterrent.

Mr Burnham made his comments during a keynote speech at Music Week's Making Online Music Pay conference.

The interim Digital Britain report was released on 29 January, 2009. The wide-ranging review looked at everything from broadband speeds to internet regulation and public service broadcasting.

The final review was widely expected to back a so-called three strikes law that music companies have called for. This would see a person's net connection terminated if they ignored official warnings about pirating digital content.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, said this was not the government's preferred option now that net access was as valuable as other utilities such as water and electricity.

Although unwilling to give exact details, the spokesman said: "The Digital Britain report coming out soon will build on last year's Memorandum of Understanding between content holders and ISPs to tackle illegal file sharing."

"It is likely to include an obligation on ISPs to send out letters to people who are infringing copyright," he said.

"What Mr Burnham also said was there was the likelihood that the MoU would be backed up by new powers for Ofcom to impose 'technical solutions' for repeat offenders if that process of sending out letters was not effective enough," added the spokesman.

It is not yet clear what those "technical solutions" would be though Mr Burnham said they would involve ways to "limit or restrict" file-sharing activity.

Mar Mulligan, vice president at Forrester Research, took this to mean that pirates would gradually have their connection speed dialled down.

"It instinctively sounds like a decent compromise," said Mr Mulligan.

"We know that ISPs currently use a mix of technical solutions to manage traffic at peak times," he said. "The ISPs already have the technical infrastructure to implement this kind of stuff."

"The sign of a good compromise is one that going to annoy both sides," he said. "I think ISPs will have an issue with it and so will the music labels."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/8083866.stm





BT Accused of Throttling
Rory Cellan-Jones

Britain's biggest broadband supplier has been accused of limiting download speeds on its cheapest package without giving users a clear warning.

BT Broadband cuts the speed users can watch video services like the BBC iPlayer and YouTube at peak times.

A customer who has signed on to an up to 8 megabit per second (MBPS) package can have speed cut to below 1Mbps.

A BT spokesman said the firm managed bandwidth "in order to optimise the experience for all customers".

The BBC said it was concerned the throttling of download speeds was affecting the viewing experience for some users.

Customers who opt for BT's Option 1 broadband deal will find that the speed at which they can watch streaming video is throttled back to under 1Mbps between 1700 and midnight.

The BBC iPlayer works at three different speeds, 500Kbps, 800Kbps, and 1.5Mbps, depending on the speed of a user's connection. There is also a high definition service which requires 3.2Mbps.

Sources at the BBC said the effect of BT's policy was to force viewers down on to the 500Kbps service, which can make the viewing experience less satisfactory.

Andrew Griffiths, a BT customer in south London, said he had noticed a drastic slowdown in the speed of his BT internet connection in the evenings.

He said: "From about 1730 onwards something like BBC iPlayer becomes impossible. It's fine during the day but come the evening, it's a no go."

Mr Griffiths explained he was on the basic package, and was promised a connection of between 5Mbps and 8Mbps.

"We get nowhere near that. We've tried to contact them numerous times to complain but without success."

In a statement, the BBC said: "While customers listening to audio and lower quality video streams would be unaffected, we are concerned that at peak times some customers' higher quality video streams may be interrupted by buffering before falling back to a lower-quality version.

"This would suggest that traffic identified as BBC iPlayer traffic is being throttled back, thereby limiting the bandwidth used up by the service on slower connections."

BT has said its speed limit is explained on its website, on a page describing its Total Broadband Fair Usage policy.

The clause in question says: "We do limit the speed of all video streaming to 896Kbps on our Option 1 product, during peak times only."

Steve Weller, from price comparison site USwitch.com, said BT was not alone in having fair use policies that were difficult to find.

'Hide terms'

He said: "Companies operating a traffic management policy usually hide their terms deep in the terms and conditions, making it difficult for customers wanting to get out of a contract."

Sources at the BBC said their data showed that speeds for BT's iPlayer users was reduced to around 700kbps at peak times.

The policy is not explained in the terms and conditions users see when they sign up to BT Broadband.

The BT website describes the Option 1 package as best for "high-speed broadband at home". There is a download cap of 10 gigabytes a month, but the advertising promises up to 8Mbps, and BT says "we'll offer the best speed available on your line".

But in a statement BT said it was not capping speeds down to 700kbps on iPlayer.

The firm said: "Where we manage bandwidth, we do so in order to optimise the experience for all customers, whatever they want to do online.

"We believe there is a real issue that content owners like the BBC need to address and we are currently in discussions with the BBC executive to ensure that our customers get the best possible experience in the future."

A number of major broadband suppliers limit speeds at peak times for some users, adopting what are known as traffic shaping policies.

Last year the regulator Ofcom brought in a voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds, which calls on Internet Service Providers to provide clear information about speeds when users sign up.

Ofcom said the code did not ask providers to make fair usage policies clear at point of sale, but they must be made clear on their websites.

Mr Weller, from uSwitch.com, said BT was not the only internet service provider trying to cope with growing demand by throttling back speeds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...gy/8077839.stm





Thousands Of Pirate Discs Seized Down Under
Lars Brandle

Australia's Music Industry Piracy Investigations unit played its part last week in two major operations in the state of Victoria, culminating in the seizure of thousands of illegal CDs and DVDs.

Acting on a tip off from the public, Victorian cops removed more than 15 disc burners from a music and movie rental store in Noble Park, Melbourne which was found to be illegally burning discs to sell to customers on site.

More than 2,000 albums from the likes of Robbie Williams, Christina Aguilera and Coldplay were seized, along with film titles such as "Australia" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Some titles on the racks weren't yet available in the country. An 18-year-old female is currently assisting police with their inquiries, according to MIPI.

The May 28 raid follows a bust two days earlier at a home in a home in Burnside, Melbourne, where authorities discovered 8,000 pirated movies and TV shows, 56 DVD-R burners and three printers from a home in Burnside, Melbourne. A 48-year-old female is understood to be assisting police with their inquiries.
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...ed30e36e744ee6





Can Washington Charge Unauthorized Downloaders With Tax Evasion?

A bunch of states have been pushing forward with plans to add taxes on digital downloads. The state of Washington apparently passed just such a law, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 26th. Nate sent in a note, pointing out that under a strict reading of the details of the bill you could see how the state could go after unauthorized downloaders as "tax evaders." Now, that may not be the case (and it would be great if we could get someone from the state to clarify), but it seems that what Nate is likely referring to is this explanation in the Q&A about the bill:

What is the value of the digital product for use tax purposes?

The value is the purchase price of the digital product. If the digital product is acquired by means other than a purchase, the value of the digital product is determined by the retail selling price of a similar digital product.

From that, you could easily conclude that anyone in Washington who downloads unauthorized files is now expected to pay a tax based on the "retail selling price" of the files. And, from there, it's not hard to see how failing to pay such a tax, could eventually be seen as tax evasion. How excited do you think that makes the RIAA? Remember, this is the same RIAA that suggested that the feds use copyright infringement laws to arrest drug dealers. You can check out the specific text (in Section 304) within the full bill (pdf file), which is basically the same as what's written above.

The feds eventually went after Al Capone on tax evasion charges. Are file sharers next?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200...49035107.shtml





War on Piracy More Important Than Right To Privacy
enigmax

A Swiss court has ruled that an anti-piracy tracking company can continue monitoring the public on the Internet. The court said that the need to fight illicit file-sharers outweighs the need to protect an individual’s privacy on the Internet, and that the ends justified the means.

logistepIn January 2008, infamous anti-piracy tracking outfit Logistep was criticized by the Swiss data protection commissioner for helping to breach the privacy of people on file-sharing networks. Logistep, which track file-sharers all over Europe, was given 30 days to stop collecting further data, or face further action.

It’s taken a while but according to a TSR report the Federal Administrative Court (TAF) has come to a decision, one which sees it overrule the Federal Data Protection commissioner’s decision of 2008.

The court said that the monitoring and data harvesting activities conducted by Logistep raise privacy concerns, since the individuals it monitors have no idea what data is being harvested and stored about them.

However, despite these worries the court decided that privacy concerns are trumped by the needs of the anti-piracy company, noting that a legal basis is not required for them to operate, since they operate exclusively in the private sphere.

The court said that the end justifies the means, since there are few other ways to deal with this type of online piracy. It would not be acceptable to turn a blind eye and allow people engaging in Internet piracy to avoid legal action, it said.

Logistep had (or still has) a partnership with lawyers Davenport Lyons and are currently working with lawyers ACS:Law to monitor and ultimately send threatening letters to alleged file-sharers in the UK. This decision by the court has no bearing on the UK cases, since it refers only to the monitoring of the Swiss public.

The verdict can be challenged within thirty days.
http://torrentfreak.com/war-on-pirac...rivacy-090604/





Clients Dictated Think-Tank Research: Former Employee
Sarah Schmidt

A former employee of the Conference Board of Canada on Wednesday accused the country's self-styled leading "independent" research organization of reworking a report on copyright after "push back" from one of the funding clients in the entertainment industry.

The conference board recalled three reports last week after admitting sections had been plagiarized from the main U.S. copyright lobby group representing the movie, music and software industries.

At the time, the conference board maintained that clients do not have any say in editorial content. But the person listed as the lead author came forward Wednesday to challenge this assertion.

Independent copyright experts say this latest twist further undermines research produced by the conference board and highlights the hardball tactics of the entertainment industry when it comes to copyright reform.

Curtis Cook, who was an employee of the conference board from September 2007 to July 2008, said the recently released final report did not resemble the draft he submitted.

He said there was "push back" from a client, who had been unhappy with his draft.

All references drawn from the research of University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy de Beer, who was commissioned by the conference board to summarize the debate among independent copyright experts on the subject, were struck, said Cook.

His draft also contained none of the plagiarized passages from a report by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a private-sector coalition of entertainment-industry groups.

In a statement, Cook said his supervisor at the conference board contacted him after he had submitted the draft to tell him "there had been 'push back' from one of the funding clients about the research and the inclusion of Mr. de Beer's contribution."

Cook, who by then had left the conference board for a job in British Columbia, also received a second call "around the same time" from "one of the funding clients who expressed similar concerns," according to his statement.

Cook told the client he was no longer employed by the organization and not involved in the research project anymore. In a brief interview, he declined to name the client, emphasizing he's concerned with the "approach the conference board has taken with it."

The think-tank confirmed last week it has several research contracts with the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Copyright Collective of Canada — the primary lobby groups in Canada calling for a hardline approach to copyright modelled on U.S. legislation.

But the think-tank declined Wednesday to say if these two groups were the clients in this specific instance, and declined to comment on Cook's allegations of client "push back." The recording industry association also declined to comment, saying inquiries about the research should be directed to the conference board.

"We are in the midst of a thorough review of the research project, and we're not going to discuss individual allegations until we've fully investigated all aspects of the project," conference board spokeswoman Yvette Diepenbrock said in a statement.

The conference board last week told Canwest News Service that both group were provided with an advance copy of the news release to announce the launch of the reports. The Copyright Collective of Canada, which represents U.S. producers and distributors in the movie and television industries, "suggested wording changes" to the release, but the conference board said none was incorporated into the final version.

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who levelled the initial charge of plagiarism after the report was released on May 29, said the news release first tipped him off to a problem with the "headline-grabbing claim" about "Canada seen as the file-swapping capital of the world." He said the line was plucked from an old news release from the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which cited a 2006 Pollara survey of 1,200 people.

Initially, the conference board stood by the reports, but recalled them two days later after an internal probe determined portions were plagiarized from the U.S. lobby group. Conference board president Anne Golden also said internal policy requiring research reports to be reviewed by an external reader was not followed.

Geist said this latest development undermines all research produced by the conference board.

"It's equally telling, if not more important, on the copyright side. It's a very clear confirmation that the kind of policy laundering that many of us have been concerned about, where you get large U.S. and Canadian lobby groups trying to launder their positions through seemingly independent groups, is exactly what's taking place," said Geist.

De Beer said Cook, who was his main point of contact at the conference board, took his contributions "seriously and objectively."

The law professor also said the final report did not include any of his contributions that appeared in the draft prepared by Cook.

"My reading is it aligns very closely with the position of the U.S. content industries and the Canadian recording industry and is inconsistent with recommendations of most independent experts," said de Beer.

"It's a very embarrassing situation for the organization, and certainly will tarnish their reputation for a long time."

In his statement, Cook said he asked the conference board president last week to remove his name as the lead author of the report and publicly acknowledge that he was not responsible for the plagiarized content.

"I am not prepared to wait for Anne Golden to conduct the review she promises because I have a pretty good sense of what happened, even though my involvement with the conference board and these reports ended with the submission of credible research 10 months ago."
http://www.canada.com/news/national/...760/story.html





On the Street and On Facebook: The Homeless Stay Wired

Mr. Pitts lacks a mailing address but he's got a computer and a web forum
Phred Dvorak

Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.

"You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper," says Mr. Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. "But you need the Internet."

Mr. Pitts's experience shows how deeply computers and the Internet have permeated society. A few years ago, some people were worrying that a "digital divide" would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack the means to buy computers and Web access. Still, in America today, even people without street addresses feel compelled to have Internet addresses.

Homeless and Online

Skip Schreiber goes online in his van, which is also his home, in San Francisco's Bayview district.

New York City has put 42 computers in five of the nine shelters it operates and plans to wire the other four this year. Roughly half of another 190 shelters in the city offer computer access. The executive director of a San Francisco nonprofit group, Central City Hospitality House, estimates that half the visitors to its new eight-computer drop-in center are homeless; demand for computer time is so great that users are limited to 30 minutes.

Shelter attendants say the number of laptop-toting overnight visitors, while small, is growing. SF Homeless, a two-year-old Internet forum, has 140 members. It posts schedules for public-housing meetings and news from similar groups in New Mexico, Arizona and Connecticut. And it has a blog with online polls about shelter life.

Cheap computers and free Internet access fuel the phenomenon. So does an increasingly computer-savvy population. Many job and housing applications must be submitted online. Some homeless advocates say the economic downturn is pushing more of the wired middle class on to the streets.

Aspiring computer programmer Paul Weston, 29, says his Macintosh PowerBook has been a "lifeboat" since he was laid off from his job as a hotel clerk in December and moved to a shelter. Sitting in a Whole Foods store with free wireless access, Mr. Weston searches for work and writes a computer program he hopes to sell eventually. He has emailed city officials to press for better shelter conditions.

Lisa Stringer, who runs a program that teaches job and computer skills to homeless and low-income residents, says some students who can't even read or write save money to buy computers at Goodwill. "It's really a symbol in today's society of being OK and connected," she says. She sometimes urges homeless students to put off buying laptops until their living situations stabilize.

Staying wired on the streets takes determination. Electricity and Internet access can be hard to come by. Threats, including rain and theft, are a problem.

Robert Livingston, 49, has carried his Asus netbook everywhere since losing his apartment in December. A meticulous man who spends some of his $59 monthly welfare check on haircuts, Mr. Livingston says he quit a security-guard job late last year, then couldn't find another when the economy tanked.

When he realized he would be homeless, Mr. Livingston bought a sturdy backpack to store his gear, a padlock for his footlocker at the shelter and a $25 annual premium Flickr account to display the digital photos he takes.

One recent morning, Mr. Livingston sat in a cafe that sometimes lets customers tap its wireless connection, and shows off his personal home page, featuring links for Chinese-language lessons.

Mr. Livingston says his computer helps him feel more connected and human. "It's frightening to be homeless," he says. "When I'm on here, I'm equal to everybody else."

For Skip Schreiber, 64, an amateur philosopher with wispy white hair who lives in a van, power is the biggest challenge to staying wired. Mr. Schreiber tended heating and ventilation systems before work-related stress and depression sidelined him around 15 years ago, he says.

For his 60th birthday, he dipped into his monthly disability check to buy a laptop, connected it to his car battery, and taught himself to use it. "I liked the concept of the Internet," says Mr. Schreiber, "this unlimited source of opinion and thought."

Mr. Schreiber later switched to a Mac because it uses less juice. He keeps the fan and wireless antenna off when possible and cools the laptop by putting it on a damp washcloth. He says that by using such tricks, he can keep the laptop battery going for 16 hours, if he avoids videos.

In the van, stacked with toolboxes, electric gear and bedding, Mr. Schreiber shows the contents of his laptop, including the complete California legal code and files on thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to the psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Mr. Schreiber says writings about human behavior and motivation help make sense of what has happened to him.

"No one creates themselves as a homeless person," he says. "We make the choices we can with what we're offered."

Michael Ross creates his own electricity, with a gas generator perched outside his yellow-and-blue tent. For a year, Mr. Ross has stood guard at a parking lot for construction equipment, under a deal with the owner. Mr. Ross figures he has been homeless for about 15 years, surviving on his Army pension.

Inside the tent, the taciturn 50-year-old has an HP laptop with a 17-inch screen and 320 gigabytes of data storage, as well as four extra hard drives that can hold another 1,000 gigabytes, the equivalent of 200 DVDs. Mr. Ross loves movies. He rents some from Netflix and Blockbuster online and downloads others over an Ethernet connection at the San Francisco public library.

One evening recently, Mr. Ross lay down on his sleeping bag and watched an X-Men cartoon on the laptop, listening through headphones over the roar of the generator. When he travels downtown, he takes all the gear with him for safekeeping. His backpack bulges with cords and bubble-wrapped electronic gadgets. Mr. Ross says he doesn't notice the weight.

Mr. Pitts, the poet who lives under a bridge, keeps a mental list of spots to charge batteries and go online, including a deserted corner of a downtown train station and wired cafes whose owners don't mind long stays and lots of bags.

When he was evicted from his apartment two years ago, Mr. Pitts says, "I thought: My existence and my life don't stop because I don't have a place to live."

He bought a Toshiba laptop. When it died, he bought a used Dell. Last month, that one expired, too, with a cracked screen. Now he checks email and posts to his Internet forum on homeless issues, from computers at libraries, college campuses and a laptop stashed behind the counter of a coffee shop by a friend.

Before the Dalai Lama visited a soup kitchen here a month ago, Mr. Pitts researched the Buddhist leader on Wikipedia and copied the text onto his iPod, to read in bed under the bridge. "I'm under my blanket, under a tarp, reading Dalai Lama this, Dalai Lama that," he says.

Mr. Pitts expects to soon scrape up the money for another computer. He figures he can get one for less than $200.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124363359881267523.html





Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon
Motoko Rich

Google appears to be throwing down the gauntlet in the e-book market.

In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device.

Google’s move is likely to be welcomed by publishers who have expressed concerns about Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategy for e-books. Amazon offers Kindle editions of most new best sellers for $9.99, far less than the typical $26 at which publishers sell new hardcovers. In early discussions, Google has said it will allow publishers to set consumer prices.

“Clearly, any major company coming into the e-book space, providing that we are happy with the pricing structure, the selling price and the security of the technology, will be a welcome addition,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson, Stephenie Meyer and Nicholas Sparks.

Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes from several university libraries. A majority of those books are out of print.

The settlement, which is the focus of a Justice Department inquiry about the antitrust implications and is also subject to court review, provides for a way for Google to sell digital access to the scanned volumes.

And Google has already made its 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on mobile phones as well as the Sony Reader, the Kindle’s largest competitor.

Under the new program, publishers give Google digital files of new and other in-print books. Already on Google, users can search up to about 20 percent of the content of those books and can follow links from Google to online retailers like Amazon.com and the Web site of Barnes & Noble to buy either paper or electronic versions of the books. But Google is now proposing to allow users to buy those digital editions direct from Google.

Google has discussed such plans with publishers before, but it has now committed the company to going live with the project by the end of 2009. In a presentation at BookExpo, Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, added the phrase: “This time we mean it.”

Although Google generates a majority of its revenue from ad sales on its search pages, it has previously charged for content. Three years ago, it opened a Google video store, and sold digital recordings of N.B.A. games as well as episodes of television shows like “CSI” and “The Brady Bunch.” This year, Google said it might eventually charge for premium content on YouTube.

