Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 11th, '08

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002


































"IP is an input to innovation as well as the product of innovation. So under certain very specfic conditions, 'piracy' can produce net gains." – Julian Sanchez


"This story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law." – Jonathon Turley


"The RIAA’s lawsuit campaign against individual American music fans has failed." – The EFF












Pocket P2P

WASTE can and does run directly off a dongle. If you find yourself at a friend's and you'd like to connect to your mesh all you need is a USB drive and you can run WASTE from a backup copy of your home system folder. The profiles will be the same, the passwords the same etc, and if the copy's a recent one you'll have all the latest IPs pre-loaded. Connecting is instantaneous. I know this because I just tried it an hour ago. The thing is, it only seems to work on a computer where WASTE has already been installed. Actually, it runs on a box that's never been within a mile of the program (like one at a library for instance) but most of the GUIs won't display for some reason. Perhaps it’s a pathway problem. It opens, connects etc, but searches won’t work because the mesh/browser windows aren't visible (although the status window is). I experimented with a laptop where WASTE had never been installed and it connected but was impractical to use without the interface. I’m not sure what would happen if someone sent me something but my guess is I’d receive it normally. Whether the transfer box would indicate it is another matter.

Anyone else try this? My laptop was an old one running 2000. I'd like to try it on another box but it's the only machine I have at the moment that doesn't have WASTE installed...yet.

If anyone wants to give it a go, just copy your WASTE folder to a USB drive and try running it off another PC you never put WASTE on. Just open the folder, find and double click waste.exe, enter your password and log onto a mesh. See if the interface appears. I'd be interested to know if it's a 2000 thing or if it happens with XP too. I'm interested also in the WASTE version. I've only tried it so far with the original.

In the following days I’m going to see what happens when files and messages are sent to a user running a USB node. I’ll let you know what I find.











Enjoy,

Jack












October 11th, 2008




750,000 Lost Jobs? The Dodgy Digits Behind the War on Piracy
Julian Sanchez

A 20-year game of Telephone

If you pay any attention to the endless debates over intellectual property policy in the United States, you'll hear two numbers invoked over and over again, like the stuttering chorus of some Philip Glass opera: 750,000 and $200 to $250 billion. The first is the number of U.S. jobs supposedly lost to intellectual property theft; the second is the annual dollar cost of IP infringement to the U.S. economy. These statistics are brandished like a talisman each time Congress is asked to step up enforcement to protect the ever-beleaguered U.S. content industry. And both, as far as an extended investigation by Ars Technica has been able to determine, are utterly bogus.

"I have said it thrice," wrote Lewis Carroll in his poem The Hunting of the Snark, "what I tell you three times is true." And by that standard, the Pythagorean Theorem is but schoolyard gossip compared with our hoary figures. As our colleagues at Wired noted earlier this week, the 750,000 jobs figure can be found cited by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Customs and Border Patrol, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among others. Both feature prominently on TheTrueCosts.org, an industry site devoted to trumpeting the harms of piracy. They're invoked by the deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. And, of course, they're a staple of indignant press releases from the congressional sponsors of tough-on-piracy legislation.

By more conventional standards of empirical verification, however, the numbers fare less well. Try to follow the thread of citations to their source, and you encounter a fractal tangle of recursive reference that resembles nothing so much as the children's game known, in less-PC times, as "Chinese whispers," and these days more often called "Telephone." Usually, the most respectable-sounding authority to cite for the numbers (the FBI for the dollar amount, Customs for the jobs figure) is also the most prevalent—but in each case, that authoritative "source" proves to be a mere waystation on a long and tortuous journey. So what is the secret origin of these ubiquitous statistics? What doomed planet's desperate alien statisticians rocketed them to Kansas? Ars did its best to find the fountainhead. Here's what we discovered.

Looking for lost jobs

First, the estimate of 750,000 jobs lost. (Is that supposed to be per year? A cumulative total over some undefined span? Those who cite the figure seldom say.) Customs is most often given as the source for this, and indeed, you can find press releases from as recently as 2002 giving that figure as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol estimate. Eureka! But when we contacted CBP to determine how they had arrived at that imposing figure, we were informed that it was, in essence, a goof. The figure, Customs assured us, came from somewhere else, and was mistakenly described as the agency's own. This should come as no great surprise: CBP is an enforcement agency, whereas calculating the total loss of jobs from IP infringement would require some terrifyingly complex counterfactual modeling by trained economists. Similar claims have appeared in Customs releases dating back at least to 1993, but a CBP spokesperson assured us that the agency has never been in the business of developing such estimates in-house.

With Customs a dead end, we dove into press archives, hoping to find the earliest public mention of the elusive 750,000 jobs number. And we found it in—this is not a typo—1986. Yes, back in the days when "Papa Don't Preach" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" topped the charts, The Christian Science Monitor quoted then-Commerce Secretary Malcom Baldridge, trumpeting Ronald Reagan's own precursor to the recently passed PRO-IP bill. Baldridge estimated the number of jobs lost to the counterfeiting of U.S. goods at "anywhere from 130,000 to 750,000."

Where did that preposterously broad range come from? As with the number of licks needed to denude a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. Ars submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Commerce this summer, hoping to uncover the basis of Baldridge's claim—or any other Commerce Department estimates of job losses to piracy—but came up empty. So whatever marvelous proof the late secretary discovered was not to be found in the margins of any document in the government's vaults. But no matter: By 1987, that Brobdignagian statistical span had been reduced, as far as the press were concerned, to "as many as 750,000" jobs. Subsequent reportage dropped the qualifier. The 750,000 figure was still being bandied about this summer in support of the aforementioned PRO-IP bill.

$250 billion? What's that in real money?

What, then, of that $200 to $250 billion range? Often, it's attributed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and indeed, the Bureau routinely cites those numbers. According to FBI spokesperson Catherine Milhoan, the figure "was derived through our coordination with industry, trade associations, rights holders, and other law enforcement agencies" at a 2002 anti-piracy confab. But neither the Bureau nor the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, which assembled the inter-agency powwow, could find any record of how that number was computed.

At this point, it's necessary to get a little speculative. As with Customs, the FBI is not in the habit of doing sophisticated economic analysis in-house. And the last time the government conducted any sort of verifiably rigorous study of the costs of IP theft—about which more presently—it was a protracted undertaking that involved sending detailed questionnaires to hundreds of businesses, which government economists concluded was still insufficient to produce a reliable figure for the economy as a whole. However, $250 billion is about the number you come up with if you start with $200 billion in 1993 dollars and adjust for inflation to 2002. And that lower end of the range, $200 billion, happens to date back to 1993.

Another group that routinely uses the $200 to $250 billion figure is the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, which (along with the FBI) is often given as the source of the number. That organization's white papers, as recently as 2005, footnote the figure to 1995 congressional testimony urging passage of what became the Anticounterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996. So Ars dug into the archives at the Library of Congress to discover where the witnesses before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees got their data.

Several of the witnesses were conspicuously vague about their sources. An IACC factsheet submitted for the hearings said the group itself "estimates the economic cost due to product counterfeiting to exceed $200 billion each year," a number repeated by the group's then-president, John Bliss. Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) gave the same figure without sourcing. But several witnesses pointed to Forbes magazine as the source of the number. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) noted that the International Trade Commission had placed the size of the counterfeit market at $60 billion in 1988 and that "a more recent estimate by Forbes Magazine says that American businesses are losing over $200 billion each year as a result of illegal counterfeiting." Finally, Charlotte Simmons-Gill of the International Trademark Association was kind enough to give a precise citation: the October 25, 1993 issue of Forbes.

Ars eagerly hunted down that issue and found a short article on counterfeiting, in which the reader is informed that "counterfeit merchandise" is "a $200 billion enterprise worldwide and growing faster than many of the industries it's preying on." No further source is given.

Quite possibly, the authors of the article called up an industry group like the IACC and got a ballpark guess. At any rate, there is nothing to indicate that Forbes itself had produced the estimate, Mr. Conyers' assertion notwithstanding. What is very clear, however, is that even assuming the figure is accurate, it is not an estimate of the cost to the U.S. economy of IP piracy. It's an estimate of the size of the entire global market in counterfeit goods. Despite the efforts of several witnesses to equate them, it is plainly not on par with the earlier calculation by the ITC that many had also cited.

But here, at last, we have a solid number to sink our claws into, right? Sure, it's 20 years old, but the U.S. International Trade Commission at least produced a reputable study yielding a definite figure for the cost of piracy to the U.S. economy: $60 billion annually.

Well, not quite.

"Biased & self-serving"

The number the ITC actually came up with, based on a survey of several hundred business selected for their likely reliance on IP for revenue, was $23.8 billion—the estimated losses to their respondents. That number was based on industry estimates that the authors of the study noted "could admittedly be biased and self-serving," since the firms had every incentive to paint the situation in the most dire terms as a means of spurring government action. But the figures at least appeared to be consistent and reasonable, both internally and across sectors.

The $60 billion number comes from a two-page appendix, in which the authors note that it's impossible to extrapolate from a self-selecting group of IP-heavy respondents to the economy as a whole. But taking a wild stab and assuming that firms outside their sample experienced losses totaling a quarter to half those of their respondents, the ITC guessed that the aggregate losses to the economy might be on the order of "$43 billion to $61 billion."

The survey also, incidentally, asked respondents to estimate the number of job losses they could attribute to inadequate intellectual property protection. The number they came up with was 5,374. If we assume, very crudely, that job losses are proportionate to dollar losses, then the ITC's high-end estimate of $61 billion in total economic costs would correspond to a loss of not 750,000 jobs, but 13,774.

If we want to be very precise, however, we should note that the ITC was not calculating losses from IP "theft," but rather "inadequate protection" of intellectual property. And "inadequate protection" was interpreted to mean protection falling short of the level provided by U.S. law. The protection provided by a foreign country might be deemed "inadequate," the study explained, if "exceptions to exclusive rights are overly broad"—for example, if a country's law contained "broad exceptions for public performances in hotels or film clips" or "too broad exceptions for educational photocopying." A legal regime could be "inadequate" because "terms of protection are too short" or because of "inadequate" civil or criminal remedies, meaning monetary damages or criminal penalties for infringers were not high enough.

Calculating the net cost of piracy to the economy

One final, slightly theoretical point deserves emphasis here. All the projections we've discussed, the rigorous and the suspect alike, calculate losses in sales or royalties to U.S. firms. This is often conflated with the net "cost to the U.S. economy." But those numbers—whatever they might be—are almost certainly not the same. When someone torrents a $12 album that they would have otherwise purchased, the record industry loses $12, to be sure. But that doesn't mean that $12 has magically vanished from the economy. On the contrary: someone has gotten the value of the album and still has $12 to spend somewhere else.

In economic jargon, charging anything for pure IP—which has a marginal cost approaching zero once it has been produced—creates a deadweight economic loss, at least in static terms. The actual net loss of IP infringement is an allocative loss that only appears in a dynamic analysis. Simply put, when people pirate IP, the market is not accurately signaling how highly people value the effort that was put into creating it, which leads to underproduction of new IP. To calculate the net loss to the economy over the long run, you'd need to figure out the value of the lost innovation in which IP owners would have invested the marginal dollar lost to piracy, and subtract from that the value of the second-best allocation—which is to say, whatever the consumer of the pirated good spent his money on instead—and the value of the deadweight loss (free music or software is a net economic benefit to someone) incurred by pricing IP at all.

If that sounds incredibly complicated, it is. And in fact, it's more complicated than that, because as Yochai Benkler has argued persuasively, IP is an input to innovation as well as the product of innovation. So under certain very specfic conditions, "piracy" can produce net gains. While it seems extremely unlikely that this is the case in the aggregate—IP theft almost certainly does impose net economic costs—simply calculating lost sales and licencing fees, assuming someone could produce a credible figure, would not provide a complete picture of the economic impact of IP infringement. It would give us, at most, one side of the ledger.

Conclusions

But enough theory and speculation; here is what we can say for certain: the two numbers that are invariably invoked whenever Congress considers the need for more stringent IP enforcement are, at best, highly dubious. They are phantoms. We have no good reason to think that either is remotely reliable.

Perhaps more importantly, both numbers are seemingly decades old, gaining a patina of currency and credibility by virtue of having been laundered through a relay race of respectable sources, even as their origin recedes into the mists. That's especially significant, because these numbers are always invoked as proof that the piracy problem is still dire—that everything we've done to step up international enforcement of intellectual property laws has been in vain. But of course, if you simply recycle the same numbers from 15 and 20 years ago—remember that IACC's 2005 publications still cite that 1995 congressional testimony, from which it seems safe to infer that they have no more recent source—then it will necessarily seem as though no ground has been gained.

Neither figure is terribly plausible on its face. As Wired noted earlier this week, 750,000 jobs is fully 8 percent of the current number of unemployed in the United States. And $250 billion is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries.

Still, anything is possible: The figures could happen to be more or less accurate. But given the shady provenance of the data, the one thing we know for certain is that we don't know for certain. And we're making policy on the basis of our ignorance.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...-on-piracy.ars





Judge Halts Sales of RealDVD
Greg Sandoval

A judge has ordered RealNetworks to suspend the sale of RealDVD, the controversial software that hands users the ability to copy and store films to a hard drive, according to a report published by NewTeeVee.com, a technology-news blog.

The film industry sought to prevent sales of RealDVD last week when it filed a lawsuit against RealNetworks. The Motion Picture Association of America accused Real of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and breach of contract.

According the story on NewTeeVee, the court wants sales to cease until Tuesday, when it has reviewed all the papers involved in the case. On Sunday evening, the RealDVD site notified visitors that because of the legal action taken by Hollywood, RealDVD was unavailable.

"Rest assure we will work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs," the post read.

Representatives from the MPAA and RealNetworks could not be reached Sunday.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10058574-93.html





Copyright Backdown Ruled Out by Tizard
Tom Pullar-Strecker and Claire Mcentee

The Government has scotched speculation it will back down on a controversial change to copyright law as a split emerged among its opponents.

The change is intended to force internet service providers and copyright owners to work out between themselves whether customers have repeatedly infringed copyright and oblige ISPs to cut off those people's internet access.

The move comes amid accusations an international copyright treaty New Zealand is helping form is being kept secret.

Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard confirmed she had agreed to a four-month delay in the enactment of a regulation that would bring section 92A of the Copyright Act into force.

But she says the clause will become law on February 28 and the delay is to allow time for an agreement on its implementation.

Representatives from six ICT industry bodies which jointly campaigned against the law change have been invited to meet with Mr Tizard, Communications Minister David Cunliffe and copyright holders today.

The Telecommunications Carriers Forum appears set to break ranks with InternetNZ by agreeing to seek a compromise that would see the clause take affect.

Chief executive Ralph Chivers says that though its members had "a fundamental problem with that clause as it stands", the TCF never expected the law change to be cancelled.

"We see those issues we raised as having to be addressed in the fullness of time, but what we have agreed is to find a practical way to make this all work.

"We have already had a meeting along those lines and will be having a workshop with rights holder organisations in the near future with a view to developing one of our codes of practice to deal with the implementation of this particular piece of the act.

"I think both parties are prepared to be quite realistic and pragmatic about what is achievable and necessary. The early engagements I have had with rights holder organisations have been very encouraging in terms of the collaborative approach they intend to take."

InternetNZ president Keith Davidson would not comment ahead of today's meeting. He has argued S92A "undermines the fundamental right of 'innocent until proven guilty"'.

Computer Society chief executive Paul Matthews had a similar opinion: "Copyright infringement is wrong, but it needs to be proven first and the penalty kept in proportion."

Recording Industry Association chief executive Campbell Smith has said it would be "impractical and ridiculous" for copyright owners to prove copyright infringers' guilt in the courts.

The Economic Development Ministry is helping negotiate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – an international treaty that seeks to establish a common standard for enforcing intellectual property rights.

Technology website CNET reported that two US interest groups had filed a lawsuit to gain access to the agreement, which they claim has been negotiated in secret.

Ministry official George Wardle says progress has been slow and no agreement has been reached.

The ministry has posted information about ACTA on its website, but "negotiations are being conducted under normal confidentiality practices that apply to trade negotiations." The agreement will target those involved in commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy, and the public will be consulted before the Government decides whether to sign it, he says.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4717723a28.html





It's DMCA Exemption Time!
Paul Sweeting

Get those anti-circumvention exemptions ready kids! It's time for the Copyright Office's triennial review of Section 1201(a)(1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in which the Register of Copyrights makes recommendations to the Librarian of Congress about granting temporary exemptions to the ban on circumventing encryption on certain classes of works. The federal register notice is here. Congress added the triennial review to the DMCA as a fail-safe mechanism, in case it turned out that the blanket ban on circumvention was "unduly burdening" fair use of certain types of work. The exemptions are only good for three years, however, and must be reapplied for with each review.

The last rulemaking, in 2006, resulted in six exemptions:

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.
Written comments recommending exemptions are due in the Copyright Office December 2, 2008. A notice of proposed rulemaking will be issued later in December based on those recommendations, and final comments are due February 2, 2009.
http://www.contentagenda.com/blog/15...640034464.html





Copyright Reform Pledge Gaining Steam
Peter Nowak

With so many issues vying for attention as the Canadian election draws nearer, it's getting harder and harder to get support for one's own particular favourite. It's notable, then, that University of Ottawa internet law professor Michael Geist is managing to drum up significant political backing for balanced copyright reform legislation.

A quick summary of recent history: late last year, the Conservatives were set to introduce their proposed reforms, but backed off at the last minute in December when details of the legislation were leaked. The reforms that were supposed to drop were reportedly overly restrictive to users and skewed heavily toward copyright holders, which led to major consumer outrage. A Facebook protest group started by Geist drew tens of thousands of supporters in a matter of days, not to mention a rally at Industry Minister Jim Prentice's office in Calgary.

In June, Prentice indeed rolled out the legislation, Bill C-61, and said it had been revised to better balance the interests of consumers and copyright holders, a "win-win" proposition.

The public, opposition politicians and Geist didn't buy it, though. They pointed out numerous problems with the proposed reforms, including a loophole that would outlaw the breaking of digital locks placed on any electronic media. That point essentially invalidated the other pro-consumer clauses in the legislation, critics said.

The Conservative bill died on the order paper once the election was called, but it's fair to believe it will again be resurrected if the party returns to power as either a minority or majority government. With that in mind, Geist two weeks ago challenged election candidates to take a pledge posted on his website dedicated to supporting balanced copyright reform. The pledge consists of three tenets:

1. To respect the rights of creators and consumers.

2. Not to support any copyright bill that undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s users rights.

3. To fully consult with Canadians before introducing any copyright reform bill and to conduct inclusive, national hearings on any tabled bill.

Two weeks on, Geist reports the pledge has the support of the entire Green Party, more than one third of the NDP and about 15 Liberals. The NDP's digital spokesman, Charlie Angus, has also come out strongly against Bill C-61, which he says "will criminalize fans, leave artists on the sidelines and offer a windfall to corporate lawyers.”

Notable exceptions from Geist's list so far are the Liberals' industry critic Scott Brison, who in June said Bill C-61 would create "a police state," and Dan McTeague, the consumer affairs critic.

Not surprisingly, he says, is the complete lack of Conservative support.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/technol...ge_gainin.html





Conservatives Pledge to Reintroduce Copyright Reform
Peter Nowak

Stephen Harper's Conservatives saw their proposed copyright reform die on the order paper when the election was called.

The Conservatives are promising to reintroduce controversial copyright-reform legislation if they are re-elected, according to the party's official platform released on Tuesday.

"A re-elected Conservative government led by Stephen Harper will reintroduce federal copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance among the rights of musicians, artists, programmers and other creators and brings Canada's intellectual property protection in line with that of other industrialized countries, but also protects consumers who want to access copyright works for their personal use," the platform document says.

"We will also introduce tougher laws on counterfeiting and piracy and give our customs and law enforcement services the resources to enforce them. This will protect consumers from phoney and sometimes dangerous products that are passed off as reliable brand-name goods."

The Conservatives' previous copyright-reform legislation, Bill C-61, which died on the order paper when the election was called, was released in June to a wave of criticism. While a number of organizations that represent copyright holders, such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, praised the plan, it was roundly criticized as unfair by consumer advocates, artists, privacy watchdogs, education groups and other businesses.

The legislation proposed hefty fines for people caught downloading copyrighted materials but also made it illegal for consumers to work around locks — known as digital rights management — placed on media.

Minister of Industry Jim Prentice said the reforms struck a balance between the needs of copyright holders and consumers, but critics said a number of loopholes, particularly the digital locks provision, skewed the rules heavily against average Canadians.
"There's a fine line between protecting creators and a police state," Liberal industry critic Scott Brison told CBCNews.ca at the time.

Prentice was also criticized for not consulting consumer groups in drafting the legislation and was accused of caving to lobbying by the U.S. entertainment industry.
Facebook protest delayed legislation

The Conservatives had planned to introduce the proposed legislation last December but backed off after its purported details were leaked. A protest group on social-networking website Facebook, started by University of Ottawa internet law professor Michael Geist, drew tens of thousands of members within days of launching, forcing Prentice to retreat.

On his website two weeks ago, Geist challenged election candidates to sign on to a pledge dedicated to consulting Canadians in drafting new legislation and in supporting balanced copyright reform. As of Tuesday, the entire Green Party, one-third of the NDP and about 15 Liberal candidates had signed on.

Geist reiterated on his blog on Tuesday that the Conservatives' approach to copyright reform is not balanced, a view shared by the more than 92,000 members of his Facebook group.

"Bill C-61 did not strike the appropriate balance and tens of thousands of Canadians told Harper just that over the summer," he wrote.

The Conservatives also touched on a few other technology, telecommunications and science issues in their platform. The party plans to prevent cellphone companies from charging for unsolicited text messages, and it intends to introduce anti-spam legislation.

The platform also pledges to strengthen the newly created Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

"We will amend the Telecommunications Act to strengthen the power of the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services, including the creation of a code of conduct for wireless services. We will also create a compliance and deterrent power that allows the … [CRTC] to block [unsolicited text message] and similar unfair charges in the future."

The platform document also said a Conservative government would make further investments to internationally recognized science and technology projects in Canada.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...ervatives.html





Canadian Democrats are Pro BitTorrent and Against Throttling
Ernesto

Three days before the Canadian elections, the party leader of the New Democrats has spoken out in favor of BitTorrent sites, calling them “fundamental to democracy.” At the same time, isoHunt, the largest Canadian BitTorrent site advises its users not to vote for the Conservatives, considering their stance on copyright issues.

Jack Layton, leader of the Canadian New Democrats is a proponent of net-neutrality, and he believes that social networking sites, YouTube and torrent sites are great services that should be available to everyone.

In a direct message to our friends at p2pnet Layton stated: “Torrent sites [...] are actually very fundamental to making a democracy work, and to helping human intelligence to be shared and exchanged. It’s about as fundamentally democratic as you can get.”

In the video message Layton is very clear. Throttling people’s connections is not an option. The Internet should be open and equal to everyone.

“What we want to see is the Internet used as a public tool — a public tool for exchanging ideas and I particularly want to say that if we don’t fight to preserve it, we could lose it. We don’t want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations,” Layton says in his message to P2Pnet.

With his statement, he joins his fellow party member Charles Angus, who has spoken out against against ‘anti-piracy bills’ and in favor of Net-neutrality many times before. In an interview last June, for example, he said that the proposed three-strikes law is idiotic, and completely useless.

“It’s idiotic because as we see with the DMCA those that get accused of infringements lack the legal power that the corporations that are threatening them have,” Angus said. “So it’s always going to be a completely one-sided argument and if ISP’s are legally bound to cut you off after three claims of infringement, I think there are certainly problems.”

Based on their views on net-neutrality and copyright bills, the New Democrats seem to be the best party to vote for. Much better than the Conservatives at least, who are supporting ACTA and bill C-61. Unfortunately, many Canadians are planning to vote for the Conservative, as they are awfully close to a majority. This triggered isoHunt’s founder Gary Fung, who’s from Canada as well, to encourage his Canadian users not to vote for them.

On the frontpage of isoHunt Gary writes: “I know about 3.7 million Canadians visited isoHunt last month, which is more than 10% of Canada’s population. So I ask all who read this to tell your Canadian friends to not be a slacker and vote on Oct. 14. I don’t care which party you vote, just vote any party but the Conservatives.” In addition to this statement, all Canadian isoHunt visitors will now see the following message on top of the page, which leads them to Gary’s statement.

The New Democrats seem to be a good alternative to the Conservative party. However, towards the end of the video message Layton scared us a little by saying: “The Internet belongs to Canadians,” but we’re pretty sure he is trying to say that all Canadians should have equal access to the web.
http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-dem...ttling-081011/





Business, Labor Urge Bush to Sign RIAA-Backed Copyright Bill
Stephanie Condon

With only five days left for President Bush to decide whether to sign into law a controversial copyright bill, business lobbyists and even the AFL-CIO are pushing for it to become law.

Most bills to expand copyright law are bipartisan--one aimed at file-swappers and prerelease movies in 2005 comes to mind--and the so-called Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act is no exception. Sens. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Republican, are the sponsors, and it enjoys the support of the Recording Industry Association of America.

But the Pro-IP Act is unusual because the Bush administration threatened a veto last month. It's been subsequently amended, and the changes are likely to assuage the administration's concerns, but the U.S. Commerce Department told CNET News that it is still reviewing the revised language.

While industries have been defensively adapting to a globalized economy and game-changing technologies, intellectual property holders are on the offense. The messages from companies like Procter & Gamble and NBC Universal are being carefully tailored to reveal the benefits of bolstering IP protections--whether it's a promise to U.S. politicians of more jobs, better products for consumers, or faster development for leaders abroad.

Industry representatives discussed how to craft those messages, and what obstacles stand in their way, on Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's fifth annual intellectual property summit.

So far, its message to the U.S. government appears to be working. The Pro-IP Act passed unanimously in the Senate and saw bipartisan support in the House.

In the case of the entertainment industry, it is imperative to educate people about "the ramification of (IP) theft to the people who work on the sets, in makeup, even selling concessions"--not just the highly paid actors and producers, said Rick Lane, senior vice president for government affairs at News Corp.

Industries have coordinated their message with union leaders to emphasize that IP protection is, at its core, a jobs issue.

"America's workers are also being victimized by a tidal wave of counterfeiting...and digital theft...(that) threatens the well-being of the U.S. economy, endangers our citizens, and steals our jobs," John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO wrote in The Hill, a newspaper ubiquitous around the Capitol.

The message seems to be sinking in not only with congressmen but also with the presidential candidates. Wednesday's panelists see the presidential election's emphasis on green technology as a positive sign.

"That's a recognition of the role of innovation and its tie to the U.S. economy," said Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal. "This is not a low-cost manufacturing economy--what we have to offer is our innovation."

The need to protect and stimulate innovation is also emphasized with foreign governments, especially those like Brazil that have implemented compulsory licenses, which forces IP holders to grant a state rights to use the intellectual property in question at a set rate.

"We're actually trying to spread that gospel in lots of different countries," said Jon Soderstrom, president of the Association of University Technology Managers. "What we see is people making assertions about the flaws (of IP protection), like hindering the flow of research--none of which is true. The evidence shows it's actually promoting innovation."

Lane said the U.S. should be "using the pulpit of the presidency to explain the importance of IP to other economies."

Creating a favorable environment for IP holders involves convincing consumers as well as lawmakers that IP enforcement is worthwhile.

Encouraging consumers to veer away from bootlegged content simply requires "sending them cues," said Cotton.

NBC has had a great deal of success routing viewers of the Olympics and popular videos like SNL sketches to its own sites.

"That combination of ease of access and the desire of consumers to access content when, and how they want it," Cotton said, "have to go hand and hand, and then we see the possibility of continuing investment."

CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10061942-38.html





Publishers Reach Quiet Settlement with Mygazines

Copyright lawsuit against controversial peer-to-peer site dismissed.
Dylan Stableford

A copyright lawsuit brought against a Web site launched earlier this year allowing users to share digital copies of hundreds of magazines has been settled.

Lawyers representing a large swath of consumer and b-to-b publishers—including Time Inc., Hearst, Hachette, McGraw-Hill, American Media Inc., Reed Business Information, Bonnier, Ziff Davis and Forbes, among others—settled their case against the proprietors of Mygazines.com on September 8, according to court documents obtained by FOLIO:.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Davis Wright Tremaine LLC, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, declined to comment on the terms of the settlement. Clifford Lax, a lawyer for the defendant, refused to comment.

But according to a source with knowledge of the terms, confirmed later by additional court documents, Mygazines has agreed to remove all of the publishers’ copyrighted content, review and screen uploads for any content not authorized by the publishers and open a channel to allow Mygazines to be notified when copyrighted content appears.

Legal experts had speculated that a case against Mygazines, which lists its address as a post office box on the Caribbean island of Anguilla—a British territory—would be difficult to enforce outside of the jurisdiction of U.S. copyright law. But the firm representing the publishers identified a Canadian, Darren Andrew Budd of Toronto, as the site’s founder, and filed suit against Budd, Salveo Ltd.—the company to which the site was registered—its designers and hosting companies in the U.S. Southern District Court of New York on August 21, asking the court to shut down the site in the United States. (A separate suit involving even more publishers—including Meredith, IDG, Martha Stewart, U.S. News and Wenner Media et al—was filed simultaneously in Canada.)

In the complaint, the publishers said the “scope and audacity of the defendants infringing acts is breathtaking,” and that the site tried to avoid enforcement—switching its hosts (“variously located” in the Bahamas, Hong Kong, Russia and Sweden”) when one was served with a publisher’s cease-and-desist letter—in a “calculated effort to evade plaintiffs’ demands and detection.”

The U.S. case was settled on September 8; an order upholding the settlement was issued in Toronto on September 9. On Wednesday, the Superior Court in Toronto ordered Mygazines to remove content belonging to all members of the Magazine Publishers of America, including those not named in the original suit. (American Business Media, the b-to-b association, says it is investigating "the best way to protect all ABM members from infringement by Mygazines.")

'Mysterious' Business Model

Mygazines is still live, although many prominent titles that were available for free download at the time of the launch—including People, Playboy, Dwell, Domino, Allure, Spin, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Martha Stewart Living, New York, Men’s Journal and Esquire—are no longer up. Currently, there are over 127,000 users registered on Mygazines.com.

The site recently introduced a program offering publishers demographic statistics, “exclusive rights and control over your titles on mygazines.com” and “revenue sharing opportunities.”

A person claiming to be the site’s founder wrote in a recent e-mail to FOLIO: that he was hoping to work with publishers to develop the site and, ultimately, share revenue. “We will reiterate we have every intention of working with the industry to fortify the future of magazines and the industry in general.”

“The publishers we represent are open to new and innovative opportunities,” said Lance Koonce, one of the lawyers representing the publishers in the U.S. case. “But the defendants started by infringing on a massive scale, then refused to cooperate when our clients found them to be infringing. Only later did they allude to a mysterious business model. That is not seen as cooperating.”
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/publish...ment-mygazines





Is an Internet Tax Coming?
Michael Geist

The emergence of cultural funding as a hot-button political issue in the current election campaign appears to have taken virtually everyone by surprise. The roughly $50 million in cuts may be tiny in terms of the overall federal budget, yet the significant impact on the cultural community has propelled the issue onto the national stage.

While leaders debate the merits of public funding for the arts, whoever forms the next government will quickly face a far bigger cultural funding issue that promises to make the current dispute seem like a short preview as compared to the forthcoming main attraction.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will hold hearings on new media regulation in early 2009 and barring a change of heart, the focal point will be the prospect of a mandated levy on Internet service providers to fund new media cultural production.

Opponents will deride the plan as a new tax, but that has not stopped cultural groups from lining up in support of such a scheme.

Earlier this year, several groups, including the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), the Directors Guild of Canada, and Writers Guild of Canada proposed a mandatory ISP contribution of 2.5 per cent of broadband revenue to help fund the creation of Canadian new media content.

In support, the groups released the results of a public opinion survey they said found that "69 per cent of Canadians believe that ISPs should be required to help fund the production of Canadian digital media content in the same way that cable and satellite TV providers are required to contribute a small percentage of their revenues to the production of Canadian television programs."

More recently, the CRTC commissioned Eli Noam, a Columbia University finance professor, to conduct an independent study on the issue. Noam's report, TV or Not TV, canvassed the regulatory options as the commission grapples with a broadcast environment that has shifted from one of scarcity to seemingly unlimited abundance.

Noam concluded that there should be regulatory harmonization between online and offline broadcast that could include public funding for the production of Canadian content. Noam's preferred funding model is "a combination of public funds; an excise tax on ISPs and carriers that would be harmonized with the existing levy on cable and satellite TV providers; and the use of spectrum sales revenues into a special trust fund."

The current discussion on cultural funding may take on greater urgency once the ISP levy takes centre stage. There is little doubt that such a levy — which Canadians would see each month on their ISP bill — would generate strong opposition from consumers. The various political parties may be battling to demonstrate their support for the cultural community today, yet an unpopular ISP levy would surely put those positions to the test.

The ISP levy proposal will also force regulators to show their cards on whether they believe that new Internet regulation is needed. The commission concluded in 1999 that the Broadcasting Act gave it the power to regulate "new media undertakings," but that given the paucity of Internet video, such regulation was unnecessary.