Mr. Turvey said that with books, Google planned to sell readers online access to digital versions of various titles. When offline, Mr. Turvey said, readers would still be able to access their electronic books in cached versions on their browsers.

Publishers briefed on the plans at BookExpo said they were not sure yet how the technology would work, but were optimistic about the new program.

Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. “We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go,” he said.

He said that Google would allow publishers to set retail prices. Amazon lets publishers set wholesale prices and then sets its own prices for consumers. In selling e-books at $9.99, Amazon takes a loss on each sale because publishers generally charge booksellers about half the list price of a hardcover — typically around $13 or $14.

Mr. Turvey said that Google would probably allow publishers to charge consumers the same price for digital editions as they do for new hardcover versions. He said Google would reserve the right to adjust prices that it deemed “exorbitant.”

Miguel Helft contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/te.../01google.html





Kung Fu Star Carradine Found Dead
BBC

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday.

Thai police told the BBC the 72-year-old was found naked by a hotel maid in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body.

The US star was in Thailand filming his latest film, Stretch, according to his personal manager Chuck Binder.

Mr Binder said the news was "shocking", adding: "He was full of life, always wanting to work... a great person."

A US embassy official confirmed the actor's death, but added that the cause of death had not yet been established.

However, Thai newspaper The Nation reported that police believe the actor took his own life, and preliminary investigations found that he hanged himself.

Carradine was part of an acting dynasty which included his father, John Carradine, and brothers Bruce, Keith and Robert.

The star was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, which spawned sequels in the '80s and '90s.

The character became one of the most iconic roles in US TV and earned Carradine both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

While his film career saw him working with directors including Martin Scorsese and Ingmar Bergman, the cult actor was considered something of a B-movie legend.

In 2003, after years in the straight-to-video market, Carradine found a new audience thanks to his role in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill.

He was most recently seen on the big screen as a Chinese mobster in Crank: High Voltage, opposite British actor Jason Statham.

Carradine was an accomplished composer, musician, musical performer and songwriter. According to his official website, he was also a sculptor and a painter.

He is survived by his wife, Annie Bierman, and three children including actresses Calista and Kansas.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/8083479.stm





How to Get Free HDTV in Canada
Jennifer Ditchburn

A spiny pack of near-extinct, multi-limbed creatures are turning up in cities across Canada, creeping up the sides of buildings and settling on urban rooftops.

TV antennas are making a tentative comeback in this country.

Nobody in the broadcasting industry or the government seems to have a handle on how many Canadians are scrapping cable and satellite in favour of the old-school technology, but there is anecdotal evidence that a mini-boom is under way.

Ironically, it’s all being fuelled by the high-tech switch by broadcasters from analog to digital and high-definition channels.

Viewers are discovering that they can get over-the-air, digital television stations that proponents say come through even better than on cable and satellite, where signals are compressed.

“And the magic word is ‘free,”’ says Jon LeBlanc, Canada’s antenna guru.

LeBlanc began an “over-the-air” discussion board on www.digitalhome.ca five years ago, where a few diehard antenna fans would pop by. Now he’s the most popular forum on the site, with dozens of new people logging on every month to find out about getting hooked up.

LeBlanc himself gets 14 digital stations, including six from the United States, with his rooftop antenna in Delta, B.C..

“If a person weeds through what they’re actually watching, does the value-added provided by a cable company or a satellite company make any sense?In this financial environment, more and more people are saying No,” says LeBlanc, a former high-tech worker.

“To my way of thinking, this is a renaissance of the over-the-air type of broadcasting, and I think the broadcasters, especially the private networks, are missing something here.”

Conventional TV broadcasters say they’re struggling to survive in a multi-channel universe with dwindling ad revenues. They are pushing the government to provide some regulatory and financial relief, particularly when it comes to the costs of converting their transmitters to digital by 2011.

But the industry has not publicly discussed the phenomenon of Canadians willingly rejecting the 500-channel universe in favour of the signals they can catch locally.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters says it’s not something they have noted at all.

Only one would-be TV broadcaster, Toronto businessman John Bitove, had been pushing the CRTC last year to allow him to start up a new Canadian HD network with over-the-air viewers in mind. He was unsuccessful.

The number of Canadians who rely on over-the-air TV is repeatedly pegged at nine per cent nationally, 16 per cent in Quebec.

David Purdy, vice-president of video product management for Rogers Communications, predicts those numbers will continue to decline once all Canadian stations convert to digital by August 2011.

He points to the range of specialty channels, and now video-on-demand, that cable companies offer and Canadians are lapping up.

“The notion that a linear television offering, whether through rabbit ears or a digital receiver, is somehow going to meet the customer’s needs is completely not reflective of the world we live in,” Purdy said.

“People want to be able to watch what they want, where they want, when they want.”

LeBlanc says the over-the-air audience numbers are outdated, and points to antenna dealers who are seeing a surge in business.

Karim Sunderani, co-owner of Toronto’s Save and Replay store, says he’s been selling 1,000 antennas a month, and he feels he’s at the cusp of something big.

Sunderani’s been getting orders from condominiums, motels, nursing homes and boarding houses to put up antennas.

“It’s hard to believe, we’re in 2009 and it’s something you expect your grandfather to have,” says Sunderani, who gets a dozen channels in his store with a $50 set-top antenna.

“It’s mainly the picture quality. If you look at the difference between the old VHF, the UHF is stunning, we’re actually getting high-definition and obviously no monthly bills once you put the antenna up.”

Sunderani describes the Greater Toronto Area as a “hotspot,” where some viewers can get up to 25 channels.

Winnipeg, parts of the B.C. lower mainland and large swaths around Montreal have been cited as prime over-the-air viewing spots.

Hooking up to an antenna is a different recipe for every viewer, Sunderani and LeBlanc note.

Some high-rise dwellers in Toronto can plug a coaxial cable from their TV into a small interior antenna, place it on a shelf or even on top of their TV, run a channel scan, and bob’s your uncle.

Their TV must have an ATSC tuner built in, as most new models do, but a digital converter box will do the trick otherwise.

The investment there could be in the range of $50-$150.

Others, however, must go to greater lengths, putting larger sized antennas in their attics, or up on their roofs. Depending on the topography of where Canadians lives, they can get TV reception easily or with more effort. Rooftop installations can go up to $500 or more.

And then there are those handy Canadians who have found a dollar-store solution to getting TV — Internet tales and Youtube tips abound.

“Blake W,” a contributor to LeBlanc’s online forum, recently recounted a harrowing tale of nearly missing the third period of a Canucks playoff game because nobody could find the satellite converter in a community centre.

MacGyver-style, Blake took the FM antenna wire off a nearby radio, stripped one of the ends, and stuck it into the back of the high-end flat-screen TV. After a channel scan, they turned up CBC “in glorious HD.”

“The group of 20 collectively gasped and clapped to show their thanks,” Blake, of Richmond, B.C., writes. “By this time tho’, there was only three mins left in the game. The Canucks won, and I had 20 brand new digital TV believers. It was a good night.”
http://money.canoe.ca/News/TopPhoto/...574371-cp.html





Cinema Ordered to Pay $10K in Damages for Search
CTV.ca News Staff

A Quebec court has ordered a cinema to pay $10,000 in damages after staff searched patrons' bags and turned up smuggled snacks and birth control pills -- and in the process violated their privacy rights.

The incident happened in 2007 when a woman took her two daughters to Cinemas Guzzo in Montreal to watch the film "Shrek the Third," said CTV Montreal's Rob Lurie.

Staff at the theatre were searching customers' bags for video equipment that could be used for movie piracy.

Security guards didn't find any video equipment in the family's bags, but did turn up a large selection of snack food, which they asked the family to take back to their vehicle, Lurie said.

"They did so willingly. But they continued the search of the bags and while searching they also uncovered some birth control pills belonging to the older daughter," Lurie said.

"Needless to say the mother was not pleased to find out in this manner that her daughter had those pills in her possession."

The woman then filed a lawsuit over the alleged privacy violation, seeking $60,000 in damages.

The judge ruled Monday that the cinema must pay $10,000 in compensation to the family over the incident..

Vince Guzzo, vice-president of Cinemas Guzzo, told CTV Montreal that the judge ruled cinema staff can still search bags, but must follow stricter rules when doing so.

"What the judge is saying is we could search bags, the problem is we have to tell people at the moment of purchasing the ticket with a sign at the ticket booth," Guzzo said.

"And we're not allowed to put our hands in your bag, which is totally understandable. I don't want to put my hands in your bag. In fact, leave the bags in the car."
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...525?hub=Canada





Animation Upstarts Are Joining the Fray
Brooks Barnes

“Planet 51,” a forthcoming computer-animated movie about an astronaut who discovers happy green people, has the game maker Sega and HarperCollins signed up as promotional partners. Hollywood stars (Dwayne Johnson, Jessica Biel) lend their vocal talents. Online chatter about the film is notably positive.

The latest from Pixar? Try the inaugural effort from Ilion Animation Studios, an upstart film company in Spain. Hardly anyone in Hollywood has heard of Ilion, but here it comes with a big-time distributor (Sony), a high-profile release date (Thanksgiving) and a kids’ meal tie-in (Burger King).

Computer animation, once one of the most isolated corners of Hollywood, is rapidly becoming one of the most crowded. With the cost of computer animation coming down because of advances in technology and soaring box office receipts for family films, a broad range of new animation players are entering the multiplex.

In 2009 14 animated movies — most of them computer-generated — will have a wide release, compared with 8 such films in 2005. Pictures from independent producers like Imagi Studios, which has “Astro Boy” lined up for an October release, are competing with the likes of “Up,” from Pixar, and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” set for release on July 1 by 20th Century Fox. Sony’s own computer-animated movie, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” is scheduled to open on Sept. 18.

“I have lots of respect for Disney and DreamWorks, but I think we are going to easily compete in this marketplace,” said Erin Corbett, president of Imagi Studios USA. “Astro Boy,” based on the popular Japanese manga and television series, is about a young robot with incredible powers.

Even the big boys are ramping up production. Last week DreamWorks Animation said it would increase its output by 20 percent, delivering five films every two years. Coming titles include “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Puss in Boots,” a prequel to the “Shrek” franchise.

When “Toy Story” had its debut in 1995 as the first feature-length computer-animated movie, the new look of the medium was captivating in and of itself. But this filmmaking style is becoming less special as more of it hits the big screen, movie executives say, forcing giants like Pixar and DreamWorks to keep inventing to stand out.

Few would confuse “Planet 51” with one of Pixar’s films — noted for their highly original stories and lavish production values — or a DreamWorks release, which boast A-list stars and dazzling action sequences. “Planet 51” cost about $70 million to produce, according to Ilion, compared with $160 million for the average DreamWorks title.

The independent production companies entering the market just don’t think computer-animated films need to cost that much.

“Pixar and DreamWorks films end up being very expensive because they have to invent it,” said Keith Calder, president of Snoot Entertainment, whose first animated film, “Battle for Terra,” was released in May. “What they do — breakthroughs in rendering hair and water — trickles down to us at reduced cost.”

In addition to leading the way in technology, the Walt Disney Company has inadvertently given a boost to newcomers by eliminating its Happy Meal partnership with McDonald’s as part of a children’s health initiative. So guess who has a major partnership with the fast-food chain? “Astro Boy.”

It’s easy to see what all these upstarts are chasing. In 2008 4 of the top 10 movies at the box office were computer-animated films (“Wall-E,” “Kung Fu Panda,” “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” and “Horton Hears a Who!”), which are easier for studios to control than their live-action counterparts.

And the medium is showing signs of expanding beyond the kiddie market. The success of video games has resulted in a generation of adults who are comfortable consuming animated entertainment, Hollywood executives say. One indication: “Coraline,” the sophisticated 3-D picture about an adventurous girl, found an adult audience, so far selling $85.2 million in tickets.

Disney will test this part of the market with “Ponyo” on Aug. 14. This Hayao Miyazaki film is centered on a 5-year-old boy’s friendship with a goldfish that wants to be human. “Sophisticated stories coupled with powerful imaginations and beautiful animation appeals to everyone,” said Kathleen Kennedy, who is co-producing the English version of the film.

Ignacio Pérez Dolset, the chief executive of Ilion, is well known in Europe for his work with video games. Mr. Dolset, via Pyro Studios, introduced its first game title, “Commandos,” in 1998. It reached No. 1 in 17 countries, selling more than 1.5 million copies. He formed Ilion in 2002 and announced “Planet 51” three years later, developing more than 100 computer applications along the way. About 400 people, based mostly in Madrid, have been toiling on the movie.

“Planet 51” tells the story of a cheery American astronaut who lands in a world filled with characters, landscapes and attitudes that bear a humorous relation to the 1950s. Joe Stillman (“Shrek” and “Shrek 2”) wrote the script; Jorge Blanco directed with Javier Abad. (The title is a nod to the secretive military base in Nevada known as Area 51.)

“The film is a recognizable world, yet one that is so unique that we see franchise opportunities everywhere,” Mr. Dolset said. “Around every corner is a new piece of business.”

George Leon, the studio’s executive vice president for worldwide consumer marketing, said, “The quality of animation is truly extraordinary, and we are blown away by the storytelling.”

Of course breaking into this market is easier said than done, something Mr. Calder knows all too well. “Battle for Terra,” distributed by Lionsgate, sold a disastrous $1.6 million in tickets — total — for its theatrical run, even though it got some positive reviews. Mr. Calder blamed the competition. “We learned it is very hard to open against an X-Men sequel,” he said.

“Igor,” the first feature from Exodus Film Group, opened last September to better results, making $29.5 million in its run, but still fell far short of a hit, although DVD sales were stronger. Exodus will try again this year with its forthcoming “Bunyan & Babe,” a computer-animated film based loosely on the Paul Bunyan folk tales.

“We learned with ‘Igor’ that a long and consistent and strong marketing campaign is a requirement for a family title,” said John D. Eraklis, chief executive of Exodus. “The nag factor is a very real thing.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/movies/03anim.html





"Smithsonian" Atop Overseas Box-Office Pedestal
Frank Segers

U.S. box-office leader "Up" dipped its animated toes in international waters during the weekend, but it was "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" that claimed the top spot overseas.

The family comedy from 20th Century fox, a sequel to 2006's "Night at the Museum," reaped $37.2 million from 9,000 screens in 100 markets.

The Ben Stiller-starring movie opened at No. 1 in China, grossing $7.4 million from 818 screens, and finished first in at least 11 other territories, propelling its overseas gross past the $100 million mark to $106 million.

Its worldwide gross to date is $211.3 million.

After two weekends atop the international circuit, Sony's "Angels & Demons" finished a close No. 2 this round, grossing $32.9 million from 10,145 screens in 101 territories.

The follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code" ranked first in at least 14 markets, including Germany, where it tallied $4.8 for the weekend, and Japan ($3.2 million). Its overseas total stands at $251.7 million.

Like DreamWorks Animation's "Monsters vs. Aliens" before it, "Up," the 10th title from Pixar/Disney, opened in Russia before its domestic bow largely because of piracy concerns. It drew an animated $4.2 million from 560 screens, taking the No. 1 spot and marking the biggest weekend opening of a Pixar/Disney title in the territory.

The 3-D animation saga, centering on a septuagenarian (voiced by Ed Asner) whose house is lifted by multiple balloons to the wilds of South America, premiered May 13 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it became the first animation title to kick off that event.

Opening overseas simultaneously with its domestic release was Mandate Pictures' "Drag Me to Hell." It screamed all the way to $4.4 million from a combined 700 screens in the U.K., Israel and France, said Mandate International, which is sharing overseas distribution with Universal. The tongue-in-cheek horror title from Sam Raimi finished at No. 2 in the U.K. and was No. 1 in the Paris area.

No. 3 for the weekend was "Terminator Salvation," which drew an action-packed $13 million from mostly Middle East and Asian markets. Sony, which is sharing overseas distribution with local distributors, said "Salvation" drew $8.6 million from 673 screens, finishing at No. 1 in the seven markets it handled. The international total so far for the fourth "Terminator" title stands at $23.1 million; its worldwide gross is $113.8 million.

Fourth overall was Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which finished a month on the foreign circuit with an international cume of $170.1 million after an $8.1 million weekend from 5,000 screens in 104 markets. A delayed Mexico opening produced a decisive No. 1 market ranking with $4.4 million from 1,336 screens.

At No. 5 was Paramount's rejuvenated "Star Trek," which rocketed past the $100 million overseas mark ($101.5 million) thanks to an $8 million weekend from 4,869 situations in 59 markets. Its worldwide tally is $311 million.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...54U1ZF20090601





United States Box Office

Issued Tue Jun 2, 2009
Title/Distributor Wknd. Gross Total Gross # Theaters Last Wk. Days Released
1 UP
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $68108790 $68108790 3766 0 3
2 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE...
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX $24353868 $104150268 4101 1 10
3 TERMINATOR SALVATION
WARNER BROS. $16433365 $90949924 3602 2 11
4 DRAG ME TO HELL
UNIVERSAL $15825480 $15825480 2508 0 3
5 STAR TREK
PARAMOUNT $12613727 $209313884 3507 3 24
6 ANGELS & DEMONS
SONY PICTURES $11353340 $104913439 3464 4 17
7 DANCE FLICK
PARAMOUNT $4743636 $19084907 2459 5 10
8 X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX $3873377 $170843712 2263 6 31
9 GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST
WARNER BROS. $1911401 $50021779 1450 7 31
10 OBSESSED
SONY PICTURES $657001 $67500481 679 8 38
11 BROTHERS BLOOM
SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT $627971 $1360130 148 15 17
12 THE SOLOIST
PARAMOUNT $485215 $30251623 412 11 38
13 HANNAH MONTANA THE MOVIE
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $421198 $77548719 310 14 52
14 17 AGAIN
WARNER BROS. $339549 $61233890 405 10 45
15 RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $327956 $65814397 283 18 80
16 MONSTERS VS. ALIENS
PARAMOUNT $320040 $194421864 566 9 66
17 EARTH
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS $294052 $31112280 315 13 40
18 FAST AND FURIOUS
UNIVERSAL $242190 $153945790 299 16 59
19 UNDER THE SEA 3D
WARNER BROS. $231104 $8834201 41 19 108
20 NEXT DAY AIR
SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT $202652 $9479286 235 12 24

http://www.reuters.com/news/entertai...R-US-BOXOFFICE





YouTube to Premiere Movie to Up Ad Revenues: Report

Google Inc's YouTube will premiere a movie, the first simultaneous Internet and theater debut, as the popular video-sharing site aims to lure advertisers and reach profitability, Bloomberg reported.

YouTube would premiere "Home," a film about the environment produced by Luc Besson, the agency said.

A Paris-based partner development manager for YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was quoted by the agency as saying, "We're more than just dogs on skateboards."

Reuters could not immediately reach Google for comment outside regular business hours.

(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore, editing by Will Waterman)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...5532AA20090604





Time Warner Cable Adds Tier-Friendly Terms to its Contracts
Stacey Higginbotham

Time Warner Cable has modified the language of its consumer subscriber agreement that is directed at legitimizing the cable company’s ability to throttle and measure a consumer’s bandwidth. The new additions to the agreement also sanction tiered pricing. After Time Warner Cable’s failed attempt to expand tiered billing trials, which created different pricing plans for consumers based on the amount of data they downloaded, the company promised it would shelve the plans while it educated consumers. It looks like that education campaign may come now that the legal bases are theoretically covered. Here’s the new language:

6. Special Provisions Regarding HSD Service

(ii) I agree that TWC or ISP may change the Maximum Throughput Rate of any tier by amending the price list or Terms of Use. My continued use of the HSD Service following such a change will constitute my acceptance of any new Maximum Throughput Rate. If the level or tier of HSD Service to which I subscribe has a specified limit on the amount of bytes that I can use in a given billing cycle, I also agree that TWC may use technical means, including but not limited to suspending or reducing the speed of my HSD Service, to ensure compliance with these limits, and that TWC or ISP may move me to a higher tier of HSD Service (which may result in higher monthly charges) or impose other charges and fees if my use exceeds these limits.

(iii) I agree that TWC may use Network Management Tools as it determines appropriate and/or that it may use technical means, including but not limited to suspending or reducing the Throughput Rate of my HSD Service, to ensure compliance with its Terms of Use and to ensure that its service operates efficiently. I further agree that TWC and ISP have the right to monitor my bandwidth usage patterns to facilitate the provision of the HSD Service and to ensure my compliance with the Terms of Use and to efficiently manage their networks and their provision of services. TWC or ISP may take such steps as each may determine appropriate in the event my usage of the HSD Service does not comply with the Terms of Use. I acknowledge that HSD Service does not include other services managed by TWC and delivered over TWC’s shared infrastructure, including Video Service and Digital Phone Service.

The language means that a subscriber can’t sign up for a contract plan hoping to avoid tiered pricing by getting in before a new tiered plan is implemented. It also specifically threatens throttling of a person’s service for violating the terms of use (hopefully it makes those terms of use a little clearer, though). It also separates out its voice and video service from the data plans, and it appears that those won’t count against any cap, and they may not be subject to throttling. Time Warner could not be reached for comment, but allowing its own products to bypass a cap would give its services an advantage over other VoIP providers and online video. That may draw the FCC’s ire. The agency earlier this year was asking Comcast whether it prioritizes its own VoIP services over competitors’ also running on the cable network. We can’t get a new FCC chief soon enough.
http://gigaom.com/2009/05/30/time-wa...its-contracts/





Monticello, MN Beats the Phone Company; Internet a "Utility"

Monticello, Minnesota hoped to set state precedent by building its own fiber-to-the-home link for every resident in town. The phone company sued, but after a year in litigation, the state Court of Appeals has ruled that Internet is indeed a "utility" that can be provided by local communities and funded by city bonds.
Nate Anderson

Monticello, MN beats the phone company; Internet a "utility"

The local telephone company in an 11,000-person Minnesota town objected when the town decided to lay its own fiber optic network. The telco filed a lawsuit, and then suddenly rolled out its own fiber network while the case was tied up in courts. Today, a state appeals court ruled in the city's favor (PDF); Internet access was certainly a "utility," the court said, and the city was well within its rights to finance the project as it did.

But is it too late to matter?

Fiber + Bonds = Lawsuit

Not satisfied with current DSL and cable offerings, the town of Monticello hatched an ambitious plan to wire up the entire community with fiber, build an interconnect station, and allow ISPs to link up to the site and offer Internet access over the city-maintained fiber links. After a vote on the measure passed in 2007, Monticello quickly moved to raise money and break ground—but was promptly sued by the local telephone provider, Bridgewater, a unit of TDS Telecom.

TDS had one main complaint: the project should not be financed with city bonds. Under Minnesota law, cities can only issue revenue bonds for certain specified reasons, including the building of "utilities." TDS charged that the project was not a utility and was instead an unfair use of government power to compete with private business. Critics charged that TDS just wanted to delay the project long enough to kill it.

A district court eventually tossed the case in 2008, but not before Monticello's bond money was locked up in an escrow account and the bitter Minnesota winter descended.

Today, an appeals court ruled that the decision was proper and that public utilities certainly include Internet access. From the ruling: "Bridgewater concedes that telephone services are utilities and that television services are gray area, but steadfastly denies that Internet services qualify as a utility. Therefore, according to Bridgewater, the project in its entirety lacks statutory authority to be funded by revenue bonds because Monticello intends to provide Internet service... [but] the definition of municipal public utilities appears broad enough to contemplate Internet service."

The court shot down Bridgewater's argument that Internet service could not yet be considered a utility because it doesn't have the "near universal usage common to a utility."

The court said that "this argument is flawed. As noted by Monticello, 'it would be absurd to conclude that the Minnesota Legislature [allows revenue bonds] to be used only to fund the creation of systems that provide services that are already in universal or near-universal use'... It is illogical to conclude that something is or is not a utility based on the number of people who have access to it."

The lawsuit has never been about whether the city has the right to build and operate such a service; it has only been about whether revenue bonds could be used to finance it. So, while the money raised from the bonds sat idle in an escrow account, the city of Monticello has already built a headend for housing the main communications gear and constructed a short fiber loop that serves the downtown—all out of its normal operating budget.

With the appeals court decision, the city can go forward with the rest of the project. Or can it? TDS now has 30 days to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court; if it does so, and the courts do not move to dispatch it quickly, the case might well drag on through another summer building season and into the fall.

Drew Petersen, who heads up corporate communications for TDS, was predictably disappointed with the ruling. "The Appeals Court decision sends a chilling message to the private business community operating in the state of Minnesota. The decision will likely discourage other private enterprises from doing or expanding their business in Minnesota. Further, the decision endangers the appropriate relationship between municipalities and private enterprise; it also allows municipalities' tax-free financing to enter into competition with tax-paying businesses," he said.

While the case was going on, TDS installed fiber of its own throughout Monticello, and Petersen says that today, "Every resident in the city can receive TDS' Internet service, via fiber, at speeds of 25Mbps at value-based prices. The neighboring townships also enjoy speeds above 10Mbps."

TDS did win the partial support of one appellate judge, who disagreed with the majority decision. But the company can't take too much comfort from the dissent; as Judge Natalie Hudson noted, "I concur with the majority opinion‘s conclusion that the Fiber Project is a 'utility or other public convenience,'" though she objected to the way some of the money was being used.

Winning Battles, Losing Wars

According to Chris Mitchell of the Institute for Self-Reliance, several other Minnesota communities are considering similar fiber projects of their own but are waiting for a resolution to the Monticello legal battle before proceeding. Mitchell admits to Ars that the TDS decision to build out fiber in Monticello does change the financial case for the entire project and that it's much more difficult to justify a fiber overbuild with an incumbent in place.

That may be exactly what TDS had in mind. As Petersen noted in his statement, "In view of TDS' development of a robust broadband platform in Monticello during the past year, it is questionable whether or not the City's feasibility study supporting its own fiber project, which was premised on no broadband competitors and on which the revenue bond purchasers relied when they secured the bonds more than a year ago, is still accurate, and whether the city fiber project is feasible today."

For Monticello's fiber backers, the whole situation may turn out to be a textbook definition of "Pyrrhic victory."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-court-win.ars





DOJ Urges US High Court Not To Hear Suit On Cablevision DVR
Brent Kendall

The U.S. Justice Department on Friday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to consider a legal challenge by major television networks and Hollywood studios to a next-generation digital-video recorder, or DVR, planned by Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC).

Cablevision's service would, for the first time, allow customers to record and store television shows on central computer servers maintained by Cablevision instead of having to record them on expensive DVR cable boxes installed in their homes.

Cablevision won a key ruling from a federal appeals court in Philadelphia last summer that gave the company the green light to move forward with its technology.

The company says the system would allow it to provide DVR services at lower costs, which could lead to a rise in new subscribers to the technology.

DVR systems are popular with consumers because the technology allows viewers to watch programs whenever they choose and to skip commercials while they do so.

The networks and studios argue that Cablevision's service violates federal copyright laws, and they want the Supreme Court to hear the case and overturn the lower court ruling.

In January, the high court invited the U.S. solicitor general, the federal government's lawyer at the Supreme Court, to weigh in on whether the justices should hear the case.

In a legal brief filed Friday with the court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan said the court shouldn't get involved in the dispute.

"Network-based technologies for copying and replaying television programming raise potentially significant questions, but this case does not provide a suitable occasion for this court to address them," Kagan wrote.

The Supreme Court doesn't always follow the solicitor general's advice, but it is often persuaded by it.

Among those suing to block Cablevision's service are General Electric Co.'s ( GE) NBC; CBS Corp. (CBS); Walt Disney Co.'s (DIS) ABC; and News Corp.'s (NWSA) Twentieth Century Fox.

News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

It isn't clear when the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the case.

The case is Cable News Network Inc. v. CSC Holdings Inc., 08-448.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...6_FORTUNE5.htm





Palm Pre, Elegant Contender
David Pogue

You’ve seen that movie, right? The one where a pair of lovable sad-sack losers team up to defeat the smug athletic golden boy?

If not, you’re about to. It’s called “Palm Pre vs. iPhone.”

The star of this summer blockbuster is Palm. Over the years, this once-great company lost its talent for everything but making business blunders. Pundits were predicting Palm’s passing — but then the new Palm Pre appeared.

The Pre, which goes on sale Saturday, is an elegant, joyous, multitouch smartphone; it’s the iPhone remixed. That’s no surprise, really; its primary mastermind was Jon Rubinstein, who joined Palm after working with Steve Jobs of Apple, on and off, for 16 years. Once at Palm, he hired 250 engineers from Apple and elsewhere, and challenged them to out-iPhone the iPhone.

That the Pre even comes close to succeeding is astonishing. As so many awful “iPhone killers” have demonstrated, most efforts to replicate the iPhone result in hideous designed-by-committee messes.

The Pre has the usual feature checklist: Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G (high-speed Internet), Bluetooth (including wireless audio), good camera with tiny flash, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, tilt sensor, standard headphone jack, 3.1-inch touch screen (the same 320 x 480 pixels as the iPhone, packed into less space). The hard part is making it all feel simple and unified — over all, Palm nailed it.

HARDWARE The Pre is a shiny, flattened black plastic capsule, coated with a hard, glossy, scratch-resistant finish. When it’s turned off, the screen disappears completely into the smoky finish, leaving a stunning, featureless talisman. It’s exactly the right size. It’s smaller than the iPhone — half an inch shorter, though a quarter-inch thicker — and therefore more comfortable as a phone.

PRICE The Pre costs $200 after rebate, with a two-year contract. (If you buy it from Best Buy instead of a Sprint store, you get the rebate instantly, without having to mail anything.)

Sprint, Palm’s equally downtrodden co-star, offers a better deal than AT&T does for iPhone. For example, the $70-a-month plan (450 talk minutes) includes unlimited Internet and text messages; the equivalent iPhone AT&T plan includes no text messages at all. Sprint’s unlimited-everything plan costs $100 a month — $240 a year less than AT&T.

And these plans include the excellent Sprint Navigation (turn-by-turn GPS, spoken street names and all) and streaming TV shows and radio (pretty neat if you have a strong cell signal).

Still, I know what you’re thinking: Sprint? Like that’s a huge improvement over AT&T, which iPhone owners love to hate? But read on.

TYPING Unlike the iPhone, the Pre has a real keyboard. The screen slides up, revealing four rows of Thumbelina-size keys. They’re really tiny; a BlackBerry’s keyboard is Texas by comparison. Even so, the domed key shapes and sticky rubber key surfaces make it faster and less frustrating than typing on glass.

PHONE To make a call on the Pre, just pop open the keyboard and start dialing. Or just start typing — matches from your address book come up immediately. Or set up speed-dial keys.

Call audio quality is about average. The ringer, however, is too quiet; expect a lot of complaints about that.

SOFTWARE The Pre’s all-new operating system, called Web OS, is attractive, fluid and exciting. It borrows plenty from the iPhone — pinch or spread two fingers on the screen to zoom in or out, for example, or flick a list item sideways to delete it — but has its own personality.

For example, once the gorgeous screen comes to life, the black plastic strip beneath it is also touch-sensitive. Slide your thumb leftward, for example, to go back one screen. Drag upward to summon the animated, bendy, quick-launch strip. It holds the icons for the five programs you use most often (phone, calendar, e-mail) so you can switch programs without returning to a central home screen first.

That’s important, because the Pre can keep multiple programs open simultaneously. Play Internet radio while you read a PDF document, or compare two open e-mail messages — you can’t do that on the iPhone.

When you press the tiny glowing button below the screen, all open windows shrink slightly into individual “cards.” You can swap programs by tossing them around, or exit a program by flicking its card up off the screen. (Good thing that’s fun to do. If you accumulate about 10 open cards, a hostile out-of-memory message appears.)

Thoughtful grace notes are everywhere. When watching a video, you can flick right or left to skip forward or backward a few seconds. Empty time slots on your daily calendar collapse to save space, denoted by a “3 hours free” strip. When you magnify a Word document, the text reflows so that you never have to scroll horizontally.

BATTERY Everyone griped about the iPhone’s permanently sealed battery. The Pre’s battery, however, is easy to swap.

That’s fortunate, because battery life is the Pre’s heartbreaker. Depending on how heavily I used the thing, the battery was dead either by late afternoon or by dinnertime. Yikes.

Palm calls those unusually poor results, probably because of the miserable Sprint coverage where I live; hunting for a signal eats up power faster. (Palm rates the battery at five hours of talk time or 12 hours of music playback.) Even Palm, however, concedes that one full day is about the best you’ll get.

(For a review of the optional magnetic wireless Touchstone charging stand, see nytimes.com/pogue.)

MUSIC Most phones do a feeble job as music players. Especially compared with the iPhone itself, which, after all, is an actual iPod.

But so, apparently, is the Pre.

When you connect it to your Mac or PC, the Pre appears in Apple’s iTunes software, labeled “iPod.” You can now sync your music, photo and video collections (minus the copy-protected items). ITunes never knows the difference. Apple’s lawyers must be having conniptions.

BUILT-IN PROGRAMS You might keep your family schedule on Google Calendar, your work calendar in Exchange or Outlook and some events in Facebook. The Pre consolidates these online agendas onto a single color-coded calendar.

It does the same thing with your various online address books. You wind up with only one entry for, say, Snuffy Smith, containing all contact information from all sources. The Pre can also consolidate e-mail accounts into a single Inbox, or AIM and Google Talk buddy lists. It’s done well and it makes enormous sense.

APP STORE A big part of the iPhone’s appeal is the app store: 35,000 free or dirt-cheap downloadable programs. The Pre’s app store is starting small — there’s a New York Times reader, Pandora Internet radio, Fandango movie listings and so on.

Palm intends to approve thousands more in the coming weeks, but they won’t be as diverse or powerful as the iPhone’s (especially games). At the outset, at least, Palm is limiting programmer access to the Pre’s features.

All right, then: the Pre is a spectacular achievement. Zero to 60 in one version.

But is it an iPhone killer, as some gadget bloggers have been asking?

The Pre will be a hit, but the iPhone isn’t going away. First of all, Apple’s lead of 20 million phones will only grow when the new iPhone 3.0 software (and, presumably, a third iPhone model) come out shortly.

Second, Palm’s audience for this model is limited to the United States. It requires a CDMA network, so it works in few other countries.

Third, even the Pre has its annoyances. Opening certain programs can be very slow — sometimes eight or nine seconds — and there’s no progress bar or hourglass to let you know that it’s still working.

There’s no memory-card slot to expand the eight gigabytes of storage, and no Visual Voicemail (where messages are listed like e-mail). The ingenious universal search function (searches your programs, address book and the Web simultaneously) won’t look through your e-mail or calendars.

There are a few bugs left to exterminate, too.

Finally, the Pre is not quite as simple as the iPhone. All those extra features, by definition, mean that there’s more to learn.

So do the Pre’s perks (beautiful hardware and software, compact size, keyboard, swappable battery, flash, multitasking, calendar consolidation) outweigh its weak spots (battery life, occasional sluggishness, ringer volume)?

Oh, yes indeedy. Especially when you consider that Verizon Wireless has announced that it will carry the Pre “in the next six months or so.”

Can you imagine how great that will be? One of the world’s best phones on the nation’s best cell network?

If the story of Palm’s rise from the ashes really is like a movie plot, then that twist will give it one heck of a happy ending.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/te...h/04pogue.html





Palm Pre USB Hack Confirmed
Johan Johansen

A little birdie provided me with the following.

As I speculated in my previous blog post on Palm Pre Sync and now confirmed by the image above, when the Pre is in “Media Sync” mode it identifies itself as an Apple iPod. However, it’s only the Mass Storage interface that identifies itself as an iPod. The root USB node (IOUSBDevice) still identifies the device as a Palm Pre (not visible in the image above). This means that Apple can very easily update iTunes to block the Pre.
http://nanocr.eu/2009/06/04/palm-pre...ack-confirmed/





Aussie Jailed In 'American Idol' Singer Stalking

An Australian woman was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Friday for stalking "American Idol" contestant Diana DeGarmo over the Internet from the opposite side of the world.

Tanya Maree Quattrocchi, 23, pleaded guilty earlier this month to four charges of cyber-stalking for hacking into DeGarmo's My Space account and intercepting her e-mails and those of her mother, Brenda, and housemate, model Donielle Morris. DeGarmo was the 2004 runner-up in the U.S. television singing contest.

The Victoria state County Court sentenced Quattrocchi, of Melbourne, to 26 months in prison. She will be eligible for parole after 12 months.

Judge Lisa Hannan described Quattrocchi's offenses as serious, especially considering they began only six months after she was convicted on similar charges.

In 2007, Quattrocchi was sentenced to 150 hours of community service for cyber-stalking and blackmailing DeGarmo in 2006.

She has been in custody since January when she was arrested as she sat a computer typing an e-mail pretending to be DeGarmo's mother. The new convictions are for offenses since November 2007.

Hannan said the stalking affected every aspect of DeGarmo's life, adding that she felt constantly vulnerable.

Since "American Idol," DeGarmo has released an album "Blue Skies" and appeared on Broadway in "Hairspray."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052900276.html





Internet Radio Host Hal Turner Faces Charges
Daniela Altimari

Internet radio host Hal Turner — accused of inciting Catholics to "take up arms" and singling out two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official on a website — was taken into custody in New Jersey late Wednesday after state Capitol police in Connecticut obtained a warrant for his arrest.

Turner, who has been identified as a white supremacist and anti-Semite by several anti-racism groups, hosts an Internet radio program with an associated blog. On Tuesday, the blog included a post that promised to release the home addresses of state Rep. Michael Lawlor, state Sen. Andrew McDonald and Thomas Jones of the State Ethics Office.

"Mr. Turner's comments are above and beyond the threshold of free speech," Capitol Police Chief Michael J. Fallon said in an e-mail announcing the warrant. "He is inciting others through his website to commit acts of violence and has created fear and alarm. He should be held accountable for his conduct."

The remarks on the blog were a reaction to the recent controversy over a bill that would have changed the way the Roman Catholic Church is governed, taking power away from church officials and turning it over to lay members. It was pulled in mid-March following an outcry from Catholics across the state and questions about its constitutionality.

Last week, the controversy flared again when the Diocese of Bridgeport filed a federal lawsuit against state ethics officials, who are investigating whether church officials violated lobbying laws by organizing a rally at the state Capitol to protest the measure earlier this spring and not registering as lobbyists.

The blog of the "Turner Radio Network" recounted the matter, then included the following remarks in a section labeled "commentary:"

"It is our intent to foment direct action against these individuals personally. These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die."

And, the post continued, "If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this, I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down, too."

Turner has been branded a racist by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. Elsewhere on the blog, the recent fatal shooting of a Kansas abortion provider is called "a righteous act."

The blog said the "Hal Turner Show" would publicize the home addresses of the Connecticut officials Wednesday night, but Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was taken into custody before that could happen.

Turner was charged in the warrant with inciting injury to persons or property and will be presented in a New Jersey courthouse today for extradition to Connecticut. It is unclear when that would happen.

Bishop William E. Lori of the Bridgeport diocese issued a statement on his blog Wednesday that thanked parishioners for supporting the lawsuit and denounced violence.

"We deplore and condemn hateful language and advocacy of violence of any kind," Lori wrote. "Such speech is contrary to the civil and respectful discourse that reflects the Christian values we hold so dear."

McDonald and Lawlor declined to comment on the matter, though Lawlor praised the work of Capitol police.

Both lawmakers were the target of an earlier threat: A New Britain teacher was ordered to avoid contact with the two men and undergo a mental health evaluation after he was charged with sending them a threatening e-mail.
http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc...,0,99236.story





Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology

Wikioperating Thetan Level Zero
Cade Metz

Exclusive In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.

Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.