Nearly 10 years later, streaming and real-time video have become a staple of Internet use with millions of Canadians turning to their computers rather than their televisions for video news and entertainment.

While the differences between the two mediums will be obvious to a generation that lives online, some regulators may be tempted to equate television and the Internet, arguing that a harmonized regulatory approach necessitates the imposition of Canadian content requirements and cultural funding programs.
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/512201





Business Software Alliance Makes Antipiracy Push
Elinor Mills

The Business Software Alliance continues to battle distribution of pirated software on peer-to-peer and auction sites.

The trade group served more than 48,000 "takedown" notices related to BitTorrent files in the first half of this year and says BSA members lost an estimated $525 million in sales as a result of peer-to-peer piracy, according to a new BSA report called "Online Software Scams: A Threat to Your Security."

During the first half of this year BSA asked auction site providers to shut down more than 18,000 auctions in which 45,000 products, worth $22 million, were being sold, the report says.

The piracy problem on auction sites is so bad that the Software and Information Industry Association has said it was considering suing eBay.

The BSA warns consumers that buying pirated software can lead to software incompatibility and viruses, increased maintenance costs with no technical support, as well as identity fraud and privacy breaches.

One in five U.S. consumers who bought software online in 2006 reported problems, in a survey conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of the BSA. More than half received software that was not what they ordered; 36 percent said the software didn't work; 14 percent realized immediately that the product was pirated; and 12 percent never received what they ordered, according to the survey.

"Although consumers may think they are getting a great deal when they buy software from unfamiliar sources online, it is more likely they will receive a substandard product with hidden cybersecurity threats that may expose them to identity theft and the loss of thousands of dollars," the report says.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10058044-93.html





Walmart Has a Change of Heart, Decides to Maintain DRM Servers
Darren Murph

Back by popular demand, it's the Walmart DRM servers! You heard right -- just days after Wally World announced its plans to turn the screw on its digital rights management servers, we're now being shown a big "just kidding." According to an e-mail (posted in full after the break) sent out to previous downloaders, the mega-corp be leaving things as-is for the foreseeable future, and it's all because of "feedback from the customers." In other words, those actions it urged you to take late last month are no longer required, though we'd still back those tracks up on CD just in case. Can't be too careful, you know.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

NOTE: This is a follow-up to our email titled "Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases" from 9/26/08.

Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. What this means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no action required on your part. Our customer service team will continue to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com.

While our customer support team is available to assist you with any issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.

We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best service possible to you. As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store, we'll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service and your account via email.

Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.

The Walmart Digital Music Team
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/10/w...n-drm-servers/





Bands Pressing Major Labels for Control Over Copyright, More
Nate Anderson

You can tell where the power lies in the music industry based on who's dictating the terms. And if you had any doubt that digital delivery, file-swapping, and dirt-cheap recording and distribution tools were transforming the world of major label music, look no further than the new "Featured Artists' Coalition." The group, unveiled this weekend in the UK, brings together acts like Radiohead, Travis, and The Verve to push for greater control over copyrights and more cash as the music industry remakes itself from the bottom up.

When the major labels owned every important cricket pitch, hot bands had to play on music industry lawns. The big issue was distribution, which was almost impossible to do well on your own or through an independent label (and then there was promotion, radio play, etc.). But distribution has changed radically; in an era when Prince can afford to give away copies of his new disc in newspapers and when Radiohead can launch its own pay-what-you-like download experiment and iTunes offers a hojillion songs from one simple storefront and TuneCore allows anyone to get their music on iTunes and P2P offers free distribution mechanisms for those who want to use it—well, distribution isn't quite so crucial as it used to be.

Digital distribution gives artists more control—especially when those artists already have name recognition. Consider a pair of quotes from prominent UK band managers. Brian Message, who manages Radiohead and Kate Nash, says that "the digital landscape is changing fast and new deals are being struck all the time, but all too often without reference to the people who actually make the music. Just look at the recent MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] on file-sharing between labels, government and the ISPs. Artists were not involved.”

Jazz Summers, who manages The Verve, says that the new group will "seek to improve the treatment of artists within the business and campaign to update laws and practices that better reflect the new music landscape. Digital technology gives artists the opportunity to control their future—this is the time to seize that opportunity."

So if digital tools have empowered artists, what do those artists want to do? They don't necessarily want to oversee everything themselves, and the Featured Artists' Coalition has no problem working with labels. But the group does demand some key changes, including an agreement that "artists always retain ultimate ownership of their music." In other words, artists keep copyrights and only license them to labels for set periods of time, rather than assign them forever (which labels have typically demanded).

These copyright licenses should also be subject to "use it or lose it" rules. "Despite new technology, many copyright owners fail to release recordings to the public," says the group. "As a result, many artists lose out and fans can only access such material illegally. A 'use it or lose it' contractual provision should automatically apply so that an artist's work is always available for legal purchase by the public, digitally and physically." If labels fail to make artists' back catalog available, the artists would then have the right to license the copyright to another label or release the albums on their own.

The FAC also wants artists' rights to be equal to authors' rights. This gets into the confusing world of music licensing, but a simple example comes from US radio: when a song is played, the songwriter gets paid by the radio station but the band that recorded the tune gets nothing. (When the band members also wrote the song, of course, they do get money when the song is played). In the UK, this plays out on TV, where songwriters get paid every time a song shows up in an ad, but artists do not.

Finally, the group wants an end to a particular UK practice based on the country's "fair dealing" laws (similar, but not identical with, "fair use" in the US). The UK allows the use of copyrighted works in conjunction with "critical reviews," a rule designed to allows critics to quote from movies and songs in order to illustrate their points.

But, according to FAC, "Several companies are producing DVDs in the UK which use artists' audio visual footage and place a review at the end of the DVD. By doing this they claim that the DVD is a work of 'critical review' and therefore no permission or payment is required to any of the stakeholders." FAC wants the practice stopped.

The group's formation sends a strong public statement that music labels, which have generally controlled artists' copyrights, do not necessarily speak for artists' interests, especially as new digital deals are being struck and "three strikes" rules are being worked out. The artists want a direct seat at the table during such talks, and they want more control over their own work when they do decide to license it to labels.

But will smaller artists be able to make the same demands of labels? It's not clear that they will unless groups like FAC can actually force through changes at the governmental level. And digital delivery isn't necessarily a panacea for small acts; lost in the noise of a billion other bands putting up MySpace pages and getting on iTunes, the inexpensive nature of digital recording and distribution has raised the noise floor of the entire business.

As one singer-songwriter in the US told me a few months ago, everyone talks up digital distribution, but it hasn't done much for his act. Without publicity, promotion, and buzz, digital brings in little extra revenue... but it makes recording and releasing cheap enough to encourage artists to try just one more time before throwing in the towel, hitting the showers, and getting a job at the local guitar store.

Is that a good thing, or does it turn music into a one-armed bandit, always ready to promise bleary-eyed and financially strapped devotees a jackpot even as it sucks away money, time, and career options that don't include playing music at coffee shops?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ight-more.html





Black Ice Album Leaked Online!

Sometime late last night or early this morning (depending on your time zone) AC/DC's Black Ice was leaked on one of the BitTorrent sites and I'm sure it will quickly become one of the most popular downloads around. A couple of hours ago, the complete album was also uploaded to YouTube.

SonyBMG/Columbia Records are probably in the midst of attempting heavy damage control right about now as their hopes to keep the album under wraps have been forever dashed nearly two weeks before the official release date of October 20th.

In other news of interest, Sirius XM has announced they're giving one lucky winner a free trip to AC/DC's special rehearsal show on October 26. You may enter the contest here if you're a legal resident of the contiguous United States and are at least 21 years of age.

By the way, according to Ticket News, AC/DC are continuing their dominance as the hottest act in the USA currently. This is the band's third straight week as the overall top ranking act. Not bad for a bunch of guys who've seemingly been retired the last 5 years, eh?
http://www.acdcnews.com/2008/10/blac...ed-online.html





Tackling Campus Piracy with FUD
Ben Jones

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) is one of the oldest, and perhaps most effective anti-piracy strategies. MPAA’s “You can click, but you can’t hide” campaign is perhaps one of the best known examples. Today, we take a peek at how FUD is used by universities to counter campus piracy.

The intent of FUD is to make people afraid (Fear) confuse issues and facts (Uncertainty) and make people change their attitudes to what they’ve done (Doubt). In many ways it’s the cheapest and easiest anti-piracy method. It doesn’t rely on facts, but on careful releases of information, and calculated small acts.

A small act could be starting a rumor or giving an interview to a student newspaper. Such tactics are cheap and often have much better returns than costly (and ultimately useless) technology-based methods. They also have the added advantage that if they don’t work, it doesn’t tend to count against you. That is, unless you’re caught at it.

FUD is used everywhere. At Elon University, a small university just east of Greensboro, in North Carolina for example. In a file-sharing piece last week in the student newspaper, the strategy of intimidation was plain to see. If you are unaware of the law regarding copyright infringement, however, you might be taken in.

The article starts with talk of rumors, concerning all manner of things designed to instill fear; RIAA reps roaming the campus, being able to backtrack to things that happened years ago. Rumors that lead to uncertainty (how far back? Will that include something I did?) as well as doubt (anything I can do about it?).

Throughout the article, Assistant Vice President for Technology Chris Fulkerson makes it clear that students should be very careful. However, he’s not afraid to tweak the facts a little, or tell outright lies, for that matter. At one point he states that the fine is “$250,000 per infraction” which is a complete lie. As regular readers and followers of US copyright infringement cases know, the maximum damages that can be awarded per infraction is $150,000 not $250,000 (USC Title 17, § 504 (c)(2)). The most they have managed to get in these cases is $9,250, but even that turned out to be too much.

Of greatest worry was his position on the details of students. Fulkerson has said that when/if the RIAA asks for names and details that correspond to an IP, the university will hand them over if the person can be identified. As the RIAA’s strategy is to file many lawsuits, and try and force a settlement (by making it cheaper to settle than to contest), handing over details is in the worst possible interests of the students, and may be illegal. Regardless of its legality, or how true the statement is in practice, the impact of the statement is chilling to many students.

Fulkerson also makes some other comments designed to disquiet the students. He says that the RIAA has no need to visit Elon, they can just jump on the net and track people down, and that the university ‘must comply’ with the RIAA. Again, this is not even close to the truth. The RIAA is a lobby group, not a government or law enforcement agency, and there is no requirement to comply with them. On the contrary, RIAA’s “tracking company” MediaSentry is not listed as holding a private investigators license by the state, nor are investigators from their home state of Maryland allowed to practice in North Carolina.

Elon is not alone though. In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Lehigh University also has a similar belief. Speaking to their student paper, University security officer Blair Bernhardt said that when they receive a notification of alleged infringement, the target’s Internet access is immediately cut off. “We lock the port instantly because we have to,” he said. “It’s the law to block access to the infringing materials, and it keeps the university from being liable for anything.” What law requires this action is currently unknown.

Unlike the MPAA and RIAA’s campaigns, these FUD methods tend to work, because the universities have student’s personal details. Worse, the person that should be the student’s supporter, is the student’s enemy. Mr Fulkerson did not respond to requests to comment.
http://torrentfreak.com/tackling-cam...th-fud-081005/





Hollywood Illegally Demands Money From Kindergartens
enigmax

A company collecting royalties on behalf of Hollywood studios has illegally demanded payments from kindergartens in Ireland. The MPLC requested 10 Euros ($14.00) per child per annum, so that they can watch DVDs legally. However, by doing so they breached the 2000 Copyright Act since MPLC failed to register with the Patent Office.

We have recently reported on the situation in the UK where charities and even police forces are threatened with legal action for playing music within earshot of the general public. Hollywood is no stranger to strict royalty collection activities either, and has stooped to a new low.

The Motion Picture Licensing Company (MPLC), which is charged with collecting royalties for the big studios, recently wrote to 2,500 kindergartens (or playschools as they are known in Ireland), informing them that it is illegal for the kids there to watch DVDs without an appropriate license.

According to The Times, the letter was sent with the knowledge of the Irish Preschool Play Association (IPPA), which represents many schools populated by around 50,000 kids between 3 and 5 years of age. The IPPA had worked out a deal with the Hollywood representatives, and eventually managed to get the royalties down to 3 euros per child.

Despite the lowered fee, most kindergarten owners were stunned by the request. Paula Doran, who runs a playschool in Dublin, said that the only time the kids hardly watch any DVDs at the kindergarten. “We would rarely show DVDs anyway because it’s frowned upon — kids get enough TV at home,” she said. In fact, the only time the kids are allowed to watch a DVD is when they are pretending to go to the cinema, a learning activity that Hollywood would fully endorse. Doran said she couldn’t understand how the MPLC could be acting legally, and refused to pay.

It turned out that she was absolutely right not to pay. The MPLC actually failed to register with the Irish Patent Office, and by demanding payments in the way they have, breached the 2000 Copyright Act. A spokesman from the IPO confirmed that an organization that acts in this manner could be fined or have its staff jailed.

The MPLC belatedly applied for a license to collect the royalties on Friday. It’s never too late to learn, or for the kids, never too early to start filling Hollywood’s pockets.
http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-en...artens-081005/





China to Make Foreign Firms Reveal Secret Info
The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Chinese government plans to introduce a new system requiring foreign firms to disclose secret information about digital household appliances and other products starting from May, sources said Thursday.

The envisaged system is likely to target products such as IC cards, digital copiers and possibly flat-panel TVs.

If a company refuses to disclose such information, the Chinese government plans to ban the firm from exporting the product to the Chinese market, as well as bar production and sales in the country, according to the sources.

Critics worry that such a system risks seeing the intellectual property of foreign firms passed onto their Chinese competitors.

In addition, the envisaged system poses security concerns if coding technology used in digital devices developed in other countries is leaked to China, they added.

Observers say the issue could develop into a serious international trade dispute, with Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and U.S. Trade Representatives expected to urge the Chinese government to drop the plan.

The Chinese government is calling the planned system an "obligatory accreditation system for IT security products," according to the sources.

Specifically, foreign companies will be obliged to disclose relevant products' source code, or a sequence of statements written in computer programming language designed to control digital appliances and other high-tech products.

The system, whereby manufacturers will be allowed to sell their products on the Chinese market only after they pass tests based on disclosed source code and inspections by an accreditation body, is said to be unprecedented.

Products expected to be subject to the system are those equipped with secret coding, such as the Felica contactless smart card system developed by Sony Corp., digital copiers and computer servers.

The Chinese government said it needs the source code to prevent computer viruses taking advantage of software vulnerabilities and to shut out hackers.

However, this explanation is unlikely to satisfy concerns that disclosed information might be handed from the Chinese government to Chinese companies.

There also are fears that Chinese intelligence services could exploit such confidential information by making it easier to break codes used in Japanese digital devices.

Source code is considered a company's intellectual property. Microsoft Corp., for instance, kept secret its Windows' source code, helping it earn huge profits from licensing.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business...19TDY01306.htm





Legal Crackdown Jams Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising
Jenna Wortham

Several websites linking to Michael Moore's freebie film Slacker Uprising have received cease-and-desist letters demanding removal of the torrents.

The legal crackdown, news of which surfaced this week, seems like an odd move: The film was released online in September as a free gift to Moore's fans in the United States and Canada, with an e-mail from the director giving them permission to "share it or show it in any way you see fit."

The problem comes from international distribution of Slacker Uprising through the peer-to-peer sites, according to a lawyer from the firm of Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, which issued the takedown notices.

"My purpose was to address unauthorized online dissemination outside the scope of authorization offered by Michael Moore," said attorney Neil Rosini in a phone interview Friday. "If a server makes the film available outside of the U.S. and Canada, then it's infringing copyright."

The move seems antithetical to the spirit of Moore's maverick distribution plan, which drew more than 2 million visitors to the Slacker Uprising site during the week of the movie's release.

The film, which documents Moore's 62-city tour in support of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, shot to the top slot on Amazon.com's Video on Demand movie rentals list.

At the time, Moore claimed he wanted audiences to "not only download it, but also to e-mail it, burn it and share it with anyone and everyone."

But according to Moore's publicity team, the documentary maker only owns the North American rights to the film. So, while he's happy to distribute it for free, the Weinstein Company, which owns international distribution rights, may not be so inclined.

Moore addressed the issue in a note to fans before the movie's release: "If you live outside the U.S. and Canada, I'm sorry that I don't own the rights to make this film available to you for free. But it will be coming to a theater, video store or television network near you soon."

Wired.com has requested an interview with Moore to discuss the crackdown; we'll update the post if and when it happens.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008...crackdown.html





Michael Moore on Slacker Uprising’s Piracy ‘Problem’
Ernesto

Michael Moore decided to give away his latest film ‘Slacker Uprising’ for free, but only to people in the US and Canada. However, since he chose to use BitTorrent, and open trackers such as The Pirate Bay, it was fairly easy for the rest of the world to download it as well. Was this done on purpose? Moore responds.

Like many other filmmakers, Moore wants his film to be seen by as many people as possible. However, the ‘rights holders’ have other interests. They want to sell the movie to as many people as possible, making sure they get every penny they are entitled to.

Moore’s latest documentary, Slacker Uprising, is only available for free in Northern America. People who attempt to download the torrent elsewhere get this annoying “Sorry” message. Since there are no geographical restrictions on the official torrent file, however, it was easy to share the film with the rest of the world. It would only take one person to upload the torrent to another site, and the rest of the world would have access to it. That’s exactly what happened.

In last week’s article, we asked the question: “Is this deliberate, or accidental?” Since it is so easy to share the documentary with people outside the US and Canada, we hinted that this might have been done on purpose. A few days later, Michael Moore contacted us, with a direct response to the question we posed.

“What do you think I’m up to? I know it may not be obvious to most, but I think you guys get it,” Moore wrote to us. “I only own the US and Canadian rights. So my hands are tied. But this is the 21st century. What are ‘geographical rights’ ?” Moore continued. “I’ll say it for the hundredth time: If I buy a book and read it, and then give you the book to read, I have broken no laws. Why is that not true for all media?”

“I wish someone would figure out what I am up to,” he concluded. We believe many people have by now. This isn’t the first time Moore has clashed with the ‘rights holders’ of one of his own films. Last year The Weinstein Co. went after websites that hosted “Sicko”, while Moore publicly said that it was ok for people to download his movie illegally. “I’m not a big believer in our copyright laws. I think they’re way too restrictive,” he said at the time.

Even further back, in 2004, Moore also backed the people who downloaded his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. “The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening, he said. “Is it wrong for someone who’s bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it’s not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared.”

Perhaps it’s time to do a documentary on the anti-piracy and pro-copyright lobby Mr. Moore? They might not kill our children in the US or overseas, but they do kill creativity, innovation, and the spread of knowledge. Worth looking into.
http://torrentfreak.com/michael-moor...roblem-081006/





It’s a Healthy Marriage of Faith and Filmmaking
Julie Bloom

An almost all-volunteer cast and crew, including a star who was an ’80s teen heartthrob, and a plot about a firefighter who saves his marriage by turning to God — it hardly sounds like a recipe for box office success, let alone a best-selling book. But that’s what the film “Fireproof” has spawned.

The movie features Kirk Cameron, an alumnus of the television show “Growing Pains,” as the firefighter, and it cost just $500,000 to produce. Yet it opened two weekends ago with $6.5 million in ticket sales, good for No. 4 at the box office, just a few spots behind the No. 1 big-budget action thriller “Eagle Eye” and five spots ahead of Spike Lee’s World War II epic, “Miracle at St. Anna.” This past weekend “Fireproof” made $4.1 million more and so far has about $12.5 million total, according to estimates by Media by Numbers, a box office tracking company.

The movie is the benefit of a highly targeted marketing plan and the latest success for Sherwood Pictures, a tiny production company affiliated with Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., about 100 miles southwest of Macon. It was directed by Alex Kendrick, 38, and written by Mr. Kendrick and his brother, Stephen, 35, with the church’s senior pastor, Michael Catt, serving as an executive producer.

In the film Mr. Cameron plays Caleb Holt, a type-A firefighter who rescues children from burning buildings but whose marriage is close to ruin. As he is about to go forward with a divorce, his father steps in and gives him a book called “The Love Dare,” a 40-day challenge that teaches married couples to use Scripture to learn to love unconditionally.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics in the mainstream media. Chris Willman in Entertainment Weekly rated it a C, while Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times wrote that the film’s positives included “that rarest of creatures on the big (or small) screen: characters with a strong, conservative Christian faith who don’t sound crazy.” Some religious groups, however, were supportive. Mitch Temple, writing on the Web site for Focus on the Family, said that “the brilliantly produced film radiates messages of authentic determination, faith and hope.”

Just as Mr. Cameron’s character seeks God’s help, Alex Kendrick said that in 2005 “we were praying for an idea, and I was jogging around the block and was inspired to do a movie inspired by marriage.” He jogged to his brother’s house with the idea.

The two weren’t entirely novices; they had made movies as children. After college and seminary they approached Sherwood Baptist, where they are associate pastors, about making movies for the ministry. Their first Sherwood film, “Flywheel,” was released in 2003, and their second, “Facing the Giants” (2006), about an underdog football team, eventually earned more than $10 million.

“For us most of what is coming out of Hollywood does not reflect our faith and values,” Alex Kendrick said, “and so this is one way to throw our hat in the ring.”

Mr. Catt, who has helped lead the church since 1989, said he has supported his ministry’s involvement with filmmaking because Christians are often critical of mainstream entertainment without adding something positive to it. “It’s easy to point fingers,” he said in a phone interview from Albany, “but what we need to be doing is offering realistic alternatives.”

As in Sherwood Pictures’ previous films, the 1,200-member cast and crew was culled mostly from the church’s 3,000 members. (There were a handful of paid professionals like editors.) “We just announced: We’re going to start on a movie, and if you’d like to volunteer we’ll take you though a boot camp. There’s a sheet outside in the atrium, and you can sign up,” Mr. Catt said.

The volunteers included his own family. His wife, Terri Catt, served as the casting director and was also in charge of costumes, while his daughter Hayley was the on-set photographer, and his other daughter, Erin Bethea, played the wife of Mr. Cameron’s character. The amateurs were trained by professionals in lighting, sound, makeup and camerawork.

Even the leading man was a volunteer. Mr. Cameron’s personal faith and acting career have become intertwined in recent years through his roles in films like the “Left Behind” series. He approached Sherwood Pictures after seeing “Facing the Giants.”

“I’m not on a professional crusade to inject Jesus Christ into every project that I do,” Mr. Cameron said by phone from Los Angeles. “But when a good project comes up that is about marriage and is based on what I think is really going to help marriages, and is worthwhile, I’ll jump in with both feet.”

Mr. Cameron, who has been married for 17 years and has six children, also said that his faith had helped him survive in Hollywood. “As a teen idol who makes it to 37 without being a crack-smoking transvestite stuck in a drug-rehab center over and over, I’d say, wow, those values have served me pretty well,” he said. Some of the proceeds from the film will go to Mr. Cameron’s children’s charity, Camp Firefly.

The movie is one of the more successful examples of a marketing strategy used for other faith-based films: taking the movie directly to its target audience. “You reach the traditional moviegoing audience by devising a marketing plan that emphasized adverting, but that doesn’t work with this audience,” said Meyer Gottlieb, president of IDP/Samuel Goldwyn Films, which released the film at 839 theaters and plans to expand it to more than 1,000 by Friday. “It’s an audience that has to feel and touch the fabric rather then take your word for it.”

The marketing was handled by Sony’s Provident Films, which seeks out Christians at the grass-roots level. Ministry leaders and members of the Christian press were invited to the set in Albany, and private screenings were held around the country. Advance sales also helped; on the first weekend of release 98 theaters were in communities where at least 1,000 tickets had been presold, said Kris Fuhr, Provident’s vice president for theatrical marketing.

The private showings also served as a catalyst for the early publication of the book “The Love Dare,” which was at first merely a plot device. The brothers decided to write the book while they were working on the script and this year signed a contract with B&H Publishing Group, a Christian publisher. Still, they had no plans to publish it until the movie was released on DVD. But at the early screenings, moviegoers requested copies of the book, so B&H decided to speed up publication and rush out a paperback edition to coincide with the movie’s theatrical release.

The book, as in the movie, is structured as a 40-day plan for revitalizing a struggling marriage. Each day starts with a quotation of Scripture and a short lesson like “Love is patient” or “Love is not irritable.”

Marketing for the movie as well as heavy promotion at chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders have helped fuel sales of the book. It is also selling strongly at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, said John Thompson, senior vice president of marketing for B&H, who added that there were 600,000 copies in print. According to Nielsen BookScan the book has sold 6,000 copies, although that does not represent sales in places like Wal-Mart. “The Love Dare” will be No. 4 on The New York Times advice, how-to and miscellaneous paperback best-seller list on Oct. 12.

For Mr. Kendrick, there is only one explanation for the successes of “Fireproof” and “The Love Dare.” “We’re not trained and smart enough to make successful movies and write best-selling books,” he said. “The only way that this could happen is if after we prayed, God really answered those prayers.”

Motoko Rich contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/movies/06fire.html





Scientist: Holographic Television to Become Reality
Mike Steere

Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D holographic television may look like.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.

The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.

He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.

"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly," he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."

There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.

The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.

Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; "When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been shown that physically, it's possible."

And what might these holographic televisions look like?

According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.

So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.

Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.

However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.

Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.

"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.

Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.

The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.

Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.

Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.
"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science...ion/index.html





Mitsubishi LaserVue 65" HDTV World Premiere
Cameron Baker

Yesterday afternoon, Kurtis and I got the chance to check out the World Premiere of Mitsubishi's new "LaserVue" HDTV at San Antonio's high-end audio/video emporium, Bjorn's. The folks from Mitsubishi were kind enough to take the time to give us a grand tour and explain the details about what makes this new tech so special. I read up on the technology a few months back, but since I wasn't at CES 2008, I'd never seen the prototypes in action. Well, now I've done one better, since Mitsubishi brought their only two production models in existence to Bjorn's for this World Premiere event. And you're in luck, because I'm gonna tell you all about it.

The first thing we noticed when we pulled into Bjorn's was that some joker parked their gigantic pimped out big-rig right in the best parking spot row. But I suppose it was forgivable, being owned by Mitsubishi and all. Once we walked inside the gigantic Mitsubishi rig, we were greeted by a couple of the folks from the PR team. The walls were lined with several different models of LCD and DLP TVs that Mitsubishi sells, but we were there for the belle of the ball - the 65" LaserVue display at the center of the showroom.

For this event, Mitsubishi had set up two televisions - one in the trailer, streaming 3D 1080p content from an HTPC, and a second unit inside the store that was flanked by comparable LCD and Plasma sets for direct comparison purposes. I'm sure that they wanted to have more on hand, but as I previously mentioned, these are the only two production LaserVue TVs in existence as of writing. They were hot off the assembly line, apparently built and shipped just this week. Before I get to the juicy details, let's take a quick look at the specs behind this new display technology.

What's New

The LaserVue L65-A90 is a high-end HDTV, and it's got the specs to match. The 65" display sports 1080p resolution with "Plush1080p" up-conversion for lower resolution signals. You also get 120Hz image interpolation tech, dubbed "Smooth120Hz." It uses Mitsubishi's 6-color processor with the new LaserVue Light Engine to produce two times the color of any other consumer HDTV. That's close to 200% of the color gamut for BT.709, the standard for High Definition television content.

As far as inputs go, there are four HDMI 1.3a ports and two component inputs located on the rear of the display, with an additional component input on the front. There's also a PC/DVI port (with dedicated audio-ins as well) on the rear next to the "3D glasses emitter" port. To round things out, there are two RF antenna inputs and an S-Video input, should you need them.

Footprint-wise, the LaserVue set is somewhere between a Plasma/LCD and a traditional DLP (I specify traditional because, technically, the LaserVue is a DLP too). It's 12.5" deep with the stabilizing foot attached, and 10.6" deep without, for when you mount it on the wall. Yes, it's wall mountable. It stands almost 40" tall and weighs about 137 pounds. It's a large television, but the depth is really an improvement over traditional DLP sets.

[Kurtis: I asked the Mitsubishi rep if the LaserVue set was wall-mountable, because it is a good bit thinner than traditional DLPs. He said yes, but I guess I wasn't clear enough with my question. I mean, you can mount ANYTHING to a wall if you're willing to spend enough money. The fact is, I'd generally say that traditional DLPs aren't wall-mountable, practically speaking, because of their weight, and a comparably sized one is around half the weight of this LaserVue set. So, if you're sane, you probably won't be putting this one on the wall either.]

One of the long-term benefits of the LaserVue technology is a significantly lower level of power consumption compared to other HDTV technologies. A Pioneer Elite 60" plasma requires 524W for operation; a Sharp Aquos 65" LCD requires 525W; Mitsubishi's 65" LaserVue TV only needs 135W. On average, the LaserVue required one-third the power of a comparably sized LCD and one-fourth of a similar plasma set. If you're dropping the suggested retail price of $6,999.99, you may not be as worried about your utility bill, but it's still good to see gains with regards to efficiency. [Kurtis: Just think... you can tell your friends you're buying the TV in an effort to "go green" - nevermind the Hummer in the driveway or the decked-out 24x7x365 fully-redundant file servers in the basement.]
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article...orld-Premiere/





Sanyo Laser to Enable Faster, Higher-Capacity Blu-Ray Discs

At 12X speed, 100GB of data could be burned to a Blu-ray disk in 10 minutes
Martyn Williams

Sanyo Electric Co. has developed a blue-laser diode that will help lay the foundation for higher-capacity and faster Blu-ray Disc systems.

The laser can emit a beam of 450 milliwatts, which is about double the power of Sanyo's current highest-power laser for Blu-ray Disc systems. The higher power means it can write and read data on discs with up to four data layers and at speeds of up to 12X, Sanyo said today.

Each recording layer on a Blu-ray Disc can store 25GB of data, and the highest-capacity commercial discs currently have two recording layers. A four-layer disc would be able to hold 100GB of data, which translates to about eight hours of high-definition video, and at 12X speed, all that data could be burned to the disc in just 10 minutes.

While the development of the laser is a step toward such systems, users shouldn't expect them anytime soon. With the development of a suitable laser, companies are now able to work on products supporting the higher speeds, but the length of the development cycle and the Blu-ray Disc standardization process means drives and recorders running at the higher speeds likely won't be available until one or two years later.

Optical disc systems such as Blu-ray Disc typically advance throughout their lives, thanks to developments in component technology. Stronger lasers mean additional recording layers can be added and discs can be spun faster. Most of the latest Blu-ray Disc drives support double-layer at speeds of up to 6X.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top





Iron Man Release Brings Down BD-Live Service

Following the release of the blu-ray version of Iron Man on october 1st, Paramount’s BD-Live servers were brought down completely by the popularity of the disc.

BD-Live is a service that lets Blu-ray players connect over the internet to download additional content, such as movie trailers and enables interactive services such as chatting about a movie. According to most sources, the content is downloaded as soon as a disc is first inserted into the player. Because of the popularity of this release, Paramount’s servers were completely overwhelmed with traffic.

That alone wouldn’t have been a problem, but because this caused the loading of the movie to halt while the content was downloaded lots of people thought the disc itself was defective. Paramount has now issued a statement to explain the problem:

The disc represents a truly state-of-the art Blu-ray presentation with a first of its kind BD-Live application. As such, the heavy amount of traffic strained the servers due to so many people heading to the same destination. The bandwidth capacity was increased in preparation for the release but the demand exceeded all expectations so capacity was expanded dramatically last night and local servers were established worldwide to accommodate all the fans.

While the idea of live content sounds good, it really makes you wonder what will happen if they decide to pull the plug on the servers hosting the extra content in a couple of years. Will the disc itself still work? And if it does, will you be forced to wait while your player tries to connect to the BD-Live servers every time you want to watch a movie?
http://securityandthe.net/2008/10/04...-live-service/





For Purists, a Cut Above in Movies
David Pogue

So Mrs. Hollywood comes home one day to find her husband bound and gagged, with a hole shot through his foot. “Honey!” she screams, racing to help him. “Who did this to you?”

Mr. Hollywood looks up and says, “I did.”

Granted, that joke isn’t ha-ha funny. All right, it’s not funny at all. But what a great metaphor for the downloadable movie business, eh?

These days, anyone born after 1980 expects instant delivery of entertainment. But the Internet movie scene is still dismal: the movies are overpriced, heavily copy protected and lacking subtitles, commentaries or extras. The selection is thin. And even if you go to the trouble of downloading, each movie deletes itself 24 hours after you start playback.

This is not how you win over movie lovers’ hearts, especially when free, unencumbered alternatives like BitTorrent are one click away.

Into this landscape comes the Vudu movie box ($300), which, even a year after its debut, hardly anyone has ever heard of. It’s a small, black set-top box that offers instant playback of 10,000 movies and TV shows. (The first 30 seconds of each are on the hard drive; as you start watching, the rest downloads in the background.) The four-button remote control has an ingenious clickable scroll wheel like the one on a computer mouse.

So why hasn’t the Vudu become more of a hit? You know, apart from the fact that there’s been no advertising?