The eighth most popular site on the web, Wikipedia bills itself as "the free encyclopedia anyone can edit." Administrators frequently ban individual Wikifiddlers for their individual Wikisins. And the site's UK press officer/resident goth once silenced an entire Utah mountain in a bizarre attempt to protect a sockpuppeting ex-BusinessWeek reporter. But according to multiple administrators speaking with The Reg, the muzzling of Scientology IPs marks the first time Wikipedia has officially barred edits from such a high-profile organization for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the site.

The Church of Scientology has not responded to our request for comment.

Officially, Wikipedia frowns on those who edit "in order to promote their own interests." The site sees itself as an encyclopedia with a "neutral point of view" - whatever that is. "Use of the encyclopedia to advance personal agendas – such as advocacy or propaganda and philosophical, ideological or religious dispute – or to publish or promote original research is prohibited," say the Wikipowersthatbe.

Admins may ban a Wikifiddler who betrays an extreme conflict of interest, and since fiddlers often hide their identity behind open proxies, such IPs may be banned as a preventative measure. After today's ruling from the Arbitration Committee - known in Orwellian fashion as the ArbCom - Scientology IPs are "to be blocked as if they were open proxies" (though individual editors can request an exemption).

According to evidence turned up by admins in this long-running Wikiland court case, multiple editors have been "openly editing [Scientology-related articles] from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their activities." Leaning on the famed WikiScanner, countless news stories have discussed the editing of Scientology articles from Scientology IPs, and some site admins are concerned this is "damaging Wikipedia's reputation for neutrality."

One admin tells The Reg that policing edits from Scientology machines has been particularly difficult because myriad editors sit behind a small number of IPs and, for some reason, the address of each editor is constantly changing. This prevents admins from determining whether a single editor is using multiple Wikipedia accounts to game the system. In Wikiland, such sockpuppeting is not allowed.

The Wikicourt considered banning edits from Scientology IPs only on Scientology-related articles. But this would require admins to "checkuser" editors - i.e. determine their IP - every time an edit is made. And even then they may not know who's who.

"Our alternatives are to block them entirely, or checkuser every 'pro-Scientology' editor on this topic. I find the latter unacceptable," wrote one ArbComer. "It is quite broad, but it seems that they're funneling a lot of editing traffic through a few IPs, which make socks impossible to track."

And it may be a moot point. Most the editors in question edit nothing but Scientology-related articles. In Wikiparlance, they're "single purpose accounts."

Some have argued that those editing from Scientology IPs may be doing so without instruction from the Church hierarchy. But a former member of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs - a department officially responsible "for directing and coordinating all legal matters affecting the Church" - says the Office has organized massive efforts to remove Scientology-related materials and criticism from the web.

"The guys I worked with posted every day all day," Tory Christman tells The Reg. "It was like a machine. I worked with someone who used five separate computers, five separate anonymous identities...to refute any facts from the internet about the Church of Scientology."

Christman left the Church in 2000, before Wikipedia was created.

This is the fourth Scientology-related Wikicourtcase in as many years, and in addition to an outright ban on Scientology IPs, the court has barred a host of anti-Scientology editors from editing topics related to the Church.

Many Wikifiddlers have vehemently criticized this sweeping crackdown. Historically, the site's cult-like inner circle has aspired to some sort of Web 2.0 utopia in which everyone has an unfettered voice. An organization editing Wikipedia articles where it has a conflict of interest is hardly unusual, and in the past such behavior typically went unpunished.

But clearly, Wikipedia is changing. In recent months, the site's ruling body seems far more interested in quashing at least the most obvious examples of propaganda pushing.

Scientology's banishment from Wikipedia comes just days after the opening of a (real world) trial that could see the dissolution of the organization's French chapter.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05...s_scientology/





Judge Halts Suits Over NSA Wiretapping
Declan McCullagh

A federal judge in San Francisco has tossed out a slew of lawsuits filed against AT&T and other telecommunications companies alleged to have illegally opened their networks to the National Security Agency.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday ruled that, thanks to a 2008 federal law retroactively immunizing those companies, approximately 46 lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups and class action lawyers will be dismissed.

Congress has created a "'focused immunity' for private entities who assisted the government with activities that allegedly violated plaintiffs' constitutional rights," Walker wrote in a 46-page opinion. That has not, he said, "affected plaintiffs' underlying constitutional rights."

Wednesday's ruling is a bitter defeat to groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, which are coordinating the lawsuits over warrantless wiretapping. They had hoped to convince the judge that the law improperly infringed upon the separation of powers described in the U.S. Constitution and handed too much power to the executive branch.

The 2008 law, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress last summer. As a senator, President Obama voted for the measure even though he had previously pledged to oppose it.

It says that no "civil action" may take place in state or federal court "against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community"--and will be automatically dismissed as long as the attorney general claims the surveillance was authorized.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent the court a letter saying the surveillance was authorized, but without offering any further information. The Justice Department under President Obama has not changed its position.

EFF said it would appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "We're deeply disappointed in Judge Walker's ruling today," EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said in a statement. "The retroactive immunity law unconstitutionally takes away Americans' claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments, violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law."

The ruling does not affect lawsuits that have been filed directly against the NSA or other government agencies, including the EFF's Jewel v. NSA case. (A congressional report accompanying the 2008 law explicitly says: "Nothing in this bill is intended to affect these suits against the government or individual government officials.")

Walker left one possible opening for EFF, ACLU, and their allies. Because the 2008 law exempts surveillance "authorized by the president" during the time from September 11, 2001 and January 17, 2007, telecom firms could be held liable if they surreptitiously cooperated with NSA or other agencies more recently.

He gave the plaintiffs 30 days to amend their complaint to focus on surveillance that took place after January 17, 2007, the date that President Bush decided to amend the program to include supervision by courts.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10256929-38.html





Public Asked to Help Monitor Life on Earth
Alister Doyle

Scientists asked people around the world on Monday to help compile an Internet-based observatory of life on earth as a guide to everything from the impact of climate change on wildlife to pests that can damage crops.

"I would hope that ... we might even have millions of people providing data" in the long term, James Edwards, head of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, told Reuters of the 10-year project.

He said scientific organizations were already working to link up thousands of computer databases of animals and plants into a one-stop "virtual observatory" that could be similar to global systems for monitoring the weather or earthquakes.

People in many countries already log observations on the Internet, ranging from sightings of rare birds in Canada to the dates on which flowers bloom in spring in Australia. The new system, when up and running, would link up the disparate sites.

About 400 biology and technology experts from 50 countries will meet in London from June 1-3 at an "e-Biosphere" conference organized by the EOL to discuss the plans. The EOL is separately trying to describe the world's species online.

"This would be a free system that everyone can access and contribute to," said Norman MacLeod, keeper of paleontology at the Natural History Museum in London which is hosting the talks.

Edwards said a biodiversity overview could have big economic benefits, for instance an unusual insect found in a garden might be an insect pest brought unwittingly in a grain shipment that could disrupt local agriculture.

Among health benefits could be understanding any shifts in the ranges of malaria-carrying mosquitoes linked to global warming, Edwards said.

"Within 10 years, scientists say they could have an efficient and effective way of tracking changes over time in the range and abundance of plants and animals as worldwide temperature and precipitation patterns shift," a statement said.

And plane accidents might be averted by studying DNA genetic samples of birds sucked into jet engines and the timing, altitude and routes of bird migrations.

The observatory could give a benchmark for monitoring the rate of extinctions, for instance, to threats led by loss of habitats to farms, cities and roads.

It could also help people in their everyday lives -- anyone planning to visit a local forest could study trees, flowers, animals or insects that might be seen on a hike.
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...5501SM20090601





Report: Social Networking Up 83 Percent for U.S.
Lance Whitney

The explosion in social networking may be even greater than imagined. The time that people in the U.S. spend on social network sites is up 83 percent from a year ago, according to a report from market researcher Nielsen Online.

Facebook enjoys the top spot among social networks, with people having spent a total of 13.9 billion minutes on the service in April of this year, 700 percent more than in April 2008, Nielsen said. Minutes spent on Twitter soared a whopping 3,712 percent to almost 300 million, versus around 7.8 million from the same month a year ago.

Former top dog MySpace watched its usage drop nearly one-third to around 4.9 billion minutes, from 7.2 billion in April 2008. MySpace still scored the number one spot for online video among the top 10, thanks to its users streaming more than 120 million videos from the site for April of this year.

Top Social Networking Sites

"We have seen some major growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace," Jon Gibs, Nielsen's vice president for online media and agency insights, said in a statement. "Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space."

But the report also offered a cautionary note: the social networking user can be fickle, quickly bouncing from one service to another. "Remember Friendster? Remember when MySpace was an unbeatable force? Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune," said Gibs. "Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment's notice."

Despite its growth and popularity, Twitter may be especially vulnerable to users who don't stick around. Another Nielsen report from April found that 60 percent of Twitter users--dubbed Twitter Quitters by the media--abandon their tweets after only one month of use. Only about 30 percent of users on MySpace and Facebook jump ship.

Nielsen Online, part of the Nielsen Company, measures consumer use of online and mobile services and other related media.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-102...html?tag=mncol





New FCC Nominees Coming Soon
FMQB

It looks like Republicans in the Senate have settled on two people to fill the GOP seats on the five-member FCC Commissioner board. Senate Republicans have agreed on former Commerce Department official Meredith Attwell Baker and current FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, the Wall Street Journal reports, paving the way for a confirmation hearing in June.

President Barack Obama's pick for FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, is still awaiting Senate confirmation, but this new development could pave the way for a confirmation hearing in June for Genachowski and one Republican FCC nominee. Another hearing for the remaining two FCC nominees would likely be scheduled later, says the WSJ. On the Democratic side, in addition to Genachowski, the White House has already nominated South Carolina public utilities commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

The FCC is currently being run by interim Chairman Michael Copps, and the delay in Republican nominees has prevented Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein from moving to his new job at the Agriculture Department. Adelstein must remain on the FCC until new commissioners are in place. As for the new nominees, Baker is the daughter-in-law of former Secretary of State James Baker. She formerly ran the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration. McDowell, whose FCC term expires in June, is a former telecom lobbyist who joined the FCC's board in 2006.
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1350090





The Haggler

My Music Is Blaring (in Someone Else’s Car)
David Segal

LAST month, the Haggler started rectifying the problems of consumers, using nothing but his bare hands and a phone. Alas, nobody wrote in with anything more to complain about, so it’s time to retire this column.

Ha-ha-ha!

Oh, the Haggler is very droll. Actually, hundreds of e-mail messages have arrived, and this column will henceforth appear every two weeks.

So let’s haggle. In this episode: satellite trouble.

Q. Last July 4, my XM receiver and my car radio were stolen. I didn’t get around to calling XM to request what refund I might be owed for my unused service until February of this year. To my surprise, the agent told me that my service had been switched over to another customer a few weeks after the theft.

When I tried to recover my property I was told that I needed to file a police report, which I did. But my request was “too late,” XM said, which seems nuts because the statute of limitations for the crime itself has not expired. Even calls on my behalf by an officer in the San Francisco auto theft investigation unit did not help.

I can’t tell you how it galls me every time I buckle up and steal a glance at the gaping rectangle in my instrument panel. At the very least, XM should refuse to service equipment reported as stolen, no? Deborah Stucker

Reno, Nev.

A. Uh, yes. If XM — now Sirius XM, after merging with its rival — does not disable hot satellite radios, it could give the unfortunate impression that it is more interested in pocketing monthly subscription fees than in discouraging this particular crime.
So what is the policy? After a few days of mulling it over, a spokesman, Patrick Reilly, wrote to say that Sirius XM takes stolen-radio reports on “a case by case basis.” Not everybody who calls to reactivate a radio is a criminal, he writes; some have bought their radios legitimately on eBay, and some customers with past-due balances have falsely reported radios stolen to try to avoid paying their bills.

Mr. Reilly also says that before giving information to the police about a reportedly stolen radio, the company needs to see a subpoena.

A subpoena? You’d think that a police report would suffice. Mr. Reilly wouldn’t confirm that Ms. Stucker’s radio was still getting service, but he strongly implied it in a follow up e-mail. After the Haggler’s call, the company offered Ms. Stucker a free radio and a year’s worth of service at roughly half-price, but she turned it down, in part because Sirius XM refused to announce a change to the company’s policy when it comes to theft.

And how would she like that policy to read?

Like that of Sirius Satellite Canada, which is a separate company. A spokesman e-mailed to say that if a customer sent in a signed statement that his or her radio was stolen, it wouldn’t be reactivated.

Simple.

Q. Since August, I have had chronic problems with my Hughes Network Systems Internet service. During the day, it often downloads data at about 70 kilobits a second, not much more than a dial-up connection, which runs at 40-50 kbps. (The company promised 700 kbps.)

Hughes customer service representatives are all polite, but they are in India, speak limited English and read from scripts. I have gotten to know their standard responses to my speed problems: they make you go through elaborate tests of your own computer and satellite modem until they finally explain that there is nothing more they can do.

Recently they have referred me to a “Level 4” technician, but they have not called as promised. Art Pearce

Ithaca, N.Y.

A. Hughes, based in Germantown, Md., sprang splendidly — if belatedly, it appears — into action after a call from the Haggler. The company moved Mr. Pearce to a different transponder, one of 60 “mini networks” it operates via satellite. And a technician who would identify himself only as William called Mr. Pearce to make sure that he was happy.

Mr. Pearce reports he is now getting far better download rates, as high as 798 kbps, though on Tuesday afternoon he was getting a disappointing 276 kbps.

But in a surprisingly contentious call with the Haggler, a vice president, Peter Gulla, said the company was pretty much blameless here: that those operators in India solved Mr. Pearce’s problem each of the roughly 20 times he called (not so, Mr. Pearce says), and that the company had already spotted a problem with this particular transponder and would have switched Mr. Pearce in a matter of days, without the Haggler’s call.

Well, talk about a happy coincidence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/yo...gler.html?8dpc





Sony Agrees to Provide Its Older Songs to eMusic
Brad Stone

In another example of struggling major music labels and Internet services finding common ground, Sony Music Entertainment has agreed to make its back catalog of songs available on eMusic, one of the largest music retailers on the Web.

EMusic, a company based in New York City, has some 400,000 subscribers who pay a monthly fee to download a certain number of songs. Its service is primarily aimed at adults who are fans of music from independent labels.

The company plans to announce on Monday that it will add all Sony Music tracks that are more than two years old, including material from artists like Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

The major labels had long been skeptical of the economics behind eMusic’s proposition to consumers. Subscribers to eMusic’s “basic” plan, for example, pay $11.99 a month to download 30 songs — or about 40 cents a song, far below the prices on Apple’s iTunes. Songs are in the MP3 format and do not have restrictions against copying.

As part of the deal, eMusic says it will slightly raise prices and reduce the number of downloads for some of its monthly plans.

Danny Stein, eMusic’s chief executive, said he had been talking to the major labels about adding their music for several years. Talks continue with Warner Music, the Universal Music Group and EMI, he said. He added that many of the independent labels had been asking the company to raise its prices.

“We have been looking for a catalyzing event to do it, and we think introducing this vast, quality catalog from Sony is that event,” Mr. Stein said.

The deal highlights several shifts in the online music landscape. The major labels gave up their objections to selling songs in the unprotected MP3 format in 2007. They also prevailed upon Apple this year to move to variable pricing in its iTunes store. Apple now sells older songs for 79 cents and new tracks for $1.29.

The major labels have also been more willing lately to strike more flexible and less expensive deals with start-ups like Imeem that are trying new approaches to online music.

Sony Music and eMusic would not disclose the particulars of their deal. An executive at Sony Music, a subsidiary of the Sony Corporation, said the company was interested in seeing multiple models for digital music coexist on the Web.

“We think the model of buying a set amount of music each month under an MP3 allowance is an attractive subscription option for consumers,” said Thomas Hesse, president of Sony’s Global Digital Business unit. “We are supportive of offerings that encourage fans to dig deep into the repertoire of our artists and discover the richness of our catalog.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/te...et/01sony.html





Study: Streaming Radio Grows Among Rock Listeners
FMQB

According to a new survey from Jacobs Media, online streaming radio listenership continues to make strides, so much so that Jacobs calls streaming "radio's new transmitter and tower." In a survey of over 21,000 Rock radio listeners, 30 percent of respondents said that their online radio listening has increased in the past year.

In 2005, 50 percent of those surveyed by Jacobs had never listened to streaming radio online, but that number has dropped to just 34 percent. Meanwhile, 39 percent of respondents said they listen to streaming radio at least on a weekly basis, up from 32 percent a year ago and up from 23 percent in 2005, the first year of Jacobs' Tech Survey.

The most frequent streaming radio users are Modern Rock fans and iPhone/iPod Touch owners. Out of the iPhone users, 45 percent listen to streaming radio at least weekly and 23 percent do so daily. Also of note, among streaming radio listeners, their most frequent destinations are local radio stations. Out of Internet-only stations, Pandora was the most popular option. The site was named by 20 percent of respondents, almost double their percentage a year ago. Sirius XM was mentioned by 12 percent and iTunes' radio channels were named by ten percent.

"For broadcast radio, if you build it, they will come," comments Jacobs Media President Fred Jacobs. "The brands that consumers know and trust terrestrially are one and the same on computers and phones. While streaming has its costs, for AM/FM stations, it’s like erecting a new tower and transmitter that creates availability to users of digital media."
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1352041





Connecticut Town Opposes Paying Royalty Fees for Teen Center Music
Nanci G. Hutson

New Milford leaders are humming their own tune about paying royalty fees for music performed at The Maxx teen center.

The majority of Town Council members, backed by Town Attorney Randy DiBella, think the music trade companies' request for royalty payments of some $4,500 annually is outlandish, so they have opted to ignore it.

"I think we should table this indefinitely,'' said council member Robert Guendelsberger.

Three years ago, the council decided not to pay royalties to another music trade group, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The music groups collect royalties on behalf of some 230,000 performing artists.

"This is the same old song,'' DiBella said of the most recent request from Broadcast Music Inc. and SESAC (formerly the Society of European Stage Author and Composers).

Although DiBella explained municipalities are not exempt from laws related to royalty payments and some towns have opted to pay an annual fee, he noted no municipality he knows of has ever been sued to pay.

"Your history is not to pay. And there are many towns that do not pay,'' DiBella said.

The Maxx is a nonprofit teen center that hires local bands, who perform their own music, and any other music played there is legitimately purchased, said Youth Agency executive director Mark Mankin, who forwarded the company's request to the mayor's office.

Mayor Patricia Murphy said she sees no reason to pay the fees when the teen center is paying for the music performed there and no profit is made from the music.

If a town entity was using somebody's music or published work to make money, Murphy said, she would sing a different tune. But "we're not violating anything."

Town Council member Robert Guendelsberger, who is an attorney, concurs.

"We're not a bar that makes a profit. We're the town,'' Guendelsberger said. "I just don't think it's appropriate."

Only council member John Lillis seemed open to negotiating a payment for what is a "legally enforceable royalty.'' He, too, is an attorney.

A message left at the BMI media relations office Monday was not immediately returned.

Town Council member Roger Szendy joked that no one in Town Hall should be caught "humming'' or they might be at risk of a royalty infringement.

DiBella said he will defend any lawsuit that might come the town's way. In the meantime, he is comfortable with the council ignoring the payment request.

"I think it's nonsense,'' he said.

The New Milford Town Council has decided to ignore a request from Broadcast Music Inc. and SESAC to pay royalty fees. Three years ago, a similar request was made by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_12496691





Salinger Sues Over "Catcher in the Rye" Sequel

J.D. Salinger on Monday sued the writer and publisher of a book billed as a sequel to his classic novel "The Catcher in the Rye," saying the work infringes on his copyright.

Salinger is asking a judge to block publication of "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" written by an author identified as J.D. California.

According to online bookstore Amazon.com, the book will be published in September by Swedish publisher Nicotext.

"The sequel is not a parody and it does not comment upon or criticize the original. It is a rip-off pure and simple," said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

A representative from Nicotext could not immediately be reached for comment.