After all, it trumps services like CinemaNow and MovieLink, because the movies play on your TV, not your computer. It beats HBO and Showtime, because you pay by the movie, not by the month, and recent movies become available much sooner. (Vudu movies become available for sale on the Vudu the same day they’re out on DVD. They generally become available for 24-hour rental 30 days later. Except for Warner movies, which are rentable on Day 1. Go Warner!)

And it’s better than driving back and forth to the video store, because — well, because you don’t have to drive back and forth to the video store.

Of course, plenty of people would argue that DVD-by-mail services like Netflix and Blockbuster Online are still the way to go. They offer just about every movie ever made, impose no viewing deadlines, and charge a flat fee for nearly unlimited movies on DVD. The catch: They’re still not instant.

You have to wait for each DVD to come in the mail. And any Netflix subscriber can tell you what a bummer it is to crash onto the couch after a hard day, only to realize that all you’ve got on hand from Netflix are two depressing war documentaries.

In any case, Vudu has quietly been making the deal even better. The price has been reduced by $100, and many movies are now available in high definition.

The company has also added a channel for sex movies — a cynical ploy for success if there ever was one — and an accompanying parental-controls screen.

Another recent enhancement: you can extend a Vudu rental for a second day for $1.

The 24-hour window is absurd from the get-go — why should downloadable movies offer any less viewing time than a DVD rented from Blockbuster? It should be a three-day or seven-day window, period. But at least you no longer have to rent the movie a second time, at full price, to watch just the last 15 minutes.

The most interesting development, however, arrived only today: a free software upgrade that permits the Vudu box to play movies in a new movie-quality level, called HDX. It’s a reaction to all the Web sites, cable companies and satellite services whose “hi-def” movies don’t look nearly as good as they should because they are so heavily compressed.

The HDX versions of Vudu movies are insanely sharp; they make standard films look blurry and washed out by comparison. It’s like seeing a movie on VHS videotape and DVD side by side.

In the HDX “Rambo,” for example, the banding was gone from the hazy, humid Thailand skies, and you can see nuanced detail in the nighttime river shots that are simply black in standard definition.

To see why HDX looks so good — especially on big screens — check its data rate, a measure of how much information is used to describe each frame of the video. It averages around 9 megabits a second, but spikes to 20 during action scenes. Compare that with Vudu standard definition: (2.2 megabits a second), Vudu and Apple TV high definition (4), regular DVD (8) or Blu-ray DVD (40). In other words, HDX quality is somewhere between DVD and Blu-ray. The audio offers a 40 percent improvement, too.

Now, the truth is, the most gigantic quality leap on the Vudu was from standard definition to high definition. The additional quality leap to HDX is not nearly as remarkable.

Furthermore, these gigantic movie files don’t play instantly on the Vudu, as its other movies do; you have to wait as long as three hours before you can start playback. That’s quite a crimp in the Vudu’s trump card. Fortunately, Vudu’s Web site lets you start the downloading process before you even get home — a slick trick.

In other words, HDX is really intended to satisfy the quality chaser, the purist. These are the people who paid dearly for top-of-the-line 1080p TV sets (capable of displaying 1,080 fine horizontal lines that are blasted to the screen simultaneously) — even though there’s not a single TV broadcast available in that format.

The Vudu joins a very small set of video sources that can feed those 1080p sets the 1080p signal they crave, like Blu-ray DVD and some games for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Better yet, HDX sends out a 24-frames-per-second signal. Since movies themselves are filmed at 24 frames per second, you supposedly get an even smoother picture.

Today, at introduction, only 65 Vudu HDX movies are available. However, all new movies sent to the box from now on (10 to 20 a week) will also be available in HDX. A rental costs $6 for HDX, versus $2 to $4 for standard-def movies.

In other words, the Vudu box keeps getting better. If you’re a movie nut — especially one who drives back and forth to Blockbuster a lot, where the most popular movies may be out of stock — you should consider Vudu’s juicy brand of instant movie gratification. Or consider the Apple TV, which offers a similar movie system. Its base model costs less ($230), does more (plays music, photos and videos from your computer) and offers twice as many hi-def movies (600 versus the Vudu’s 300).

On the other hand, the Vudu has more movies (6,000 versus 2,500); more storage (250 versus 40 gigabytes on the base model Apple TV); better movie-finding features; a remote that works through walls and cabinets; and higher defintion (1080p instead of 720p), not to mention HDX. As for the price: if you buy a Vudu from Best Buy by Dec. 31, your first $200 worth of movies are free. That should help.

The only real cause for pause, actually, is that Vudu is a start-up company. If it goes under, you wind up with a $300 doorstop. That’s what happened to the roughly similar MovieBeam box, despite backers like Disney, Intel and Cisco.

But Vudu asserts that it’s doing fine — it just got $46 million in venture capital — and will arrive in Best Buy this week. And in the complex matrix of desirable features — broad movie selection, prompt movie availability, reasonable pricing, high quality, instant playback and so on — the Vudu box scores very highly indeed.

Now if Hollywood would just get its own act together. Once it starts offering more movies, sooner, with less obnoxious rental terms, then the concept of downloadable Internet movies won’t be a bad joke.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/te...2pogue.html?em





How to Skip the Introduction of a Youtube Video?

To view directly a part of a video that you feel relevant to your visitors, or to skip an introduction that is too long and intrusive, a parameter must complete the code to embed provided by Youtube.

&start=a number of secondes

The number of seconds is displayed on the video panel.

This option must be added to both URLs, so that the complete reader has this form:

<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" 
       value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G4evlxq34og&hl=fr&fs=1&start=190">
</param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G4evlxq34og&hl=fr&fs=1&start=190" 
    type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
    allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344">
</embed>
</object>

This demonstration gives explanation about a commercial exoskeleton that multiplies your force by 5 or allows disabled people to walk.

Consider the case where you do not want to embed the video in a page but put a link on the video instead, you can use a range of options and two settings:

&start=x
&autoplay=1

The autoplay parameter starts the video automatically.

And the code is now:

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl58601.swf
&video_id=G4evlxq34og
&rel=1
&hqt=0
&load_modules=1
&start=200
&autoplay=1

http://www.scriptol.com/how-to/skip-video-intro.php





Cable Operator Sends Viewers to Web
Brian Stelter

In the midst of a contract dispute with a local broadcaster last week, Time Warner Cable did something that was until recently unthinkable: it told its customers to hook up a computer to their television and watch their favorite shows using the Internet.

The suggestion was meant as a slap at LIN TV, which owns 15 stations — all affiliates of the national networks — that were, until Thursday, retransmitted to Time Warner Cable’s customers in 11 markets. As part of a contract renewal, LIN TV is seeking a subscriber fee for each cable customer.

But Time Warner bristled at the prospect of paying for material “that’s available over the air for free — and now available online for free,” said Alexander Dudley, a company spokesman.

Rather than confronting viewers with blank screens on the disputed channels, Time Warner Cable told people how to circumvent LIN TV. The company made a video showing how to watch programs on the Internet, and on Thursday — the same day the LIN TV stations were cut off — posted it to the Time Warner Cable Web site. (In place of the channels, viewers saw a graphic with the Web address for the video, Mr. Dudley said.)

In the tutorial, a friendly female narrator makes it sound effortless. “Here’s all you need: a broadband Internet service like Road Runner, an audio cable and a video cable,” she said, showing various inputs and outputs.

“Simply go to the network’s Web site and choose your favorite program,” the video continued, recognizing that almost all prime-time programs are now streamed online within a day of their TV premiere. Some — but not most — of the sporting events and local newscasts are also available online.

Meanwhile, LIN TV had already taken a precautionary slap at Time Warner Cable. In mid-September it issued a news release suggesting that if Time Warner Cable did remove its signals, viewers could switch to a competitor. The two it named were the Dish Network, a satellite TV service, and Verizon’s FiOS TV, a telecommunications service.

Vincent Sadusky, chief executive of LIN TV, which is based in Providence, R.I., said Time Warner Cable’s actions were odd because “every other significant pay-TV provider” had reached agreements with his company.

“The amount of time viewers have spent consuming video on the Web is a very small fraction of the time they spend watching TV, and we don’t believe watching some network programs online will satisfy viewers that can no longer watch our local broadcast channels on Time Warner,” Mr. Sadusky said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/bu...a/06cable.html





Traffic Shaping Could Shape Online Entertainment Habits
Grant Buckler

A dispute between the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) and Bell Canada generated lots of controversy in the telecommunications industry over the past few months, but it's safe to say most of the public has been more interested in the latest summer movies or the Olympics — even though the outcome of this argument could affect anyone who likes to watch movies or sports events online.

The core of the issue is a practice called traffic shaping by the industry and bandwidth throttling by some critics.

Bell limits the speed at which internet users can download files when they're using a peer-to-peer connection, a common way of exchanging large files such as songs, movies and software programs. It's not the only ISP to do so, but Bell owns the data network used by many CAIP members — small internet service providers (ISPs) who provide their own internet access packages to customers. Bell applies bandwidth throttling to customers of its own Sympatico High Speed service, and it also shapes the traffic of CAIP members who provide similar services using Bell's local phone lines — whether the smaller providers like it or not.

CAIP, a group of mostly small ISPs, filed a complaint in April with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), asking that Bell be forced to stop the practice. In May, the CRTC denied CAIP's request for a temporary injunction to stop Bell from applying bandwidth throttling while its case was being heard. A CRTC decision on the matter is expected by the end of October.

The CRTC is will not decide whether throttling is legal, though; the case involves whether Bell violated its wholesale agreements with CAIP members by applying bandwidth shaping. The CRTC has promised to look at the larger issue of throttling once this case has been decided.

The larger issue goes beyond the CAIP complaint and divides even advocates of the principle Bell is being accused of violating: Net neutrality. The concept of Net neutrality is one in which all internet traffic is considered equal and nobody plays traffic cop. Some say that instead of allowing internet traffic to flow freely, priority should be given to data such as streaming video files and voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls to ensure that playback is smooth, while less time-sensitive traffic such as e-mail can be shunted into the "slow lane."

Management versus discrimination

So where is the line between legitimate network management and unjust discrimination by internet service providers against some content or customers?

Bell doesn't deny throttling peer-to-peer traffic - but Bell calls it traffic management. The company's position is that it must manage internet traffic to maintain satisfactory service for all internet users in the face of increasing network congestion — to which peer-to-peer traffic is, Bell says, a significant contributor.

"In order to continue to ensure a consistently high level of service for all of its customers, whether retail or wholesale customers," the company says in its response to CAIP's complaint submitted to the CRTC, "Bell Canada is required to manage its network in such a way that no customer, service or application consumes excessive bandwidth that may impede the use and enjoyment by other customers."

The broad issue: What's network management and what's discrimination?

From a technical perspective, "they're pretty much the same thing," says Cynthia Lee, research analyst with SeaBoard Group, a telecommunications consultant company. Both involve giving some traffic preferential treatment.

The real distinction, Lee says, is motivation — it's network management if the goal is to make the network work better, and discrimination if the goal is something like favouring the network operator's service over a rival's. And motivation is hard to determine.

A growing number of businesses route phone calls over data networks, for example. Because transmission delays are very noticeable in a VoIP phone call and not noticeable when, say, delivering e-mail, network managers routinely give priority to the packets of data that make up those conversations, sometimes at the expense of less urgent data.

Would it be legitimate for an internet service provider to do that?

Possibly, says Philippa Lawson, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Research Clinic at the University of Ottawa, which has intervened to support the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' CRTC complaint. But she adds that it would only be legitimate after a regulatory ruling, and not as a result of a decision in a private boardroom.

But Bernard Courtois, chairman and chief executive of the Information Technology Association of Canada and a former senior executive at Bell, argues that it's better to let carriers experiment than to clamp down with regulation.

Carriers shouldn't treat their own services differently from those that compete with them, Courtois says, and they shouldn't treat various online applications differently unless there are substantial differences in those applications' impact on the network — in which case different treatment may be justified.

Lee is also cautious about regulation. "Obvious abuse, I believe, should be addressed under the Competition Act," she says.

Looking for solutions

Jon Peha, professor of electrical engineering and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and author of a 2007 paper entitled The Benefits and Risks of Mandating Network Neutrality, and the Quest for a Balanced Policy, suggests working in from the edges, outlawing what is clearly wrong and specifically allowing what most people can agree is OK.

"It is better to put some rules in place that limit what appear to be the worst of abuses [by carriers]," he says. "And at the same time, you should be giving some certainty to providers that other sorts of behaviour will not get them into trouble, so that they will not be afraid to invest."

Lawson says there's no need to throttle specific applications. If the network is so congested, she says, ISPs should replace unlimited access plans with a tiered model where customers pay for different levels of use, just as they do with cellphone minutes. Some already do this. They might also charge more at peak periods.

That would be fairer than targeting all peer-to-peer downloads, says Tom Copeland, chair of CAIP. He says the present approach penalizes the person who watches one video a week along with those who spend six hours every day downloading peer-to-peer files.
"I think that's a reasonable method of curbing [excessive use]," Lee says, "and for me personally, it's the preferred method."

Or better yet, Lawson says, carriers could add capacity - paid for, if necessary, by higher prices for heavy users.

That sounds like the law of supply and demand at work. But Courtois says it's not that simple.

The small number of heavy users use so much more bandwidth, he says, that truly charging them for what they use would make prices exorbitant and probably drive them away. And if the carriers spread the cost of adding capacity more evenly, everyone would pay more. Either way, falling demand could leave carriers with costly new capacity they would no longer need.

The variety of opinions may seem daunting, but that's exactly why this issue deserves attention. Lawson fears the CRTC decision on CAIP's complaint will focus too narrowly on Bell's decision to impose throttling on independent providers, and says it needs to address how all ISPs manage network traffic and establish clear rules.

"We need a CRTC proceeding on the broader throttling issue," she says.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...eutrality.html





Sprint's 4G Xohm WiMax: How Fast Is It?

In our hands-on tests, the new Xohm network was fast and smooth -- but for now, you have to be in Baltimore.
Brian Nadel

With most American mobile data networks busy trying to deliver third-generation (3G) mobile wireless access to traveling businesspeople, Sprint's newly launched Xohm service takes a giant step forward by offering America's first 4G system.

Based on WiMax technology, it can deliver broadband data speeds to notebooks, Internet tablets and eventually smartphones. But at the moment, there aren't many devices to connect with, the network is struggling with reliability issues, and the high-speed service is limited to just one city -- Baltimore.

WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless data system based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) technology and the IEEE's 802.16e spec. That's a lot to swallow, but Xohm's basic facts are that it broadcasts on the 2.5-GHz portion of the radio frequency spectrum, a slightly higher frequency than the 2.4 GHz that the 802.11b/g/n standards, commonly used in Wi-Fi networks, operate on.

Because it has a longer range and can deliver higher data rates than 3G services, WiMax has the power to transform the way we think of wireless data delivery. Think about receiving the equivalent of a home DSL or cable broadband connection while you're mobile, and you get an idea of its potential to put data everywhere you'll be. In other words, WiMax can turn a city into a hot spot for wireless data.

"WiMax is Wi-Fi's big sister," says Sean Maloney, Intel's executive vice president. "It will have a big impact on mobility by covering a larger area. The future is here, now."

In the lab, WiMax can deliver a peak data speed of 40Mbit/sec. But in the real world, speed depends on things like how far you are from a transmitting tower, how many others are using the network and the general health of the Internet. Expect to see download speeds between 3Mbit/sec. and 5Mbit/sec., or about three times what the current 3G networks from AT&T, Sprint and Verizon can deliver.

The technology first went commercial in South Korea in 2006 under the name WiBro. Available in 407 locations in 133 countries, according to the WiMax Forum, the wireless system is prominently used in South Korea, Italy, Taiwan, Brazil and Japan every day for a variety of uses.

Enter Xohm

To see just what WiMax is, how it works and what it's actually capable of, I went to Baltimore, the first U.S. city to offer WiMax service commercially, to try it out. Called Xohm, the new network is a joint venture of Sprint and Clearwire.

So far, Xohm has spent about $3.2 billion to develop, test and roll out WiMax in a few places, according to Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. "It's just the start. Another $5 billion will be required to create a national network," he explains. Google, Intel and several cable companies have invested an additional $3 billion in the project.

What can you expect from the Xohm network? First of all, its deployment is obviously very limited at this point. It's as if you wanted to call to order a pizza a month after Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call. There just aren't enough places in which to use it.

Baltimore has 180 WiMax towers in use, out of an expected total of 300 when the deployment is complete. "We have coverage of 70% of the city," explains Bin Shen, Xohm's vice president of product and partnership management.

The plan is to expand beyond Baltimore to include Washington, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in the coming weeks and months.

"We'll build out the network so that it will be available to where 80 million people live or work by the end of 2009," adds Shen. "By 2010, the plan is to have a network that reaches 140 million people. In 2011, Xohm will match the coverage of Sprint's current 3G EV-DO network."

It's extremely ambitious to build out a wireless network in less than three years, but Monica Paolini of Sammamish, Wash.-based Senza Fili Consulting, says, "This is a realistic schedule, but only as long as the money holds out. To succeed, Xohm needs to simultaneously have devices available, a working network and customers."

How fast is it?

Speed is of the essence when it comes to WiMax. I spent the better part of a day roaming around Baltimore, testing the network at six locations using SpeedTest's online bandwidth meter. As a test system, I used a Lenovo ThinkPad X301 with built-in WiMax as well as a Sierra Wireless AirCard 875U that works with AT&T's BroadbandConnect data network.

The Xohm network delivered a peak download speed of 4.4Mbit/sec., while AT&T could muster only 1.7Mbit/sec. -- that's nearly three times the throughput at exactly the same locations. During a drive around the city, the hand-offs from tower to tower were seamless and glitch-free. WiMax can deliver data to a car moving at highway speeds, perfect for back-seat surfing or doing work on a commuter train.

On average, Xohm pushed through more than 3Mbit/sec., compared with 1.3 Mbit/sec. for the AT&T network. More to the point, the latency of the WiMax network was about one-third that of the AT&T network, meaning that the data you need won't be sitting on servers waiting for an active connection to transmit it to your notebook. This streamlines access and downloads.

At almost all of the locations I tested, Xohm quickly brought up YouTube and played videos flawlessly, while the AT&T network balked a couple of times and once produced jittery video with unsynchronized audio.

As good as it is, however, Xohm is not perfect, and its engineers need to work out some of the early bugs. At one location, I wasn't able to connect to Xohm at all, while five feet away, I got on quickly with 4Mbit/sec. of bandwidth at my disposal.

Barry West, Xohm's CEO, chalks this up to a network that still needs to be completed. "There are bubbles of connectivity with spaces in between," he says. "You can't build a network overnight."

Getting online the WiMax way

A bigger problem is the paucity of devices that can connect to the network. At this point, there are only a handful of devices available. Here are some highlights.
Modems and data cards

These devices connect your existing laptop or desktop computer to the Xohm service.

Despite looking like a futuristic coffee maker or an alien spaceship, Zyxel's Xohm Modem, model MAX206M2, is the equivalent of a cable or DSL modem for the Xohm network. It has an Ethernet jack on the back to connect it to a home router to distribute the data throughout a house or apartment. Sure, it's big and clunky (6.5 by 6.45 by 4.65 in.), but it's meant to be hidden. It costs $80.

Samsung 's Xohm ExpressCard, SWC-E100, weighs 1.3 ounces and works like a charm for accessing the network. The good news is that setup is quick and easy; the bad news is that the card doesn't work with Mac or Linux computers, cutting into its usefulness. The card costs $60.

Look for ZTE and Motorola to introduce USB adapters that can transform many notebooks into WiMax systems. But as with the ExpressCard, this will be a Windows-only data party, with Mac and Linux systems left out in the cold.

Laptops and Internet devices

In the market for a new notebook or mobile Internet device? A handful are starting to add built-in WiMax connectivity.

Representative among the new breed is the Lenovo ThinkPad X301. A dead ringer for the ThinkPad X300 on the outside, the X301 updates the system with Intel's latest Montevino processors and built-in WiMax that sits on a mini-USB module. The best part is that the hardware works perfectly with Lenovo's Access Connections software, so it's easy to go from Wi-Fi to WiMax and back again. The connected notebook costs $2,556.

Other WiMax-capable laptops include the Asus M50Vm and the Lenovo ThinkPad SL300, SL500 and T400; soon-to-be-released models include the Acer Aspire 6930 and 4930, the Asus N50Vn-B2WM and F8Va-C2WM, and the Toshiba Satellite U405-ST550W.

"By the end of the year, there will be a dozen WiMax notebooks," says Xohm's West.

But without a doubt, the most exciting product for this new technology is Nokia's N810 WiMax Edition. This hand-friendly Internet tablet squeezes the Web and all it has to offer into a 4-in. 800 x 480 screen. When you're away from a WiMax network, the N810 can connect with its built-in Wi-Fi.

Oddly enough, the missing link is phones. None of Xohm's service plans or device info includes any traditional handsets or smartphones, a key gap in the company's plans.

Xohm's West counters, "For us, voice is just another app. We encourage people to use voice over IP on Xohm." In other words, there will be Xohm phones for sale, but no specific models or dates have been mentioned.

As good as Xohm is, the majority of Sprint's network still uses older and slower EV-DO technology, which leaves a critical gap because there are no dual-network devices available. A dual-network connection card would allow a user in Seattle to tap into the older network but get full speed in Baltimore. West says to expect the first dual-network devices later this year.

The big question is how expensive they will be to use. They will require access to both the old and the new networks, so I expect it to cost more than a single subscription. On the other hand, you won't be able to access two networks at once, which should keep the price of the service plans reasonable.
Shaking up wireless data service

Xohm has rewritten the business model for mobile data by doing away with the subsidies that carriers use to lower the price of phones and data cards to entice new customers.

Over the life of a typical two-year contract, a service's monthly bills are about $10 to $15 higher when you get a discounted device upfront. It's no wonder you can get a free phone or data card when you factor in the extra $240 to $360 the carrier will rake in over time.

By contrast, Xohm users won't need any long-term contract and will get lower prices on monthly service. "This brings simplicity to pricing," says West.

Xohm's typical all-you-can download plan goes for $30 a month, though in 2009 it'll go up to $45 per month. Even at the higher price, this is $15 a month less than the typical monthly service charge by AT&T, Sprint and Verizon for similar service.

The company also offers an innovative $10 single-day plan that provides 24 hours of unlimited network access. It's perfect for occasional travelers who need to stay online but don't need coverage every day.
The bottom line

All told, Xohm will likely be a godsend for mobile professionals who have to stay connected while they travel. When you can get a good connection, Xohm is on par with wired broadband or a Starbucks Wi-Fi connection. When you're not as lucky, it's still better and cheaper to use than the current 3G networks. It's exhilarating and liberating to watch videos, listen to Internet radio, read e-mail, use a VoIP phone and move files on a remote server -- all while connected through thin air.

But Xohm will succeed only if the company quickly adds more cities to its coverage map. For those of us who aren't in a WiMax city, it's just another case of hurry up and wait.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...icleId=9116844





Light Bulb Networks Could be the Next WiFi
Joshua Topolsky

If researchers at Boston University's College of Engineering have their way, light bulbs of the future may be the highway your data gets carried along. A team at the school is working on low-power LEDs which could utilize an optical communication system to carry data wirelessly. Using a technique which rapidly switches the LEDs on and off data transmissions could be made via imperceptible -- yet undoubtedly brain-scrambling -- flickering patterns, and each light would be its own network entry point at speeds of 1 to 10Mbps. The concept is more secure than current RF techniques because it requires linked devices be in line-of-sight, and the technology would draw far less energy than conventional radios. Says professor Thomas Little, "Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires." Yes... and talk about you behind your back. And plot your "accidental" death after taking out a large life insurance policy on you. You won't get away with this LED network!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/07/l...the-next-wifi/





City-Owned Fiber Network a Go as Judge Tosses Telco Lawsuit
Nate Anderson

When the 12,000 person city of Monticello, Minnesota voted overwhelmingly to put in a city-owned and -operated fiber-optic network that would link up all homes and business to a fast Internet pipe, the local telco sued to stop them. Wednesday, District Court Judge Jonathan Jasper dismissed the suit with prejudice after finding that the city was well within its rights to build the network by issuing municipal bonds. In this case, however, a total loss for the telco might actually turn out to be a perverse sort of victory.

The judge's ruling, a copy of which was seen by Ars Technica, is noteworthy for two things: (1) the judge's complete dismissal of Bridgewater Telephone Company's complaint and (2) his obvious anger at the underfunding of Minnesota's state courts. Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case, even going so far as to cite approvingly a newspaper editorial backing more funds for the court.

Bridgewater's basic complaint was that cities in Minnesota are not allowed to use bonds in order to offer data services to residents, because they lack the necessary authority. State statute says that such bonds may be issued for a host of projects (sewers, stadia, playgrounds, and "homes for aged," among others), and they can more generally be used to fund "other public conveniences." But is Internet access a "public convenience"?

According to the judge, the entire point of the statute is to give cities the money-raising authority they need to "make a city a better place for its citizens to live." The fact that a fee would be charged to access the new fiber network is irrelevant; such fees are also charged to use municipal swimming pools or subway systems or city-owned sports stadia and art galleries.

After a descent into grammar, which—if you weren't aware—is a "complementary analytical tool for understanding how language is used in a statute to convey meaning," the judge got down to the heart of the matter. Cities have the express right to operate a telephone exchange and a cable system; the legislature also noted that the goal of all this was to encourage deployment of "higher speed telecommunications services and greater capacity for voice, video, and data transmission." This indicated that the "public convenience" was certainly meant to extend to data pipes, and the judge tossed the entire case.

Loss=win?

Chris Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has been heavily involved in the case, praised the judge's ruling, telling Ars that the entire case was little more than a "delaying tactic." After the Monticello referendum that approved the project, Bridgewater sued the city and immediately rolled out a fiber deployment of its own.

In our own conversation with TDS Telecom, the parent company of Bridgewater, Ars was told that nine crews were in town, laying a 100-mile fiber network (20 miles were complete as of a month ago). That puts the city network at a disadvantage. Without being able to use funds from the bonds, the city has only been able to start construction on a basic loop to connect government offices and downtown businesses. The bigger buildout to residential homes now must be postponed until after Minnesota's harsh winter, potentially giving TDS a big head start.

In Mitchell's view, this was the only point of the lawsuit; even in defeat, Bridgewater has tied the project up for six months and delayed it into next year. TDS, for its part, insists to us that it simply wanted to protect taxpayers from covering an expensive system that TDS itself could operate more efficiently.

The telco might still appeal the ruling, but Mitchell was optimistic. "We've seen cities win these cases" all across the US, he said, and the Minnesota ruling should give other cities in the state a "giant green light" to roll out such projects of their own.

As for Monticello, it will now have the profligate luxury of having two fiber optic networks where most cities have none. Monticello's actions certainly spurred the TDS deployment, but the city now will have to compete with a telco for customers, as both offer similar services. Unlike the city, TDS can also undercut the city's network on cost by subsidizing it with profits from the many other communities where the company operates, and no doubt TDS would like nothing better than to see the city's project turn into an expensive, underused boondoggle.

"See?" it can say. "We sue because we care. And we turned out to be right."


Update

In a statement, Drew Petersen of TDS Telecom makes the best of bad situation. "While disappointed with the courts decision," he writes, "we believe Judge Jasper recognized, on several occasions, including in his written decision, the validity of our suit when he states, 'the Court found that this litigation presented a substantial issue of statutory construction.'"

Having your entire case dismissed on the merits can't feel like much of a victory, though the judge's words will allow the company to dispute the charge that the lawsuit was merely a frivolous delay tactic. TDS also stresses its commitment to its own fiber buildout and says that it "will continue to move forward with our construction plan to complete our fiber network by the end of the year."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...o-lawsuit.html





Inside Obama and McCain's Conflicting Takes on Net Neutrality

It wasn't a contentious topic at last night's presidential debate, but network neutrality is the hot-button issue on the mind of PM's senior tech editor. He explores the candidates' stands on the issue in a Geek the Vote edition of his biweekly trends column.
Glenn Derene

Conflicts of interest, questionable accounting and government regulation are all on the political hot plate right now as the financial markets slide into meltdown mode. As a technology journalist I find it interesting that these very same factors are pivotal to another issue that probably will never make it into a presidential debate (it certainly wasn't mentioned last night).

Network neutrality has gathered enough political momentum for both candidates to take an official stand on it. Although the issue was debated furiously in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2006, neither side managed to produce a bill that could be signed into law. (The only lasting result of the efforts on Capitol Hill was an unintentionally comical bit of grandstanding by Alaska senator Ted Stevens, where he offered an analogy describing the Internet as a "series of tubes.") In the absence of any clear legislation on the matter, the FCC has taken up the role of neutrality enforcer, forcing cable provider Comcast to stop restricting BitTorrent traffic earlier this year.

According to their position statements on the issues, John McCain is against Net neutrality and Barack Obama is for it. This makes it one of the few technology issues on which the candidates clearly disagree.

I invited both campaigns to elaborate on their positions, but in the waning weeks of the race, neither side was willing to take a few moments from their busy schedules and talk technology with me. Nevertheless, the general philosophies of each side seem clear: McCain believes in a lightly regulated Internet, while Obama believes in more government involvement. But it gets a bit more complicated. When it comes to net neutrality, both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.

One reason is that there's no accepted definition of network neutrality itself. It is, in fact, more of a networking philosophy than a defined political position. A pure "neutral" network is one that would treat all content that traveled across it equally. No one data packet would be prioritized above another. Image files, audio files, a request from a consumer for a web page—all would be blindly routed from one location to another, and the network would neither know nor care what kind of data was encompassed in each packet.For most but not all kinds of files, that's how it works now.

When they were created, TCP/IP protocols were not intended to discriminate routinely between packets of data. The idea was to maintain a "best effort" network, one that moved packets from place to place in an effort to maximize overall throughput. But the protocols did allow for discrimination when it was needed. "Even the very first design for IP, back in 1980, had a "type of service" field, intended to provide different levels of traffic priority in a military setting," says John Wroclawski, the director of the computer networks division at the University of Southern California's revered Information Sciences Institute.

"The big question is not 'can you do this technically,'" Wroclawski says. "It's 'how do you decide who to favor?'" In today's multimedia-saturated Internet, streams of time-sensitive voice and video data are routinely prioritized over nonsequential data transfers such as Web pages. If one bit doesn't follow another in a videoconference, for instance, the stream falls apart. For the most part, even proponents of net neutrality are okay with that level of discrimination.

The real controversy arises in the "last mile," where Internet service providers (ISPs) serve as the conduit between the public Internet and customers' homes. At this point, data cannot be rerouted along a different path in response to excessive traffic. So, predictably, the biggest opponents of net neutrality are ISPs, particularly the cable Internet providers such as Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, etc. These companies are selling shared bandwidth, meaning that many customers are drawing data from a limited-capacity pipeline at the same time. Cable companies divide up that bandwidth through a process known as statistical multiplexing: They analyze traffic flows in an effort to ensure fair distribution of the overall bit rate. By the strictest definition of net neutrality, even these maneuvers based on usage are restrictive, slowing down the service of heavy-downloading users for the benefit of the larger crowd.

When this sort of technology is used to ensure a fair allocation of total capacity, then it works to the benefit of most customers, but the ethics start getting shaky quickly. On cable systems, the download speeds quoted to customers range from 5 to 30 Mbps (megabits per second), but those are maximum speeds, and are based on a shared-usage estimate that presumes everyone isn't placing heavy demands on the network at all times. If a large percentage of those users start using the Web to watch video streams and place VoIP telephone calls, then the cable multiplexers either need to throttle down the bandwidth available to those customers, or slow down the network for everyone else. Today's video- and audio-compression codecs are extremely flexible and can scale the quality of their transmissions to the available bandwidth in real time. In other words, if you narrow the available pipeline, these streams automatically make themselves slimmer. (Then again, if you open up a fat pipeline, a single high-def stream could suck up 6 Mbps or more for 2 straight hours.)

Now, here's the part where it get's controversial—and political. It just so happens that cable companies are selling VoIP and video-on-demand services of their own, though not in forms that you access over an Internet browser. Is it acceptable to let cable companies reduce bandwidth for competing services? If so, they could, theoretically, lower the quality of their competitor's offerings until consumers had little choice but to sign up for their own ISP's services. Could the ISPs totally prevent competing VoIP or video services (like, say, Skype or Netflix's Watch Now) from using their bandwidth, eliminating competition altogether? Then again, is it fair to demand that a cable company open up an unlimited pipeline to every potential movie download site that pops up? That could make its bandwidth extremely hard to manage.

Here's another complexity. In a world where unfiltered Internet access is a legislative goal, what do we do with emerging broadband Internet access technologies such as 3G cellular networks, WiMAX and municipal Wi-Fi, which all have shared bandwidth issues that are at once similar and yet totally different from those of cable Internet? Cellular providers in particular have been highly prescriptive about what content their customers could access from the Internet (although with the advent of the Apple iPhone and Google's Android cellular operating systems, that is changing). Could regulators write rules fair and flexible enough to apply to these services as well, without choking them off in their developmental stage? Or is the technology still moving too fast for any relevant regulation to keep up?