Salinger holds a copyright to the 1951 novel, considered one of the great works of American literature, and its main character, Holden Caulfield.

The lawsuit describes Salinger as "fiercely protective of his intellectual property" and says he "would not approve of defendants' use of his intellectual property."

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Michelle Nichols and John O'Callaghan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...5507H720090602





Cher, Bono Heirs Sue Universal Music Over Royalties
Matthew Belloni

Cher has sued Universal Music Group, claiming that the label's creative accounting has shortchanged her and the heirs of her late ex-husband, Sonny Bono, to the tune of $5 million.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims an audit of UMG's accounting to the singer-actress from 2000 to 2003 showed that UMG executives "engaged in wrongful tactics" designed to hide revenue from two hit compilation albums.

The five-count, 22-page complaint claims breach of two recording contracts Cher had with UMG predecessors, one with MCA division Kapp Records in 1972 and a 1987 deal with the David Geffen Company. Cher claims that those deals entitled her -- and, in the case of the 1972 deal, Bono -- to receive up to 50 percent of net royalties received by UMG.

The complaint alleges that UMG later made a deal with Warner Music U.K. to distribute a 1999 compilation called "Cher The Greatest Hits," then funneled the money through UMG's international arm to conceal the amount of royalties owed to Cher and the Bono heirs.

"Instead of reporting to and paying plaintiffs their share of the revenues generated by Warner U.K., UMG Recordings, in an egregious example of self-dealing, apparently inserted Universal International as a middleman in the transaction ... for the sole purpose of diverting money that rightfully belonged to plaintiffs to Universal International," the complaint says.

"The claims are meritless, and we are confident that we will prevail in court," said UMG spokesperson Peter Lofrumento.

Improper Accounting Alleged

Cher also challenges accounting on a second compilation, 2002's "The Very Best of Cher." UMG allegedly allowed the album to be distributed by a division of Warner Music Group but accounted to Cher on a royalty basis as though UMG had sold the records itself, thus decreasing her share.

"UMG Recordings is underreporting and underpaying the royalties due to plaintiffs based on UMG Recordings' improperly accounting to plaintiffs based on a royalty rate instead of their respective shares of net receipts."

Cher also claims that UMG improperly deducted $328,662 in television advertising expenses and a 6.5 percent service charge in reporting revenue from the 1999 greatest hits collection, and that more money is owed from 2004 through 2008. But she has not yet audited the label's books for those years.

Cher and Bono came to prominence in 1965 when their single "I Got You, Babe" hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart, and she has since become the only female recording artist to have a Top 10 hit in each of the past five decades.

When Cher and Bono divorced in 1977, they agreed to split revenue from the songs recorded together. After Bono died in a ski accident in 1998, one-third of his interest passed to wife Mary Bono Mack, and one-sixth interests were split amongst his kids. Bono Mack, as well as Cher's daughter with Bono, Chastity Bono, are plaintiffs in the case, as are Bono children Christy Bono, Chianna Bono and son Chesare Bono.

"Universal is playing a game of catch-me-if-you-can with one of the most popular and iconic artists of all time," said Cher's lawyer, Mark Passin, of Robbins Kaplan. "Unfortunately, record companies have learned over the years that they can increase their bottom line by underreporting royalties to artists."

Music producer Snuff Garrett is also a plaintiff. He claims he is entitled to a 50 percent pro rata share of royalties from some of the recordings based on a producer's deal with MCA Records.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/enter...5520MT20090603





Publishers Look to Music Lessons on Digital Content
Michelle Nichols

Publishers are learning from music labels' struggle to make online music profitable and combat piracy, but so-called e-books will only add value to the industry and not replace printed books, experts say.

Amid a global economic downturn, the publishing industry is also trying to deal with a growing demand for online content driven by advances in technology with electronic readers like Amazon.com's Kindle and Sony Corp's Reader.

But it is learning from music labels, who have seen a shift in fans to digital sales from physical sales. These labels have filed countless lawsuits to combat free online music-sharing sites, while trying to make digital distribution profitable.

"Our aim is not to beat up the music industry ... but that said, they sure did screw it up," Andrew Albanese, Publisher's Weekly features editor, told a panel discussion on the topic at the recent Book Expo America in New York City.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, told the panel the Internet broke the traditional physical distribution model for music and is now doing the same for publishing.

But while he said the popularity of the MP3 music format is a rejection by fans of compact discs, "the difference is with books there's nothing wrong with books, the book is not a value-subtract medium but a value-add medium."

"Over time (e-books) will tend to enhance and contribute to the success of the book rather than replace it," he said.

While the music industry fought free music-sharing sites such as Napster and Kazaa in court, Jared Friedman, co-founder of social publishing website Scribd, said he was optimistic about the transition of the publishing industry.

"We seem to be going straight from an Adams model to an iTunes model and skipping the many years of Napster's and Kazaa's that went in between for the music industry," he said.

Apple Inc's online music store iTunes dominates the sale of digital music, but Friedman said it was important that publishers encourage a more competitive marketplace.

"It's clear now that there's going to be enough demand for books distributed as digital content, that there is going to have to be a digital distribution mechanism for books," he said. "If we handle the transition correctly the electronic model may actually monetize better than the print model."

But Penguin USA chief executive David Shanks and president Susan Kennedy are still wary of the piracy of digital books. Penguin is owned by British publishing group Pearson.

"The thing that's the most frightening is this sense of some people that everything should be free," Kennedy told Reuters at the Book Expo

Shanks added: "Piracy is an issue that we're concerned about.

"The industry still feels that we need some sort of digital rights management ... and that's sort of evolving," he said.

Oren Teicher, the chief operating officer and incoming chief executive officer of the American Booksellers Association, said one of the key challenges is the creation of open platforms that allow all retailers to sell digital books.

"There are very clear lessons and we are very conscious of trying to prevent repetition of what happened in the music industry," he told Reuters. "The challenge for us is to incorporate all the new ways that people access information and to continue to be relevant in that dialogue."

(Editing by Mark Egan and Philip Barbara)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55133X20090602





Last.fm, CBS: We Have Not Shared Any Data With Anyone

Last.fm and CBS respond in no uncertain terms to rumors that the two companies were involved in transferring user data to either the RIAA or a music label. Last.fm speculates that the company may be the target of slander.
Jacqui Cheng

Unsourced rumors that Last.fm handed over user data to the RIAA have resurfaced thanks to renewed and revised accusations against Last.fm's parent company, CBS. We reached out to the targets of the rumor to see if they had official comment. The RIAA, Last.fm, and CBS vehemently deny the claims, in broad terms, with one related party speaking on the condition of anonymity going so far as to call the story an instance of "irresponsible journalism."

It all started in February when TechCrunch published information from an unnamed "source" claiming that Last.fm had handed over individual user data to the RIAA after U2's then-unreleased album leaked onto the Internet. It was argued that this showed the RIAA how many users (and their IP addresses) had downloaded copies of the music and listened to it. The accusations sparked some panic among the Last.fm community. Last.fm quickly issued a "full and categorical denial" of the accusations, and the RIAA told Ars that it hadn't requested the data, and didn't even know where the rumor came from in the first place.

Some months later, Tech Crunch returned to the topic with a new rumor based on yet another unnamed source who is said to be "very close to Last.fm."

The claims now have morphed from Last.fm secreting the data to the RIAA, to CBS doing so. Or, maybe, CBS didn't send it to the RIAA, maybe they sent it to a record label. Or, perhaps, CBS was intending to send it, but never actually did.

As a result, Last.fm's Russ Garrett has issued a strongly worded denial on Last.fm's forums. "That particular data is controlled tightly inside Last.fm and is only stored for a short period of time. Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS's ops team provided this data is just not possible—Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system," Garrett said. "It really seems like someone is trying to slander us here." In another post, Garrett clarified that Last.fm has never given data linking IPs to scrobbles to any third party or to CBS, for that matter.

CBS is obviously frustrated by the airtime this story has gotten and has issued its own statement on the matter to Ars Technica. "[A]bsolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by Last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future," CBS told Ars. When we asked if perhaps CBS had transferred the data to a music label or other third party, CBS said, "We never handed over user info to the music labels or anyone else."

And, once again, the RIAA confirmed that it played no part in this drama: "We've made no such request for this information," RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told us.

This all leaves us in the same place we were in February—with a slew of accusations, a handful of denials, and zero evidence.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...ls-denials.ars





Artists Abused in Pirate Bay Trial Strike Back
Ernesto

Hiphop group Advance Patrol was used by the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial, portrayed as artists suffering losses from illegal downloading. However, the group itself was never consulted, and they are now striking back at the music industry by releasing their new album for free - on The Pirate Bay, of course.

advance patrolDuring the Pirate Bay trial, the prosecution showed how various torrents linking to infringing material could be downloaded from the Pirate Bay, including an album by the Sweden-based hiphop group Advance Patrol. The music industry lawyers then claimed that the Pirate Bay was aiding in copyright infringement and that the artists and labels were losing millions of dollars.

Interestingly, the bands and artists, including Advance Patrol, were never informed that they were to feature in the trial. Even worse, Advance Patrol feels that they were abused by the labels, as they are using BitTorrent themselves, and encourage their fans to do the same.

“We never asked to be plaintiffs in this case,” Gonza from Advance Patrol explains. “They used us as scapegoats in a fight in which we don’t wish to participate. We refuse to be used in a war against our fans.”

Gonza further explains that the people who download and share the band’s music are some of their most dedicated fans, not some criminals. To show how wrong the music industry was in targeting The Pirate Bay, they have decided to share their latest album “El Futuro” for free.

The Pirate Bay crew is delighted with Advance Patrol’s statement. “In the case against us the music industry used many artists without asking them first. The cooperation between us and Advance Patrol shows that not all of those who were plaintiffs wanted to be a part of the Spectrial circus.”

“Earlier we’ve seen the hip hop artist Max Peezay drop out of the trial proceedings, and when we’ve spoken to other artists they were upset as well. This shows that artists really like the internet, and of course - we love them right back,” we were told.

More and more artists are speaking out against the harsh anti-piracy efforts of the music industry lobby and the alienating effect it has on fans. Several top artists including Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Iron Maiden and Travis even founded their own lobby group, the Featured Artists Coalition - to stand up for their own rights and those of their fans.

Advance Patrol’s latest album can be downloaded via The Pirate Bay, and they encourage everyone to share it with as many people as possible.
http://torrentfreak.com/artists-abus...e-back-090602/





Beatles Unveil Fab Rock Band Game
FMQB

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono gathered at a press conference in Los Angeles yesterday, held in conjunction with the annual E3 videogame conference, to announce details of The Beatles Rock Band video game. They disclosed 10 of the 45 songs that will be included in the game when it comes out on September 9 (9/9/09, get it?) and they are: "I Saw Her Standing There," "I Want To Hold Your Hand," "I Feel Fine," "Taxman," "Day Tripper," "Back In The USSR," "I Am The Walrus," "Octopus's Garden," "Here Comes The Sun" and "Get Back."

Additionally, the former Beatles said the entire Abbey Road album will be available for purchase and download, as will other tracks from the Fab Four's catalog, after the game is released. "All You Need Is Love" will be released exclusively for Xbox 360 users as a downloadable song, and the proceeds of the single will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

"The game is good, the graphics are good, and we look great," joked Ringo Starr at the press conference, though he was not exaggerating. A trailer for the game can be viewed here at TheBeatlesRockBand.com, and the virtual depictions of the band members are pretty dead on. The trailer shows them playing at different venues from throughout their career, such as the Cavern Club in Liverpool, Shea Stadium, Abbey Road studio and the Ed Sullivan Theater. It also takes players through different phases of the band's career, from the early days to the later psychedelic era.

The Beatles Rock Band will be the first music game to offer three-part vocal harmonies rather than just one singer, challenging players to recreate The Beatles' vocal blend. There will also be custom-built models of the instruments that The Beatles played, such as McCartney's famous bass. The website also notes that "the game is packed with fab extras. Master the songs to hear rare audio and view unseen photos from the archives!"
http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=1352005





Acer to Sell Netbooks Running Google's Android
Kelvin Soh

Acer Inc, the world's No. 3 PC brand, plans to sell netbook PCs that run on Google's Android operating system, posing a potential threat to Microsoft's Windows.

Acer was the first PC vendor to officially announce that it was making Android PCs, weeks after it said it planned to launch smartphones -- mobile phones packed with advanced computer-like capabilities -- on the same platform later this year.

"Today's netbooks are not close to perfection at all. In two years, it will all be very different," Jim Wong, Acer's global president for IT products, told a news conference at Computex, the world's second-largest PC trade show held in Taipei.

"If we do not continue to change our mobile Internet devices, consumers may not choose then any more."

Wang declined to give any shipment targets or prices for the Android netbooks, which will run on Intel's low-cost and low-performance Atom processor, but said the company would continue to ship netbooks with Microsoft Windows.

Netbooks are stripped-down PCs optimized for surfing the internet, and usually cost around $300 each. A computer running on Android could be cheaper as analysts have previously said PC brands pay about $25 to install Windows XP into each netbook.

Android could cost less as its open source nature means developers and brands are free to use it and change it to suit their own needs.

"When we are doing this new Android netbook, we are not going to make the other one go away," Wong said. "Both systems will still remain available to customers, and one will not go away because of the other."

Analysts said it was still too early to say whether Android could really threaten the dominance of the Windows operating system in the PC world, pointing to an absence of software and applications that support Android.

"We'll still have to see what kind of applications the Android software can run on and how stable it'll be," said Vincent Chen, an analyst at Yuanta Securities.

Android, an open-source software that is meant for mobile phones, was first used by HTC in its smartphones, but many PC brands, such as netbook pioneer Asustek, have expressed interest in using it in its netbook computers.

The announcement came after Taiwan's market closed. Acer's shares ended 0.83 percent higher, outperforming a 0.07 percent decline in the main TAIEX index.

(Additional reporting by Roger Tung; Writing by Lee Chyen Yee; Editing by Nick Macfie)





Touchscreen PCs More Hype than Reality?
Kelvin Soh

Touchscreen technology is sweeping the consumer electronics market as technology brands hope to come up with the next iPhone, but these new toys could be little more than plenty of hype especially in the PC market.

Major phone and PC makers such as Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Research in Motion (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Asustek (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have launched touchscreen-enabled products, aiming to ride the trend of what they expect to be the next big thing.

Microsoft's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) impending launch of its next-generation Windows 7 operating system is expected to give the budding technology a further boost, bringing a software that supports such capabilities into millions of home and office PCs.

But most consumers may not find touchscreen PCs very different from their usual laptop or desktop PCs, and the technology is unlikely to spread beyond mobile phones.

"I don't think it's going to be the next big thing by any means, but just more and more brands are going into it," said IDC analyst Jay Chou.

"The software's still in an embryonic stage, and until that changes, hopefully with Windows 7, it's still going to be a while more before we see things taking off."

Touchscreens, once only commonly found in supermarket checkout counters and airports and banks, jumped to the forefront of consumer technology thanks to Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) popular iPhone, inspiring a whole list of knock-offs in the process.

PC brands' previous forays into touchscreens have fizzled, with products such as the tablet PC not living up to its initial hype when they were first launched more than a decade ago, with its popularity has dwindling.

The old-fashioned keyboard and mouse could still be the best way to use a PC, with user interaction habits notoriously hard to change, especially if there is a dearth of software support.

"I think it sounds like a lot of hype," said Gartner analyst Tracy Tsai. "It seems impractical to me for a person to use touchscreens on a computer, and when you're using a device so big, it really adds little value to the overall experience."

Touchscreen PCs have been around for a while now, but high costs and limited functionality have kept them to niche devices. These type of PCs make up less than 1 percent of all computers sold worldwide. While most analysts expect this figure to climb, few see it growing as quickly as some computer brands expect.

"The biggest question to me is how much value does a touchscreen add to your computer? Probably not very much, and if that's the case, why would I want to pay more money for such a computer," said iSuppli analyst Peter Lin.

Investors have been pumping money into companies that make touchscreens, with shares of component makers such as Wintek (2384.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) quadrupling this year while recently-listed Young Fast (3622.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has more than doubled.

Research firm DRAMeXchange expects revenue at these companies that manufacture touchscreens to grow nearly 17 percent annually to about T$49.79 billion ($1.5 billion) in three years, betting that more PCs and other tech gadgets will be equipped with touchscreens.

It's All About Costs

High cost associated with touchscreens could set back the technology a few more years until prices come down, with the cost of manufacturing a panel and its required chips jumping manifold on a PC when compared to a smaller smartphone.

Specialist manufacturer Wintek estimates it costs about $10 to make a 3-inch touchscreen frequently used in smartphones, but said costs can increase exponentially when the size increases.

"It really depends on the specifics of what the client wants, but prices can change and will of course be different when there are specific requirements that a client wants," said James Chen, a Wintek spokesman.

Touchscreen chip designer Elan Microelectronics (2458.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which counts Dell (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and HTC (2498.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) among its clients, estimates that adding a touchscreen to a desktop computer would increase its price by more than 10 percent.

"We've got to wait for the cost to come down a little before the kind of growth we're seeing right now in mobile phones can spread to computers," Elan's Chairman I.H. Yeh told Reuters at during the PC trade show Computex.

"Right now, I think it's still an issue whether or not consumers are willing to fork out an extra 10 percent for a touchscreen on their computers."

And not all consumers are buying into the hype surrounding touchscreens, especially as the current lean times force many of them to pull back on their discretionary spending and focus on what they really need.

"It's more expensive, and the money can be put to better use somewhere else," said 44-year-old John Lai, as he looked at the rows of computers on display at a computer shop.

(Editing by Anshuman Daga)
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv...5530OA20090604





Police in Talks Over PC Crime 'Breathalysers' Rollout

A pocket digital forensics lab?
Nick Heath

Police are in talks with companies about deploying a tool to detect evidence of illegal activity on PCs, aiming for it to be as easy to use as a breathalyser.

Officers in the Association of Chief Police Officers' (Acpo) e-crime group are looking into commercial devices that can search text, pictures and computer code on a hard disc for material of interest.

Such 'digital triage' tools would allow police the flexibility to search for anything from text in emails relating to stolen goods to illegal images.

Forensic specialists within Acpo are examining how commercially-available digital triage tools can be adapted to develop the device, which they want to be as easy for frontline officers to use as a breathalyser.

Commercially available digital triage tools targeted at law enforcement typically boot the target computer using a CD, which runs a forensically sound operating system to preserve the integrity of the data it holds for use in a criminal case. A separate program run from a USB drive will then search the disc for the material and extract it to the drive.

An Acpo spokeswoman told silicon.com: "[Acpo is] working with a commercial outlet to see what tools are available.

"There are quite specific objectives that they want to achieve and it is a case of discovering whether they need to rework something that is already in existence or develop a completely new tool.

"If somebody is suspected of a certain form of activity they will be able to carry out a targeted search rather than having to look through every piece of data."

Currently, UK police forces have a backlog of hundreds of computers seized during criminal investigations. The backlog of seized machines, combined with modern drives which can hold terabytes of data, means that many forces will wait up to a year to analyse machines, Charlie McMurdie, head of the new Police Central e-Crime Unit, revealed last year.

Use of the tool could minimise the numbers of seized machines and help officers without digital forensics training to uncover evidence on a hard drive.

The continuing growth in the size modern hard drives means it is becoming increasingly important to speed up digital forensics, and the hope is that such devices will allow police to reduce the amount of work necessary to identify machines of interest to investigators.
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9420144,00.htm





AFP Arrests 15 Over Web Video Showing Rape of Girl, 8

AUSTRALIAN Federal Police have arrested 15 men who, as part of a global pornography network, downloaded a single movie showing the rape of an eight-year-old Russian girl.

Police in 92 countries are tracking as many as 9000 suspects believed to have downloaded the movie, which was available online for four months last year.

As many as 30 Australians are expected to be charged over the film, in what the AFP said would be the biggest child pornography operation involving a single movie.