Stepping back, underlying the issue of net neutrality is a more fundamental policy question: Is Internet service a public utility? If the answer is yes, then many people would assume that it should be subject to robust yet flexible regulation on par with what exists for water, natural gas, telephone and electrical service. In one respect, both presidential candidates seem to look on the Net as somehow akin to electrical service: They both favor extending broadband to underserved rural areas. Their approaches are different—McCain advocates private investment and local government programs, while Obama suggests an extension of the Universal Service Fund that brought telephone service to America's rural areas. However, both acknowledge that universal broadband is in the public interest.

Perhaps the problem with the argument over "net neutrality" is that it is often promoted as a battle of unimpeachable ideals. If we agree that the Internet is as important as telephony and electricity, then it calls for practical, intelligent oversight that will balance the needs of consumers with incentives for investment in infrastructure and innovation in new content and services. Just think of it like municipal water and sewers on a national level, a series of tubes for information whose proper function is in the public interest. Give any one company unrestricted power over the system and water will only come when it's most profitable, but subject it to oppressive rules and regulations and there may be no incentive to keep the water running in the first place.

Wait a sec—could Ted Stevens have had the right analogy after all?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...y/4286547.html





Real-Time BitTorrent Search Engines Expand
Ernesto

‘Real-Time’ BitTorrent search engines are the trend of 2008, and new sites emerge every other week. It all started in January with the launch of YouTorrent, but soon after it went legal, other sites took over. We catch up with the founder of one of YouTorrent’s successors to find out more.

The “real-time” search approach YouTorrent introduced appealed to many users, and it is no surprise that most of the new meta-search engines that were inspired by it have been growing steadily. PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents serve hundreds of thousands of searches a day, and newcomers such as TorrentFly and the more basic looking Gpirate (not real-time) are picking up steam as well.

In March, we mentioned both PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents in our top 10 YouTorrent (meta-search) alternatives. Since then, a lot of things have changed, both in design and feature-wise. We decided to catch up with Godius, the founder of NowTorrents, to find out what’s happened since Spring.

“We recently re-coded and designed the whole website,” Godius told us. “The new site has a more user friendly layout and has a bunch of new features. For example it’s now possible to filter site-by-site results, filter keyword and categories, all in real-time. We also build a popular searches caching system, this has greatly improved loading times. And we added more personal search preference settings.”

One of the new features at NowTorrents (and Gpirate) is the BoxOffice listings. The MPAA probably won’t be too happy with such a feature, but the users love it according to Godius.

“We are planning to expand the BoxOffice torrents feature with a latest Games and Music Albums charts section. We have noticed that users greatly appreciate the BoxOffice section, so we feel that adding games and music charts will satisfy their needs even more. Many people don’t know what to search for; they just want to download the latest stuff that has just been released.”

Godius is not too worried about the MPAA showing up at his doorstep, as he told us: “Basically we are doing exactly what Google is doing only we do not list non-torrent related results. We feel as long as Google gets away with it, and the torrent sites we link to get away with it, we have nothing to worry about.”

One of the downsides of all these new meta-torrent search engines is that they all rely on a handful of BitTorrent trackers, and sites that actually host torrent files. Running a meta-search engine is easier, less costly, and probably safer from a legal point of view. Nevertheless, they become useless if there are no torrent files to index, or torrents to track.
http://torrentfreak.com/real-time-to...expand-081011/





Court Orders Spammers to Pay $236M to Iowa ISP
Robert McMillan

A federal judge has ordered an Arizona couple to pay more than US$236 million for sending millions of spam messages to a small Iowa ISP (Internet service provider).

Henry Perez and his wife Suzanne Bartok were ordered to pay the damages -- amounting to $10 per bulk e-mail -- following a four-year court case in which the judge found that they had bombarded CIS Internet Services of Clinton, Iowa, over a four-month period in 2003.

According to a ruling by Judge John Jarvey of Iowa federal court, Perez and Bartok used a program called Bulk Mailing 4 Dummies to send millions of e-mails to CIS servers, forcing the company to undergo an expensive server upgrade and to dedicate three servers to blocking spam.

Starting in 2001, CIS gradually became overwhelmed by unsolicited e-mail that came from a variety of sources, according to company owner Robert Kramer III. By 2003, the company was processing about 500 million spam messages every day.

Kramer thinks that he may have been hit with extra spam because his company's cis.net domain was confusingly similar to the cis.com domain once used by CompuServe, at one time one of the largest ISPs in the U.S.

The attacks cut into CIS's bandwidth, making it harder for customers to surf the Web and ultimately costing Kramer a lot of business. His company's client base dropped from about 5,000 customers in 2001 to just 1,200 by late 2004.

"There were millions of e-mails being delivered to us for each spam campaign to users that didn't exist on our servers," Kramer said in an interview. "It was do or die: it wasn't just a nuisance for us."

Perez and Bartok had argued that they were not spammers and that the e-mail messages they used were legitimately generated, but the judge didn't buy it, writing in his Sept. 30 order that their explanation was simply "not credible."

"The court simply does not believe Mr. Perez or Ms. Bartok," Jarvey wrote.

Since the dark days of 2003, CIS has filed suit against many spammers and so far it has received about 10 judgments in its favor, Kramer said. Collecting the money has proven to be difficult, however. Many of the spammers have gone out of business, moved their money overseas or simply hidden from sight, he said.

In fact, Kramer was awarded a judgment against Perez and Bartok's company, AMP Dollar Savings, in late 2004, but he has so far been unable to collect.

Spam volumes have dropped significantly over the past five years, Kramer said. Now CIS receives between 10 million and 15 million unwanted messages each day, a more manageable amount.

Kramer said that this drop may be due, in part, to his litigation. "Certainly some of the people we went after would have continued doing it if they hadn't been held accountable."
http://www.itworld.com/security/5579...-236m-iowa-isp




Judge Waives Apple, AT&T Objections to Antitrust Case vs. iPhone
Aidan Malley

A US federal judge has shut down some attempts by Apple and AT&T to dismiss a class action lawsuit that accuses the two of violating antitrust law with their iPhone exclusivity agreement, pushing the complaint closer to a possible trial.

Northern California District Judge James Ware said in his 31-page decision that both Apple and AT&T are still potentially liable for violating state rules meant to preserve fair competition as well as claims that Apple alone was responsible for violating federal and California laws for abuse, computer trespass, and fraud.

However, it also grants dismissals to some claims of "unfair and deceptive" practices in jurisdictions outside of the states of California, New York and Washington, where Apple and the two original plaintiffs reside.

Submitted nearly one year ago, the original lawsuit begun by Paul Holman and Lucy Rivello charges the companies with allegedly maintaining unfair AT&T exclusivity for the iPhone until at least 2012 and hiding some of the after-sales costs of ownership. It also claims that Apple has locked the handset's software in such a way that use with other carriers, or even the use of third-party software on and for the phone, would be rendered impossible.

Apple is further accused of deliberately engineering iPhone 1.1.1 and other updates to break modified firmware and discourage some users.

In the dismissal, Judge Ware finds that many of the arguments made by Apple and AT&T to throw out the complaint run afoul of either the law or don't directly address the nature of the issue. Apple contends that customers were aware of entering an agreement for just two years and are still under those terms, and so aren't yet in a position where they could legally contest being locked to AT&T; that doesn't matter, according to the decision, as the claim is that customers weren't told that they may have no choice but to use AT&T for iPhone service for as many as three years after the contract expires.

The judge also heads off a motion by Apple to dismiss the case based on the company's recent addition of support for third-party apps in iPhone firmware 2.0. The real issue is an allegation that Apple knowingly limiting access to certain functions where it has a "financial interest," the ruling explains.

Other sections of the document also note that the claims fraud and trespass, both of which would have occurred by ruining modified iPhones, aren't necessarily invalidated by Apple's advance warning of possible damage to hacked phones by applying 1.1.1 or even the need to willfully download and install the update. Customers were reportedly never told at the beginning that potentially damaging updates could come in the future.

Judge Ware centers his dismissals of AT&T's claims around the cellular carrier's insistence on taking any disputes over iPhone contracts to arbitration. While AT&T believes that anyone who signed an iPhone contract affected by the lawsuit would also have agreed to arbitration and thus invalidated any right to file a lawsuit, the judge asserts that AT&T is violating laws in each of the three relevant states that make "unconscionable" any attempts to quash lawsuits by forcing out-of-court dispute settlements.

The lawsuit has the potential for further conflicts should the plaintiffs decide to modify their complaint or encounter further motions from the defendants, but for now is on track to a case management discussion among the involved parties on November 17th.

The conference will lay out the groundwork for discovering information relevant to the case that may reveal some of the inner workings of the exclusivity deal between Apple and AT&T: neither company has ever publicly described how long the iPhone will be available solely to AT&T in the US. At best, observers have had an uncorroborated claim by USA Today that would give AT&T exclusive rights until 2010, which is longer than the first iPhone contracts but two years ahead of the lawsuit's concerns.

Word of the judge's ruling was first reported by Law360.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._iphon e.html





Bogus Jobs' Heart Attack Report Rattles Citizen Journalism

CNN's iReport website hosted a user-submitted story that claimed falsely that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack. The prank puts citizen journalism in the line of fire.
JR Raphael

An unsubstantiated report of Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffering a heart attack is emboldening question marks around the notion of citizen journalism. A user identified only as "Johntw" posted a story on CNN's iReport Web site Friday morning stating Jobs had been rushed to the ER as a result of a "major heart attack." The user cited "an insider" who he said "opted to remain anonymous" but was "quite reliable."

That tersely stated reliability proved to be enough to send Apple's stock plummeting. The company's shares fell by more than 10 percent shortly after the report's publication. It wasn't until Apple representatives came forward to adamantly deny the claims that shares rebounded, and the report was removed. The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating.

Content Questions

CNN's iReport site, like other news organizations' user-submitted content portals, allows anybody to submit and immediately publish content. Fill out a form, click the link in the e-mailed verification, and you're a full-fledged iJournalist. That kind of raw and instant connection can be a blessing, or -- as demonstrated in Friday's Jobs incident -- a curse.

"The Internet really is the Wild West when it comes to freedom of information -- there is no sheriff in town," says Terry Anzur, a TV talent coach and news veteran.

"Let's say you have another Virginia Tech shooting, and somebody with a cell phone is in the right place at the right time to be able to put the breaking news on iReport. You don't want to censor that -- and in order to get that, you have to put up with somebody who decides to start trouble by starting a rumor," she says.

Anzur happens to have a personal connection with Jobs -- the two graduated high school together in Cupertino, Calif. -- so hearing the apparent "news" of his heart attack certainly caught her attention. And while CNN's iReport site is separated from the network's primary online news operation, cnn.com, Anzur believes the shared branding can easily cause confusion.

"The typical user does not [draw the distinction]," she says. "They don't know whether the 'i' in iReport stands for 'intelligent' or 'idiot.'"

A Blurred Line

That increasingly blurred line between journalism and rumor is a serious concern for Al Tompkins, the broadcast/online group leader at The Poynter Institute -- a specialized school for journalists of all media forms.

"How could you possibly allow just anybody to post just anything under your label unless you have blazing billboards that say, 'None of this has been verified, we've not looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true'?" he asks.

iReport's banner at the top of the site reads: "Unedited. Unfiltered. News." That marketing, Tompkins asserts, delivers a misleading message.

"Unedited, unfiltered news -- what that means to me is, boy, this is the real thing. Nobody's trying to put a spin on me here," he says. "The truth is that it's not just unedited and unfiltered -- it's unverified."

A more detailed disclaimer is found only when clicking onto the site's "About" page. Tompkins questions whether that inconspicuous placement is enough.

"If you're going to run a raw site like that, with absolutely no verification, it better be prominently displayed that this is nothing more than a rumor mill," he says.

Definition Debate

Ultimately, the issue comes down to definitions: How can we easily ascertain the difference between trustworthy information and meaningless chit-chat? A site with CNN branding -- even if it's under the name iReport -- can clearly be misinterpreted as legitimate news, as Steve Jobs and his Apple colleagues discovered. And while iReport may contain some legitimate news, the same lack of editorial standards that sets it apart from mainstream media also erodes away its reliability.

"One thing that should differentiate journalism sites from any other kind of sites is the issue of verification. That is what we do. We don't just publish -- we verify before we publish," Tompkins says.

Services such as iReport, then, essentially become open forums of expression. Few would question the value of such forums -- but again, it all boils down to definitions. Does an open forum constitute journalism?

"The frame 'citizen journalism' itself is a little on the toxic side for me," Tompkins says. "Can you go down to the bus stop and talk to a 'citizen physician'? If I work on my garbage disposal, am I a 'citizen plumber'? The whole notion that anybody can be a journalist I think is wrong-minded, because journalism as a craft does mean something. It actually embodies a conduct and a standard of truth-telling that I think still are important."

Lines may become blurred in the age of information, but the importance of definitions -- concepts such as "journalism," "truth," and "rumor" -- remains constant. The manufactured hospitalization of a well-known CEO makes that all too clear.

"Information is moving much faster, but it doesn't mean the information is any better than it ever was," Tompkins says.

"If anything, this may send a real warning signal."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/15187...rnalism.ht ml





Why I Can't Wait for the iPod to Die
Don Reisinger

Steve Wozniak said it best in his exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this week: "The iPod has sort of lived a long life at No. 1," he said. "Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after awhile.

"It's kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap, and they are not selling as much."

Finally, someone on the "inside" at Apple has made some sense about the iPod and its future. Although it may be difficult for Apple zealots and even CEO Steve Jobs to understand, the iPod is not going to be one of the most important devices forever, and if we consider the impact the Walkman had on the industry, the iPod should be moving to the execution chamber in the next 5 to 10 years.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Apple Store itself. How many times must Jobs find his way to the stage only to show off an iPod with barely upgraded specs and a so-called fresh design that we've seen already? Granted, the iPod Touch is unique in its own right, but the iPod Nano and Shuffle have been the joke of the iPod world for years now. The design changes look more like Apple felt it needed to do something to get people to keep buying them, so they went from long and thin to short and fat and back to long and thin again. And don't even get me started on the iPod Classic.

But it's tough to make the argument that iPods will die when sales are up. According to the company's latest quarterly filing, iPod revenue is up 7 percent since last year and unit sales have jumped 12 percent.

Of course, that doesn't stop me from wanting the iPod to die off as soon as possible.

So why do I look forward to the day when the iPod is no longer the toast of the town and finally enters the retirement home? It's simple: it means that the industry has grown, more innovative products are finally available, and we can get away from all the derivative garbage we're seeing at every turn.

When one company makes it big with a product in the tech industry, every other company in the market wants to try its luck in the same space. Because of that, we've seen countless iPod-wannabes like the Zune, the iRiver Clix, and many more. None were able to vanquish the leader, and few were even able to make a dent. And yet, all these companies still try to make their iPod competitors work.

Here's a clue: it'll never happen if you do the same thing Apple does.

Apple has been successful in the PMP (portable media player) market because it provides a real end-to-end solution that easily eclipses the competition's. Let's face it--buying a device and getting it to work with third-party software isn't easy and it's not seamless. But buying an iPod and getting it to work with iTunes is quick and easy. It's usability that attracted people in the beginning and it's the iPod's enormous popularity that attracts them now.

But that popularity is attracting all kinds of bad things, too. How many times do we have to see another iPod clone before we finally say "enough is enough?" And how many times must we sit back and watch as Apple dominates the market without one real competitor to stop it?

It's not that I dislike iPods--I own three. Instead, I think the iPod is the main reason why innovation is at a standstill in the PMP market and why we're not being satisfied nearly enough by the right devices.

As Apple continues to sell millions of iPods, it realizes that it has no reason to change tactics and try something new. And as executives at other companies look at the state of the economy and their company's own financial health, they think it's better to offer a PMP that will appeal to a small percentage of the market than take a risk and try something new.

And therein lies the rub. How can we get out of this vicious cycle if neither the leader nor the others competing in the market want to change anything?

The way I see it, nothing will change until Apple experiences a year of declining iPod sales. Once that happens, its competitors will panic and try to be the first to the market with something innovative and Apple will be forced to make serious changes to the iPod or come up with something new altogether. And once that happens, the market should start booming with innovation once again.

And I, for one, can't wait until that happens.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10...g=2547-1_3-0-5





EU Battery Rule May Zap iPhone, Blow Away MacBook Air
Jan Libbenga

The EU is readying a new set of directives that could spell trouble for Apple's iPhone and any other gadget that lacks an easily removable power pack.

A new, draft batteries directive mandates that power cells inside electronic devices must be "readily removable" for replacement and safe disposal. This isn't the case with the iPhone, which does not have a user-replaceable battery.

Neither do Apple's numerous iPods, or a growing number of handheld devices from other manufacturers.

Under the terms of the directive, by 2012, at least 25 per cent of all portable batteries - including mobile phone, laptop and car batteries - used annually in each member state must be recycled. By 2016, 45 per cent of them have to be.

Mercury, lead and cadmium are by far the most challenging substances in the battery waste stream, the EU says.

Although finer details of the removable-battery mandate have not yet been defined - is it sufficient for the supplier to be able to remove a product's battery? - Gary Nevison of Leeds-based repair services company Premier Farnell believes the requirement is "clearly intended to ensure that users can remove batteries by opening a cover by hand or after removal of one or two screws".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10...pells_trouble/





Sony’s Expands 66-Cent-Per-Song Music Attack at Apple
Wolfgang Gruener

Music industry giants show more and more effort in supporting digital music download services that compete with Apple’s iTunes. Universal Music Group this morning announced that it will be supplying its music catalog to Dada.net, which plans to be offering over-the-air DRM-free MP3 tracks. The cost per song is well below iTunes pricing: A 15 song package is sold for $10.

Last week we witnessed another cat fight between the music industry and Apple, in which in the music industry requests Apple to shell out more money to compensate artists and Apple claims it has no room to do so. Apple eventually prevailed, but we all know that the music industry will be thinking about steps to cut down Apple’s profits and its influence.

One strategy, of course, is to build up other suppliers - and that includes one of the industry’s own big players. Dada.net, which is operated at a 50/50 share by Dada USA and Sony Music Entertainment (formerly Sony BMG) today said that it has begun offering the music catalog of Universal Music Group, in addition to Sony’s already available catalog. The company noted that it will soon be adding content from other music labels as well as Indie labels “in the near future.”

Dada said all of its MP3 tracks are DRM-free and can be freely transferred to any mobile phone, iPod or digital music player. Over-the-air MP3 downloads to mobile devices in will be supported in the coming weeks, the company said. But the key selling point may actually be the price of those music tracks: Compared to the uniform 99-cent pricing on iTunes, Dada.net is offering 15-song packages for $10 per month. If we assume that you actually download 15 songs per month, the per-song-cost is 33% below the iTunes cost – 66 cents. Or, in a different perspective, songs 11-15 are actually free when compared to iTunes.

Of course, if you don’t download at least 10 songs per month, the service will turn out to be more expensive as the song budget (described in “tokens”) cannot be rolled over to the next month. Users can cancel a subscription to the Dada.net service at any time.
http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/cont...-39613-98.html





Google Puts Tunes From YouTube a Click Away
Miguel Helft

In its continuing effort to find a way to make money from its YouTube unit, Google introduced on Tuesday a type of e-commerce ad that YouTube users can click to buy digital goods from Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com.

Under the new program, viewers of a video with a music track, for example, would be able to click on an icon to download that song from one of the two music stores.

“If you like the song, you don’t need to leave Google or leave the site to buy it,” said Bakari Brock, business affairs counsel at YouTube.

The new ad format is the latest that YouTube has introduced in recent months as it tries to turn the site’s large audience into substantial revenue. So far, that effort has met with limited success, according to many analysts.

Google, which paid $1.65 billion for YouTube nearly two years ago, is counting on the video site to help it expand into new forms of advertising at a time when the growth of its core business — small text ads that appear next to search results — is slowing.

Mr. Brock said the new ads were YouTube’s first step toward building a viable e-commerce platform. For now, the program is limited to buying songs from EMI or the Universal Music Group on iTunes and Amazon. The recently released video game Spore is also available, Mr. Brock said. Over time, YouTube plans to expand the program to include other stores and other merchandise, like concert tickets, he said.

Music labels could choose to place the e-commerce links next to their own videos or on videos uploaded by users, whose images or soundtrack they identified using YouTube’s Content ID system, which allows content owners to find unauthorized material on the site.

Google executives have sent mixed messages about their ability to make money from YouTube. Earlier this year, Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said it had taken longer than he expected to find the right advertising models for YouTube. Last month, he said that he was satisfied with YouTube’s progress.

“You Tube is a huge end-user success and we are awaiting the monetization that goes with that, and we believe it will come,” Mr. Schmidt said. “We are where we should be.”

On Tuesday, YouTube also introduced a larger viewer that it said was suitable for the growing number of long-format videos available on the site.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/te...08youtube.html





Kids Keep Parents in the Dark About Cyberbullying
Desiree Everts

Online bullying could be more pervasive than you think.

Three out of four teens were bullied online over the last year, according to a study released this week by psychologists at the University of California at Los Angeles. And while that number may seem high at the outset, only 1 in 10 of those kids told their parents or another adult about it, the study showed.

The anonymous Web-based study surveyed 1,454 kids between the ages of 12 and 17. Of those, 41 percent reported between one and three cyberbullying incidents during the year; 13 percent reported four to six incidents; and 19 percent reported seven or more. In other words, no longer are victims of bullying relegated to the geeks and nerds of yore when it comes to the Internet.

The psychologists published the results of their research in the September issue of the Journal of School Health.

Many teens neglected to tell their parents about the incidents because they believed they "need to learn to deal with it," according to the research. Others kept it to themselves because they feared that their parents would cut back on their Internet access.

"Many parents do not understand how vital the Internet is to their social lives," said Jaana Juvonen, lead study author and a professor of psychology and chair of UCLA's developmental psychology program. "Parents can take detrimental action with good intentions, such as trying to protect their children by not letting them use the Internet at all. That is not likely to help parent-teen relationships or the social lives of their children."

Juvonen said it's important that parents talk with their kids about bullying well before it happens, as well as look for changes in teens' behavior.

However, it's also equally important to teach children the importance of not becoming bullies themselves, is it not? Surely if bullying is this prevalent online, it's not always a one-sided affair.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10058444-93.html





U.S. Official Says Online Drug Videos Threaten Teens
Alex Dobuzinskis

The director of the White House war on drugs said on Monday that Internet videos that show people getting high pose a dangerous threat to teenagers by encouraging them to use drugs and alcohol.

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, spoke as his office released a study about drug-related videos on popular sites such as MySpace. He said in a Reuters interview that parents need to monitor their teens' online activities.

The study, which was conducted in June, found that 5 percent of teens using the Internet saw at least one drug-related video that month. More than a third of the teens were under 16.

Walters said the often amateurish videos, posted by Internet users on video-sharing pages and social networking sites, play up everything from cocaine use to smoking marijuana with a device called a bong.

"Parents would be horrified to think that people are sneaking into their house to encourage their kids to build a bong or to chug on beer at age 13," Walters said.

"The fact is those people are sneaking into your house through your Internet connection on your computer," he said.

Walters said while the number of teens in the study who viewed drug-related videos was limited to 5 percent, he suspects the number of teens exposed to that content over the course of a year is higher.

Drug Exposure

The study was conducted for Walters' agency, by the research firm Nielsen Online and 6,000 teens participated.

The study found 40 percent of the drug-related videos seen by teens in the study contained explicit use of drugs or footage of intoxicated users.

Videos the ONDCP found particularly troublesome included footage of teens driving while getting high or snapping pictures of other teens drunk or passed out.

"Kids already did stupid stuff, but what's new is kids are recording what they're doing and broadcasting it for the world in competition for a kind of celebrity," said Peter Zollo, co-founder and chief executive officer of TRU, a market research firm that studies how teens use the Internet.

Walters said teens rely heavily on the Web for schoolwork, and parents cannot simply pull the plug.

Walters advised parents to check the browser history on their teens' computer. Also, since the videos are posted on sites where teens meet other Internet users, Walters said parents should look at text messages and incoming and outgoing phone numbers on their teens' cell phones.

"Nobody's talking about censorship over the Internet here, what we're talking about is legitimate parental supervision," he said.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100701901.html





Ohio Teen Charged for Sending Nude Phone Photos
AP

Police in Newark, Ohio, have arrested a 15-year-old girl on juvenile child pornography charges for allegedly sending nude cell phone photos of herself to classmates.

The girl was arrested Friday and held over the weekend. Her defense filed denials in court Monday.

Police did not identify the girl by name and prosecutors promised a statement with details later Wednesday. Authorities were also considering charges for students who received the photos.
http://www.newstimes.com/national/ci_10668632





Seeking Broader Reach for Social Web Sites
Brian Stelter

As the Web becomes a more social place, media companies are trying to make it easier to share links with friends, add comments to articles and extend users’ online identities.

This week, CNN will begin connecting “The Forum,” a site for political expression, to Facebook, the country’s second-largest social network, enabling users to talk about the presidential debates and see what their friends are writing.

“It allows us to reach our audience in the places where they’re aggregating their friends together and sharing their thoughts,” KC Estenson, the general manager of CNN.com, said.

Last week Radio One, one of the nation’s largest radio broadcasting companies, started tying its news and lifestyle Web sites to BlackPlanet, the largest social networking site for African-Americans. The BlackPlanet name and photo of users now appear next to their comments on the news blog NewsOne and the female-oriented site HelloBeautiful and other sites.

“Although nobody has figured out the secret sauce,” said Tom Newman, the president of Interactive One, a new digital subsidiary of Radio One, “enabling members to interact with each other and interact with professionally generated content is the future.”

Combining content with a social network is a strategy pioneered by MySpace, the most popular social network in the United States, which has moved aggressively to add videos, news, games and other features. Last week, it added a “branded entertainment hub” from the celebrity-watching site TMZ.

Facebook has taken a different tack, seeking to aggregate a user’s online actions and encouraging users to share links. Both networks are making profiles portable, meaning that users can carry their social network identity to third-party sites, said Adam Ostrow, the editor of the social networking blog Mashable.

The sites are “allowing users to bring their friends from the social networks they already use” he said.

While technical and legal hurdles remain, some forward-thinking media executives hope that the ability to connect actions on news sites to social networks will keep visitors on their sites longer and make them more appealing to advertisers. CNN executives emphasize that its experiment is in its early stages.

Other media companies are also making their Web sites more social. Last month, for example, The Wall Street Journal added discussion features as part of a site revamp, and The New York Times introduced a way to recommend articles to other users.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/te.../07social.html





Peering Into the Mystery of Those Enigmatic Fragments
Edward Rothstein

They are not really scrolls. They are scraps — darkened, cracked fragments of parchment. Yet the faded ink strokes of Aramaic or ancient Hebrew refer to epic incantations: to trumpets blowing in battle, to praise of the righteous and condemnation of the wicked, to “the heavens, the earth and all its thinking creatures.”

Go see these six encased bits of ancient text at the Jewish Museum’s new exhibition, “The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World,” before it closes on Jan. 4. Go, but not because these scraps are themselves new to our understanding. Though these six “scrolls” have never been seen in New York before, and though three have never before been exhibited anywhere, the literature about these findings has become as voluminous and familiar as the texts are gnomic and condensed.

And the story of the Bedouin goatherd who in 1947 tossed a stone in a cave above the Dead Sea, heard the shattering of pottery, and discovered scrolls that proved to date from the third century B.C. through the time of Jesus, is now legendary. That single cave led the way to 10 more caves hiding scrolls in the same region. Seven scrolls of that first find were followed by fragments of more than 800 others written in some 500 different hands.

Go see these fragments, too, even if the exhibition, a collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority, is not fully satisfying. It seems to suggest that since so much has already been said, there is no need to rehash the scandals and hypotheses that surround the scrolls. The show’s curator, Susan L. Braunstein, has chosen instead to stand back and point, reminding us of the scrolls along with archaeological discoveries from Qumran, the ancient settlement beneath the caves.

Those discoveries are easier to comprehend than the scrolls and, in appearance, are more sensational, offering rare artifacts preserved in the desert’s time capsule: the base of a leather sandal that could still be worn, a woman’s hairnet, a fragment of cloth with an indigo decoration.

Go, finally, because there is something rarely felt in exhibitions, and which the critic Walter Benjamin argued was heading toward extinction. In the 1930s he suggested that art objects were now so easily reproduced that they were being stripped of their “aura.” Aura, he suggested, is connected with uniqueness, but it also involves a sense of distance. An object possessing aura stands at a distance from us, no matter how near we get to it.

Here, you can feel the essence of this idea. Even though you can lean over these cases, even though there seems nothing intrinsically remarkable about these bits of parchment, they stand alien and apart; their history and their significance make them seem immeasurably remote.

Yet they are also intimately close to us. Some scholars have speculated that Jesus or John the Baptist could have handled these scrolls; certainly Christianity developed out of their milieu. And their preoccupations with messianism, communal law and textual exegesis foreshadowed the concerns of later Judaism.

One scroll here refers to a messianic figure, “the Son of God,” and seems to anticipate the Annunciation in Luke. Another includes excerpts from Jeremiah, one of the earliest biblical texts in existence (225 to 175 B.C.). This combination of familiarity and strangeness makes the scrolls seem beyond our conceptual, if not our physical, grasp.

But there is something else here also worth paying attention to. In the midst of many of the explanatory labels are understated signs of a revolution during the last 15 years. Until then, the scholarly cult devoted to these scrolls was as tightly knit, self-regarding and monastic as the cult those scholars imagined produced the scrolls.

Here were scrolls in use during an astonishing period of what the exhibition notes were “political upheavals” in ancient Israel — religious revolts, the rule of Herod the Great, the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70. What led to their being so carefully stored in these caves?

Modern interpreters resemble their ancient counterparts in finding their own reflections in these texts. The major scrolls of the first cave were ultimately purchased by Israeli representatives and were quickly published; they have been displayed and stored at the Israel Museum in the Shrine of the Book. They were treated as precious foundational documents — the earliest evidence of the beliefs and Scripture that shaped Judaism during the last centuries of Israelite autonomy, 2,000 years ago.

But after the 1948 war, Jordan annexed the West Bank, took control of the caves and appointed the Rev. Roland de Vaux of École Biblique et Archéologique Française in East Jerusalem as overseer of an international team of scholars that would publish the scrolls. Then came 40 years in which the scrolls were passed among generations of scholars like esoteric possessions, until the lack of progress was called by the Oxford scholar Geza Vermes “the academic scandal par excellence of the 20th century.”

It is discomfiting, too, to see photographs in which scholars — who pieced together fragments using scotch tape — smoke over them as destructive daylight streams onto tables.

In addition, Jewish scholars were deliberately excluded from de Vaux’s original eight-member team, which was dominated by Roman Catholic priests and scholars. De Vaux later rejected offers by Israelis to help his team and persisted in referring to Israel as Palestine.

In the 1967 war Israel won control over the caves and scrolls, but two decades passed before it asserted any real authority over the project. One of de Vaux’s early appointees, John Strugnell, became head of the team in the 1980s but was dismissed in 1990 after an interview in which he called Judaism a “horrible religion” that “should have disappeared.”

De Vaux and Strugnell were not alone on the team to have a scorn of political or religious aspects of Judaism, a strange situation given that the scrolls demand an intimate understanding of ancient Jewish politics and religion. But their interpretations tended to reflect more a frame of mind than a doctrine, portraying the group that created the scrolls in the scholars’ own image.

Though the identification of the scrolls with a sect of ascetic Essenes was first made by Prof. Eleazar Sukenik of Hebrew University, that vision was filled out by de Vaux and his colleagues. De Vaux’s excavations at Qumran led to his theory that it housed a monastic celibate group living in the desert, isolated from other Judaic movements; in the dissent and messianic passions reflected in the scrolls, these devotees embodied almost proto-Christian sensibilities. Over decades this became orthodoxy, made immutable because until the 1990s the texts were largely inaccessible to outsiders.

Then came the deluge. Once pressure by scholars and by the journal Biblical Archaeological Review led to publication of the texts, and new excavations had begun, other hypotheses proliferated. (See “The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls” by Philip R. Davies, George Brooks and Philip Calaway, published in 2002 by Thames & Hudson, for a good summary.)

The Essene hypothesis remains dominant. But this exhibition hints at the range of disagreement, including the suggestion that the scrolls were a “random collection of texts reflecting the beliefs of several distinct Jewish groups,” perhaps even hidden in caves by refugees fleeing the Romans who sacked Jerusalem in the year 70.

The archaeological evidence also raises questions. If Qumran housed a monastic group, why does a nearby cemetery hold bodies of women and children? How did a woman’s linen hairnet arrive here? What about the mysterious “copper scroll” in one cave that refers to buried treasures? Some believe Qumran was a military fortress, others that it was a center for the manufacture of pottery or date honey.

And so, the show suggests, what we are left with right now, at this “particularly stimulating moment in Dead Sea Scroll scholarship,” is a mystery. In these relics are the remnants of a world that seems extraordinarily close to us but also seems destined to remain infinitely distant.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World” remains through Jan. 4 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street; (212) 423-3200.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/ar...n/07scrol.html





DNA Fingerprinting Could Reveal Your Surname

Police could one day predict the surname of male suspects or victims of crime from DNA alone, British researchers said on Wednesday.

Scientists at Leicester University, where DNA fingerprinting was invented in 1984, said they had demonstrated that men with the same surname were highly likely to be genetically linked.

The finding could help genealogy researchers as well detectives investigating crimes using traces of DNA found in blood, hair, saliva or semen.

The technique is based on analyzing DNA from the Y chromosome that imparts maleness and which, like surnames, is passed down from father to son.

Not surprisingly, the likelihood of a good genetic match depends on the rarity of the name, with the most unusual names having the strongest links.

A study of 2,500 men found that on average there was a 24 percent chance of two men with the same surname sharing a common ancestor but this increased to nearly 50 percent when the surname was rare.

Over 70 percent of men with surnames such as Attenborough and Swindlehurst shared the same or near identical Y chromosome types.

"The fact that such a strong link exists between surname and Y chromosome type has a potential use in forensic science, since it suggests that, given large databases of names and Y chromosome profiles, surname prediction from DNA alone may be feasible," said Turi King, who will present her research at a lecture on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Matthew Jones)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...-surnames.html





Government Will Spy on Every Call and E-Mail
David Leppard

Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.

Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country’s biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.”

MI5 currently conducts limited e-mail and website intercepts which are approved under specific warrants by the home secretary.

Further details of the new plan will be unveiled next month in the Queen’s speech.

The Home Office stressed no formal decision had been taken but sources said officials had made clear that ministers had agreed “in principle” to the programme.

Officials claim live monitoring is necessary to fight terrorism and crime. However, critics question whether such a vast system can be kept secure. A total of 57 billion text messages were sent in the UK last year - 1,800 every second.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4882600.ece





New Surveillance Program Will Turn Military Satellites on US
Julian Sanchez

An appropriations bill signed by President Bush last week allows the controversial National Applications Office to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program that would turn military spy satellites on the US, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies. The government's own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, has warned in an unpublished report that the more expansive program in the offing lacks adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.

For now, the law restricts the NAO to "activities substantially similar" to those carried out by the Civil Applications Committee, an interagency coordinating body formed in 1976 to give civilian agencies access to military satellites for scientific and disaster preparedness purposes, such as "monitoring volcanic activity, environmental and geological changes, hurricanes, and floods." But as a draft charter for the Office makes clear, officials at the Department of Homeland Security hope to branch out from these traditional applications, providing assistance and information to domestic law enforcement agencies.

That doesn't sit well with some members of Congess, who in a sharply worded letter earlier this year expressed concerns that the NAO "raises major issues under the Posse Comitatus Act" barring the military from performing law enforcement duties, and worried the program could be used to "gather domestic intelligence outside the rigorous protections of the law—and, ultimately, to share this intelligence with local law enforcement outside of constitutional parameters."

And as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Government Accountability Office appears to share those concerns. In an unpublished analysis—a public version of which may be released in coming weeks—the GAO found that there did not seem to be adequate "assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards," nor sufficient checks and oversight procedures to prevent the misuse of satellite imagery.

The existence of the NAO was first publicly disclosed in press reports last summer, several months after its creation at the behest of the Director of National Intelligence. Following hearings held by the House Committee on Homeland Security, Congress blocked funding for the NAO, pressing DHS for more information about the legal basis for the progam—as well as the privacy safeguard to be put in place. The current appropriations bill permits the NAO to be funded only for the purpose of carrying out the old Civil Applications Committee's functions, pending a certification by the Secretary of Homeland Security that the Office's compliance with the law has been vetted, and provision to the Appropriations Committee of details of how funds will be spent. The bill also directs the Inspector General to provide regular reports—somewhat oddly, to the Appropriations Committee—on the data collected by NAO.

Among the questions raised about the proposed program is whether it runs afoul of the Reconstruction Era statute that makes it a crime to use the armed forces to "execute the laws" within US borders. Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, believes the new initiative to be "a prima facie violation of the Posse Comitatus Act—this is about using a military asset to do domestic law enforcement." If law enforcement or immigration agencies need spy satellites, he argues, they should ask Congress to buy them some, rather than using the powerful eyes in the sky operated by the National Reconaissance Office for foreign-intelligence agencies not bound by domestic privacy constraints. "The military should never be used against the citizenry," he argues. "Even if we're talking about shooting pictures of people instead of shooting people, the principle remains the same."

But Gene Healy, an attorney and scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, is not so sure. At least since the 70s, says Healy, courts have tended to read the prohibition on using the military to "execute the laws" only as a barrier to "hands-on policing," such as conducting arrests or doing crowd control. That means sending soldiers to physically search a criminal suspects home is out, but loaning expertise or equipment and sharing information may be allowed. During the 2002 hunt for the "DC sniper," he notes, Army aircraft were used in the effort to hunt down the serial killer. "That doesn't mean it's a good policy," says Healy, "I can think of a lot of reasons it's a really bad idea to let soldiers train narcotics officers too, but that doesn't mean either is illegal under the current statute."

And what of Fourth Amendment concerns? Here, Sparapani says, the program enters "uncharted waters." In a pair of 1986 decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that aerial observation by surveillance planes did not count as a Fourth Amendment "search." If you grew your marijuana out in the open, the justices essentially concluded, you could not claim a "reasonable expectation of privacy" even if the crop wasn't visible from the ground. But the court left open the question of whether the same logic would apply in the case of technology more esoteric than an airplane. And in 2001, the court concluded that a search warrant was needed to use infrared scanners to detect the heat signature from an indoor dope-growing operation.

Presumably intelligence satellites have a range of sophisticated scanning equipment that would fall under the latter rule. But even in the case of ordinary image capturing, the high degree of precision of the satellite cameras—by some accounts good enough to read a page of text in a subject's hand—may make spying from space qualitatively different from a plane flyover.

Whatever the courts decide, Sparapani argues that Congress should press DHS to be more forthcoming about how it plans to use the orbiting eyes. "Given this administration," he says, "'trust us' just doesn't work anymore."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...tes-on-us.html





Street View Operatives Object to Being Snapped

Edinburgh spycar crews fear 'reprisals'
Lester Haines

Edinburgh's Evening News has discovered that, when it comes to personal privacy, Google's Street View is a strictly one-way thoroughfare.

The paper was alerted yesterday that several examples of the Orwellian spycar fleet were being prepared for action at a disused garage site in Drum Brae South. It duly dispatched a snapper to record the action, but when he "began to capture the teams setting up the roof-mounted cameras, he was threatened with legal action".

Photographer Ian Georgeson explained: "I was standing on public ground taking photos of the cars when one of the drivers came over and said that they didn't want us to print their faces. He said if I used any shots of him they would sue us, because they were concerned about reprisals.

"He admitted they were a bit concerned about the way people would react to the cameras, but said they would be in Edinburgh for a couple of months at least trying to map the city."

Guy Herbert of UK civil liberties group No2ID told the Evening News: "That is an extraordinary situation, but it does seem to be the case that while large organisations, traditionally the police or councils, are happy to photograph the public, they are less keen on being photographed themselves.

"It would be interesting to see just what legal grounds they think they have to stop their picture being used that wouldn't also apply to the pictures they are taking, and I think they would be on pretty treacherous ground."

A spokesgooglette said the search monolith had "no problem with the cars being photographed, but admitted it did not want staff to be hindered in any way".

She concluded: "We are happy for people to take pictures of the cars - they are clearly identified as working for Google. We would not want our staff to be in any way stopped from doing their job, however."

Well, we're glad Google has no objection to people snapping its sinister black Opels, because here are the 110 or so sightings to date on El Reg's splendid Spot-the-Street-View Web 0.2 mashup:

View Larger Map (opens in new window)

Oh yes, and the Evening News has published a photo of the snoopmobile-prepping here.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09..._crew_privacy/





Encrypted Image Backups Open to New Attack
John E. Dunn

Bitmaps stored inside encrypted backup files could be vulnerable to a sophisticated ‘comparison' attack, a German security researcher has discovered.

In a new paper, Bernd Roellgen of Munich-based encryption outfit PMC Ciphers, explains how it is possible to compare an encrypted backup image file made with almost any commercial encryption program or algorithm to an original that has subsequently changed so that small but telling quantities of data 'leaks'.

The problem is that bitmaps often display low levels of entropy, such as would be the case in pictures taken at night with large areas of high contrast. Roellgen's attack is based on comparing two volumes encrypted into scrambled ciphertext using the same symmetric or 'static' key, where the original subsequently has new files added. This yields a pattern of structured similarities and differences that can be used to reveal some of the original information in plaintext form.

The attack doesn't work for other types of data, for instance text files, because the entropy levels are too high. But it is believed to effect almost any encryption program currently on sale as long as the two volumes being compared use the same encryption key whilst being slightly different from one another.

The vulnerability will interest anyone storing image data in backup files, because it raises a small but theoretically significant level of doubt about their security under everyday circumstances. The technique could also have interesting implications for police investigations where officials suspect 'invisible' data to be encrypted inside already encrypted volumes.

At the moment, police expend considerable effort trying to crack encrypted volumes. The problem is that a sophisticated criminal can hide an independently encrypted volume inside this master volume, and simply deny its existence, knowing that it cannot be detected.

But if the police have access to two backup volumes created with a single key, one of which has changed over time, Roellgen's technique can be used to compute that such a volume must exist within the primary volume. Although police cannot decipher the data, they can at least know that it is being hidden.

"Generally all disk encryption programs that are available on the market seem to contain this security hole," comments Roellgen in his paper. "The attack has been proven for a number of popular and commercially available OTFE (on-the-fly encryption) software packages," he says.

Registration is free, and gives you access to our white paper library, case studies & analysis, downloads & speciality areas, forums, and more.

The defence against the attack is simply to make sure that each encrypted backup file uses an independent key, something Roellgen had made mandatory in his own company's encryption utility, TurboCrypt.

The attack's success can be seen in a website demonstration where it is used to reveal the outline of a single image file hacked open using the technique.

Last month, PMC Ciphers demonstrated TurboCrypt's defence against another great weakness of encryption software, Trojan keyloggers, which can be used to record the encryption key as it is being entered.
http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...?newsid=105263





Recovering Censored Text Using Photoshop and JavaScript
Thomas Robinson

My friend Andrew recently posted a teaser for a new project he’s working on, but with part of the headline pixelated to obscure what the project actually is. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do what any self-respecting geek would do: write a program to figure out what the censored text said.

Ultimately I failed to recover most of the censored text (except “to”), so I had to cheat a little. The following video is the program running on a very similar image I created. This proves it works in ideal conditions, but needs some improvement to work in less than ideal cases.

(and no, as far as I know my friend’s project has nothing to do with eating monkeys)

Applying a filter like Photoshop’s “mosaic” filter obscures the original data, but doesn’t remove it entirely. If we can reconstruct an image with known text that looks very similar to original image, then we can be pretty sure the original text is the same as our known text. This is very similar in principle to brute-force cracking a password hash. For a more detailed explanation see this article.

Photoshop was an obvious choice since I needed to recreate the exact same fancy styling as the original image, then apply the exact same mosaic filter. I figured I would have to write a script that tells Photoshop to generate images, then use an external tool to actually compare them to the original.

It turns out that Photoshop CS3 has all the features necessary to pull the whole thing off without any other programs or tools. The most important feature is the JavaScript scripting environment built into Photoshop, which is far more powerful than the AppleScript environment (and a much nicer language, in my opinion).

CS3 added two other features that are critical to this task: Smart Filters, and Measurements. Smart Filters lets you edit a layer (namely the text with effects applied) after you apply a filter that would have previously require rasterization. This lets us apply the censoring filter to our styled text, and later change the text without having to manually reapply the filter. The “measurements” feature lets you record various statistics about an image or portion of an image: in our case we’ll want the “average gray value” of the “difference” between the original and generated images.

First we need to prepare the environment. Open the original image in Photoshop, and attempt to replicate the original un-censored text as closely as possible (you need some uncensored text as a reference). Place your text layer on top of the original and toggle between normal and “difference” blending modes to see how you close you are. Ideally everything will be black in “difference” mode. It’s very important to precisely match the font, size, spacing, color, effects like drop shadows or outlines, and even the background. If these are off even by a little bit it will throw things off. I ended up having to cheat because I couldn’t match the slick styling of the original text with my lame Photoshop design skills.

Once the text matches and is lined up perfectly, select the layer then choose “Convert for Smart Filters” from the “Filter” menu. Now select the censored portion of the text and apply the same filter used on the original image, again matching it as closely as possible. For the mosaic filter, you can line up the “grid” by adjusting the origin and size of the selection (yeah, it’s a pain).

Finally, make sure your layer is on top of the original, and the blending mode on your layer is set to “difference”. Also, in the menu “Analysis”: “Select Data Points”: “Custom…” make sure only “Gray Value (Mean)” is checked.

[code]

Rather than attempting to explain it in detail here, just read the code and comments. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Start with the first character. Try setting it to each of the possibilities (a through z, and a space), and record the difference score between the original image and generated image. Only look at the first half of the current character (since the second half will be influenced by the *next* character).
2. Sort the results. Lower scores are better (less different)
3. Now try each of the top 3 characters along with every possibility for the *next* character. This time record score for the whole width of the current character since we’re checking the next character as well.
4. Pick the best choice, either the best permutation out of all 81 combinations (3 best * 27 possible), or out of the 3 averages for each best.
5. Repeat for the next character until done.

// change these parameters based on document names and layer ordering
baseDocName = "base.psd";
baseDocTextLayer = 0;
textDocName = "The easy way to do somethingss12.psb";
textDocTextLayer = 0;

knownString = "The easy way "; // the part of the string that’s already known
missingLength = 20; // number of characters to figure out

method = 3;
debug = false;

function main()
{
    baseDoc = documents[baseDocName];
    textDoc = documents[textDocName];

    // get the top left corner of the text layer in the main doc
    var mainBounds = baseDoc.artLayers[baseDocTextLayer].bounds,
        mainX = mainBounds[0].as("px"),
        mainY = mainBounds[1].as("px");
    
    // possible characters include space and lowercase.
    var possibleCharacters = [" "];
    for (var i = 0; i < 26; i++)
    {
        possibleCharacters.push(String.fromCharCode("a".charCodeAt(0) + i));
        //possibleCharacters.push(String.fromCharCode("A".charCodeAt(0) + i)); // uncomment for uppercase letters
    }

    var fudgeFactor = 3,    // number of top choices to try
        guess = "";         // guessed letters so far

    for (var charNum = 0; charNum < missingLength; charNum++)
    {
        results = [];
    
        // get the beginning and potential end (width of a "M") of the next character
        var w1 = getStringBounds(knownString + guess),
            w2 = getStringBounds(knownString + guess + "M");

        // PASS 1: half the potential width, since we’re not looking at the next character yet

        // half the width of "M"
        setSelection(mainX, mainY, (w1[2].as("px") + w2[2].as("px")) / 2, 15);//w2[3].as("px"));
    
        // get the score for every letter
        for (var i = 0; i < possibleCharacters.length; i++)
        {
            var val = getStringScore(knownString + guess + possibleCharacters[i])
        
            var res = { ch: possibleCharacters[i], v: val };
            results.push(res);
        }

        // sort from best (lowest) to worst score
        results = results.sort(function (a,b) { return a.v - b.v; });
        
        // method 1: too simple, poor results
        if (method == 1)
        {
            guess += results[0].ch;
        }
        else
        {
            // PASS 2: full (potential) width of the current character, testing each of the few top matches and every possible next character
            
            // full width of "M"
            setSelection(mainX, mainY, w2[2].as("px"), 15);//w2[3].as("px"));
        
            var minValue = Number.MAX_VALUE,
                minChar = null,
                minSum = Number.MAX_VALUE,
                minSumChar = null;
            
            // try the few best from the first pass
            for (var i = 0; i < fudgeFactor; i++)
            {
                var sum = 0;
                for (var j = 0; j < possibleCharacters.length; j++)
                {
                    // get the score for the potential best PLUS each possible next character
                    var val = getStringScore(knownString + guess + results[i].ch + possibleCharacters[j])
                
                    sum += val;
                    
                    if (val < minValue)
                    {
                        minValue = val;
                        minChar = results[i].ch;
                    }
                }    
                if (sum < minSum)
                {
                    minSum = sum;
                    minSumChar = results[i].ch;
                }
            }
        
            // if the results aren’t consistent let us know
            if (debug && results[0].ch != minSumChar || minChar != minSumChar)
                alert(minChar + "," + minSumChar + " (" +results[0].ch + "," + results[1].ch+ "," + results[2].ch+ ")");
            
            if (method == 2)
            {
                // method 2: best of all permutations
                guess += minChar;
            }
            else
            {
                // method 3: best average 
                guess += minSumChar;
            }
        }
        WaitForRedraw();
    }
}

// measure the gray value mean in the current selection
function getMeasurement()
{
    // delete existing measurements
    app.measurementLog.deleteMeasurements();
    
    // record new measurement
    app.activeDocument = baseDoc;
    app.activeDocument.recordMeasurements();//MeasurementSource.MEASURESELECTION, ["GrayValueMean"]);
    
    // export measurements to a file
    var f = new File ("/tmp/crack-tmp-file.txt");
    app.measurementLog.exportMeasurements(f);//, MeasurementRange.ACTIVEMEASUREMENTS, ["GrayValueMean"]);
    
    // open the file, read, and parse
    f.open();
    var line = f.read();
    var matches = line.match(/[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?/);
    if (matches)
    {
        var val = parseFloat(matches[0]);
        return val;
    }
    return null;
}

// sets the value of the test string
function setString(string)
{
    app.activeDocument = textDoc;
    app.activeDocument.artLayers[textDocTextLayer].textItem.contents = string;

    WaitForRedraw();
}

// gets the difference between the original and test strings in the currently selected area 
function getStringScore(string)
{
    setString(string);
    
    // save document to propagate changes parent of smart object
    app.activeDocument = textDoc;
    app.activeDocument.save();
    
    // return the average gray value
    return getMeasurement();
}

// get the bounds of the text
function getStringBounds(string)
{
    app.activeDocument = textDoc;
    // set the string of the text document
    setString(string);
    // select top left pixel. change this if it’s not empty
    app.activeDocument.selection.select([[0,0], [0,1], [1,1], [1,0]]);
    // select similar pixels (i.e. everything that’s not text)
    app.activeDocument.selection.similar(1, false);
    // invert selection to get just the text
    app.activeDocument.selection.invert();
    // return the bounds of the resulting selection
    return app.activeDocument.selection.bounds;
}

// sets the base document’s selection to the given rectange
function setSelection(x, y, w, h)
{
    app.activeDocument = baseDoc;
    app.activeDocument.selection.select([[x,y], [x,y+h], [x+w,y+h], [x+w,y]]);
}

// pauses for Photoshop to redraw. taken from reference docs.
function WaitForRedraw() 
{
    // return; // uncomment for slight speed boost
    var eventWait = charIDToTypeID("Wait") 
    var enumRedrawComplete = charIDToTypeID("RdCm") 
    var typeState = charIDToTypeID("Stte") 
    var keyState = charIDToTypeID("Stte") 
    var desc = new ActionDescriptor() 
    desc.putEnumerated(keyState, typeState, enumRedrawComplete) 
    executeAction(eventWait, desc, DialogModes.NO) 
}

main();

The raw code and sample Photoshop file are available on GitHub.

Issues

This problem is particularly tricky for proportional fonts, since if you get any character wrong and it’s width is different than the actual character, then all subsequent characters will be misaligned, causing more incorrect guesses, compounding the problem even more, and so on. I’m not sure how to deal with this, other than improving the overall matching quality. Ideally we would test every possible combination for the entire string, but that would require 27^n tests, where n is the number of unknown characters. This is obviously not feasible.

With the simplistic method of iterating over each position and trying each possible character, it turned out that almost every single “guess” was for the letters “m” or “w”. This was because for positions where the original was narrower characters, the “m” would “bleed” over into the next position, improving the score regardless of how well it actually matched the current character. To get around this, we only look at the difference for the first half of the character’s position.

Since looking at the first half of the character removes some valuable information, we then do a second pass using the top several guesses from the first pass, this time looking at the full width of the current character along with each of the possible next characters (27 tests + 3 runs times 27 tests results in 108 tests per character).

Further improvements could definitely be made, but I’ve already spent several hours too many on this.

The current algorithm runs at about 3 characters per minute. The overhead of Photoshop saving the Smart Object document on every individual test case is significant. If this were a special purpose program manipulating images directly it would likely be much faster. The tradeoff, of course, is you have all of Photoshop’s flexibility at your disposal for matching the original document’s font, size, style, spacing, and censoring effects, which is very important. For small amounts of text speed isn’t a problem.

Conclusion

While my original goal of recovering the censored text on my friend’s page was never achieved, the project was a success. It works well on my test image, and I learned about 3 obscure but cool and useful features of Photoshop!
http://tlrobinson.net/blog/?p=52





Second Bill Tackles Laptop Border Searches

Three U.S. lawmakers announced this week that they had proposed a law to limit the searches of laptops or other electronic devices to cases where customs agents have reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.

The Travelers Privacy Protection Act, a bill written by U.S. Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Representative Adam Smith, D-Wash., would allow border agents to search electronic devices only if they had reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing. In addition, the legislation would limit the length of time that a device could be out of its owner's possession to 24 hours, after which the search becomes a seizure, requiring probable cause. The lawmakers decided to propose the legislation after the Department of Homeland Security failed to provide adequate information about the searches or the limitations on the power, Feingold said in a statement.

"Most Americans would be shocked to learn that upon their return to the U.S. from traveling abroad, the government could demand the password to their laptop, hold it for as long as it wants, pore over their documents, emails, and photographs, and examine which websites they visited –- all without any suggestion of wrongdoing," Feingold said in the statement. "Focusing our limited law enforcement resources on law-abiding Americans who present no basis for suspicion does not make us any safer and is a gross violation of privacy."

The legislation is the second bill to tackle the controversial issue of laptop border searches. Last month, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., introduced the Border Security Search Accountability Act, which would require that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security report to Congress on the number of searches and inform targeted individuals of their rights.

Civil-liberties organizations and business-travel groups have taken issue with the suspension of normal search rules for electronic devices at the U.S. border. In February, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus sued the Department of Homeland Security over the invasive searches. In May, a federal district court's ruling upholding the searches led to a broad coalition of groups warning international travelers to leave their electronic devices at home, if possible.

Like the previous bill, the TPPA would require that federal agents stringently protect any information take from a citizen's electronic devices and mandate that the DHS regularly report to Congress on their activities.
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/832





TSA to Deploy Remote Detection Machines at Airports

Terrorists may not only blow up a plane, but also explode a bomb in an airport lounge or near a crowded ticket counter; TSA tests machines that can detect explosives at a distance

We should assume that terrorists are going to change their methods as they adopt to security measures taken in response to earlier attacks. This is the assumption of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) which will soon begin to check passengers for bombs at the airport entrance. USA Today's Thomas Frank writes that the agency fears that terrorists would blow themselves up in crowded lounges or near ticket counters, so it has decided to test a way to scan people as they walk through terminals. Detection devices recently tested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and Denver International Airport could lead to more airports to get the technology.

It works this way: A scanner is mounted on a tripod at a busy part of an airport terminal, pointing at people thirty feet away. The $210,000 machine, which looks like a spotlight, reads the energy emitted from a human body. It looks for "cold" spots where dense objects -- such as bombs -- block energy. When the scanner sounds an alarm, a screener can call police to handle anyone who seems dangerous.

Frank writes that the TSA effort comes amid concern about terrorists targeting airports. Two weeks ago Pakistan there was a bomb threat to the airport at Pakistan's capital, and in July 2007 terrorists drove an SUV into the Glasgow Airport in Scotland, igniting a blaze that killed no one. "As you close up holes (on airplanes), terrorists have to find other ways to set something off," aviation-security consultant Rich Roth said. An airport attack "is what everybody's afraid of, and it's a valid fear."

Virginia-based QinetiQ North America, which manufactures the scanner, says it does not produce still images of passengers and poses no health risk because it does not emit energy such as X-rays.

Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told Frank that the machines will subject innocent people to extra scrutiny by generating false alarms for things such as back braces. Meanwhile, he said, terrorists will evade scrutiny by simply avoiding the scanners, which sit openly in terminals. "These only create the illusion of security," Steinhardt said. Wally Miller, QinetiQ's head of transportation security, admitted that a passenger wearing a body brace under a shirt might set off the alarm.
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=6928





Supremes Mull Whether Bad Databases Make for Illegal Searches
Ryan Singel

If a false entry in a database leads to a unconstitutional police search that reveals illegal drugs, does the government get to hold it against you?

That's the question the Supreme Court will tackle on Tuesday in a case civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center argue will have broad implications in a world where we are constantly being evaluated against databases and watch lists that are riddled with frustratingly persistent errors.

"In these interlinked databases, one error can spread like a disease, infecting every system it touches and condemning the individual to whom this error refers to suffer substantial delay, harassment, and improper arrest," EPIC director Marc Rotenberg argued in a friend of the court brief.

Not surprisingly, the government disagrees.

"Police officers in the field must be allowed to rely on information they receive from others when it is reasonable to do so," the Justice Department wrote in its brief, arguing that throwing out the evidence won't make errors less likely.

At issue is the case of Bennie Herring, an Alabama man who drove to the police station in July 2004 to try to retrieve items from an impounded pickup truck. A Coffee County cop recognized him, asked the clerk to check the database for outstanding warrant.

None was found, so the investigator asked the clerk to call the neighboring Dale county clerk to see if it had a warrant for Herring.

The Dale county clerk found a warrant for Herring in their database, so the Coffee County cops set out after Herring after asking the other county to fax the warrant over.

Herring was soon pulled over and the police found meth in his pocket and a pistol under the truck's seat.

But in the meantime, the Dale county clerk found that there was no warrant for Herring and the entry should have been removed five months previous.

In court, Herring moved to have the evidence thrown out, but instead was sentenced to 27 months for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

No one – not even the government - disputes that the search was unconstitutional.

But the courts – including the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – aren't convinced that throwing out evidence from a tainted-database-initiated search will make the system better.

"Hoping to gain a beneficial deterrent effect on Dale County personnel by excluding evidence in a case brought by Coffee County officers would be like telling a student that if he skips school one of his classmates will be punished," Judge Edward Carnes wrote in a 2007 opinion.

"The student may not exactly relish the prospect of causing another to suffer, but human nature being what it is, he is unlikely to fear that prospect as much as he would his own suffering. "

Instead Carnes suggests victims of bad government databases should find their justice by filing a civil suit against the responsible parties.

Civil liberties groups say such suits are unlikely to succeed and that the Constitution should protect people from watch lists and databases relied on more and more by the government, even as it denies responsibility for keeping them accurate.

The case is Herring vs. US 07-513.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/200...es-mull-w.html





Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans

U.S. officers' "phone sex" intercepted; senate demanding answers
Brian Ross, Vic Walter, and Anna Schecter

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

"We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration," Rockefeller said Thursday. "The Committee will take whatever action is necessary."

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and "collected on" as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

Another intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, said he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad's Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007.

"Calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another," said Faulk.

The accounts of the two former intercept operators, who have never met and did not know of the other's allegations, provide the first inside look at the day to day operations of the huge and controversial US terrorist surveillance program.

"There is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect," said President Bush at a news conference this past February.

But the accounts of the two whistleblowers, which could not be independently corroborated, raise serious questions about how much respect is accorded those Americans whose conversations are intercepted in the name of fighting terrorism.

US Soldier's 'Phone Sex' Intercepted, Shared

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.

"I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me," he said.

In testimony before Congress, then-NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, said private conversations of Americans are not intercepted.

"It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda and those organizations who are affiliated with it," Gen. Hayden testified.

He was asked by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), "Are you just doing this because you just want to pry into people's lives?"

"No, sir," General Hayden replied.

Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said "all employees of the US government" should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and "information assurance."

"They certainly didn't consent to having interceptions of their telephone sex conversations being passed around like some type of fraternity game," said Jonathon Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who has testified before Congress on the country's warrantless surveillance program.

"This story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law," Turley said.

Listening to Aid Workers

NSA awarded Adrienne Kinne a NSA Joint Service Achievement Medal in 2003 at the same time she says she was listening to hundreds of private conversations between Americans, including many from the International Red Cross and Doctors without Borders.

"We knew they were working for these aid organizations," Kinne told ABC News. "They were identified in our systems as 'belongs to the International Red Cross' and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them," she told ABC News.

A spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, Michael Goldfarb, said: "The abuse of humanitarian action through intelligence gathering for military or political objectives, threatens the ability to assist populations and undermines the safety of humanitarian aid workers."

Both Kinne and Faulk said their military commanders rebuffed questions about listening in to the private conversations of Americans talking to Americans.

"It was just always, that , you know, your job is not to question. Your job is to collect and pass on the information," Kinne said.

Some times, Kinne and Faulk said, the intercepts helped identify possible terror planning in Iraq and saved American lives.

"IED's were disarmed before they exploded, that people who were intending to harm US forces were captured ahead of time," Faulk said.

NSA job evaluation forms show he regularly received high marks for job performance. Faulk left his job as a newspaper reporter in Pittsburgh to join the Navy after 9/11.

Kinne says the success stories underscored for her the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans, instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack.

"By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody," she said. "You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security."

The NSA: "The Shadow Factory"

Both former intercept operators came forward at first to speak with investigative journalist Jim Bamford for a book on the NSA, "The Shadow Factory," to be published next week.

"It's extremely rare," said Bamford, who has written two previous books on the NSA, including the landmark "Puzzle Palace" which first revealed the existence of the super secret spy agency.

"Both of them felt that what they were doing was illegal and improper, and immoral, and it shouldn't be done, and that's what forces whistleblowers."

A spokesman for General Hayden, Mark Mansfield, said: "At NSA, the law was followed assiduously. The notion that General Hayden sanctioned or tolerated illegalities of any sort is ridiculous on its face."

The director of the NSA, Lt. General Keith B. Alexander, declined to directly answer any of the allegations made by the whistleblowers.

In a written statement, Gen. Alexander said: "We have been entrusted to protect and defend the nation with integrity, accountability, and respect for the law. As Americans, we take this obligation seriously. Our employees work tirelessly for the good of the nation, and serve this country proudly."
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5987804&page=1





Report Says Forest Service Has Harassed Gatherings
AP

A report by the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union contends that the federal Forest Service has engaged in systematic harassment of people who attend Rainbow Family gatherings on public lands.

The A.C.L.U. opened an investigation this summer after a clash on July 3 between members of the Rainbow Family, an informal group of professed hippies and peace activists, and Forest Service law enforcement officers.

About 7,000 members of the group attended its annual gathering this summer, held in the Bridger-Teton National Forest near Big Sandy in western Wyoming.

Forest Service law enforcement officers fired pepper balls — like paint balls but containing a pepper substance — at Rainbow Family members during the incident.

Scores of witnesses told the A.C.L.U. that the officers had lacked justification. The A.C.L.U. did not talk to Forest Service officials for its report. The report also said that officers had taken the smallest violation as an excuse to search participants’ cars and campsites for drugs.

“This type of harassment and general overzealous enforcement appear to have been the pattern in the U.S.F.S. relationship with the Rainbow Family,” the report said. It reported that the Forest Service had set up roadblocks and safety checkpoints and had “searched and ticketed people on the narrowest of pretexts.”

Linda Burt, executive director of the A.C.L.U. in Wyoming, said her office had interviewed about 60 Rainbow Family members who attended this year’s gathering and reviewed court records of charges against members.

In response to the report, the Forest Service said officers had fired only after a crowd threw sticks and rocks at officers and otherwise interfered in the arrest of a man on drug charges.

John Twiss, the national head of law enforcement for the Forest Service, said Friday that he strongly disagreed with the report.

Mr. Twiss was among the officers who responded to the disturbance at this year’s gathering. He described as “nonsense” the notion that Forest Service officers searched people or vehicles for drugs without probable cause.

The agency wrote only 18 citations for traffic and vehicle violations, but wrote 139 citations and arrested eight people for drug offenses, he said.

The Forest Service is discussing whether to allow future Rainbow Family gatherings on Forest Service lands, he said.

“Their behavior is unacceptable, and it’s a tremendous financial burden on the taxpayers to keep the gathering safe,” Mr. Twiss said.

He estimated that it cost the Forest Service $1 million to patrol the gathering in Wyoming this year. He said the group had not paid any of the costs.

During the pepper ball incident, only one of the people the A.C.L.U. spoke with reported that they had possibly seen one person throw a stick at law enforcement. The rest said they had seen nothing thrown, Ms. Burt said.

In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Burt said the A.C.L.U. was not planning to pursue legal action, but she said she hoped Congress would look hard at the issue. The organization sent its report to members of Wyoming’s Congressional delegation.

“Certainly people do have that right to peaceable assembly under the Constitution,” Ms. Burt said. “It doesn’t state anything in the Constitution that only the ‘right kind’ of people can have peaceable assembly, or only the people who dress like we like to dress can have peaceable assembly.”

Garrick Beck, 58, of Santa Fe, N.M., was a participant at the Wyoming gathering. In a telephone interview Friday, Mr. Beck said he had been attending gatherings since 1972 and had seen increasing harassment from Forest Service law enforcement in recent years.

“I would say that the conclusion that there has been a consistent pattern of harassment is absolutely correct, and some of these consistent patterns have been extremely provocative,” Mr. Beck said.