And as the AFP executed search warrants in states and territories around Australia, police forces all over the world were busy tracing viewers of the movie, which the AFP said contained some of the most serious images of sexual abuse.

The 18-minute film, which police believe was shot in Russia, came to the attention of the AFP in December, following a referral from German police.

So far, 27 search warrants have been executed in connection with the film, with more expected this week. As a result of the raids, the AFP has seized hundreds of thousands of additional images of child pornography.

AFP manager of high-tech crimes and child protection operations, Neil Gaughan, said the scale of Operation Furious was unprecedented.

"This would be the only time we've undertaken a significant investigation in relation to one file," Mr Gaughan told The Australian.

"It shows the tenacity of law enforcement around the world to crack into peer-to-peer operations to get this type of material off the internet."

A peer-to-peer system is a private network that gives users access to each other's computers, much like the now-defunct music file-sharing systems.

Most pedophile rings now favoured peer-to-peer applications as they are harder for police to infiltrate, Mr Gaughan said.

This network was operating for four months between July and November last year.

During that time, more than 9000 internet addresses accessed the film, meaning police agencies around the world are searching for a potential 9000 suspects.

Mr Gaughan said Operation Furious had resulted in 15 arrests in most states and territories, with more than 40 charges laid.

And more arrests were certain, with the AFP set to execute upwards of 30 warrants.

Those charged included students, petrol station attendants, company directors and IT workers. The alleged offenders range in age from 21 to those in their mid-40s.

All are male and none is believed to have been convicted of prior child sex offences.

The AFP is investigating possible links between the men.

No children have yet been removed as a result of the raids.

The film begins with a young Caucasian girl posing provocatively for the camera.

She then undresses before being forced to masturbate. The film culminates with her rape.

Mr Gaughan said the girl, who it is believed is between 8 and 10 years old, becomes visibly more distressed as the abuse escalates.

"That's why we call it child abuse material," Mr Gaughan said.

Authorities have yet to identify either the girl or her attacker.

But based on the film's backdrop, police believe the movie was shot in Russia.

Mr Gaughan said Eastern Europe had become the main source of child abuse material uncovered by the AFP.

Mr Gaughan said the investigation demonstrated the lengths offenders would go to in order to access new material.

"The fact that they'll go into a peer-to-peer application just to get one file, because no one had it, goes to show you about the mindset of these individuals," Mr Gaughan said.

"They're always seeking new and exciting material."

As a result of the arrests, the AFP has uncovered a wealth of additional child abuse material.

So far, the AFP had seized "hundreds of thousands" of pictures and videos depicting the full spectrum of child pornography, Mr Gaughan said.

Some of the material seized was at the most extreme end of the child pornography scale, depicting scenes of rape, bondage and bestiality.

He said the AFP expected to seize about 30 terabytes of child pornography.

To give some sense of the scale of the seizures, Mr Gaughan described a terabyte in the following way: "If I had a 500-page book and I stood it (on its end) 10-terabytes would go from one end of the Harbour Bridge to the other, 540 times."

In April, German police seized more than 500 computers and 800 storage devices as part of the crackdown. Their investigations revealed as many as 9000 people had accessed the film in 92 countries including the US, Canada, New Zealand and Austria.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...57-601,00.html





FTC Sues, Shuts Down N. Calif. Web Hosting Firm
Brian Krebs

In an unprecedented move, the Federal Trade Commission has taken legal steps to shut down a Web hosting provider in Northern California that the agency says was directly involved in managing massive global spam operations.

Sometime on Tuesday, more than 15,000 Web sites connected to San Jose, Calif., based Triple Fiber Network (3FN.net) went dark. 3FN's sites were disconnected after a Northern California district court judge approved an FTC request to have the company's upstream Internet providers stop routing traffic for the provider.

In its civil complaint, the FTC names 3FN and its various monikers, including Pricewert LLC -- the business entity named on the 3fn.net Web site registration records. The FTC alleges that Pricewert/3FN operates as a "'rogue' or 'black hat' Internet service provider that recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of illegal, malicious, and harmful content," including botnet control servers, child pornography and rogue antivirus products. 3FN also operates by the names APS Telecom and APX Telecom.

In an interview with Security Fix, FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz said the agency's action targets one of the Web's worst actors.

"Anything bad on the Internet, they were involved in it," Leibowitz said. "We're very proud, because in one fell swoop we've gone after a big facilitator of some of the utterly worst conduct."

The FTC chairman confirmed that this was the first time the agency had sought and been granted an order to shut down an Internet service provider.

Efforts to contact 3FN via phone, instant message and e-mail were unsuccessful. I will update this post in the event I hear back from them.

The FTC alleges that even though Pricewert officially is registered in Oregon, its principals and staff are located outside of the United States.

"Pricewert markets its services to domestic and overseas criminals by placing ads in the darkest corners of the Internet, including forums set up to facilitate communication between criminals," the FTC complaint said. (The image on the right is a screen shot of an ad for 3FN's services I found running on verified.ru, one of the busiest Russian online forums dedicated to identity theft and the sale of stolen identities).

"Pricewert hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest," the FTC said.

The FTC also said that not only was 3FN hosting sites promoting illegal activities, but that its owners and operators were directly facilitating and brokering those businesses. The commission references several Internet chat logs in which the head of programming for Pricewert/3FN is observed directly participating in the creation and configuration of a botnet.

"The customer informs Pricewert that he controls 200,000 bots and needs assistance configuring the botnet. The head of Pricewert's Programming Department agrees to assist, but complains upon learning of the size of the botnet that it will require a lot of work," the FTC's complaint alleges.

Botnet experts I have spoken with over the past eight months have found that 3FN housed many of the command and control networks for "Cutwail," one of the world's largest spam botnets. As late as mid-April, Joe Stewart, a botnet expert and director of malware research at SecureWorks, tracked nearly a dozen Cutwail control networks hosted at 3FN.

Indeed, in February, Security Fix began tracking malware samples from Cutwail and its cousin Pushdo that traced back to 3FN, dating back to at least October 2008. These reports were listed at ThreatExpert.com. A copy of that record -- with citations from malware analysis reports is available at this link here (Microsoft Excel document) or in HTML format. The Internet addresses colored yellow in those charts belong to 3FN.

Among the most popular sites on 3FN's hosting servers was botmaster.net, the home of an extremely popular service and software product used to blast out massive amounts of blog comment spam.

Mark Rasch, a former cyber crime prosecutor for the Justice Department and a principal at the Arlington, Va., based Internet Law Group, said the FTC's authority gives it the power to shut down companies that appear to be engaged in unfair and deceptive practices, whereas criminal law enforcement agencies have a much higher standard for proving wrongdoing in order to convince a court to shut down an ISP.

"It could be that other law enforcement organizations are using the FTC as a front in order to obtain evidence for later criminal prosecutions," Rasch said. "What's interesting about that approach is that in order for these guys to get out from under this court order, they're going to have to show that they've taken steps to clean up their act. But if there is a criminal investigation ongoing against 3FN, then anything their operators say in trying to convince a court to lift the order can and will be used against them later."

The FTC's Leibowitz declined to say whether other law enforcement agencies were investigating 3FN, but said his agency was assisted by several organizations, including: cyber investigators at NASA; Spamhaus; The Shadowserver Foundation; the University of Alabama at Birmingham; The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; and Symantec Corp.,

Interestingly, the Russian blogosphere is beginning to light up about 3FN's closure. This blog post notes that large numbers of 3FN customers were forced to move their sites to other providers. Meanwhile, the 3FN operators are telling customers that they will be back online in another location within hours or days.

Christopher Barton, lead research scientist at McAfee, said a number of 3FN domain name servers already have popped up at new locations online.

"The rats are running," Barton said.

Leibowitz said his agency would continue to pursue other ISPs that "provide a haven for Internet criminals."

"This is a signal that we're going to go after you, and you're not going to be able to hide behind the shroud of the Internet and be immune from enforcement action," Leibowitz said.

A signed copy of the FTC's complaint is available here (PDF).
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sec..._calif_we.html





Newspapers Want U.S. Help, Not Bailout
Robert MacMillan

Many U.S. companies consider lobbying the government just another cost of doing business. When newspapers want help from Uncle Sam, the cost could be their reputation.

Newspapers across the country are bleeding revenue and enduring the worst economic climate they have ever faced, similar to automotive and financial giants such as General Motors Corp and Bank of America Corp.

Some are seeking help from a source they once considered unthinkable: the government. But unlike other companies, newspapers cannot ask for public money without compromising their journalistic goals, media experts and executives say.

"That is so clearly contrary to what our role is as a watchdog that it's just not acceptable," said Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University's College of Communication and former editor of The Miami Herald.

Instead, publishers are looking for changes to antitrust law, tax breaks and, for some, the leeway to convert their business into nonprofit companies.

The call for action among newspapers has grown since late last year, and increasingly, the Obama administration and Capitol Hill are signaling that they are receptive.

The stakes could not be higher. Many papers are losing unprecedented amounts of advertising revenue. At the same time, publishers such as The New York Times Co and McClatchy Co must pay off billions in debt.

Others, such as Tribune Co and Journal Register Co, are in bankruptcy protection. Some papers have closed, and experts say more are on the way.

At risk, beyond the lost jobs and shareholder money, is the journalism that people deem essential for telling them what they need to know about their communities, their investments and the world.

All Together Now

All the while, newspapers are trying to reinvent themselves for an age when people read most of their news online for free. They have not yet found a way to make it pay, and to figure that out, they say, they have to sit down as an industry.

To do that, they also say, requires the Justice Department to change its antitrust policies so publishers cannot be accused of colluding to find the answers that they need.

"I've never seen an industry where people are so afraid to share ideas," said Philadelphia Newspapers CEO Brian Tierney, at a House subcommittee hearing in April. "Antitrust concerns inhibit even the most rudimentary discussions."

Some publishers want the Justice Department to reinterpret the law in a way that would encourage newspaper mergers or joint ventures.

"All of this really translates to supporting local journalism," said John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America, in an interview.

They also want freedom to discuss ways to get compensated by companies that make money by displaying their articles online, such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

The Justice Department considers antitrust law flexible enough now, one of its officials said at that hearing. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that the department is open to adjusting antitrust policy if it would help.

Another idea, supported by Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry, would let newspapers book losses in 2008 and 2009 over the previous five years when they were more profitable -- essentially a tax break.

Some journalists support a bill that would let newspapers operate as nonprofit organizations.

When's Your Deadline?

Nobody is arguing that government intervention can save the newspaper business, but more people in that industry say it is one of many pieces critical to its survival -- and with no end in sight to the ad declines, quick action is key, they say.

Whether that will happen is anyone's guess. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz told Reuters it is not time to act yet.

"Before you get to the point where you look at remedies, you have to discuss more the nature of the problem," said Leibowitz, who is planning a workshop for September to study the media's future. "The notion of some special tax treatment or an antitrust carve-out (exception) is way premature."

Some publishers think even a tax break is going too far.

"The industry still needs to reinvent its business model," said Mike Reed, chief executive of GateHouse Media Inc. "That's not really the government's problem."

Morningstar analyst Tom Corbett questioned the government's need to intervene at all.

"Creative destruction is an integral part of economic history," he said. "It may not be pretty, but the free market left to its own devices will come up with a model."

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan; Editing by Richard Chang)
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...55208420090603





Opera Passes iPhone to Lead Mobile-Browser Market

Norway's Opera Software overtook Apple's iPhone browser in May as the most popular mobile browser in the world, Web analytics firm StatCounter said on Tuesday.

Of all Internet pages that were downloaded to mobile devices globally in May, 24.6 percent were downloaded through Opera's browser and 22.3 percent via iPhone, StatCounter said.

The top spot has see-sawed this year.

"Opera began the year in the number one slot but iPhone overtook it in February," Aodhan Cullen, chief executive of StatCounter, said in a statement. "It will be fascinating to watch how this battle plays out over the year."

Opera sells its browser to many cellphone makers and operators, and consumers can directly download it for free, while the Apple browser's ranking reflects only iPhone users surfing the Internet.

Nokia, the world's top cellphone maker, retained third place in mobile browsers with 17.9 percent of the market, StatCounter said.

StatCounter said its research data is based on four billion pages loaded per month.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Gary Hill)
http://www.reuters.com/article/techn...55171K20090602





Opera 10 Browser: Extensive Real-World Test
Nate Lanxon

If your Internet connection is pathetic at best, prepare to become very interested in the latest version of the Opera Web browser.

Opera 10 is the latest rival to Internet Explorer, Firefox and Apple's Safari, which we first reported on back in 2006. It has a stack of new features, an overhauled tabbed browsing interface and promises a significant speed boost. We've taken the beta for a test drive and found, for the first time, that Opera is capable of impressing the crap out of us.

First, let's talk speed. Put simply, the slower your Internet connection is, the more impressive you'll find Opera. Opera Turbo -- a system that compresses Web pages you ask for, before they're sent down your line -- significantly increased the speeds at which our pages loaded when we throttled our connection from 100Mbps down to a pathetic 50Kbps. It was roughly twice as fast, in fact, which we'll present in graph form shortly.

There are two other major changes over version 9.6, and you'll notice two in the screenshot above. The first concerns tabs, which can now appear as Web page thumbnails. Vertically extending the bar of tabs transforms them from text to thumbnail. It's a logical step for tabbed browsing to take, and visually it's superb. But superb enough to warrant the reduction of Web page real estate? Crave is sat uncomfortably on the fence here.

So let's forward-ho to the other major change: the much-mimicked Speed Dial. It now includes the option to add a background image, and to extend the number of bookmarks it displays from nine to as many as 25 (or as few as four). It lacks the on-screen lick, spit and animation Apple's Safari 4 produces, but seasoned Operatics will both welcome the change, and chastise our deliciously mild criticism of it.

Performance

Earlier, we mentioned how much faster pages load over very slow connections when Opera Turbo is enabled. For us, this is Opera 10's killer feature. To test this we throttled the connection on our test machine* to just 50Kbps (roughly dial-up speed), then loaded ten pages twice: once with Opera in 'normal' mode, then once with Turbo enabled.

Pages used: CNET UK Windows 7 homepage, Google UK, Wordpress, BBC News, Wikipedia English homepage, eBay UK, Fark, Apple.com, Yahoo UK, Bebo

Safe to say, even having Opera installed as a backup browser for browsing over slow public Wi-Fi, is no mean idea. The drawback of note is that image quality suffers dramatically. Images are heavily compressed in order to acheive these download speeds, and as a result they can look horribly smeared with artefacts.

Standards and Javascript

As Javascript-heavy sites such as Gmail and Facebook continue to dominate our browsers more and more, the ability of a browser to quickly render them is becoming more important. Out of all the major browsers, it's Google's Chrome 2 that dominates, scoring 709ms (milliseconds) in our last round of browser benchmarks with the SunSpider benchmark. Apple's Safari 4 came second with 910ms, followed by Firefox 3.2a1 with 1,136ms. With 3,461ms, this puts Opera 10 beta 1 in fourth place, just ahead of Opera 9.6, which scored 4,076ms, and Internet Explorer 8 with 5,839ms.

In the real world, does Opera 10's apparent sluggishness really make a regrettable difference? For most people, no, and it's still faster than any modern version of Internet Explorer. But yes, if you want the cut off those precious milliseconds of Gmail loading times, Google Chrome is for you.

Finally, we should note that Opera 10 beta 1 scores a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. This is the Web-standards compliancy test, and the industry standard for testing how well a browser can handle technologies used to design Web sites. Safari 4 is the only other browser to pass this test (IE8 scores only 12/100, incidentally).

Conclusion

So, should you switch to Opera? In a nutshell, probably not switch, no: Firefox is more customisable, Chrome and Safari are faster. Anyone who uses a laptop on public Wi-Fi, however, should have it installed as a backup browser, as should anyone who wants the best tabbed browsing on the planet.

The key point to take away and mull at your leisure? It's a much better browser than Internet Explorer, and we're considering it an essential install on our laptops for times when connections are flaky and painfully slow. And that, ladies and gents, is an achievement no other browser has yet garnered.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,3...9302491,00.htm





Web Site Tracks Policy Changes at Popular Sites
Deborah Yao

-- A new Web site unveiled Thursday will track policies imposed by popular Internet sites such as Facebook and Google, hoping to help users spot potentially harmful changes.

TOSBack.org, the brainchild of privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, will track terms of service modifications within hours of an update.

The site will compare old and new policies side by side and highlight changes. With about two dozen sites covered already, TOSBack.org plans to add more agreements, from credit card, bank, cable TV and other companies.

Tim Jones, the EFF's activism and technology manager, hopes the site will help avoid debacles such as the one faced by Facebook in February.

Changes to Facebook's terms of use over control of content went unnoticed at first. But amid protests that Facebook might hold sway over content indefinitely, the company agreed to solicit user feedback. The site reverted to the previous terms of use policies as it tried to resolve the issues raised. Ultimately, Facebook let users vote on revised terms, which clarify that users own their information, not Facebook.

But Jones said many Web sites change their terms of service all the time and often don't notify their users.

"Terms of service policies are obviously really important. They form the foundation of your relationship with almost every site you visit on the Internet," he said. "But almost no one really has time to read them or the legal background to read them."

TOSBack.org aims to make the general public more aware of user agreements and how it affects them, Jones said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060403718.html





Cybercriminals Refine Data-Sniffing Software for ATM Fraud

The malware, which steals PINs and card data, works on ATMs running Windows XP
Jeremy Kirk

Cybercriminals are improving a malicious software program that can be installed on ATMs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system that records sensitive card details, according to security vendor Trustwave.

The malware has been found on ATMs in Eastern European countries, according to a Trustwave report.

Error 500--Internal Server Error
From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:
10.5.1 500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

The malware records the magnetic stripe information on the back of a card as well as the PIN (Personal Identification Number), which would potentially allow criminals to clone the card in order to withdraw cash.

The collected card data, which is encrypted using the DES (Data Encryption Standard) algorithm, can be printed out by the ATM's receipt printer, Trustwave wrote.

The malware is controlled via a GUI that is displayed when a so-called "trigger card" is inserted into the machine by a criminal. The trigger card causes a small window to appear that gives its controller 10 seconds to pick one of 10 command options using the ATM's keypad.

"The malware contains advanced management functionality allowing the attacker to fully control the compromised ATM through a customized user interface built into the malware," Trustwave wrote.

A criminal can then view the number of transactions, print card data, reboot the machine and even uninstall the malware. Another menu option appears to allow the ejection of an ATM's cash cassette.

Trustwave has collected multiple versions of the malware. The company believes that the particular one it analyzed is "a relatively early version of the malware and that subsequent versions have seen significant additions to its functionality."

The company advised banks to scan their ATMs to see if they're infected.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...tware-for.html





US and UK Prepare Fightback Against Eastern Hackers

Hackers are being targeted for attack by US and UK security authorities eager to launch a cyber counteroffensive to kick them off the net

Hackers who attack defence or commercial computers in the US and UK in future may be in for a surprise: a counterattack, authorised and carried out by the police and defence agencies that aims to disrupt and even knock them off the net.

The secret plans, prompted by the explosion in the number of computer-crime incidents from east Asia targeting commercially or politically sensitive information, are known as "strikeback", and are intended to target hackers' computers and disrupt them, in some cases involving denial of service attacks.

According to well-placed sources, work on "strikeback" has already begun in the UK, with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Metropolitan police's e-crime unit working to deploy teams. The measures are being adopted because of the unprecedented level of attacks being suffered from hacking groups in China, Russia and North Korea, which are suspected of being state sponsored. Among intelligence circles in Washington, DC, the idea of hitting back at foreign hacking groups is being described as the hottest topic in cyberspace.

"This is considered to be a key activity," said a former CIA officer actively involved in the debate. "We are being penetrated and it is not in our tradition to sit back and do nothing.