He said confrontations would escalate more were it not for the peaceful nature of the Rainbow participants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/us/05rainbow.html





Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists

Surveillance's Reach Revealed
Lisa Rein

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.

"The names don't belong in there," he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "It's as simple as that."

The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists "fringe people."

Sheridan said protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations in the databases, but his staff has not identified which ones.

Stunned senators pressed Sheridan to apologize to the activists for the spying, assailed in an independent review last week as "overreaching" by law enforcement officials who were oblivious to their violation of the activists' rights of free expression and association. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, does not apologize but admits that the state police have "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime" by those classified as terrorists.

Hutchins told the committee it was not accurate to describe the program as spying. "I doubt anyone who has used that term has ever met a spy," he told the committee.

"What John Walker did is spying," Hutchins said, referring to John Walker Jr., a communications specialist for the U.S. Navy convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Hutchins said the intelligence agents, whose logs were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland as part of a lawsuit, were monitoring "open public meetings." His officers sought a "situational awareness" of the potential for disruption as death penalty opponents prepared to protest the executions of two men on death row, Hutchins said.

"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.

Hutchins did not name the commander in the Division of Homeland Security and Intelligence who informed him in March 2005 that the surveillance had begun. More than a year later, after "they said, 'We're not getting much here,' " Hutchins said he cut off what he called a "low-level operation."

But Sen. James Brochin (D-Baltimore County) noted that undercover troopers used aliases to infiltrate organizational meetings, rallies and group e-mail lists. He called the spying a "deliberate infiltration to find out every piece of information necessary" on groups such as the Maryland Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance. When Hutchins called their members "fringe people," the audience of activists who filled the seats in the hearing room in Annapolis sighed.

Some activists said yesterday that they have received letters; others said they were waiting with anticipation to see whether they were on the state police watch list.

Laura Lising of Catonsville, a member of the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, received her notification yesterday. She said she wants a hard copy of her file, because she does not trust the police to purge it. "We need as much protection as possible," she said.

Both Hutchins and Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries.

The police also entered the activists' names into the federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, which tracks suspected terrorists. One well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a "primary crime" of "terrorism-anti-government" and a "secondary crime" of "terrorism-anti-war protesters."

Sheridan said that he did not think the names were circulated to other agencies in the federal system and that they are not on the federal government's terrorist watch list. Hutchins said some names might have been shared with the National Security Agency.

Although the independent report on the surveillance released last week said that it was part of a broad effort by the state police to gather information on protest groups across the state, Sheridan said the department is not aware of any surveillance as "intrusive" as the spying on death penalty and war opponents.

The police notified the protesters at the recommendation of former U.S. attorney and state attorney general Stephen H. Sachs, who was appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to review the covert monitoring. In a report last week, Sachs also recommended regulations that forbid such spying on protest groups unless the state police chief believes it is justified.

"I can't imagine getting a letter that says, 'You've been classified as a terrorist; come in and we'll tell about it,'" said Sen. Bryan W. Simonaire (R-Anne Arundel). Two senators noted that they had been arrested years ago for civil disobedience. Sen. Jennie Forehand (D-Montgomery) asked Sheridan, "Do you have any legislators on your list?" The answer was no.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100703245.html





Malaysia Blogger Goes on Trial

One of Malaysia's most prominent bloggers and a high-profile critic of the government has gone on trial for sedition.

Raja Petra Kamarudin, who is already being held under Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA), could be sentenced to three years in jail if he is convicted.

In an entry on his Web site - Malaysia Today - he allegedly implied that Malaysia's deputy prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, was involved in the high-profile murder of a young Mongolian woman.

Raja Petra denies the allegation and supporters have criticised what they say is a government attempt to gag critics and suppress freedom of speech.

He was brought to court in Kuala Lumpur on Monday in handcuffs, unshaven and wearing flipflops.

Supporters said he appeared frail as he was escorted into the hearing by police.

The charge stems from an article published on Malaysia Today in late April related to the killing of a 28-year-old Mongolian interpreter.

Two policemen have been accused of killing her and destroying her body with explosives in a jungle clearing.

A third man, Abdul Razak Baginda, a close associate of Malaysia's deputy prime minister, is charged with abetting the murder.

The trial of the three men is on going.

Detained without trial

Malaysian officials have already said Raja Petra will be detained for at least two years without trial under the ISA – a colonial-era law that allows for indefinite detention at the discretion of the country's home minister.

He was arrested last month after allegedly publishing articles that the government said insulted Islam, inflamed racial tensions and tarnished the country's leadership.

Critics have called for the ISA to be scrapped, saying a law that was introduced when communist fighters threatened national security is now being used to suppress legitimate political opposition.

Raja Petra's detention comes amid escalating political tensions in Malaysia, with the government's popularity at an all time low after suffering its worst ever result in March general elections.

The opposition, led by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, has said it plans to oust the current leadership by orchestrating the defection of more than 30 government MPs.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/as...323419616.html





Kenya Detains U.S. Author Critical of Obama
Jeffrey Gettleman

The American author of a best-selling book highly critical of Senator Barack Obama was detained by Kenyan immigration agents on Tuesday as he prepared to give a press conference in Nairobi.

Jerome R. Corsi, the conservative gadfly who wrote “The Obama Nation,” in which he attacks the Democratic presidential candidate, was being held Tuesday because he was trying to work in Kenya without a valid work permit, according to local media reports. The reports said that Mr. Corsi would likely be deported.

Elias Njeru, a spokesman for Kenya’s immigration department, said, “His immigration forms were not in order.”

When asked if Mr. Corsi would be deported, Mr. Njeru said he did not know and that Mr. Corsi was still being investigated.

“I don’t know whether he came here to work, but his papers indicated he was a visitor. If he was going to work, he would need different papers,” he said. “When he arrived, he said he was a visitor on holiday. If he started to work, that would be the problem.”

Eric Kiraithe, Kenya’s police spokesman, said he had heard the reports of Mr. Corsi’s arrest and was pushing the immigration department to release more information.

“I’ve just sent an officer to the immigration department and I should get more on this soon,” he said.

Many Kenyans would be very sensitive about Mr. Obama, the Democratic contender in the American presidential election next month. His father was Kenyan and many people here are intensely cheering him on. His photos have been plastered across the back of mini-buses and stories about the election are front page news almost every day.

However, affection for Mr. Obama is not universal, especially within the divided Kenyan government. Several government officials, including some aligned with President Mwai Kibaki, have distanced themselves from Mr. Obama, saying he is American, not Kenyan, and asking what is the big deal about his candidacy.

One explanation is Mr. Obama’s criticism of some of Kenya’s leaders as corrupt. Another is the ethnic tensions that divide Kenya and plunged the country into chaos earlier this year.

Mr. Obama’s father, who died more than 20 years ago, was a member of the Luo ethnic group, the same group as Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga. Mr. Kibaki is a member of another large ethnic group, the Kikuyu. Mr. Odinga nearly defeated Mr. Kibaki in an election last December that was tainted by widespread allegations of vote-rigging by Mr. Kibaki’s party.

Violence erupted and fighting between Kikuyus and Luos, among others, killed more than 1,000 people, shaking Kenya in the worst strife since independence in 1963.

Mr. Corsi’s attacks on Mr. Obama are similar to those in “Unfit for Command” a book he co-authored in 2004 that helped derail Senator John Kerry’s presidential bid by questioning his record as an officer during the Vietnam War.

Among his allegations in “The Obama Nation” is that Mr. Obama is a radical liberal who has tried to cover up “extensive connections to Islam” — Mr. Obama is Christian — and that Mr. Obama has maintained secret ties with certain Kenyan politicians. Mr. Obama’s campaign and others have disputed many of the allegations in the book.

Mr. Corsi was preparing Tuesday morning to give a press conference about his Obama book at a big hotel in downtown Nairobi. Dozens of purple chairs and a microphone had been set up. The room was soon deserted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/wo...a/08kenya.html





Lawyer’s Threats, Intimidation Shut Down Web Site

Lawyer objected to CyberTrialLawyer-Sucks.com

A Virginia lawyer used intimidation and bullying tactics, including spurious trademark infringement and defamation claims, to shut down a Web site that criticized him, Public Citizen argues in lawsuit filed against the lawyer and his firm.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks an order that would prevent John Dozier of Dozier Internet Law from pursuing defamation and trademark claims against Ronald Riley, who runs the Web site CyberTrialLawyer-Sucks.com. The suit also asks for attorneys’ fees, court costs and $1,000 in punitive damages.

In the past month, three successive Internet hosting companies have taken down Riley’s Web site after each company received a warning letter from Dozier. Among Dozier’s complaints was that Riley used his firm’s name to link to an unrelated Web site, which Dozier claimed was a trademark infringement.

In at least two cases, companies were told that if they didn’t take down CyberTrialLawyer-Sucks.com, they would run the risk of having the Web sites of all their clients shut down.

Last month, Dozier sued Riley and several related companies in Virginia Circuit Court, alleging “statutory trademark infringement” and “common law trademark infringement.” However, Dozier has never served that lawsuit on Riley or the other defendants, Public Citizen said.

Dozier’s claims are baseless and intended to squelch Riley’s right to free speech, said Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy, who is representing Riley, along with local counsel Thomas Wolf of the Richmond firm of LeClair Ryan.

“The courts repeatedly have struck down these types of bullying tactics and upheld the public’s right to criticize people and companies on the Internet – something which Mr. Dozier was well aware of when he began his intimidation campaign against our client,” Levy said. “Not liking what someone says about you is not enough reason to throw out the First Amendment.”

Levy argued that Dozier has no right under the trademark laws to force Riley to hyperlink the names “Dozier” and “Dozier Internet Law” to Dozier’s own Web site, and, in any event, his use of the terms was fair use and protected, non-commercial speech.

Although Riley’s site admittedly “drips contempt for Dozier Internet Law,” the statements are not defamatory because most of them are opinions, and any statements of fact on the site are not false, Public Citizen argued.

The suit asks the court to declare Riley’s Web site lawful and not in violation of Dozier’s legal rights.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news0...ybertrial.html





Two Europeans Charged in US Over DDOS Attacks
Jeremy Kirk

Two European men have been indicted for allegedly orchestrating cyberattacks against two Web sites, a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into distributed denial-of-service attacks, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

One of the men, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany, is believed to be the programmer behind Agobot, a well-known malicious software program used to create a botnet or network of compromised PCs.

Gembe and 24-year-old Lee Graham Walker of Bleys Bolton, England, were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system.

The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks. Those attacks were directed at the public Web sites of two of Orbit's competitors, Rapid Satellite of Miami, Florida, and Weaknees of Los Angeles.

The attacks halted Weaknees' business for two weeks in October 2003, causing the company $200,000 in losses, the DOJ said. Weaknees sold digital video recorders online. Rapid Satellite, which sold home satellite television systems, was also damaged.

Echouafni remains at large. Another man, Paul Ashley, who prosecutors describe as one of the Echouafni's associates, has already completed a two-year prison sentence for his role in the conspiracy.

Walker is accused of helping maintain Gembe's botnet. According to the indictment, the two used IRC (Internet relay chat) to discuss ways to make the code behind the botnet more powerful and damaging to Web sites.

During a DDOS attack, computers infected with the botnet code are directed to send overwhelming amounts of data traffic to the targeted Web site, which usually causes the site to become unavailable.

In this case, computers in the botnet sent "syn" data packets to both Web sites. Syn packets initiate communication between two computers, but can be configured with false information.

Syn packets sent in an overwhelming data stream jams up the receiving server. Gembe's botnet could also direct large amounts HTTP traffic toward a Web site, which has the same damaging effect.
http://www.itworld.com/legal/55611/t...r-ddos-attacks





Fraud Ring Funnels Data From Cards to Pakistan
Siobhan Gorman

European law-enforcement officials uncovered a highly sophisticated credit-card fraud ring that funnels account data to Pakistan from hundreds of grocery-store card machines across Europe, according to U.S. intelligence officials and other people familiar with the case.

Specialists say the theft technology is the most advanced they have seen, and a person close to British law enforcement said it has affected big retailers including a British unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Tesco Ltd.

The account data have been used to make repeated bank withdrawals and Internet purchases, such as airline tickets, in several countries including the U.S. Investigators haven't pinpointed the culprits. Early estimates of the losses range of $50 million to $100 million, but the figure could grow, said the person close to British law enforcement.

The scheme uses untraceable devices inserted into credit-card readers that were made in China.

The devices selectively send account data by a wireless connection to computer servers in Lahore, Pakisan, and constantly change the pattern of theft so it is hard to detect, officials say.

"Pretty small but intelligent criminal organizations are pulling off transnational, multicontinent heists that only a foreign intelligence service would have been able to do a few years ago," said Joel F. Brenner, the U.S. government's top counterintelligence officer.

U.S. intelligence officials, including senior National Security Agency officials, are monitoring the case, in part because of its ties to Pakistan, which has become home to a resurgent al Qaeda.

The scheme comes on the heels of the August indictment of a fraud ring that stole more than 40 million credit-card numbers from U.S. companies, including TJX Cos., the parent company of TJ Maxx.

In March, security officials at MasterCard Inc. saw a pattern of potential fraud in northern England. Meanwhile, a security guard at a U.K. grocery store noticed suspicious static on his cellphone and alerted authorities. Scotland Yard learned of the report and eventually connected it with the warning from MasterCard, according to the person close to British law enforcement.

Examining the store's credit-card readers, investigators discovered a high-tech bug tucked behind the motherboard. It was small card containing wireless communication technology.

The bug would read an individual's card number and the corresponding personal identification number, then package and store the data. The device would once a day call a number in Lahore to upload the data to servers there and obtain instructions on what to steal next.

A MasterCard spokesman declined to discuss details of the case but said safeguarding financial information is a top priority for the company.

There is no obvious visual indication that a machine has been altered, but those with the bugs weigh about four ounces more. For the past several months, teams of investigators have been weighing thousands of machines across Europe with a precision scale.
So far, investigators have found hundreds of machines in at least five countries: Britain, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. They have turned up at European grocery chains including Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart; Tesco; and J Sainsbury PLC, according to the person close to British law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for Asda said, "It's subject to a police investigation, so we can't comment." A spokeswoman for Sainsbury denied its stores were hit by the scheme. A spokeswoman for Tesco said: "We're aware that this was an issue for retailers." She said Tesco tested its devices and is confident they are now secure.

The device can be told to copy certain types of transactions -- for example, five Visa platinum cards or every tenth transaction. It can also be instructed to go dormant to evade detection. On average, only five to 10 card numbers would be phoned in to Pakistan, the person close to British law enforcement said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122366999999723871.html





Fake YouTube Pages Used to Spread Viruses
Jordan Robertson

Savvy Internet users know that downloading unsolicited computer programs is one of the most dangerous things you can do online. It puts you at great risk for a virus or another time bomb from a hacker.

But even some sophisticated surfers could get taken in by a sneaky new attack in which criminals create fake YouTube pages — dead-on replicas of the real site — to push their malicious software and make it look like it's safe stuff coming from a trusted source.

A program circulating online helps hackers build those fake pages. Users who follow an e-mail pointing them to one of the pages would see an error message that claims the video they want won't play without installing new software first. That error message includes a link the hacker has provided to a malicious program, which delivers a virus.

Even worse: Once the computer is infected, it's simple for the hacker to silently redirect the victims to a real YouTube page to see videos they were hoping to see — and hide the crime.

"It's spot-on accurate, and that is scary," said Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager for security software company Trend Micro. "If I were watching YouTube videos all day I would probably click on this one."

The tactic itself isn't new: There's a constant push by criminals to build more convincing spoofs of legitimate sites to trick people into downloading harmful software. And the latest attacks don't target any vulnerability in the YouTube site.

But it highlights the fact that criminals are getting better at creating bogus sites and developing so-called "social engineering" methods to fool people.

Fortunately, truly alert Internet users can still see the telltale warning signs with the fake YouTube pages. For one, the Web browser won't show the real YouTube's Internet address. And to even see the malicious page, you have to first follow a link that's sent to you, which is often a tip-off that you should independently verify whether the site is legitimate.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/ci...nclick_check=1





UT Student David Kernell Pleads Not Guilty in Palin E-Mail Hacking

Lawmaker's son must stay off computer except for college work
Matt Lakin

David Christopher Kernell walked into federal court this morning in handcuffs, shackles and tennis shoes to plead not guilty to hacking Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account.

He can stay out of jail for now as long as he stays off his computer.

The University of Tennessee student, who is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, D-Memphis, turned himself in today after being indicted by a federal grand jury.

He made his first court appearance this morning before U.S. Magistrate Judge C. Clifford Shirley and could go to trial Dec. 16.

"David Kernell surrendered voluntarily this morning after being informed of the charges," said his lawyer, Wade Davies. "We look forward to (the case's) ultimate resolution in court."

The judge granted Kernell release as long as he stays off his computer, unless it's for college purposes, and has no contact with Palin or her family.

"Do you feel like you know what is going on here?" the judge asked Kernell.

"I believe I do," Kernell said.

Kernell, an economics major at UT, can't leave East Tennessee without written permission from his probation officer. That includes going home to Memphis.

The judge also ordered him not to discuss the case with any potential witnesses.

Kernell asked the judge if that applied to a girl he's dating in South Carolina.

His lawyer told Shirley he'll work that out.

Federal prosecutors wouldn't say whether their witness list includes Palin, the Alaska governor and running mate of Sen. John McCain.

The single-count indictment, returned Tuesday and unsealed today, alleges that on approximately Sept. 16, 2008, Kernell obtained unauthorized access to Palin's personal e-mail account by resetting the account password.

According to the indictment, after answering a series of security questions that allowed him to reset the password and gain access to the e-mail account, Kernell read the contents of the account and made screenshots of the e-mail directory, e-mail content and other personal information.

According to the indictment, Kernell posted screenshots of the e-mail and other personal information to a public Web site, along with the new password.

If convicted, Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of probation.

A federal grand jury in Chattanooga ended a Sept. 23 session without an indictment after investigators last month searched Kernell's apartment in Knoxville.

Three students accompanied by Maryville attorney Phil Reed met with the Chattanooga grand jury last month.

"Cyber crime is the FBI's top criminal investigative priority," Richard Lambert, special agent in charge of the FBI Knoxville office, said in a press release this morning.

The case is being investigated by the FBI's Knoxville and Anchorage field offices, with Agent Scott Wenger acting as the lead investigator.

It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.s. Attorney Greg Weddle in Knoxville and Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Krotoski of the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington.

Kernell's father said last month he knew bloggers had said his son had claimed responsibility for breaking into Palin's private account. He said he had nothing to do with the case and didn't know anything about it.

A person using the e-mail address rubico10@yahoo.com posted a message to an online forum about how he used Yahoo Mail's password-recovery tool to obtain Palin's password by entering Palin's birth date, ZIP code and where Palin met her husband.

The family hired Davies after the weekend search last month of his apartment, which is just off the UT campus downtown.

More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel.

Staff writer Jamie Satterfield and The Commercial Appeal of Memphis contributed to this story.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/oc...-hacking-case/





Palin E-Mails: Judge Orders State To Preserve
Mark Thiessen

A judge has ordered the state of Alaska to preserve any government-related e-mails that Gov. Sarah Palin sent from private accounts.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers ruled Friday in the lawsuit brought by Anchorage resident Andree McLeod against Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Palin has occasionally used private e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and her Yahoo accounts were hacked last month. The hacking of Palin's private account was significant because it showed that using private e-mail accounts to conduct state business would be vulnerable to being exposed.

It wasn't widely known that the governor and her staff were using private e-mail accounts until McLeod filed the first of several open records requests earlier this year that yielded some of the e-mail traffic _ much of it redacted for what were deemed privacy reasons.

The judge ordered the attorney general to contact Yahoo and other private carriers to preserve any e-mails sent and received on those accounts. If the e-mails were destroyed when the accounts were deactivated, he directed state officials to have the companies attempt to resurrect the e-mails.

"We shouldn't be in a position where public records have been lost because the governor didn't do what every other state employee knows to do, which is to use an official, secure state e-mail account to conduct state business," McLeod said after the 90-minute hearing.

"It's a dereliction of the governor and her duties," she said.

Assistant Attorney General Mike Mitchell told the court that the governor is no longer using private e-mail to conduct state business.

Stowers ordered e-mails of Palin's staff members who used private accounts to be preserved, as well. Mitchell was unsure if these other employees had also stopped using the private accounts.

Palin's e-mail account with Yahoo Inc. was compromised last month by a hacker who revealed as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate.

Palin used "gov.sarah" in one of the Yahoo e-mail addresses she sometimes used to conduct state business. The hacker targeted her separate "gov.palin" account. Both have been shut down.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/1..._n_133727.html





Busted

WiFi is No Longer a Viable Secure Connection
Dan Raywood

Global Secure Systems has said that a Russian's firm's use of the latest NVidia graphics cards to accelerate WiFi ‘password recovery' times by up to an astonishing 10,000 per cent proves that WiFi's WPA and WPA2 encryption systems are no longer enough to protect wireless data.

David Hobson, managing director of GSS, claimed that companies can no longer view standards-based WiFi transmission as sufficiently secure against eavesdropping to be used with impunity. He also said that the use of VPNs is arguably now mandatory for companies wanting to comply with the Data Protection Act.

He said: “This breakthrough in brute force decryption of WiFi signals by Elcomsoft confirms our observations that firms can no longer rely on standards-based security to protect their data. As a result, we now advise clients using WiFi in their offices to move on up to a VPN encryption system as well.

“Brute force decryption of the WPA and WPA2 systems using parallel processing has been on the theoretical possibilities horizon for some time - and presumably employed by relevant government agencies in extreme situations - but the use of the latest NVidia cards to speedup decryption on a standard PC is extremely worrying.

“The $64,000 question, of course, is what happens when hackers secure a pecuniary advantage by gaining access to company data flowing across a WPA or WPA2-encrypted wireless connection. Will the Information Commissioner take action against the company concerned for an effective breach of the Data Protection Act.”
http://www.scmagazineuk.com/WiFi-is-...rticle/119294/





Q&A: E-Voting Security Results 'Awful,' Says Ohio Secretary of State

How bad? 'I thought I was going to throw up,' Jennifer Brunner recalls
Brad Friedman

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner will be under the national spotlight next month, overseeing what's expected to be the state's largest-ever turnout for a presidential election. It will also be her first as the state's chief election official.

The stakes will be just as high as they were for her Republican predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell, four years ago, when the narrowly decided state election was marred by charges of questionable results and complaints that some residents, largely in minority areas, were forced to wait hours to cast their votes.

This year, denizens of the Buckeye State who mistrust touch-screen systems will be allowed to vote on a paper ballot if they prefer. The directive to allow "paper or plastic" came in the wake of Brunner's landmark 2007 "Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing" analysis, otherwise known as EVEREST, in which "critical security failures" were found in every system tested by several teams of both corporate and academic computer scientists and security experts.

Ohio officials discovered in March that some voting systems manufactured by Premier Elections Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Diebold Inc., dropped votes as they were being uploaded to a main server. Because the problem is in the tabulator system, it affects votes cast on both Diebold's direct recording electronic (DRE) systems, which are usually touch screen, and paper ballot optical-scan systems. The same central tabulators will be used in more than 30 states next month.

Unfortunately, correcting the problem is not as easy as simply applying a patch to work around the problem. Voting systems, at least at the federal level, must be certified as an entire end-to-end unit. In order to receive a certification "stamp of approval" from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), companies must submit every piece of hardware and software to be used -- such as optical-scan devices, "paper trail" printers and central tabulators -- as a single unit so that tests can determine whether they all work together without conflict.

Critics have long complained that testing at the federal level has been lax and secretive. Recently, the EAC revamped its certification process, but it has yet to approve any of the systems currently submitted by vendors. Therefore, systems criticized as insecure in the EVEREST study will once again be in use this November.

Brad Friedman, publisher of The Brad Blog, recently sat down with Brunner to discuss the many challenges she has faced since taking office as Ohio's first Democratic secretary of state in 16 years. Those challenges range from the delicate task of encouraging county election administrators to move to more secure and verifiable voting systems to addressing concerns about how to best ensure that votes will be counted accurately in the upcoming election. The following are edited excerpts from that conversation.

I think other election officials around the country are now realizing, thanks to you and [California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen] coming up with these tests, that it's not just crazy bloggers who are concerned about this stuff.

Oh no, no. When I finally saw the results of our [EVEREST] tests, I thought I was going to throw up.

I didn't think it would be that bad. And it was -- it was awful. I looked at it on a Saturday morning, and that night I went to bed and woke up [just before 4:00 on] Sunday morning going, "Oh my God." I never wake up on the weekends -- trust me.

You know, I've been pushing against the tide, but when Premier [Elections Solutions] sent that letter out [admitting that their tabulators drop votes], it's like vindication.

Tell me how that admission came about.

[Premier] really didn't know what was causing the votes to be dropped. And they sent the equipment in this situation to a lab in Canada, and what they came back with was that it could be an interaction with the McAfee antivirus software. So they put out that first nationwide advisory, but then their advice was to disable the software when you're uploading the memory cards. That gave me the chills.

Butler County [where the problem was first discovered] brought their machines to Columbus, and we had already contacted McAfee and said, "Do you think this is possible for there to be these kinds of interactions?" We told them we were going to do more testing. McAfee told us what kind of testing we should be doing, and we were performing the testing over a two-day period. It was [still] dropping the votes with the software disabled.

So we already knew that it was dropping votes [even] with the McAfee software disabled. We already knew it was in the Premier software, but I'm just very surprised with there being pending litigation that they just came out and said, "Yes, it is a problem, and we're responsible for it. It's an error in the code."

If they're going to use McAfee on those systems, did it occur to you or to them that those aren't certified for use with McAfee? Under the federal certification standards, they have to approve all of that software together. So, in truth, for federal certification to be legitimate with McAfee on there, they have to test it with that on there.

It was tested in Ohio with it on there. Which is why, according to my discussions with Premier, it was certified with the McAfee on there.

It was?

We heard two different stories. We heard that it was on the server when it was sent to Ohio to be tested and certified, and then we heard that the [former Secretary of State] Blackwell people wanted it on there and specified McAfee, so we're not really sure. But it was tested and certified in Ohio with the McAfee software.

Under Blackwell?

Under Blackwell, yeah.

They've got a more stringent testing process now, at the EAC [U.S. Election Assistance Commission], supposedly.

Very cumbersome, yes.

Cumbersome?

Do you realize it's end-to-end testing? So let's say we wanted to make available the high-speed optical scanner, for absentee ballots, from Premier. You can't just test that. And you can't just get that. It's got to be their server, their software, their DRE [touch-screen system], their precinct-based scanner, their high-speed scanner -- and once all of that is approved, then it's allowed to go into the state market.

One way to look at [the EAC's new testing regime] is "cumbersome," another way to look at it is "thorough" -- knowing that previous systems have, you know, slipped through [its previous certification process]. And look at the mess we're in.

Right, right. And what's interesting: Do you know that the EAC put out an RFP [request for proposals] for an EVEREST-like study at the federal level?

Most people haven't read EVEREST. They just really don't get how bad it is. Are we looking at a situation -- if not now, then maybe down the road -- when we say, "You know what? All of these computers are causing us more trouble than they are ultimately worth." That maybe we ought to just take a piece of paper, put in a check mark, put it in a clear box and count it at the precinct the way many other countries do. Even states in the U.S. still do it. Just count the ballots at the polls before they move and be done with it.

Part of the problem is public expectation, the expectation of the media. They just think we should have the elements to do these results [quickly].

But we do, in places like, for example, New Hampshire. Twenty percent of the precincts up there count by hand. If we're talking about [counting] at the precincts, there's not all that many ballots per precinct. It could be counted in an hour or two.

[Maybe], if you think about one race. But if you are talking about multiple races, and in Ohio we have four ballots -- we have presidential, partisan, the nonpartisan, and the issues ballot....

Our boards of elections have a directive on how to hand count the ballots if they have a need to, but it is a longer process than one would think. And with our poll workers working 13, 14 hours, we'd have to have extra people to come in as counters....

Yes, bring another shift in. Well, you say it's a longer process. Do we actually know that, or do we think that it is? We can say, "Forget this hand-counting stuff; it'll never work." Or say, "You know what? All these problems we're having, maybe we ought to at least explore, see if there is another way." Because I don't see this nightmare ending, frankly, with these machines.

[Hand counting] may be worth it to try as a pilot [program]. I'm not so sure I'd want to experiment during the presidential elections.

I understand that. But literally, four or five precincts, not counties.

With the diversity that we have in Ohio, you may have a board of elections that would be willing to try it, because you have a wide variety of viewpoints among the election officials.

You've got friends in Cuyahoga County, I understand. You could try it there.

It may be worth doing, especially Cuyahoga County. They have so many elections because of all the different municipalities. And then I think we would have a little bit more data to deal with rather than supposition or anecdotes.... We say, "Let's try it and see." You know, after the November election.

What's the next election following November?

There's a special in February, and then there's the May primary next year. This would be for municipal elections, which would make more sense -- a smaller election, a safer environment, to try it in, [when] we're not hit by such large turnout.

It also might offer a good message to the voting machine companies, who I think pretty much feel, "Hey, you may hate us, but what else are you going to do? Where else are you going to go?" And it might send a message saying, "You know what? There may be other ways. You guys might not be the only game in town."

It wouldn't be willy-nilly, but it would be where we maybe set up a control, some control precincts and then these precincts, and we run processes and we see.

Yes.

So it would be worth trying as a pilot next year.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/...=NLT_AM&nlid=1





Government Report: Data Mining Doesn't Work Well
Declan McCullagh

The most extensive government report to date on whether terrorists can be identified through data mining has yielded an important conclusion: It doesn't really work.

A National Research Council report, years in the making and scheduled to be released Tuesday, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism "is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts." Inevitable false positives will result in "ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses" being incorrectly flagged as suspects.

The whopping 352-page report, called "Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists," amounts to at least a partial repudiation of the Defense Department's controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by Congress in 2003.

But the ambition of the report's authors is far broader than just revisiting the problems of the TIA program and its successors. Instead, they aim to produce a scholarly evaluation of the current technologies that exist for data mining, their effectiveness, and how government agencies should use them to limit false positives--of the sort that can result in situations like heavily-armed SWAT teams raiding someone's home and shooting their dogs based on the false belief that they were part of a drug ring.

The report was written by a committee whose members include William Perry, a professor at Stanford University; Charles Vest, the former president of MIT; W. Earl Boebert, a retired senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories; Cynthia Dwork of Microsoft Research; R. Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle's police chief; and Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google.

They admit that far more Americans live their lives online, using everything from VoIP phones to Facebook to RFID tags in automobiles, than a decade ago, and the databases created by those activities are tempting targets for federal agencies. And they draw a distinction between subject-based data mining (starting with one individual and looking for connections) compared with pattern-based data mining (looking for anomalous activities that could show illegal activities).

But the authors conclude the type of data mining that government bureaucrats would like to do--perhaps inspired by watching too many episodes of the Fox series 24--can't work. "If it were possible to automatically find the digital tracks of terrorists and automatically monitor only the communications of terrorists, public policy choices in this domain would be much simpler. But it is not possible to do so."

A summary of the recommendations:

* U.S. government agencies should be required to follow a systematic process to evaluate the effectiveness, lawfulness, and consistency with U.S. values of every information-based program, whether classified or unclassified, for detecting and countering terrorists before it can be deployed, and periodically thereafter.

* Periodically after a program has been operationally deployed, and in particular before a program enters a new phase in its life cycle, policy makers should (carefully review) the program before allowing it to continue operations or to proceed to the next phase.

* To protect the privacy of innocent people, the research and development of any information-based counterterrorism program should be conducted with synthetic population data... At all stages of a phased deployment, data about individuals should be rigorously subjected to the full safeguards of the framework.

* Any information-based counterterrorism program of the U.S. government should be subjected to robust, independent oversight of the operations of that program, a part of which would entail a practice of using the same data mining technologies to "mine the miners and track the trackers."

* Counterterrorism programs should provide meaningful redress to any individuals inappropriately harmed by their operation.

* The U.S. government should periodically review the nation's laws, policies, and procedures that protect individuals' private information for relevance and effectiveness in light of changing technologies and circumstances. In particular, Congress should re-examine existing law to consider how privacy should be protected in the context of information-based programs (e.g., data mining) for counterterrorism.

By itself, of course, this is merely a report with non-binding recommendations that Congress and the executive branch could ignore. But NRC reports are not radical treatises written by an advocacy group; they tend to represent a working consensus of technologists and lawyers.

The great encryption debate of the 1990s was one example. The NRC's so-called CRISIS report on encryption in 1996 concluded export controls--that treated software like Web browsers and PGP as munitions--were a failure and should be relaxed. That eventually happened two years later.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10...=2547-1_3-0-20





TiVo Builds a Data Mining Empire
Andrew Keen

Not satisfied with contributing to the demise of the television industry, TiVo -- the company that invented the time-skipping digital video recorder (DVR), the set-top device that empowers TV viewers to "zap" or fast-forward through 30-second commercials -- is now unleashing its creative/destructive storm on the Internet.

Last week, the Silicon Valley based TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) -- in alliance with the German software company, Nero -- launched an online version of its DVR called TiVo PC. This TV tuner that can be plugged into a PC will be available in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada Oct. 15; $199 buys you a full year’s service with an annual renewal fee of $99.

All this raises a host of questions:

• Does the arrival of the TiVo PC set-top box represent the final convergence of television and Internet video?
• What will be the impact of TiVo's new device on the online video economy?
• Will TiVo be remembered as the company that helped slaughter the advertising golden goose that has enriched the broadcasting industry for the last 50 years?

The TiVo PC isn't the company’s first foray into uniting the online and television experiences. In July, for example, TiVo announced an alliance with Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), which enabled its 4 million U.S. subscribers to buy books, CDs, and DVDs directly from onscreen menus on their TVs. In March, TiVo launched an arrangement with YouTube Inc. by which its high-end Series 3 and HD subscribers would be allowed direct access to YouTube’s video content on their TVs. Given, however, that only around 3 percent of YouTube content currently comes with pre-roll advertising, it isn’t entirely clear what the real benefit of time-skipping technology is for TiVo subscribers wanting to watch YouTube videos on their TVs.

Earlier this year at "All Things D" TiVo's outspoken CEO Tom Rogers predicted that "Like it or not, it's 'game over' in terms of forcing people to watch commercials." With TiVo PC, a product that really represents the full convergence of TV and the Internet, Rogers is doing some fast-forwarding of his own with that prediction coming true.

It is particularly disturbing that the TiVo PC set-top box has been launched just as promising video channels like Hulu.com (3.2 viewers in June, according to Nielsen) and ABC.com (2.9 million viewers in June) are finally reaching their tipping points. All the video content on both these sites is free, all comes with pre-, mid-, and post-roll advertising, which, inevitably, will be skipped by the 50 percent of TiVo users who use their DVRs to avoid commercials.

So, if the DVR revolution spells game-over for forcing people to watch online commercials, then how are sites like ABC.com or Hulu.com supposed to finance their high-quality, curated content? Certainly not with the false panacea of product placement advertising in television content, which actually dropped 15 percent between the first half of 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately, then, a product like TiVo PC might well up end up spelling game-over for an inchoate online video business dependent on advertising revenue for its survival.

So what is TiVo's ultimate business goal with this convergence product? I did contact TiVo to learn more about its intentions, but -- surprise, surprise -- they never got back to me. So I'm left to speculate on these intentions for myself. On one level, of course, TiVo is simply trying to sell as many packages of $199 hardware and $99 software packages as it can.

But I wonder if there’s another, more sinister explanation here as well. In the summer of 2006, TiVo launched a research division designed to aggregate and then sell the data of how its millions of subscribers viewed commercials using their traditional television set-top boxes. TiVo PC will, of course, provide much richer and more intimate details of user behavior than does the company’s television product. As television and the Internet converge, perhaps we should imagine TiVo as the big brother of the emerging online video industry, a data mining company with treasure chests of valuable information about all of our Internet viewing behavior and preferences.
http://www.internetevolution.com/aut...doc_id=165304&





Alviso's TiVo Wins $104 Million Dish Battle
Ryan Kim

TiVo's patent battle with Dish Network Corp. turned in favor of the Alviso company Monday when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network's appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages.

Dish Network, which operates the No. 2 satellite TV service, said it will release the full amount from escrow to TiVo in the coming days.

TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind and record live television on digital video recorders.

EchoStar had wanted the Supreme Court to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that upheld a district court judgment of willful patent infringement, full award of damages and an injunction against Dish Network's infringing DVR products.

"We are extremely pleased that the United States Supreme Court has denied EchoStar's petition," TiVo said in a statement.

Dish Network said the ruling will not disrupt its customers' continued use of its video recorders because it has deployed work-around software that it says does not infringe on TiVo's intellectual property. But Dish still needs to prove that its work-around software does not violate TiVo's patents.

A lower court had issued an injunction against Dish, ordering it to stop the distribution of its DVRs. Dish continued to sell the set-top boxes, saying the DVRs did not employ software that infringed on TiVo's patents.

U.S. District Judge David Folsom of Texas will now decide if Dish was successful in steering clear of TiVo's patents. If not, the company could face additional damages for failing to comply with the injunction.

"We believe that the design-around does not infringe TiVo's patent and that TiVo's pending motion for contempt should be denied. We look forward to that ruling in the near future," the company said in a statement.

TiVo's shares finished up 11 cents, or 1.76 percent, to $6.37 per share on Monday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl....DTL&type=tech





CSIRO Wins Landmark Legal Battle

The CSIRO has won a landmark US legal battle against Buffalo Technology, under which it could receive royalties from every producer of wireless local area network (WLAN) products worldwide.

The CSIRO brought the case against Buffalo before the US Federal Court of the Eastern District of Texas in February last year, claiming the manufacturer had failed to pay royalties on US patent 5487069.

The patent, granted to CSIRO in 1996, encompasses elements of the 802.11a/g wireless technology that is now an industry standard.

It stems from a system developed by CSIRO in the early '90s, "to exchange large amounts of information wirelessly at high speed, within environments such as offices and homes", said a CSIRO spokeswoman.

Today the research group announced it had won the Buffalo case, with Judge Davis granting summary judgement in favour of CSIRO, reaffirming the patent's validity and supporting CSIRO's claims that Buffalo had infringed its patent.

A royalty rate is yet to be determined, but CSIRO chief executive, Geoff Garrett, said he hoped this would be decided by the court shortly.

"This is an important win because the judge has supported CSIRO's position comprehensively ... However, it is only a brick in the wall. CSIRO still has a long way to go," he said.

CSIRO is facing two other legal battles with some of the technology world's biggest players, who seek to have the patent invalidated, removing the need for them to pay CSIRO royalties.

CSIRO will take on Intel and Dell in one case and Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Netgear in the other. Both cases arose in May last year.

In its defence, CSIRO claimed that its position as a foreign government body meant it was immune from lawsuits.

The US Court of Appeals dismissed this argument and CSIRO followed up by filing counter-claims for patent infringement.

Its win against Buffalo could set an important precedent for the other cases, which could lead to CSIRO reaping massive royalties on every WLAN product produced.

A report by another Australian newspaper on its website said the battle was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but the CSIRO spokeswoman said this figure was "plucked out of the air".

"They asked me and I said I wasn't prepared to comment," she said.

"We're not talking about sums at all at this stage. We're just concentrating on the case."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/wirele...266614119.html





A.M.D. to Split Into Two Operations
Ashlee Vance

Advanced Micro Devices said Tuesday that it would split into two companies — one focused on designing microprocessors and the other on the costly business of manufacturing them — in a drastic effort to maintain its position as the only real rival to Intel.

In addition, the company said two Abu Dhabi investment firms would inject at least $6 billion into the two firms, mostly to finance a new chip factory that A.M.D. planned to build near Albany, N.Y., and to upgrade one of the company’s existing plants in Dresden, Germany.

A.M.D., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., makes graphics, computer and server processors. It will own 44.4 percent of the new entity, which has been temporarily named the Foundry Company, a reference to the technical term for a chip factory. The Advanced Technology Investment Company will own the rest.

Advanced Technology, which was formed by the Abu Dhabi government, has promised to put up $2.1 billion immediately and contribute $3.6 billion to $6 billion more to build or upgrade chip fabrication plants, also known as fabs. A.M.D. said the two companies would share voting control equally.

The Mubadala Development Company, an Abu Dhabi company that bought 8 percent of A.M.D. in November, will pay $314 million for 58 million newly issued shares, increasing its stake in the presplit company to 19.3 percent. It will also get warrants to buy 30 million shares. A.M.D. stock closed Monday at $4.23 a share, down 30 cents.

“We generally believe this deal is a game changer for the industry,” said Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chief executive of Mubadala. “It’s bold, and I think it’s smart.”

Coming up with the billions of dollars needed to construct each new chip plant has proved to be a huge drain on A.M.D., the perennial No. 2 to Intel in the market for microprocessors, the powerful chips that control the functions of personal computers and the larger corporate machines known as servers. As of June, A.M.D. reported that it had $5.3 billion in debt and just $1.6 billion in cash.

With the constant need to devise smaller, faster, more energy-efficient chips to keep up with Intel, A.M.D. was forced to turn to outside help.

“This is the biggest announcement in our history,” said A.M.D.’s chief executive, Dirk Meyer. “This will make us a financially stronger company, both in the near term and in the long term, as a result of being out from the capital expense burden we have had to bear.”

The semiconductor industry faces constant consolidation because of the amount of investment required to create ever finer components on semiconductors. In addition, chip makers tend to experience significant financial fluctuations as they adapt to shifts in manufacturing processes.

But executives from both Abu Dhabi investment groups expressed optimism that they’re buying into what is overall a growth business.

“Yes, it is a cyclical business, but over time the trajectory is always upwards,” said Waleed al-Mokarrab, chairman of Advanced Technology.

The transaction, which A.M.D. expects will close in early 2009, must be approved by shareholders, regulators and officials in New York and Germany who oversee government subsidies for the local chip plants.

A.M.D. said Foundry would manufacture processors for A.M.D. as well as other customers. This will place the new entity in competition with a host of companies, many of them in Asia, that produce chips designed by other firms.

The breakup of A.M.D. is a major shift in the processor landscape, leaving Intel as the only significant maker of PC chips to still design and build its own products. Such an arrangement is often seen as an advantage since it allows the chip maker to align new products with the latest advances in manufacturing technology.

The split, which has been in the works for more than a year, did not come easily to A.M.D. According to company lore, A.M.D.’s co-founder and longtime chief executive, W. J. Sanders III, known as Jerry, once remarked that “real men have fabs.”

Under the deal proposed by A.M.D., the company would retain many of the traditional benefits of fabs, since part of Foundry will be dedicated to serving A.M.D. and will remain in close communication with the company’s engineers.

“We feel like we’re still pretty manly at A.M.D.,” Mr. Meyer said. Noting that Mr. Sanders made his quip over a decade ago, he added, “Frankly, the math has changed.”

A.M.D. owns a pair of plants in Dresden. One of them is already state-of-the-art, but the other is undergoing a conversion that will let it produce processors for other companies as well as A.M.D.

With the cash infusion, A.M.D. said it was now committed to moving forward with plans, first announced in June 2006, to build a huge $3.2 billion chip fab in Malta, N.Y., north of Albany.

The plant, which will be owned by the new manufacturing company, will employ about 1,400 workers and is expected to get about $1.2 billion in incentives from the State of New York.

I.B.M., which also has chip plants in the state, has extended a technology pact with A.M.D. to 2015.

A.M.D. will count $700 million of the $2.1 billion from Advanced Technology as payment for its stake in the foundry company. Foundry will also assume $1.2 billion of A.M.D.’s debt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/te...gy/07chip.html





Windows XP: the Invincible OS
Davey Winder

Good news for consumers and business customers alike who would not touch Vista with a slow-running barge pole, bad news for Microsoft which is already touting the wonders of Windows 7. XP simply refuses to die, and Microsoft appears unable or unwilling to turn off the life support…

On April 15th 2007 I penned a story suggesting that the death of Windows XP should be accompanied by an epitaph of good riddance to insecure rubbish. In that same piece I reported how Microsoft had set a date of February 2008 to “kill off XP.”

It seems I may have been premature, as Microsoft really just does not seem to have the stomach to kill XP. This is not all that surprising, especially when you have the likes of Intel flicking the V’s at Vista. Just three short months ago an Intel insider (geddit?) revealed that the company had decided against upgrading to Vista after a “lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff” suggested the costs and potential benefits of making the switch were simply not worth it.

Nonetheless, Microsoft ploughed ahead with the official death to XP strategy and announced it was dead on June 30th when the OS would no longer be available to the likes of Dell and HP, and shrink-wrapped distribution would also cease. Shame then, that at the very start of July I was able to reveal that Dell was introducing a Windows Vista Bonus package for its buyers: the bonus being that your computer came with XP pre-installed instead of Vista.

XP just will not die for one simple reason, well two actually. Firstly there is a genuine demand in the market for an OS which is not as resource hungry as Vista yet is still Windows based. That OS demand is met by XP and not anything else, not even Linux which still frightens off the masses. Secondly, there is the reason for that demand. Which, and I’m sorry about this Microsoft, really does come back to the fact that Vista has just not made a compelling case for itself. It demands too much raw power to perform its magic, and even then you end up feeling like you have paid for Derren Brown and got Paul Daniels.

Which is why Microsoft OEM partners have been able to continue selling XP, with the no doubt begrudging blessing of Microsoft. The get-around is by way of selling a Vista PC with XP in the box and the ability to ‘downgrade’ by way of the supplied recovery disc. Seems quite apt really that you can recover from Vista and end up with XP.

Microsoft apparently had decided that OEMs could continue doing this until the end of January 2009, but under pressure has now caved in and given them an additional six months.

Of course, the fatal bullet could come from Microsoft itself when it releases the much talked about Windows 7 OS. If you cannot wait until the first half of 2010 when Windows 7 is slated for delivery, then you could always try a legit free copy this month as Microsoft is giving away pre-beta builds at PDC and WinHEC if you happen to be attending.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/...invincible-os/





'Smoot' Measurement Reaches New Heights at MIT
AP

The father of a measurement known as the ''Smoot'' returned Saturday to be honored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the school where he and his fraternity brothers invented it 50 years ago.

Oliver Smoot was the shortest pledge in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity in 1958 when its members decided to lay him on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. After discovering Smoot measured 5 feet 7, they marked the bridge in those increments, with an eventually exhausted Smoot getting up and down for each new measurement.

They soon determined the bridge was 364.4 Smoots long.

Today, Google.com's calculator function can convert any measurement into Smoots.

The original Smoot, who later became chairman of the American National Standards Institute, spoke Saturday at ''Smoot Celebration Day'' at MIT and received a plaque. The plaque will be installed on the bridge this year.

''This plaque will brighten the lives of windblown pedestrians,'' MIT President Susan Hockfield said during the presentation.

Smoot said the freshmen who repaint the Smoot markers on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge every year may not appreciate how good they have it.

''For years, the police departments of Boston and Cambridge took this as an infraction and would chase the guys repainting the marks -- but they called a truce,'' Smoot said. ''I'm not sure if they tell the freshmen that at least you won't get hauled into jail.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...Smoot-Day.html





Online Scientific Repository Hits Milestone
Press release

With 500,000 Articles, arXiv Established as Vital Library Resource

Reinforcing its place in the scientific community, the arXiv repository at Cornell University Library reached a new milestone in October 2008. Half a million e-print postings – research articles published online – now reside in arXiv, which is free and available to the public.

arXiv is the primary daily information source for hundreds of thousands of researchers in many areas of physics and related fields. Its users include the world's most prominent researchers in science, including 53 Physics Nobel Laureates, 31 Fields Medalists and 55 MacArthur Fellows, as well as people in countries with limited access to scientific materials. The famously reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posted the proof for the 100-year-old Poincaré Conjecture solely in arXiv.

Journalists also use the repository extensively to prepare articles for the general public about newly released scientific results. It has long stood at the forefront of the open-access movement and served as the model for many other initiatives, including the National Institute of Health’s PubMedCentral repository, and the many institutional DSpace repositories. arXiv is currently ranked the No. 1 repository in the world by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

“arXiv began its operations before the World Wide Web, search engines, online commerce and all the rest, but nonetheless anticipated many components of current ‘Web 2.0’ methodology,” said Cornell professor Paul Ginsparg, arXiv’s creator. “It continues to play a leading role at the forefront of new models for scientific communication.”

arXiv encompasses publications in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science and quantitative biology. Researchers upload their own articles to arXiv, and they are usually made available to the public the next day. A team of 113 volunteer moderators from around the world screen submissions and recommend whether they should be included in the repository.

More than 200,000 articles are downloaded from arXiv each week by about 400,000 users, and its 118,000 registered submitters live in nearly 200 countries, including Suriname, Sudan and Iraq. Fifteen countries host mirrors of the main site, which is located on Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, N.Y.

“It represents an incredible model for scholarly communication that transcends borders, publishers and time,” said Anne R. Kenney, Cornell’s Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. “We bring operational stability and a demonstrated track record of stewardship to this invaluable open-access resource.”

Ginsparg developed arXiv in 1991, when he was working for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. When Ginsparg came to Cornell as a faculty member in 2001, the repository came with him and is now a collaboration between Cornell University Library and Cornell’s Information Science Program. The Library maintains the repository; information science handles research and development.

The repository is continually evolving, adding links to other repositories and RSS feeds. New facilities are being developed to ease the submission process for authors and support the addition of articles from conference management systems. The new query-and-retrieval interface allows others to build additional services onto arXiv, such as an iPhone interface.

“We’re excited to not only sustain and grow arXiv, but also to make it an integral part of the global scholarly communications infrastructure,” said arXiv manager Simeon Warner, who has been working on the project for nearly a decade.
http://communications.library.cornel...-milestone.cfm





Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker's Library
Steven Levy

Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker's library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer ... is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II. In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy.

Wearing a huge can-you-believe-it grin is the collection's impresario, the 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of Walker Digital — a think tank churning out ideas and patents, it's best-known for its lucrative Priceline.com. "I started an R&D lab and have been an entrepreneur. So I have a big affinity for the human imagination," he says. "About a dozen years ago, my collection got so big that I said, 'It's time to build a room, a library, that would be about human imagination.'"

Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate his massive library. To create the space, which was constructed in 2002, Walker and architect Mark Finlay first built a 7-foot-long model. Then they used miniature cameras to help visualize what it would be like to move around inside. In a conscious nod to M. C. Escher (whose graphics are echoed in the wood tiling), the labyrinthine platforms seem to float in space, an illusion amplified by the glass-paneled bridges connecting the platforms. Walker commissioned decorative etched glass, dynamic lighting, and even a custom soundtrack that sets the tone for the cerebral adventures hidden in this cabinet of curiosities. "I said to the architect, 'Think of it as a theater, from a lighting and engineering standpoint,'" Walker says. "But it's not a performance space. It's an engagement space."

Walker shuns the sort of bibliomania that covets first editions for their own sake—many of the volumes that decorate the library's walls are leather-bound Franklin Press reprints. What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think, like Robert Hooke's Micrographia. Published in 1665, it was the first book to contain illustrations made possible by the microscope. He's also drawn to objects that embody a revelatory (or just plain weird) train of thought. "I get offered things that collectors don't," he says. "Nobody else would want a book on dwarfs, with pages beautifully hand-painted in silver and gold, but for me that makes perfect sense."

What excites him even more is using his treasures to make mind-expanding connections. He loves juxtapositions, like placing a 16th-century map that combines experience and guesswork—"the first one showing North and South America," he says—next to a modern map carried by astronauts to the moon. "If this is what can happen in 500 years, nothing is impossible."

Walker struggles to balance privacy with his impulse to share his finds with the outside world. Schoolchildren often visit by invitation, as do executives, politicians, and scholars. Last February, the organizers of the TED conference persuaded him to decorate their stage with some of his treasures. But he's never invited any press in to see the collection—until now.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/...urrentPage=all





Commerce Dept Cites Bogus Stats, Chamber Of Commerce Uses Them To Ask Bush To Accept Copyright Czar

We've seen it time and time again, where totally bogus stats about the "costs" of "piracy" are floated (usually by lobbyists) and then suddenly accepted as fact. It's even worse when it's government officials citing the stats as fact. Yet, we've got that happening again. In urging President Bush to sign into law the ProIP bill, which would give him a copyright czar (something the Justice Department had said it it doesn't want), the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy. Yet, it doesn't cite where that number comes from.

Wired's David Kravets tries to track down the source but finds no one can quite figure it out. Instead, they each point to different gov't organizations which have all quoted the number -- often citing each other, but no one pointing out where it actually came from. Chances are, of course, that the stat comes from a variety of reports, like the easily debunked piracy impact report from the BSA, put together by IDG. That lists out a number for job losses in the software industry that's simply untrue, and is based on only the negative impact of "piracy" impacting jobs, leaving out any positive impact (i.e., if a company used only pirated software, it could hire more people). That's not to defend piracy, but to note that the job loss claim is completely made up -- and now repeated by a variety of different government officials based on... nothing.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20081003/1946432453.shtml





Expelled Is Absolved
Anthony Falzone

After both the state and federal courts rejected the attempts of Yoko Ono Lennon and EMI Records to enjoin the showing of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed on the ground it used a 15-second fragment of John Lennon's Imagine, all of the plaintiffs in both cases have now withdrawn their claims and dismissed their cases.

This is the right result to be sure. There should never have been any doubt the filmmakers who were sued here had every right to use a short segment of a song for the purpose of criticizing it and the views it represents. But the right result came far too late. The mere pendency of these cases caused the film's DVD distributor to shy away from releasing the full film -- the version that includes the Imagine segment. So the film goes out on DVD on October 21 in censored form, illustrating the damage that even an unproved and unsupported infringement claim can do.

At the same time, the result here -- great but imperfect -- is a fantastic lesson in how we might start to solve the fair use dilemma. We launched the Documentary Film Program with Media Professional Insurance and Michael Donaldson to help solve a critical problem: fair use rights are expensive to use because they require lots of lawyer time. Media Pro took the visionary step of insuring fair use risks. We and Donaldson agreed to mediate these risks by vetting the fair use issues ahead of time. (We do it for free; Donaldson has to make a living.) Donaldson reviewed Expelled, and Media Pro insured it. When its producers got sued, we agreed to defend it pro bono, alongside the producers' regular counsel at the Locke Lord firm. Together we won, kept the cost to Media Pro minimal, and thus demonstrated that the fair use problem can be solved, in many (but perhaps not all) cases by teamwork like this.

I'm proud to have been a part of it.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5876





In Defense of Piracy

Digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up.
Lawrence Lessig

In early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz's 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, "Let's Go Crazy." He had heard the song before. The beat had obviously stuck. So when Holden heard the song again, he did what any sensible 13-month-old would do -- he accepted Prince's invitation and went "crazy" to the beat. Holden's mom grabbed her camcorder and, for 29 seconds, captured the priceless image of Holden dancing, with the barely discernible Prince playing on a CD player somewhere in the background.

Ms. Lenz wanted her mother to see the film. But you can't easily email a movie. So she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. They watched the video scores of times. It was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video, readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch.

Sometime over the next four months, however, someone from Universal Music Group also watched Holden dance. Universal manages the copyrights of Prince. It fired off a letter to YouTube demanding that it remove the unauthorized "performance" of Prince's music. YouTube, to avoid liability itself, complied. A spokeswoman for YouTube declined to comment.

This sort of thing happens all the time today. Companies like YouTube are deluged with demands to remove material from their systems. No doubt a significant portion of those demands are fair and justified. Universal's demand, however, was not. The quality of the recording was terrible. No one would download Ms. Lenz's video to avoid paying Prince for his music. There was no plausible way in which Prince or Universal was being harmed by Holden Lenz.

YouTube sent Ms. Lenz a notice that it was removing her video. She wondered, "Why?" What had she done wrong? She pressed that question through a number of channels until it found its way to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (on whose board I sat until the beginning of 2008). The foundation's lawyers thought this was a straightforward case of fair use. Ms. Lenz consulted with the EFF and filed a "counter-notice" to YouTube, arguing that no rights of Universal were violated by Holden's dance.

Yet Universal's lawyers insist to this day that sharing this home movie is willful copyright infringement under the laws of the United States. On their view of the law, she is liable to a fine of up to $150,000 for sharing 29 seconds of Holden dancing. Universal declined to comment.

How is it that sensible people, people no doubt educated at some of the best universities and law schools in the country, would come to think it a sane use of corporate resources to threaten the mother of a dancing 13-month-old? What is it that allows these lawyers and executives to take a case like this seriously, to believe there's some important social or corporate reason to deploy the federal scheme of regulation called copyright to stop the spread of these images and music? "Let's Go Crazy" indeed!

It doesn't have to be like this. We could craft copyright law to encourage a wide range of both professional and amateur creativity, without threatening Prince's profits. We could reject the notion that Internet culture must oppose profit, or that profit must destroy Internet culture. But real change will be necessary if this is to be our future -- changes in law, and changes in us.

For now, trials like Ms. Lenz's are becoming increasingly common. Both professionals, such as the band Girl Talk or the artist Candice Breitz, and amateurs, including thousands creating videos posted on YouTube, are finding themselves the target of overeager lawyers. Because their creativity captures or includes the creativity of others, the owners of the original creation are increasingly invoking copyright to stop the spread of this unauthorized speech. This new work builds upon the old by in effect "quoting" the old. But while writers with words have had the freedom to quote since time immemorial, "writers" with digital technology have not yet earned this right. Instead, the lawyers insist permission is required to include the protected work in anything new.

Not all owners, of course. Viacom, for example, has effectively promised to exempt practically any amateur remix from its lawyers' concerns. But enough owners insist on permission to have touched, and hence, taint, an extraordinary range of extraordinary creativity, including remixes in the latest presidential campaign. During the Republican primary, for example, Fox News ordered John McCain's campaign to stop using a clip of Sen. McCain at a Fox News-moderated debate in an ad. And two weeks ago, Warner Music Group got YouTube to remove a video attacking Barack Obama, which used pieces of songs like the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." (Spokesman Will Tanous of Warner Music Group, which represents the Talking Heads, says the request came from the band's management.) Around the same time, NBC asked the Obama campaign to pull an ad that remixed some NBC News footage with Tom Brokaw and Keith Olbermann.

We are in the middle of something of a war here -- what some call "the copyright wars"; what the late Jack Valenti called his own "terrorist war," where the "terrorists" are apparently our kids. But if I asked you to shut your eyes and think about these "copyright wars," your mind would not likely run to artists like Girl Talk or creators like Stephanie Lenz. Peer-to-peer file sharing is the enemy in the "copyright wars." Kids "stealing" stuff with a computer is the target. The war is not about new forms of creativity, not about artists making new art.

Yet every war has its collateral damage. These creators are this war's collateral damage. The extreme of regulation that copyright law has become makes it difficult, sometimes impossible, for a wide range of creativity that any free society -- if it thought about it for just a second -- would allow to exist, legally. In a state of "war," we can't be lax. We can't forgive infractions that might at a different time not even be noticed. Think "Eighty-year-old Grandma Manhandled by TSA Agents," and you're in the right frame for this war as well.

The work of these remix creators is valuable in ways that we have forgotten. It returns us to a culture that, ironically, artists a century ago feared the new technology of that day would destroy. In 1906, for example, perhaps America's then most famous musician, John Phillip Sousa, warned Congress about the inevitable loss that the spread of these "infernal machines" -- the record player -- would cause. As he described it:

"When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left. The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape."

A professional fearful that new technology would destroy the amateur. "The tide of amateurism cannot but recede," he predicted. A recession that he believed would only weaken culture.

A new generation of "infernal machines" has now reversed this trend. New technology is restoring the "vocal chords" of millions. Wikipedia is a text version of this amateur creativity. Much of YouTube is the video version. A new generation has been inspired to create in a way our generation could not imagine. And tens of thousands, maybe millions, of "young people" again get together to sing "the songs of the day or the old songs" using this technology. Not on corner streets, or in parks near their homes. But on platforms like YouTube, or MySpace, with others spread across the world, whom they never met, or never even spoke to, but whose creativity has inspired them to create in return.

The return of this "remix" culture could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced. It could return our culture to a practice that has marked every culture in human history -- save a few in the developed world for much of the 20th century -- where many create as well as consume. And it could inspire a deeper, much more meaningful practice of learning for a generation that has no time to read a book, but spends scores of hours each week listening, or watching or creating, "media."

Yet our attention is not focused on these creators. It is focused instead upon "the pirates." We wage war against these "pirates"; we deploy extraordinary social and legal resources in the absolutely failed effort to get them to stop "sharing."

This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.

Copyright law must be changed. Here are just five changes that would make a world of difference:

Deregulate amateur remix: We need to restore a copyright law that leaves "amateur creativity" free from regulation. Before the 20th century, this culture flourished. The 21st century could see its return. Digital technologies have democratized the ability to create and re-create the culture around us. Where the creativity is an amateur remix, the law should leave it alone. It should deregulate amateur remix.

What happens when others profit from this creativity? Then a line has been crossed, and the remixed artists plainly ought to be paid -- at least where payment is feasible. If a parent has remixed photos of his kid with a song by Gilberto Gil (as I have, many times), then when YouTube makes the amateur remix publicly available, some compensation to Mr. Gil is appropriate -- just as, for example, when a community playhouse lets neighbors put on a performance consisting of a series of songs sung by neighbors, the public performance of those songs triggers a copyright obligation (usually covered by a blanket license issued to the community playhouse). There are plenty of models within the copyright law for assuring that payment. We need to be as creative as our kids in finding a model that works.

Deregulate "the copy": Copyright law is triggered every time there is a copy. In the digital age, where every use of a creative work produces a "copy," that makes as much sense as regulating breathing. The law should also give up its obsession with "the copy," and focus instead on uses -- like public distributions of copyrighted work -- that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.

Simplify: If copyright regulation were limited to large film studios and record companies, its complexity and inefficiency would be unfortunate, though not terribly significant. But when copyright law purports to regulate everyone with a computer, there is a special obligation to make sure this regulation is clear. It is not clear now. Tax-code complexity regulating income is bad enough; tax-code complexity regulating speech is a First Amendment nightmare.

Restore efficiency: Copyright is the most inefficient property system known to man. Now that technology makes it trivial, we should return to the system of our framers requiring at least that domestic copyright owners maintain their copyright after an automatic, 14-year initial term. It should be clear who owns what, and if it isn't, the owners should bear the burden of making it clear.

Decriminalize Gen-X: The war on peer-to-peer file-sharing is a failure. After a decade of fighting, the law has neither slowed file sharing, nor compensated artists. We should sue not kids, but for peace, and build upon a host of proposals that would assure that artists get paid for their work, without trying to stop "sharing."

—Adapted from "Remix" by Lawrence Lessig, to be published by The Penguin Press on Oct. 16, 2008. Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, 2008. Printed by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html





RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later
EFF

On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry’s best customers: music fans.1 Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals.2 These individuals have included children, grandparents, unemployed single mothers, college professors—a random selection from the millions of Americans who have used P2P networks. And there’s no end in sight; new lawsuits are filed monthly, and now they are supplemented by a flood of "pre-litigation" settlement letters designed to extract settlements without any need to enter a courtroom.3

But suing music fans has proven to be an ineffective response to unauthorized P2P file-sharing. Downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits.4 And the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists. One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.

I. Prelude: Sue the Technology

The music industry initially responded to P2P file sharing as it has often responded to disruptive innovations in the past: it sent its lawyers after the innovators, hoping to smother the technology in its infancy. Beginning with the December 1999 lawsuit against Napster, the recording industry has sued major P2P technology companies one after the other: Scour, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, iMesh, and LimeWire.5

Although these same technologies were also being used for non-infringing purposes, including sharing of authorized songs, live concert recordings, public domain works, movie trailers, and video games, the record industry has won most of these lawsuits—but it is still losing the war.6 After Napster was shut down, new networks quickly appeared. Napster was replaced by Aimster and AudioGalaxy, which were supplanted in turn by LimeWire, Morpheus and Kazaa, which were then partially supplanted by eDonkey and BitTorrent.7

Meanwhile, the number of filesharers, as well as the number of P2P software applications, has continued to grow. Today, P2P networks that rely on open protocols and open source software flourish independently of any particular software vendor.8 P2P comprises 45% of Internet traffic, in part since technologies like BitTorrent have been adopted for a variety of mainstream legitimate uses.9 In addition, music fans have turned to new, so-called "darknet" solutions, such as swapping iPods, burning DVD-Rs, modifying Apple’s iTunes software to permit downloading of other users’ libraries, and using private online storage networks to send large files to friends.10

Nonetheless, the recording industry, bolstered by the June 2005 Supreme Court decision in MGM v. Grokster, continues to use legal threats to intimidate P2P technology companies.11 Some of those companies, such as iMesh, BearShare and Kazaa have bowed to the legal pressure and agreed to "filter" infringing material from their networks. To little avail: filtered P2P applications have been quickly eclipsed by new, unfiltered alternatives. Indeed, developing unfiltered P2P software is well within the capabilities of small offshore companies, or even individual hobbyist programmers. After all, a college student was able to create Napster in mere months,12 and BitTorrent was largely the handiwork of one unemployed software developer working in his spare time.13 Today, most computer science undergraduates could assemble a new P2P file sharing application in a few weeks time.14

In the meantime, other P2P technology sites have made themselves less vulnerable to legal assault by expanding and drawing attention to legitimate uses of P2P technology. BitTorrent indexing site Isohunt.com, for example, has promoted public domain material, and has formed an alliance with Jamendo, an archive of Creative Commons-licensed music from a variety of independent musicians.15

In short, suing the technology hasn’t worked.

II. Phase One: DMCA Subpoenas by the Thousands

In the summer of 2003, the RIAA announced that it was gathering evidence in preparation for lawsuits against individuals who were sharing music on P2P networks.16 As they have for the entirety of the litigation campaign, the RIAA investigators targeted "uploaders"—individuals who were allowing others to copy music files from their "shared" folders. The investigators ran the same software as the other P2P users, searched for recordings owned by their record label masters, and then collected the IP addresses of those who were offering those recordings.17

However, RIAA investigators could not tie an IP address to a name and street address without help from the uploader’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). In order to force ISPs to hand over this information, the RIAA resorted to a special subpoena power that its lobbyists had slipped into the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998.18 Under this provision, a copyright owner is entitled to issue a subpoena to an ISP seeking the identity of a subscriber accused of copyright infringement. In the view of the recording industry’s lawyers, this entitled them to get names and addresses from an ISP with a mere allegation of infringement—no need to file a lawsuit, no requirement of proof, and no oversight by a judge.