"This is a huge, huge deal in Washington and it is a high-priority discussion. What it means is that if we can identify who is doing this to us, then we can return fire with a payload that takes them out. That's a very big priority." Amid rhetoric reminiscent of the cold war, it is clear the US has run out of patience, following blatant cyberattacks such as Titan Rain - an attempt to breach western defence systems with the aim of stealing defence and commercial secrets.

Pledge on cybersecurity

While on the campaign trail last July, Barack Obama identified cybersecurity as one of the biggest challenges facing the United States. "As president, I'll make cybersecurity the top priority that it should be in the 21st century," he said. He has also equated cyberthreats with nuclear and biological weapons.

Last week saw the results of President Obama's cybersecurity concerns, with the publication by the White House of the "Cyberspace Policy Review" written by Melissa Hathaway, a senior director at the National Security Council who is widely tipped to become Obama's cybersecurity chief.

In the document - a review of the US's computer security problems, carried out over the past 60 days - Hathaway broadly recommends more cooperation and education, and maintaining the US's technological lead. The document also states: "The Communications Act of 1934 authorized the President, if he deems it necessary in the national security or defense and the requisite threshold condition exists, to use, control, or close communications services, systems, and networks under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission in conditions ranging from 'state of public peril' to 'war'."

Many involved in the "strikeback" discussions in the US think it must be deployed immediately to develop a "defensive offensive capability". "At a high level this has to do with a cyberwar threat discussion. If we can confirm who has attacked us, we have to have an offensive strikeback," said the former intelligence officer. Less bellicose but equally specific definitions are now in force in Britain. "The UK, like many other nations, has an offensive capability, which is for defence only," said a UK intelligence source. "There is a growing willingness to strike back against some of the more obvious threats."

One of the stated aims of the Met's e-crime unit is to "disseminate target-specific intervention and prevention advice, and conduct intelligence-led disruption activity". It all sounds very hawkish but it is a policy that is exciting controversy - how do you hit someone back without causing damage to someone else on the way, or taking out the servers of an ISP that the attack was routed through?

The cost of collateral

"People were talking about this six years ago," said Rik Ferguson, a senior security adviser for the computer-security company Trend Micro. "This is a very bad idea, due to the issues surrounding collateral damage." But the hawks say concern is outmoded, as conventional computer-security procedures and the methods used by security companies are proving ineffective at stemming the tide of attacks. And, according to some in the industry, targeting is possible.

"We know of a couple of hundred individuals in China and Brazil, a hundred in Russia and similar numbers in North Korea," said Brian Grayek, vice president of product development for CA, a company specialising in tools to identify the origin of attacks. "We can put tracking tools on the attackers' computers so we know who they are, where they are coming from, where they are going and when they are doing it. "We can pinpoint to street and location, there are a number of times we can identify individuals and I would be fairly sure the US government has the same capability." Which leaves the problem of who carries out the counterattacks.

"We were approached by Soca and asked if we were prepared to carry out denial of service attacks and trace routes back to known IP addresses," said a security specialist working in the City of London.

According to Len Hynds, former head of the National High-Tech Crime Unit, targeting and disruption of hacking groups such as the Russian Business Network has long been a topic of discussion at Soca. "Soca was looking at it as a target, but the stumbling block for them was legal issues." Which for many means that outsourcing the response is the name of the game. Just as groups such as the RBN and the students operating from Guangdong in China are suspected of working with the collusion of their governments, so many think the hunter-killers of cyberspace will operate on an outsourced basis as paid vigilantes.

In through the backdoor

"Anything that the UK would do would be deniable," says Pat Tyrrell, a former high-ranking official at the Ministry of Defence who drafted the UK's first assessment of the potential for cyberwarfare. "Doing things this way would not surprise me I always though the only way to deal with this was, quote, 'illegally'.

"You can either do nothing, which leaves you open to attack, or you can do something and accept there might be a risk downstream. One of the risks is that you do something and get caught but the people attacking us are already doing that," says Tyrrell, adding that drastic steps were now necessary to deal with the scale of the problem. "There are Chinese manufacturers of telecoms equipment who are known to have put backdoors into them, which is why their technology is banned from use in the US, even though it is significantly cheaper. This isn't just about hacking."

Asked to comment for this article, a spokeswoman for Soca says: "I've spoken with our e-crime team. All we can really say on this is that Soca uses a range of techniques within the available legal frameworks, appropriate to each investigation. We don't comment on the detailed use of individual tactical options."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ty-authorities





The Ultimate Lock Picker Hacks Pentagon, Beats Corporate Security for Fun and Profit
Charles Graeber

Tobias is laughing. And laughing. The effect is disconcerting. It's a bwa-ha-ha kind of evil mastermind laugh—appropriate if you've just sacked Constantinople, checkmated Deep Blue, or handed Superman a Dixie cup of kryptonite Kool-Aid, but downright scary in a midtown Manhattan restaurant during the early-bird special.

Our fellow diners begin to stare. Tobias doesn't notice and wouldn't care anyway. He's as rumpled and wild as a nerdy grizzly bear. His place mat is covered in diagrams and sketched floor plans and scribbled arrows. His laugh fits him like a tinfoil hat. It goes on for a solid 20 seconds.

But Tobias isn't crazy. Far from it. He's a professional lock breaker, a man obsessively—perhaps compulsively—dedicated to cracking physical security systems. He doesn't play games, he rarely sees movies, he doesn't attend to plants or pets or, currently, a girlfriend. Tobias hacks locks. Then he teaches the public how to hack them, too.

Like many exceedingly bright people, Tobias has the exhausted air of a know-it-all. Over dozens of dinners, he has walked me through how to pick simple locks ("Uh, is there something wrong with your hands?") and bypass combination dials ("A brain-damaged monkey could do it faster"). He has described how to outwit security technologies like motion detectors ("Duh"), face-recognition software ("It's stupid, even if you think about it!"), fingerprint scans ("What child came up with that?"), and heat sensors ("You can get this one—maybe").

We've covered key card hotel locks over seafood, in-room credit card safes over sandwiches. While we ate a decent steak dinner, Tobias used the house crayons to diagram one of the largest jewel robberies in history; over dessert, he showed me how a person less honest than himself would pull the heist again.

Thinking like a criminal is Tobias' idea of fun. It makes him laugh. It has also made him money and earned him a reputation as something of the Rain Man of lock-breaking. Even if you've never heard of Tobias, you may know his work: He's the guy who figured out how to steal your bike, unlock your front door, crack your gun lock, blow up your airplane, and hijack your mail. Marc Weber Tobias has a name for the headache he inflicts on his targets: the Marc Weber Tobias problem.

Lock-breaking is equal parts art and science. So is the ability to royally piss people off. Tobias is a veritable da Vinci at both endeavors. His Web site's streaming video of prepubescent kids gleefully opening gun locks has won him no points with mothers or locksmiths, and his ideas about how to smuggle liquid explosive reagents onto commercial airlines spookily presaged the Transportation Security Administration's prohibitions against carry-on liquids. Over the past 20 years, Tobias has been threatened by casinos, banned from hotel chains, and bullied by legions of corporate lawyers. And enjoyed every minute of it.

But to Tobias, pissing off The Man isn't the point, not entirely. Nor is it, entirely, to make himself famous or rich—not that he's allergic to either outcome. The point, he says, is to "make shit better." Tobias thinks of himself as a humble public servant. When he attacks the Kryptonite bike lock or the Club (or those in-room safes at Holiday Inn or Caesars Palace), he's not a bad guy—he's just Ralph Nader with a slim jim, protecting consumers by exposing locks, safes, and security systems that aren't actually locked, safe, or secure. At least, not from people like him.

The problem, if you're a safe company or a lock maker, is that Tobias makes it all public through hacker confabs, posts on his Security.org site, and tech blogs like Engadget. He views this glasnost as a public service. Others see a hacker how-to that makes The Anarchist Cookbook read like Betty Crocker. And where Tobias sees a splendid expression of First Amendment rights, locksmiths and security companies see a criminal finishing school. Tobias isn't just exposing problems, they say. He is the problem.

But forget bike locks and hotel room safes: These days, Tobias is attacking the lock famous for protecting places like military installations and the homes of American presidents and British royals.

Between stabs at his salad, Tobias hands me his latest idea of fun: nearly 300 pages of self-published hacker-porn detailing his attack on the allegedly uncrackable Medeco high-security lock. "Trust me, this will cause a goddamned riot!" he says, dabbing at tears of joy with a paper napkin. "Oh yeah, this is way, way bigger than the liquid explosives thing!" And he's right, it is bigger—and with way, way bigger consequences.

Some Marc Weber Tobias problems rattle companies. Others end as consulting contracts or dropped lawsuits or forcibly improved design. But all Tobias problems, like all hacker stories, start with a nerdy kid in a basement workshop, taking things apart.

Tobias' basement was in the Denver suburbs of the 1950s, back when the global data carrier wasn't the Internet but Ma Bell. The Bell System said you had to use its equipment and protocols and pay a dime to access its network; Tobias figured out how to do it with a penny.

At the time, the saying was "Ma Bell has you by the calls." Young Tobias saw the company as a Goliath, "a big corporate monopoly intent on ripping everyone off." It was the perfect target for an aspiring pain in the ass.

With practice, the inscrutable pay phone boxes began giving up their secrets. Tobias was fascinated, then disappointed; once you saw how the machine worked, it was obvious, stupid even. All you had to do was hit the coin return thingy at the right moment, launch a penny into the nickel slot, and the circuit connected. Stupid.

And the stupidest thing of all was that the phone company counted on customers being more stupid than their stupid machine. To a 15-year-old troublemaker, this was either an insult or a challenge. Tobias decided it was both and decided to take it personally. Cheap phone calls weren't the point. Beating the machine, hacking the lock: These were acts of vindication, proof that you were right and others wrong, proof that you were better than the suckers.

Now Tobias started turning up at school dances—not to show off his Hand Jive, of course, but to showcase his new phone trick. It was a nerdy cool: David outgeeking Goliath. He felt a ripple of electricity whenever he teased a dial tone out of a machine, and at collection time the company men found pennies where nickels should have been.

But penny games were greasy kids' stuff. Soon Tobias started phone phreaking—building devices known as blue boxes that mimic phone tones to speak directly to the switching machines. Like his other Ma Bell trick, the point of this hack wasn't just to get free long-distance calls; it was to solve the most interesting puzzle possible. He had a lot of fun.

Recounting these triumphs delights Tobias, and soon his rant becomes a waggle dance of pure geek glee. His eyelids flutter as his eyeballs scan and rescan space like a stuttering robot. Tobias can present a closed and curmudgeonly attitude to strangers, but this subject opens him up like a tickled child. "All lock breakers talk about the intellectual challenge being like chess," he says. "But really, it's much better, because you're pitted against smart guys and millions of dollars of engineering designed to keep you out!"

Through the late '60s and early '70s, as his university campus exploded in drugs and protest, Tobias was monkishly working his way through the dorm's pin-tumbler master key system. For a solitary kid with fierce concentration and odd social skills, locks provided rewards the outside world never could. "Basically, I've given up women for locks," Tobias laughs. "They're dependable, and their problems are understandable—if you focus long enough, you can actually figure them out!"

On weekends he did file-drawer wafer locks, combination dials from lockers, and, eventually, simple safes. The technical permutations filled notebooks, then a filing cabinet. By senior year, Tobias was methodically chronicling his discoveries in what became a hacker's encyclopedia. Over the next few decades, this would evolve into a book and multimedia CD-ROM called Locks, Safes, and Security: An International Police Reference (1,411 pages; $220). In the trade, it's usually just called the bible.

Since Tobias had his sights set on being a professional pain in the ass, law school was a natural choice. So was a private investigator's license. And a polygraph license. And invitations to help sheriff's department investigations. Soon Tobias was trapping racketeers through wiretaps and rigging hidden cameras in hospitals and churches to catch junkie night nurses and pedophile Catholic priests. ("That was really fun," Tobias says. "Especially as a Jew.") And if in the course of an investigation a locked door needed opening or a security system needed circumventing—well, he had some methods for that, too.

By the 1980s, Tobias had settled into a career working the edges of law enforcement. His gigs had paired him with the South Dakota attorney general's office, the state highway patrol, and more than half a dozen police and sheriff's departments. He had been a PI. He had worked with informants in two states' penitentiaries and as a wired-up undercover operative buying dope, a prosecutor, and a consultant. He was a personal friend of the governor. By all conventional measures, Tobias was a successful adult. But somewhere deep inside, that 15-year-old tinkerer was still looking for trouble.

He found it by doing street theater to disgrace a parking-meter manufacturer in Sioux Falls, by planning a mock press conference in Minneapolis (resulting in a panicked attempt to ban him from the Marriott hotel chain), and by threatening to take his in-room safecracking show to the Vegas Strip. ("Caesars' security really didn't find it funny," Tobias says. "So I flew to a hotel near Disney World and did it there instead.") When the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor came and went without an apology from the Japanese government, Tobias decided to sneak-attack a Japanese company by decoding the magnetic key cards for its hotel door locks.

"Do I like to make trouble? Of course, I'm a lawyer!" Tobias says. "Ask yourself, why does a lawyer pick locks? The answer is liability. A lot of companies are arrogant and greedy and stupid bullies who put people at risk. They deserve to have a Marc Weber Tobias problem!" And year after year, Tobias delighted in creating them, hitting Elsafe and the Club, Targus combination and Master locks, iPod leashes and laptop cables. He did the Kryptonite with a Bic pen, post office boxes with a filed key, and electronic home security systems with a UHF walkie-talkie. He was having fun. And in response, the lock companies were forced to address his hacks by upgrading their technology. True to his code, Tobias' meddling was "making shit better." It was all going swimmingly. Then, in the early 2000s, he became increasingly fascinated with the crack cocaine of lock-picking: a technique called bumping. It would lead him to a lock breaker almost as obsessed as he was—and to the biggest security drama of his career.

Bumping is simple: Insert a filed-down key into a lock, then knock it with a hammer to momentarily pop the lock's pins into an open position. Like the Bic pen technique for defeating the Kryptonite lock, it's perfect for opportunistic bad guys; any idiot with a few tools and minimal skill can use it to open most cheap front-door locks worldwide. Though well-known in Europe, bumping was still relatively obscure in the US—until Tobias began introducing it at hacker conferences in 2004.

Not surprisingly, news of the imminent bumping epidemic was media catnip. Tobias was interviewed dozens of times for the kind of scare pieces that local newscasts wedge between weather and sports. It didn't take much to imagine all the paranoid scenarios: Kids study Tobias' online video, crack the lock off Dad's Glock, and put holes in things that shouldn't have them. Enterprising junkies embark on habit-feeding crime waves. Hotel rooms, no longer secure, become magnets for burglary and rape. High school truants walk the halls shimming combination locks off rows of lockers. Crime gangs use Tobias' case study to copycat the 2003 Antwerp diamond heist, while tech terrorists simply co-opt the master list of Marc Weber Tobias problems to outwit America's Keystone Kop-homeland security and generally blow stuff up. The world is unzipped. And our innocence—not to mention a good deal of our cash, jewelry, and portable electronics—is lost.

Tobias shrugged off such concerns, along with the hate mail. Scaring citizens to attention is part of his educational program. "Do you really think ignorance will keep you safe?" he asks. "Is it even an option?" But what did worry him was the growing anger among members of the Associated Locksmiths of America, the largest lock-industry trade group in the country.

An ALOA member filed a formal grievance for violation of the association's code of ethics after Tobias spoke at the 2004 HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York City. After Tobias appeared at the 2007 Defcon meeting in Las Vegas, ALOA threatened to kick him out of the organization for presenting security weaknesses to hackers and continuing to associate with enterprises of "questionable character." Since much of Tobias' income comes as a consultant to lock companies that rely on ALOA, for once he'd met a threat he couldn't afford to shrug off.

Tobias understands why some ALOA members despise him, and he's sympathetic, to a point. "They're pissed because I keep telling them that it's not a guild and that there are no secrets," he says. "It's called the Internet—duh!"

But Tobias' information-age philosophy belies a practical problem: Locks are not software, and you can't download a patch for your front door. Until someone pays to swap out that hardware, it's vulnerable. And so are you.

But where most locksmiths saw menace, a manufacturer called Medeco High Security Locks sensed a marketing opportunity. For four decades, Medeco systems have defined high security (a technical designation indicating resistance against covert-entry attack for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on which of two laboratory standards is used). While Medeco locks are obviously not the only barrier between an evildoer and, say, US nuclear codes, they are some of the best locks ever made—and over the years, they have secured most everything worth protecting: storefronts and corporate offices, even the Department of Defense, courthouses, UN buildings, and military and munitions facilities worldwide. And the company's newest line of locks, Medeco3, was essentially a promise in brass and steel.

Medeco trumpeted the fact that the lock protected the residences of the British royals and the US president. A press release emphasized that while cheaper locks might be susceptible to bumping, "not all locks can be bumped." And consumers should "know the differences." Soon Clyde Roberson, Medeco's director of technical services, also began appearing on those local news scare pieces, raising the alarm about the bump menace while touting a lock that, the news reports said, "can't be bumped." And Medeco didn't deny the "bump-proof" claims. (As this article went to press, the company Web site continued to link to the reports.) In August 2006, Medeco even filed paperwork to trademark the term bump-proof.

Bumping was a PR boon for Medeco's $100-plus high-security locks, and Tobias was the technique's American prophet. But even as Medeco's Roberson thanked Tobias for the publicity, the lock cracker had begun to preach a new message: Medeco's hardware was good, but not good for everyone—and certainly nowhere as good as company executives claimed. "I told them the whole 'bump-proof' thing was a terrible idea," Tobias says. One reason: a young Latin American locksmith named, coincidentally, Tobias. Like Marc Tobias, Tobias Bluzmanis had started his lock-hacking career by taking things apart down in his parents' basement (in this case, in Caracas, Venezuela). After moving to Miami, Bluzmanis spent nearly two years moonlighting in his workshop, obsessed with inventing a gizmo to determine pin position in Medeco locks. His lawyer wrote to Medeco, describing the device. The company evinced little interest, replying with a form letter.

When Bluzmanis turned to Tobias for advice, the older man spotted something special. It wasn't the invention—several lock engineers had designed similar decoders decades earlier, to no effect. The impressive thing was that Bluzmanis had done it without formal engineering training or knowledge of the previous efforts. Essentially, Bluzmanis had been clever enough to reinvent the wheel.

Tobias saw potential in Bluzmanis—and a possible partner. By July 2006, the two were meeting regularly in the back of a Miami locksmith shop, hunting for the Medeco's vulnerabilities.

Bluzmanis and Tobias are a classic odd couple: Bluzmanis is a tall, soft-spoken Venezuelan with a new family and a taste for red wine. Tobias is an outspoken, midsize, middle-aged, middle-American bachelor and lifelong teetotaler. But crouching geek-to-geek at a workbench, squinting into a puzzling keyhole, the differences didn't matter.

The lock-cracking quest took on the intensity of a recurring fever dream as night after night they employed paper clips, needle-nose pliers, a plane sander, safe-deposit key blanks, plastic sheets, lock-picking tools, tension wrenches, and lots and lots of paper. They divided the Medeco3 mechanism into a series of problems, then devised theories to attack each in order.

By December 2006, Bluzmanis and Tobias had discovered a method for opening the Medeco3 in about a minute. Tobias called Roberson immediately. "We figured he'd be as interested as we were," Bluzmanis says. "But he said, 'No, it's impossible; the locks must have been defective.'" So a few weeks later, Tobias sent Roberson the breached hardware along with a video of them opening a couple of Medeco locks. "I even posted the clip on my Web site," Tobias says. The password for access: Roberson's initials and phone extension.

Then Tobias and Bluzmanis sat back and waited. What did they expect? Perhaps a press conference, at least some attaboys for cracking the lock equivalent of Fermat's last theorem. They had just slain Goliath on digital video. But Goliath didn't appear to care. In fact, according to Tobias, Goliath was no longer returning phone calls.