Thanks to the efforts of EFF, ISPs and numerous public interest groups, the courts ultimately rejected this unprecedented breach of privacy. The RIAA had begun testing the DMCA subpoena power in 2003, when it delivered a few subpoenas to a variety of ISPs in what was widely viewed as a "test run." Verizon (as well as Charter Communications and Pacific Bell Internet Services) fought back in court to defend the privacy of its customers.19 EFF, alongside a host of public interest and privacy organizations, joined with Verizon to argue that every Internet user’s privacy was at risk if anyone claiming to be a copyright owner could, without ever appearing before a judge, force an ISP to hand over the names and addresses of its customers.20

Unfortunately, Verizon and the privacy advocates lost the first rounds in court. That gave the RIAA the green light to start delivering thousands of subpoenas in order to build a list of potential lawsuit targets. Between August and September 2003, the RIAA issued more than 1,500 subpoenas to ISPs around the country.21

On September 8, 2003, the RIAA announced the first 261 lawsuits against individuals that it had identified using the DMCA subpoenas.22 Among those sued was Brianna Lahara, a twelve-year-old girl living with her single mother in public housing in New York City.23 In order to settle the case, Brianna was forced to apologize publicly and pay $2,000.24

Just as privacy advocates had feared, however, the lack of judicial oversight in the subpoena process resulted in abuses. For example, Sarah Ward, a Macintosh-using Massachusetts grandmother, was accused of using Windows-only Kazaa to download hard-core rap music.25 Although the RIAA ultimately withdrew the lawsuit against her, it remained unapologetic: in the words of an RIAA spokesperson, "When you go fishing with a driftnet, sometimes you catch a dolphin."26

The subpoena power also attracted other, less scrupulous copyright owners. A vendor of hard-core gay pornographic videos, Titan Media, began using the DMCA subpoena process to identify and contact individuals allegedly sharing Titan videos on P2P networks. These targets were contacted by Titan and given the choice of either being named in a (potentially embarrassing) lawsuit, or purchasing the Titan videos in exchange for "amnesty."27 Several observers felt that this tactic bordered on extortion.28

After enduring stinging criticism on Capitol Hill from Senator Norm Coleman, the RIAA changed gears.29 Rather than suing people directly after obtaining their names with DMCA subpoenas, the RIAA began sending threat letters first, giving the accused an opportunity to settle the matter before a lawsuit was filed. In October 2003, the RIAA sent 204 letters to alleged filesharers.30 Most of the targets settled for amounts averaging $3,000.31 The 80 who did not accept the RIAA offer were sued a few weeks later.32

Then the legal landscape changed. On December 19, 2003, a federal appeals court agreed with Verizon that the DMCA subpoena provision did not authorize the RIAA’s "driftnet fishing" tactics.33 The court overturned the lower court ruling and found that the DMCA subpoenas were available only where the allegedly infringing material was stored on the ISPs’ own computers, not for situations involving P2P file-sharing where the material was stored on a subscriber’s individual computer.

The decision brought the RIAA’s mass-subpoena campaign to a halt. If the RIAA wanted to use the federal subpoena power to identify Internet users, it would have to file a lawsuit and conduct its efforts under the supervision of a judge. In other words, the RIAA would have to play by the same rules as every other litigant in federal court.

Nonetheless, by the time the court of appeals decided RIAA v. Verizon, more than 3,000 subpoenas had already been issued.34 More than 400 lawsuits had been brought on the basis of the names obtained with those subpoenas, and hundreds more had settled in response to an intimidating RIAA demand letter.35 Even though the RIAA had used illegal tactics to pursue these lawsuits, none of the defendants who settled received any money back.
III. Phase Two: Mass John Doe Lawsuits

On January 21, 2004, the lawsuit campaign entered a new phase when the RIAA announced 532 new "John Doe" lawsuits.36 In these lawsuits, the record label lawyers sued unidentified "John Doe" uploaders that investigators had traced to an IP address. After filing the lawsuit, the record labels would ask the court to authorize subpoenas against the ISPs. After delivering these subpoenas and obtaining the real name of the subscriber behind the IP address, the record label lawyers would then either deliver a letter demanding a settlement or amend their lawsuit to name the identified individual.

This procedure was a distinct improvement over the DMCA subpoenas because it required the RIAA investigators and lawyers to follow the same rules that apply to all civil litigants. It injected judicial oversight into the process and afforded innocent individuals the opportunity to challenge the subpoenas. It did not, however, stop the lawsuits.

The RIAA filed 5,460 lawsuits during 2004, ringing in the new school year with a wave of suits against university students and bringing the total number of lawsuits to 7,437.37 By the end of 2005, the total number of suits had swelled to 16,087.38 In February 2006, at which point 17,587 had been sued, the RIAA stopped making monthly announcements regarding the precise number of suits being filed. As a result, it is now impossible to get an exact count of the total number of lawsuits that have been filed. The lawsuits, however, have continued, with the RIAA admitting in April 2007 that more than 18,000 individuals had been sued by its member companies,39 and news reports showing the number as of October 2007 to be at least 30,000.40

Most lawsuit targets settle their cases for amounts ranging between $3,000 and $11,000. They have little choice—even if an individual has a defense, it is generally more expensive to hire a lawyer to fight than it would be simply to settle. Ignoring the lawsuit can also be more expensive than settling; at least one court has entered a default judgment of $6,200 against a defendant who failed to contest the lawsuit.41

Moreover, even the best defense involves some risk of loss, and a loss could result in a major financial penalty. One court awarded a $22,500 judgment against a Chicago woman who attempted to fight the lawsuit against her.42 Another awarded a $40,850 judgment against an Arizona man who tried to defend himself without a lawyer.43 And in the first filesharing case to go to trial, Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable for $222,000 in damages for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa.44 In a ruling granting Thomas’ request for a new trial one year later (on other grounds), the judge in the case implored Congress to revise the Copyright Act to lower statutory penalties for individual, noncommercial infringers.45

IV. Personal Effects = Devastating

There is no question that the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign is unfairly singling out a few people for a disproportionate amount of punishment. Tens of millions of Americans continue to use P2P file sharing software and other new technologies to share music, yet the RIAA has randomly singled out only a few for retribution through lawsuits. Unfortunately, many of the people in this group cannot afford either to settle or to defend themselves.

Take, for example, the case of the Tammy Lafky, a 41-year-old sugar mill worker and single mother in Minnesota. Because her teenage daughter downloaded some music—an activity both mother and daughter believed to be legal—Lafky faced over $500,000 in penalties. The RIAA offered to settle for $4,000, but even that sum was well beyond Lafky’s means—she earned just $21,000 per year and received no child support.46

Or consider the case of the defendant who faced the $22,500 judgment discussed above, Cecilia Gonzalez. Gonzalez, a mother of five, was hit with the judgment just two weeks after she was laid off from her job as a secretary—a job where she made not much more than that amount in an entire year. Ironically, Gonzalez primarily downloaded songs she already owned on CD—the downloads were meant to help her avoid the labor of manually loading the 250 CDs she owns onto her computer. In fact, the record companies were going after a steady customer—Gonzalez and her husband spent about $30 per month on CDs.47

Gonzalez is not the only good customer the RIAA has chosen to alienate. The organization also targeted a fully disabled widow and veteran for downloading over 500 songs she already owned. The veteran’s mobility was limited; by downloading the songs onto her computer, she was able to access the music in the room in which she primarily resides. The RIAA offered to settle for $2,000—but only if the veteran provided a wealth of private information regarding her disability and her finances.48

Prof. Gerardo Valecillos, a Spanish teacher and recent immigrant from Venezuela, faced another kind of blackmail. After his ISP advised him that his daughter had illegally downloaded music, Valecillos contacted a lawyer. The lawyer negotiated a $3,000 settlement figure, but that was still far more than Valecillos was able to pay. The sole support for his family of four, Valecillos had recently undergone surgery and been forced to pay legal fees for both a copyright and immigration attorney. Failing to settle could have jeopardized his immigration status.49

In yet another instance, Cassi Hunt, a student at M.I.T. sued for illegally sharing music, attempted to negotiate the RIAA’s proposed settlement price of $3,750. Hunt pointed out that she was already in debt to cover tuition. The RIAA’s response? Its representative suggested that she drop out of school in order to pay off the settlement.50

The RIAA has also failed to verify that its targets are actually current file-sharers. John Paladuk was an employee of C&N railroad for 36 years and suffered a stroke in 2006 which left his entire left side paralyzed, and severely impaired his speech, leaving him disabled with his disability check as his only source of income. Despite this, the RIAA has filed suit in Michigan against Mr. Paladuk, even though he lived in Florida at the time of the alleged infringement and has no knowledge of file sharing.51 One Florida college senior was named in a civil case based on downloads that had occurred two to three years before, from a computer she then shared with her three roommates. The computer was long gone, making any investigation into the circumstances difficult at best. Fearful of leaving college with a damaged credit record, the student believed that she had no choice but to meet the RIAA’s demand.52

Indeed, we many never know how many entirely innocent people have been caught in the net of the recording industry lawsuits and forced to settle in order to avoid the legal fees involved with defending themselves. In addition to Sarah Ward, the grandmother wrongly accused in the very first round of lawsuits, the RIAA in early 2005 sued Gertrude Walton of Mount Hope, West Virginia, who had passed away months before.53 In yet another case, Lee Thao of Wisconsin was sued for sharing files when both the RIAA and the ISP overlooked the fact that Mr. Thao was not actually a customer of the ISP at the time of the alleged infringement, though his old cable modem remained registered to his name.54 Although these suits were ultimately dismissed, it raises troubling questions about how many others have been misidentified in the lawsuit campaign.

V. Fighting Back

While the majority of lawsuit victims continue to settle or default rather than face the expense of litigation, some accused filesharers are fighting back. In particular, parents have succeeded in dismissing suits where their children were the ones responsible for the file sharing. Indeed, one such parent was able to recover attorney’s fees for the initial suit.55

In May 2005, accused file-sharer Candy Chan moved to dismiss the record companies’ lawsuit against her on the ground that the RIAA had sued the wrong person. The RIAA was forced to withdraw the case, though it later filed a new lawsuit against Ms. Chan’s 14-year-old daughter.56 This suit was also eventually dismissed in April of 2006 after the RIAA requested that a legal guardian be appointed for Ms. Chan’s daughter, but then refused to pay for such a guardian as ordered by the court.57

In August 2005, Patricia Santangelo, a single mother of five, moved to dismiss the lawsuit filed against her by several record companies.58 Santangelo says that she was not aware that there was a file sharing program on her computer, and that the file sharing account named in the lawsuit belongs to a friend of her children. The case was dismissed in April of 2007, with the opportunity for Ms. Santangelo to pursue her claim for attorney’s fees.59 The RIAA responded by suing her son and daughter, based on alleged evidence from the first case.60 When Michelle, the daughter, refused to respond, a default judgment was entered against her for $31,000. However, the judge vacated the judgment, saying he preferred cases be decided on their merits.61

A federal judge recently ruled that an RIAA boilerplate complaint could not support a default judgment, which is a court order for money damages against a defendant who doesn't show up, essentially forfeiting his chance to defend himself.62 This may make it more difficult for the recording industry to collect large judgments against individuals who are unable to afford lawyers to appear in court on their behalf.

Even RIAA "victories" are sometimes short lived. In October 2007, in the first case to reach a jury trial, a Minnesota jury found that Jammie Thomas had infringed copyright by sharing 24 songs and awarded the record company plaintiffs $222,000 in damages. In September 2008, however, the judge threw out the verdict, citing an erroneous jury instruction that stated that Ms. Thomas could be liable for distribution based on the presence of music files in a shared folder, whether or not anyone ever downloaded any of the 24 songs from her computer.63 The ruling joins two others that have rejected the RIAA’s "making available" theory.64

The RIAA’s pre-lawsuit investigations have also come under fire. After having his case dismissed, Rolando Amurao countersued for a declaration of non-infringement and a finding of copyright misuse.65 In the process, he challenged MediaSentry, the company the RIAA often hires to monitor and catch suspected filesharers. He claimed that they acted as a private investigator without the proper license.66 The judge rejected these claims, but Amurao is appealing.67

Amurao was not alone in his concerns. Academics have raised serious questions about the accuracy of RIAA investigators’ results, which is especially important given that their information often forms the bulk of evidence in RIAA lawsuits.68 A 2008 study by researchers at the University of Washington revealed that DMCA takedown notices are sent based on inconclusive evidence—and sometimes even to printers and other devices that do not download music or movies at all.69 And the RIAA has admitted that it bases its DMCA notices to universities and colleges solely on identifying files as "available" for sharing—even though, as discussed above, three courts have found that the presence of a file in a shared folder is not itself proof of infringing distribution.

MediaSentry, the investigators relied upon most frequently in these cases, is also facing investigation by various governmental entities. In North Carolina, it is being investigated by the North Carolina Private Protective Services Board, which controls private investigator licenses.70 In Massachusetts, it has been ordered by the state to cease and desist unlicensed private investigations.71 And Michigan has passed a law requiring computer forensics groups like MediaSentry to obtain a license.72 Finally, defendants in Oregon, Florida, Texas, New York have challenged RIAA investigators for operating without a license.73 Also, the Oregon Attorney General has launched an investigation on their practices without a license, expressing concerns about the extensive use of evidence obtained by MediaSentry to force quick settlements, without court scrutiny.74

VI. Phase Three: Targeting Higher Education

On February 28, 2007, the RIAA announced a new "deterrence and education initiative" targeting college students nationwide.75 Under this new initiative, instead of initiating lawsuits, the RIAA sends out hundreds of "pre-litigation" letters each month to a variety of universities with the request that they forward these letters to unidentified students.76 These letters identify the IP address of the accused infringer, threaten future legal action with damages upwards of $750 per song, and offer a deal in the form of a "reduced" settlement if the student comes forward and pays the non-negotiable amount (around $3,000) within 20 days of receiving the letter.77 If the students does not respond to the pre-litigation settlement offer, then the labels file a traditional "John Doe" suit.78 In the first six months of this new initiative, the RIAA targeted 2,926 college students at nearly 100 different campuses across the United States.79 Within a year, the RIAA had sent over 5,400 letters to 160 different schools.80 The RIAA has allegedly collected millions in this pre-litigation settlement campaign.81

The campaign has been supplemented with the creation of a new website, http://www.P2Plawsuits.com. At the website, those receiving pre-litigation letters can simply settle their cases by paying the settlement with a credit card, without any aspect of the case ever entering the legal system. This in turn saves the recording industry the substantial costs of actually having to file and pursue a "John Doe" suit. The "reduced" settlement amount, in other words, represents the record companies’ savings from cutting out the middleman—our justice system. At the same time, the costs saved by the RIAA in not filing an actual suit can then be applied towards targeting more students with pre-litigation letters.

The RIAA has put special effort into getting universities to deliver these pre-litigation letters. However, university responses to this effort have been varied, ranging from complete refusal to forward pre-litigation letters to students, to fining students upon receipt. Since the letters are sent under threat of legal action, but before any lawsuit commences, the colleges themselves are under no legal obligation to forward these letters to students who have been targeted. The University of Wisconsin, the University of Maine and the University of Kansas, for example, have refused to forward the pre-litigation letters, citing a refusal to be the RIAA's "legal agent."82

Stanford University in California has taken the opposite tack. Not only do they forward on such letters, but starting in September 2007, the university began charging students for complaints they receive from the RIAA. The first offense comes with a $100 reconnection fee unless the student responds within 48 hours, the second a $500 fee, and $1,000 for the third.83 Other schools are taking similar steps.84 Most universities, however, appear to be forwarding RIAA pre-litigation letters on to their students, apparently on the assumption that a student will be better off settling sooner, at the "discounted" rate, rather than later.

Some students targeted by the RIAA have gone to court, with mixed success.85 University of Maine law students are fighting not only to stop a particular set of subpoenas, but to bar the RIAA from bringing such suits in the future without good faith evidentiary support.86 Other students are getting support from their universities.87 The University of Oregon has been fighting subpoenas with help from Oregon's Attorney General (who also argues that RIAA tactics may be illegal under state law.)88 The University of San Francisco's legal clinic has sought to advise members of the public in addition to students targeted by RIAA lawsuits.89 The University of Central Arkansas defies the RIAA in another way, by designing their network so that IP addresses change constantly and are not recorded; as a result, even with a subpoena there is no way to find out who did what on their network, so no act can be tied to a specific person.90

Meanwhile, not content with using the judicial process, the RIAA has used its lobbying power to put intense pressure on universities to use filtering and other technologies to stop P2P file-sharing. In May 2007, members of Congress from both parties on the House Judiciary and the Education and Labor Committees sent a letter to 20 universities requesting that they respond to an extensive survey asking about their policies regarding network file sharing.91 These were universities previously targeted by the RIAA and the MPAA in their Top-25 list of "worst offenders." The letter threatened "unspecified repercussions" if the universities did not provide "acceptable answers" to the survey, which included questions such as: "Does your institution expel violating students?"

One year later, after months of intensive wrangling, Congress passed the Higher Education Act (HEA), which included a provision requiring campuses to develop "plans to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including through the use of a variety of technology-based deterrents." However, the Common Solutions Group, a consortium of 25 educational institutions, looked at the leading "infringement suppression" technologies and concluded that they were expensive, not very effective, and could suppress legitimate as well as infringing traffic.92 And, the Association for Computing Machinery found that the mandatory use of these technological deterrents would "add to the costs of education and university research, introduce new security and privacy issues, degrade existing rights under copyright, and have little or no lasting impact on infringement of copyrighted works."93

VII. Is it Working?

Are the lawsuits working? Has the arbitrary singling out of nearly 30,000 random American families helped promote public respect for copyright law? Have the lawsuits put the P2P genie back in the bottle or restored the record industry to its 1997 revenues?

After five years of threats and litigation, the answer is a resounding no.

By the Numbers: U.S. File-sharers Undeterred

How many Americans continue to use P2P file sharing software to download music? Because of the decentralized nature of P2P networks, it is extremely difficult to answer this question definitively. However, virtually all surveys and studies agree that P2P usage has grown steadily since the RIAA’s litigation campaign began in 2003.

For example, at the end of 2004, a group of independent computer scientists at UC San Diego and UC Riverside published a study aimed at measuring P2P usage from 2002 through 2004. Drawing on empirical data collected from two Tier 1 ISPs, the researchers concluded:

In general we observe that P2P activity has not diminished. On the contrary, P2P traffic represents a significant amount of Internet traffic and is likely to continue to grow in the future, RIAA behavior notwithstanding.94

The methodology employed by the researchers had several advantages over the survey-based approaches that had been used in earlier studies. The empirical data eliminated the self-reporting bias that is an inevitable part of surveys, a bias that was almost certainly exacerbated by the high-profile lawsuit campaign. In addition, by measuring traffic at the link level, the study was able to track file sharing that may not show up otherwise due to the use of alternate ports.95

Other empirical data has continued to support the UC researchers’ findings. Big Champagne, for example, monitors the peak number of U.S. users of several P2P networks. Its numbers are accurate enough to be used by major record labels, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, and Clear Channel to monitor the popularity of various artists on those networks.96 Big Champagne’s network monitoring indicates that the amount of traffic on P2P networks doubled between September 2003 (when the lawsuits began) and June 2005.97 The average number of simultaneous users in June 2005 reached 8.9 million, a 20% increase over the previous year. In May 2006 Big Champagne logged a whopping 10 million, 12% more than the previous year.98 American users accounted for 75% of those on P2P networks.99 The NPD Group, a marketing research firm, announced that 15 million U.S. households downloaded from P2P networks in 2006, with total P2P file sharing volume up 50% from 2005.100

Data from BayTSP, which monitors P2P file sharing networks in order to provide copyright enforcement services to major motion picture studios and record labels, also indicate that P2P file sharing continued to grow despite the RIAA lawsuit campaign.101 In particular, BayTSP’s statistics highlighted the growth of newer P2P networks, such as eDonkey, at the expense of incumbent networks, like Kazaa.102

The growth in P2P popularity continued in 2007 and 2008. Big Champagne reports that the average number of simultaneous users on P2P networks swelled to 9.35 million in 2007.103 The NPD’s 2007 Digital Music Study found that while the percentage of the population engaged in P2P file sharing stayed constant, the number of files each user downloaded increased throughout 2007—and that P2P music sharing continued to grow aggressively among teens.104 These numbers likely understate the frequency of P2P downloading, given that NPD's numbers are based on data from users who know they are being monitored. Other data suggests that consumers now consider P2P file-sharing applications to be a necessity on their PCs.105 According to a February 2007 report by the Digital News Research Group, 18.3% of all computer desktops worldwide had LimeWire installed.106

A few early surveys of Internet users contradicted these numbers. For example, in November and December 2003, researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project called 1,358 Internet users across the nation to ask them whether they continued to download music.107 In March 2003, prior to the RIAA lawsuits, 29 percent of those responding admitted downloading songs from the Internet. This number fell by half, to only 14 percent, in the November/December survey. Many pointed out, however, that this dramatic shift might have been caused by an increased reluctance to admit downloading in light of the widely publicized RIAA lawsuits. In other words, the widespread publicity attending the RIAA lawsuits may have encouraged the respondents to be more willing to lie about their downloading activities. Pew’s own investigators admitted that the publicity may have influenced their results.108 Indeed, a survey conducted by the NPD Group showed that, overall, P2P file sharing was on the rise in November of 2003, gaining 14% over September’s numbers.109

At any rate, the decrease shown by Pew’s early surveys soon reversed itself. By February 2004, Pew’s survey showed an increase in downloading, partially due to the rise of authorized download services and partly due to increased P2P file sharing.110 By Pew’s own conservative estimates, six months after the RIAA lawsuits began, more than 20 million Americans continued to use P2P file sharing software—a number amounting to 1 in 6 Americans with Internet access.111

While it is hard to precisely measure the use of P2P and the amount of illegal file sharing in the U.S., one thing is clear: after more than 30,000 RIAA lawsuits, tens of millions of U.S. music fans continue to use P2P networks and other new technologies to share music. The lawsuit campaign has not succeeded in driving P2P out of the mainstream, much less to the fringes, of the digital music marketplace. Moreover, by most accounts P2P usage is growing rapidly in the rest of the world, where the RIAA has not been able to replicate the scale of its lawsuits against Americans of all ages and backgrounds.

In fact, there are signs that even the record companies that have contributed millions to anti-piracy trade groups are growing disenchanted with the ineffectiveness and bad press their efforts have brought.112 A Sony executive called the anti-P2P litigation a "money pit."113 One of the "big four," EMI, has threatened to cut its funding to the record industry’s international trade group almost entirely.114 Others are considering legal action to collect on P2P settlement money the RIAA collected but never distributed to artists.115

While the RIAA's assault on P2P goes on, a substantial amount of illegal music copying occurs beyond the realm of P2P networks altogether, leaving the recording industry with little recourse. A 2006 poll by the Los Angeles Times revealed that 69% of 12-17 year-olds felt that it was legal to copy a CD or DVD they owned and give it to a friend.116 A May 2007 NPD Group survey found that "the social ripping and burning of CDs among friends—which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts—accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file sharing."117 RIAA head Mitch Bainwol has publicly acknowledged that CD ripping is becoming a more serious problem than P2P file sharing.118 At the same time, more and more users are turning to new Internet technologies like instant messaging, modified versions of iTunes, or private or semi-private networks to exchange files, leaving this traffic unaccounted for by most empirical metrics.

Education by Lawsuit: Lesson Learned and Ignored

The RIAA has frequently justified the lawsuit campaign as the most effective way to get music fans to understand that downloading is illegal and can have serious consequences.119 In the words of top RIAA lawyer, Cary Sherman, "Enforcement is a tough love form of education."120 There is some evidence to support this view. After all, in light of the early headlines in most major media outlets, it would be remarkable if the lawsuits had failed to increase awareness of the record industry’s view that file sharing constitutes copyright infringement. An April 2004 survey revealed that 88% of children between 8 and 18 years of age believed that P2P downloading was illegal.121 At the same time, the survey also discovered that 56% of the children polled continue to download music. In fact, the children surveyed were more concerned about computer viruses than about being sued by the record industry. Another April 2004 survey, this one focusing on college-bound high school students, found that 89% of high school students continued to download music despite believing that it was against the law.122 This number decreased slightly in a 2006 survey by Piper Jaffrey that found that of 79% of high school students who obtain their music online, 72% use P2P networks to do so.123 In short, the RIAA’s "tough love" message has been delivered, and largely ignored.

The "educational" value of the litigation campaign is also diminishing because it has become "business as usual." Media coverage of the continuing lawsuit campaign has largely dissipated, with stories about the lawsuits migrating from the front to the back pages to not being covered at all.124 Indeed, in early 2006 the RIAA gave up its monthly press releases announcing how many individuals were being sued.

If the goal of the RIAA was to increase awareness of the copyright laws, that mission has been accomplished, albeit at the expense of financial hardship to nearly 30,000 arbitrarily chosen individuals. But as press attention fades, the "bang for the buck" provided by suing randomly-chosen filesharers has diminished as well.125 In other words, if the lawsuits are to continue indefinitely, they cannot be justified as an "educational" measure.

Going After the Fans = Unnecessary Roughness

According to the RIAA’s public statements, its lawsuits against individuals were necessitated, in part, by court rulings that blocked record labels from going after P2P technology vendors. That justification has disappeared as well. In June 2005, the Supreme Court announced a new "inducement" doctrine that permits the imposition of liability against anyone "who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement."

The RIAA characterized the MGM v. Grokster decision as "the dawn of a new day—an opportunity that will bring the entertainment and technology communities even closer together, with music fans reaping the rewards."126 Presumably, one of those "rewards" could have been the end of the lawsuit campaign. Instead, just two days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the RIAA announced a new wave of lawsuits against 784 music fans.127

What About iTunes? A Drop in the Bucket

Some have justified the lawsuit campaign as a necessary "stick" designed to complement the "carrot" of authorized music services. The notion is that the fear of lawsuits will drive music fans to services like Apple’s iTunes Music Store, where they will be hooked on 99 cent downloads and abandon the P2P networks.

Certainly, some music fans are finding what they want at the authorized music services and download stores. Digital sales account for 30% of revenues in the U.S. music market.128 Apple’s iTunes Music Store, with 5 billion sales since its inception, is now the largest music retailer in the U.S.129

But the volume of downloads sold to date continues to pale when compared to the number of files swapped over P2P networks.130 The recording industry’s own international industry group, the IFPI, estimated in 2008 that there were 20 unauthorized downloads for every legitimate download purchased—in other words, as of January 2008, 95% of all digital music downloads were from unauthorized sources.131 In short, all of the authorized music services together do not yet amount to a drop in the digital music downloading bucket.

Developments in 2007 and 2008 suggest that the record industry is finally beginning to focus more on the "carrot" by making authorized music services more attractive, rather than relying solely on the "stick" of lawsuits. For example, all the major labels have finally released part or all of their catalogs in DRM-free format.132 However, DRM is still present on much of the iTunes library, and has not been relaxed on subscription services like Rhapsody.133 The major labels have also licensed on-demand streaming services like iMeem, LaLa, and Myspace Music, which allow music fans to listen on-demand to a broad inventory of music. These initiatives hold more promise for luring music fans away from P2P filesharing than the lawsuit campaign.

Incubating New "Darknet" Technologies

The RIAA lawsuit campaign may also be encouraging music fans to migrate to file sharing technologies that will be more efficient for users and harder for the RIAA to infiltrate. To the extent filesharers are worried about the RIAA lawsuits, many are simply opting to continue downloading while refraining from uploading (this is known as "leeching" in the lexicon of the P2P world).134 Because the RIAA lawsuit campaign has, thus far, only targeted uploaders, "leechers" can continue downloading without apparent risk. Given the global popularity of P2P, there is no shortage of offshore uploaders.

In response to the RIAA lawsuits, many filesharers are also beginning to opt for new file sharing technologies that protect their anonymity. Software such as DirectConnect, WASTE, AllPeers, and Wuala offer secure, encrypted file sharing capabilities to groups of friends.135 Infiltrating these private P2P circles is much more difficult than simply trolling public P2P networks. Other technologies, such as MUTE, Freenet, the I2P Network, and JAP provide file sharing capabilities in a context that protects the anonymity of the uploader.136 In these networks, the content is encrypted and copied through a number of intermediate points in a manner that obfuscates its source. Surveys also suggest that as many as 25% of downloaders are opting to share using the "buddy list" and file sharing capabilities in popular instant messaging clients, or by email.137

Internet-based file sharing, moreover, may soon be supplanted by hand-to-hand file sharing. As noted, burning and exchanging CDs among friends is commonplace. In fact, 20% of downloaders have copied files directly off another's MP3 player.138 In Britain, the average teenager has over 800 illegally copied songs on their digital music player, mostly copied from friends.139 Furthermore, the cost of digital storage media is falling rapidly, while capacity has risen substantially in the past few years. Blu-Ray's recordable formats, BD-R and BD-RE, are capable of storing between 25 and 50 GB per disc, for which PC-based burners have been available since July 2006.140 TDK has even showcased a BD-R disc capable of storing 100 GB.141 Hard drives also continue to fall in price and expand in capacity. As of September 2008, a 1 terabyte drive can be had for about $120, offering music fans the ability to collect and share extremely large music collections from and among their extended circle of friends and acquaintances. USB flashdrives, which now offer for a few dollars as much capacity as the first-generation iPod did in 2001, have also become popular, providing another convenient means for quickly sharing files.

What to Do Instead

The RIAA’s lawsuit campaign against individual American music fans has failed. It has failed to curtail P2P downloading. It has not persuaded music fans that sharing is equivalent to shoplifting. It has not put a penny into the pockets of artists. It has done little to drive most filesharers into the arms of authorized music services. In fact, the RIAA lawsuits may well be driving filesharers to new technologies that will be much harder for the RIAA’s investigators to infiltrate and monitor.

This failure should not come as a surprise. The conflict between copyright owners and new ways of distributing music is not new, but is rather the historical norm. Every new innovation from the past century – moving pictures, player pianos, radio, and television, to name a few – has sparked a new conflict between those in a better position under the old scheme and those who stand to benefit by updating copyright law in light of new technologies. However, these compromises take a long time to form and build into legislation, and even then the negotiations often omit the most important interests: those of the fans.

There is a better way. EFF advocates a voluntary collective licensing regime as a mechanism that would fairly compensate artists and rightsholders for P2P file sharing.142 The demand is there: for example, a recent survey showed 80% of teens are interested in a good legal P2P solution.143 The concept is simple: the music industry forms one or more collecting societies, which then offers file sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway—share the music they love using whatever software they like on whatever computer platform they prefer—without fear of lawsuits. The money collected gets divided among rightsholders based on the popularity of their music. In exchange, file sharing music fans who pay (or have their ISP or software provider or other intermediary pay on their behalf) will be free to download whatever they like, using whatever software works best for them. Universities, for example, could obtain blanket licenses for their campus, solving problems with copyright holders and ensuring freedom of access in our nation's centers of innovation.144 The more people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. The more competition in P2P software, the more rapid the innovation and improvement. The more freedom for fans to upload what they care about, the deeper the catalog. This model is currently being explored by some of the major labels.145

This has been successfully done before. For decades, "collecting societies" like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC have been collecting fees from radio stations, performance venues, bars and restaurants. Once the fee is paid, these establishments are entitled to play whatever music they like, from whatever source, as often as they like. Music fans today deserve the same opportunity to pay a fee for the freedom to download the music they love.

Some lawsuits would still be necessary, the same way that spot checks on the subway are necessary in cities that rely on an "honor system" for mass transit. But the lawsuits will no longer be aimed at singling out music fans for multi-thousand dollar punishments in order to "make an example" of them. They will no longer be intended to drive fans into the arms of inferior alternatives.

Instead, the system would reinforce the rule of law—by giving fans the chance to pay a small monthly fee for P2P file sharing, a voluntary collection system creates a way for fans to "do the right thing" along with a realistic chance that the majority will actually be able to live up to the letter of the law.

To be clear, the system should be voluntary. Making it a tax on all broadband connections, for example, would not only be unfair to fans, but reduce much-needed industry transparency by denying artists the chance to choose which society to join.146 Further, the artificial constraints on technological innovation that have slowed new ways to interact with content will be gone. As a result, new or improved products will arrive in consumers' hands sooner. This increased demand for content is as beneficial for copyright holders as for fans, provided they are creative enough to adapt their business models to take advantage of this freer environment.

Five years into the RIAA’s campaign, it has become all too clear (if there were ever any doubt) that suing music fans is not a viable business model for the recording industry. With courts, state watchdogs and the RIAA’s own members questioning the tactics of the campaign, it is time for the industry to embrace a new model that can help artists get paid and help fans access and share the music they love.
http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later

















Until next week,

- js.



















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