Tobias says that even after five weeks he had heard nothing substantial from Roberson: "He said nobody had looked at the video or examined the locks; they were too busy. I mean, give me a break!" (Roberson says he can't remember the specifics but has "always appropriately responded to any reasonable inquiry" that Tobias made.)

But internally, Medeco was making adjustments. Online, the company changed its claim to "virtually bump-proof" and stopped pursuing its application to trademark bump-proof. Yet Medeco still wouldn't comment on Tobias' discovery. Nothing could piss off Tobias more. And so what had started as an intellectual pursuit now became a crusade.

Tobias needed proof, a confession. But Medeco would no longer engage in any substantial conversation with him. So he started using surrogates and taping the calls. "Customer service was still saying they couldn't be picked or bumped," Tobias fumes. "At the conferences, my colleagues were being told, 'Hey, Marc Tobias is just a crank and a liar trying to extort hush money from the company!'"

Sitting across from Tobias at dinner, protecting my food from flying spittle, I don't really need to ask if he's pissed off. But I do anyway. "What?" he shrieks, alarming the waiter. "Of course I'm pissed off! Everybody should be pissed off!"

"It's not about me. It's about what these locks protect," Tobias says. "Medeco locks are the best in the world—that's why they're used by the Pentagon, the embassies. These agencies believe that the locks can't be picked in under 15 minutes, that they can't be bumped, that you can't trace keys onto plastic. It's the definition of high security—and it's wrong! We proved it."

"Look," he says, taking it down a few notches. "If we can do it, so can the bad guys. Medeco needs to acknowledge it and let the locksmiths know it—and the DOD, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and all their clients."

Tobias blinks frantically, trying to clear this appalling reality from his view-screen. "You know, they could have just admitted the problem. Just said, 'Marc, you're right and we're wrong and we need to admit this publicly and fix it.' But did they do that?"

Tobias waggles an emphatic no. "Instead, they called me an extortionist and trashed the Marc Tobias reputation. And they're going to pay for that," he says, stabbing the defenseless tablecloth for emphasis. "Oh yeah, arrogance does have its price."

Cheated of intellectual laurels and shut out by one of the most revered lock companies in the world, his only option now was to go Rambo. He would take this Marc Weber Tobias problem directly to the public.

First, Tobias wrote another encyclopedic manual, called Open in Thirty Seconds, and in 261 excruciatingly detailed pages, he and Bluzmanis explained exactly how they exploited the Medeco vulnerabilities—and exactly how you could exploit them, too. They spelled out not only picking and bumping attacks but other Medeco3 hacks as well and crowned the work with a cheeky introduction "thanking" Clyde Roberson of Medeco for "making this possible." (Their DIY method for duplicating keys using a photocopier, an X-Acto knife, and some old credit cards will be included in the next edition.) Then Tobias had 3,000 copies printed (it's available on Amazon.com and his Web site), packed up his locks, socks, and underwear, and hit the road.

Maybe this meeting was in Myrtle Beach or Dallas or Dubai. Or Kuala Lumpur or Amsterdam or San Francisco—it doesn't matter, since nobody was officially here anyway.

Call them spooks, black-bag operators, whitehats, covert-entry men. You can't call them anything else, because the people who run security for federal agencies don't wear uniforms or name tags. They don't introduce themselves, and they never, ever speak on the record. When they meet, it's by personal invitation in rented rooms stocked with Styrofoam cups and nondairy creamer. Theirs is a universe of complete secrecy and total deniability, of national secrets and nuclear footballs, clothed in the anonymity of Dockers and Ecco walkers.

But even in this shadow world, these men had faith in certain fundamental truths, like the reliability of Medeco locks. These were the locks that defined high security. They couldn't be hacked, not quickly and quietly, not covertly, not with picks or jiggle keys, and definitely not with blanks cut from credit cards. These men had known this for sure, and for decades.

And yet they gathered last summer to sit in rented chairs and experience the latest Marc Weber Tobias problem. Laid out on a rented table were new Medeco locks, picking kits, bump hammers, jiggle keys, a paper clip, and a vise. Tobias clicked through his PowerPoint slides, then hit the lights. He stood aside while the spooks tried the technique themselves, one after another.

"Well, I'll be damned," said the man from the European military security organization.

"Good golly," said the man with desert cargo pants and a jarhead cut.

"Hmm," said the security guy for a US government acronym.

Tobias swallowed a smirk. "I'm sure you know what these protect..."

"Uh-huh," the American spook said. The lock was open. It wasn't supposed to be. He held it between his fingers like a radioactive turd. "This," he said, "is a problem."

Suddenly, it was all too easy to imagine real-life Tobias attacks: A mole in Defense or Treasury borrows a key for five minutes. He photocopies it and emails the scan, distributing a master key that can access a whole floor. And all those security protocols based on 10-minute response times? Now an expert covert team might take seconds, not hours or minutes, to open a target's door. Not every lock, not every door—but still, the impossible was now clearly possible.

And how long had the Tobias attack been out there? Did the Chinese have it yet? You could see part of the room thinking, "Holy crap, if the terrorists are half as smart as the hackers, they've already won," and the other part thinking, "Holy crap, how can we use this trick to screw everyone else?" Suddenly, there was a new menu of spy-world options, from embassy break-ins and bug placement to military, diplomatic, and industrial espionage.

"Even for high-security locks, it's never a matter of if but how long it takes a professional team to get inside," one clandestine federal security expert told me. "The Tobias approach changes that attack time for Medeco locks."

While a couple of minutes might not seem like much when that lock is protecting an ice cream shop, it's a lifetime in the covert world. "For high-risk targets, it can mean the difference between 'you're in' and 'you're dead,'" the expert explained. "So yeah, it's a very big deal."

But officially, Medeco wasn't so sure. Roberson was still adamant that he had never seen "objective verification that Tobias is able to do this himself in the times he claims, particularly under realistic conditions." Without independent verification, Roberson said, the Tobias attack is just a parlor trick performed on what could well be prescreened locks. It certainly wasn't a threat worth notifying the world about.

It could have just stalled there—an unresolved he-said/he-said situation, a war of words and words only. That's how it happens in the real world: No party is totally wrong, nobody gets sued, and nothing gets fixed. But of course that's not how a Marc Weber Tobias problem goes down.

Instead, on a blustery Thursday in February, I brought a video team, a chronograph, and six Medeco3 locks to a Wired conference room on the ninth floor of the Condè Nast building in New York City.

These were the same Medeco locks protecting tens of thousands of doors across the planet, the same locks Roberson said he'd never seen convincingly hacked—and apparently never will. Because while Roberson and ALOA representatives were both invited—and encouraged to bring along their own locks, protocols, judges, videographers, lawyers, technicians, and locksmiths—the invitation inspired only a 1,500-word response from Roberson and, ultimately, a flat refusal to attend what he deemed an unfair demonstration.

As it turned out, only Tobias and Bluzmanis showed up. They had a cheap rolling suitcase bungied with a small vise, a tackle box full of picks and tryout keys, and everything to lose.

One by one, brand-new Medeco locks were unsealed. And, as the camera rolled, one by one these locks were picked open. None of the Medeco3 locks lasted the minimum 10 to 15 minutes necessary to qualify for the "high security" rating. One was cracked in just seven seconds. By Roberson's standards, Tobias and Bluzmanis had done the impossible.

Afterward, Bluzmanis was exhausted. Nerves had kept him awake the night before the demo, and now he had Marlboros to smoke and a plane to catch. But Tobias was fired up. Fueled. Pumped. Ready for his close-up. And, as always, hungry.

"This isn't a salted earth campaign anymore," Tobias tells me over a post-test matzo-ball soup and Reuben in a decrepit Times Square deli. "This is Sherman's March now. Tell Clyde Roberson to look it up. Look up Atlanta. Look up Savannah, 1864. Look up Elm Street—if you talk to Clyde, ask him when they're moving to Elm Street. Because they're already in the goddamned nightmare!"

Thirty minutes ago, Tobias and Bluzmanis defeated the Medeco3. But by the time our waitress swaps out soup for sandwich, the Medeco3 is yesterday's news.

Tobias has already swiveled his sights to Medeco's newest tech—electromechanical locks that combine physical security hardware with electronic authentication. Smart locks like NexGen and Logic are the new new things, integrated androids of brawn and brains. At a few hundred dollars a pop, they're the expensive new things, too.

As of this writing, Medeco is peddling its Logic and NexGen locks for use in bill changers, token dispensers, and soda machines. They're already protecting sealed cargo containers entering American ports. They safeguard parking meters in major American cities and the security hub of at least one international airport. And under a contract signed last year, Medeco's Logic locks became the technological watchmen for security and data systems used by more than 500 agencies in Ohio alone. The US government has ordered even more for the offices of the Federal Trade Commission.

So surely, Tobias reasons, Medeco will want to know that its new locks could have a big new problem. "As far as we can tell—and there's still testing to be done—we're talking about a full-blown engineering defect," he says, "like the Kryptonite. Any idiot can hack these locks in 10 seconds! Without leaving a single trace that they were there!"

Tobias points his pickle accusingly. "Tell me every college Coke machine won't get stripped!" he yells. "Tell me nobody's going to treat parking meters like cash machines! Or treat bill changers like bowls of bar peanuts! Hell, even you could do it!"

Tobias grins a corned-beef smile. Then suddenly he remembers his pickle. It is, for now, the most delicious pickle on the planet.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/...urrentPage=all





List of U.S. Nuclear Sites Inadvertently Posted Online
Joby Warrick

A U.S. document containing sensitive details about hundreds of civilian nuclear sites across the country was posted online Monday, an apparently inadvertent security breach that had federal officials scrambling yesterday to remedy the mistake.

The document, a draft declaration of U.S. nuclear facilities to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, contained descriptions of sensitive civilian sites, including the locations of facilities that store enriched uranium and other materials used in nuclear weapons. It was available for about a day on a Government Printing Office Web site before inquiries by news organizations prompted its hasty removal.

Nuclear experts said it was theoretically possible that the document could benefit terrorists contemplating an attack on one of the facilities. Still, because the information was unclassified and most of it is publicly available through other sources, the release generally was deemed more embarrassing than harmful.

"It is probably not that dangerous, but it is a violation of the law," said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector and president the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit research group in Washington. "You don't want this information out there, any more than you would want a thief to know the location of a vault in your house."

The 267-page draft document was intended as a formal declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of U.S. obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Obama administration submitted the document last month to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for technical review.

In a cover letter to Congress that accompanies the document and is posted on the White House's Web site, President Obama states that measures had been taken to "ensure that information of direct national security significance will not be compromised at any such site, location, facility, or activity" as a result of IAEA oversight of U.S. facilities.

The document does not contain information about the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, but it does divulge restricted information such as interior design features of nuclear facilities where fissile materials are stored.

The online appearance of the document was first reported on the blog Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. He noted that much of the draft's contents were designated "sensitive but unclassified."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060300028.html





Big Brother HAS Gone Too Far ... and That's an Ex-Spy Chief Talking
Mathew Hickley

Warning: Sir Richard Dearlove is concerned about the loss of liberties in 'Big Brother' Britain
The former head of MI6 has hit out at 'striking and disturbing' invasions of privacy by the Big Brother state.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, claimed some were an 'abuse' of the law.

He attacked the 'loss of liberties' caused by expanding surveillance powers and described some police operations as 'mind-boggling.'

The former spy chief joins a growing number of high-profile critics warning that individual freedom and privacy are being seriously eroded by the Government's disproportionate efforts to guard against terrorism.

Sir Richard was particularly critical of what he claimed were inadequate laws to regulate some surveillance powers.

Commenting on the massive surge in police use of stop-and-search powers in London, he highlighted the fact that Scotland Yard officers have carried out more than 150,000 searches since 2007.

This compared with fewer than 300 in Manchester. Sir Richard said: 'That is a mind-boggling statistic. That may well be an abuse of the law.

'I am a great believer in proportionality and as a citizen I worry about the loss of my liberties.'

He questioned the legal constraints on the use of millions of CCTV cameras across Britain, saying: 'We have constructed a society which has great technical competence - and some of that competence isn't particularly regulated.

I think the important thing in the UK is that there should be very strict legislation and strict legislative oversight.'

Sir Richard, who spoke out during a question-and-answer appearance in front of 800 people at the Hay on Wye Festival, was a career intelligence officer who joined MI6 in 1966.

He was in charge of the agency at the time of the September 11 attacks, and oversaw the response to the emerging threat from Al Qaeda.

When he left MI6 and became Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, officials said he would not be giving interviews or making public appearances.

But in recent months he has spoken at a number of events.

Sir Richard's remarks echo concerns voiced recently by terrorism watchdog Lord Carlile who criticised the number of stopandsearches and said it risked gravely undermining relations with the Muslim community.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee recently called for the state's Big Brother powers to be rolled back, while Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has condemned the spread of surveillance, particularly the UK's 4.5million CCTV cameras.

He said Home Office plans for a vast internet surveillance database were 'a step too far for the British way of life'.

Sir Richard said he believed the U.S. response to September 11 had been disproportionate.

George Bush's administration detained and tortured hundreds of suspected terrorists in foreign jails under the extraordinary rendition programme. Sir Richard said: 'I'm a great believer in proportionality, and while what happened on 9/11 was a dreadful and serious event, in no way did it threaten the integrity of western civilisation.'

Asked about Britain's involvement in the CIA's rendition programme, Sir Richard told the festival audience that MI6 would have sought ministerial approval of any cases involving British citizens or residents.

He said: 'The intelligence and security community act in sensitive situations with political cover'.

Sir Richard admitted he had been aware of a number of rendition cases while he was head of MI6, but claimed the Americans had not passed on lists of names. He added: 'Yes, I think we were certainly aware. I mean we were not aware of the detail, we were aware of some individual cases.'

He said he had known of no cases involving British nationals, and dismissed suggestions that the UK had run its own rendition programme to move terror suspects abroad to be questioned and tortured.

The former spy chief said: 'No British minister would ever have agreed a rendition action by us because I think the legal advice in the UK would have been that under common law this was very questionable. U.S. lawyers gave different advice.'

Sir Richard insisted Britain's position condemning torture remained secure, adding: 'I do not know of any violations.

'We don't use torture and in instances where we know that, let's say, a foreign government is not handling a case in line with our legal procedures then we would express our disagreement and our disapproval.'
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/18...-chief-talking





A Fluid Definition of Self-Sufficiency
Steven Kurutz

ONE afternoon last week, Mary Mattingly, a 30-year-old sculptor and photographer who has been living in a two-bedroom walk-up in Queens, gave a reporter a tour of her new home, a 30-by-100-foot barge moored at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“This is the living quarters,” Ms. Mattingly said, standing on deck and pointing to a half-built shed made of scrap wood. “And over here,” she continued, walking toward an area enclosed by an iron fence, “is where the greenhouse will be.”

A few days earlier, a 25-foot tower had been welded to the barge to anchor a windmill, and Ms. Mattingly was anticipating delivery of a chicken coop to house the egg-producing flock that soon will be in residence. Nearby, two men in hard hats were sawing lumber, while a film crew from Vancouver recorded the process for a possible documentary.

The presence of the film crew, along with Ms. Mattingly’s narration, gave the scene the appearance of a very weird episode of “This Old House.” In fact, it was the final, frantic construction phase of the Waterpod, an independent project Ms. Mattingly dreamed up three years ago to explore the possibility of creating a self-sufficient community on the water — a kind of aquatic version of the Biosphere 2 complex built in the Arizona desert in the 1980s — that might offer an alternative to living on land in the future, if “our resources on land grow scarcer and sea levels rise,” she said.

Next week, if construction is completed on schedule — something that seems in question, given how much work is left — she and three other artists will begin living on the barge for five months, docking at various locations in the five boroughs, where it will be open to the public, beginning with South Street Seaport.

The project, which has been financed with private donations and grants, is intended to be self-sustaining: food will be grown onboard, some of it in hydroponic gardens; drinking water derived from purified rainwater; electricity generated through a mix of solar, wind and bicycle power; and waste recycled into compost.

John McGarvey, an art consultant who is serving in an unpaid capacity as the project’s executive director, compared it to “farm life, minus the livestock — but inside the fishbowl of New York City.”

Mr. McGarvey, who will be living on the Waterpod intermittently, said he expected the experience to be taxing because of the residents’ constant exposure to the elements, the cramped quarters, the daily chores (something as simple as using a laptop may require furious pedaling on the bicycle that generates electricity) and the lack of privacy created by the constant influx of guest artists and curious onlookers.

For her part, Ms. Mattingly didn’t seem too concerned. “I can’t wait to get on board,” she said, noting that she had already boxed up her books and artwork, and although she still has her apartment in Queens for a few more days, is basically living out of three tote bags, which she calls her “mobile office.” (Then again, in an earlier project, the “Wearable Home,” Ms. Mattingly proposed the idea that an all-weather jumpsuit equipped with solar panels and a water purifier might be all the shelter a person needs.)

Alison Ward, a 37-year-old visual and performance artist who will be a member of the crew, said she had given up her Brooklyn apartment, shed her furniture and put the rest of her stuff in storage, and is couch surfing until she can move on board. “I’m thinking about this as a launching point for a different way of life,” she said. “I love the idea of nomadism.”

The other crew members, Derek Hunter, a visual artist from Vancouver, and his wife, Mira, a dancer, arrived in December and have been subletting an apartment in Manhattan. Mr. Hunter, who is the project’s head builder, said he was excited about living on the barge, but was more concerned about “getting a roof over our head.”

The Waterpod isn’t the only project exploring water-based living. Last year, Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer, co-founded the Seasteading Institute, based in Palo Alto, Calif., which is developing a floating home based on the design of an oil rig, with $500,000 in financing from Peter Thiel, a PayPal founder. Mr. Friedman, who said he sees the ocean as “a new frontier for pioneers to try things out,” plans to have a single-family prototype built next year, and has set a goal of housing 100,000 people in the next 25 years.

But if the Waterpod’s arduous odyssey is any indication, the era of marine communities springing up with Toll Brothers-like efficiency is years away. For starters, there was the matter of securing a barge; Ms. Mattingly and her team endured two false starts (one of them when their barge sank) before a marine yard in New Jersey rented them the current vessel for $3,600 a month.

Towing and docking the Waterpod has required eight insurance policies, at a cost of $18,000, and obtaining permits from the Coast Guard and a host of state and local agencies. Even the chickens came with a bureaucratic hitch: because the public would be visiting, Mr. McGarvey was told by the city that he needed a permit for animal exhibition.

Ms. Mattingly estimates the total cost at about $150,000, though much of it has been offset with free materials and services, from the boards used to build the living quarters (recycled from old rooftop water tanks and donated by American Pipe and Tank) to sustainable elements like the stationary bike that can be pedaled to generate electricity (built by an engineering class at Humboldt State University).

The other day, Ms. Mattingly was running last-minute errands driving a pickup with the word “Roofing” on the side — another donation, this one from her brother. First stop: Framo Electrical Supply in Astoria, Queens, where she scored a free boiler they plan to convert into a solar water heater.

Next she drove to a hardware store in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to pick up nuts and bolts, and then to the Lower East Side, where she and Ms. Ward cleared out the art studio they have shared for the last year. On the way back to the navy yard, they talked over concerns about life on the Waterpod, including the issue of food.

Ms. Mattingly has been growing tomatoes and onions on her windowsill (as have other crew members), but they won’t be ripe by next week, and she acknowledged the possibility that the onboard gardens and the eggs laid by the chickens won’t provide enough food to feed four people for five months.

“We worked out a deal with the Union Square Greenmarket, where we’re going to barter for food,” she said. She hadn’t yet figured out what to offer in exchange. But she didn’t seem particularly troubled by that, or by the fact that supplementing the food supply meant that their community wouldn’t actually be self-sustaining.

As for the lack of personal space, she and Ms. Ward seemed equally untroubled.

“I’m not worried at all,” Ms. Ward said. “I mean, the Waterpod has a guest room. I don’t think any New York apartment I’ve lived in has had a guest room.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/ga...4waterpod.html


















Until next week,

- js.



















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