So what's your response to this?
Techno-Rebels in West Bank?
File Swapping Firm Claims Odd Hide-Out
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 22, 2004; Page A29
JENIN, West Bank -- Somewhere in this beleaguered town, Palestinian computer
whizzes from a company called Earth Station V have launched a high-tech
assault on the U.S. entertainment industry, with a defiant message for those
trying to stop the downloading of music and movies: "Resistance is futile."
That, at least, is what the company wants people to believe, and it has
cooked up an elaborate ruse that has made Earth Station V and its claim to
hide downloaders' identities the buzz of the moment in the online universe.
But seemingly no one in this town of 34,000 -- the scene of some of the
heaviest fighting in the three-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- has
heard of Earth Station V. Computer salesmen and technicians, Internet
providers, Internet cafe workers and customers and community and Palestinian
militant leaders said they knew of no one who works for the company.
Questions about its founder and president, who calls himself Ras Kabir --
Arabic for "Big Head" -- drew laughter.
Yet someone has gone to enormous trouble and expense to create complicated
software programs and a sophisticated Web site that offers X-rated movies,
long-distance calling, a dating service, the downloading of music, first-run
movies and computer software -- all free and all supposedly augmented with
stealth technology that hides a user's identity. And all with no
advertisements or other visible means of generating revenue, despite monthly
operating costs that the company says amount to $1.5 million.
In recent years, downloading music has become one of the biggest and most
controversial activities on the Internet -- one that many computer experts
say could transform the U.S. entertainment industry. Even if laws could be
written fast enough to keep up with changing technology, experts say, online
file swapping and downloading are virtually unstoppable.
With entertainment industry agencies -- particularly the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) -- using tough U.S. laws to shut down other
Internet platforms used for copying music, most Web sites that specialize in
music downloads have gone low-profile. But Earth Station V is openly
rallying people to engage in digital music and movie swapping. Its operators
have crafted a finely honed bad-boy image that seems to taunt officials to
discover who they are and to catch 'em if they can.
The company claims to have its headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
to take advantage of loose Palestinian copyright and intellectual property
laws that it says can keep U.S. legal hounds at bay.
No Paper Trail
The real boon for Earth Station V, however, seems to be the publicity
bonanza that comes from claiming that such a cutting-edge Internet company
is being run by a multiethnic band of techno-rebels in besieged and
impoverished Palestinian refugee camps.
But the company's business and Internet paper trails don't support that
claim. The West Bank and Gaza addresses the company lists for its offices
don't exist, the telephone numbers don't answer, company officials refuse to
meet with reporters and they communicate only by e-mails and call-backs.
Reporters are not allowed to visit Earth Station V offices or talk to
workers.
In several telephone interviews, a spokesman for Earth Station V, Steve
Taylor, said the company has about 100 employees in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. But he declined a reporter's request to visit their work sites,
saying that Palestinian militant groups did not approve of Earth Station V's
activities -- particularly its broadcast of pornographic movies -- and were
threatening the company's operations and employees. Militants also were
angry, he claimed, that the company had Jewish partners.
Computer sleuths have traced some of Earth Station V's Internet providers to
Israel; computer experts agree that from there, the service could be routed
into the Palestinian territories. But even if that is the case, experts
agree, the electronic veil offered by the Internet is so impermeable that
the company's employees could be sitting at desks almost anywhere in the
world, while using the West Bank as their electronic address.
"They are making it very difficult for anyone to find who they are, where
they are and how they operate," said Ghassan Anabtawi, marketing director
for Paltel, the monopoly telephone company in the Palestinian territories.
Paltel has no record of providing voice or Internet service to Earth Station
V. "It's something fishy and weird -- they are very professional in conning
people," Anabtawi said.
The company might be receiving Internet service from a Palestinian provider,
he said, but none had claimed it as a client.
In addition to Jenin and Gaza, said Taylor, the Earth Station V spokesman,
the company has offices in the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Nablus and
Bethlehem. Computer specialists in each town said they were not familiar
with Earth Station V.
"I've never heard of the company, and I should have heard of it," said Yahya
Salqan, general secretary of the Palestinian Information Technology
Association. He said he sent e-mails to the 75 members of his association
asking if any knew of Earth Station V, and "nobody had."
Business registration papers filed with the Palestinian Authority in
Ramallah and other company documents reviewed by The Washington Post list an
Internet pornography king, Stephen Michael Cohen, as the "sole director" of
Earth Station V. Taylor said Cohen was a "consultant" who "brings a lot to
the table because of his expertise."
Cohen has been listed as a fugitive from the United States since 2001 for
failing to appear in a court case in which he was ordered to pay $65 million
in damages for stealing the Internet domain sex.com. According to the
judgment, in 1995 Cohen forged a letter by the real owner of sex.com
instructing the agency that registered domains to transfer ownership to him.
Cohen controlled the domain name for five years, building sex.com into what
reportedly was one of world's most visited and profitable Web sites.
Taylor said Earth Station V had about $1.5 million per month in operating
costs but no revenues. He said the company's investors, whom he declined to
name, were willing to lose money in the short term to attract users but
planned to add potentially huge money-making ventures to the Web site in the
near future, including online auctioning and gambling.
A Widespread Practice
But its biggest draw is offering a platform for Internet users to download
music, a practice that has become so widespread that many experts expect it
to revolutionize the relationship between Americans and the performing arts.
Internet experts estimate that 60 million Americans swap files online. A
report in August by the Internet technology firm Forrester Research found
that 49 percent of 12- to 22-year-olds had downloaded music in the previous
month.
In September, the RIAA filed lawsuits against 261 people for copying music
over the Internet, saying the practice violated U.S. copyright laws.
According to the RIAA, about 2.6 billion copyrighted files, mostly songs,
are downloaded over the Internet per month, which the organization says is
the leading cause of the worldwide decline in music industry sales from $40
billion in 2000 to $26 billion in 2002.
Marc Andreessen, who helped create the Netscape Web browser and is
considered one of the fathers of the Internet, said at a conference in Palm
Beach in November that Earth Station V and file-sharing companies like it
were on the verge of making the downloading of music and other intellectual
property virtually unstoppable, no matter the law.
Such predictions hinge on whether Earth Station V really has found a way for
users to conduct online music swapping with impunity. Computer experts and
music industry officials scoff at the company's claim that it can hide the
identities of the site's users.
"It's a sophisticated protocol, but it's not set up for all the claims they
make," said Mark Ishikawa, the head of BayTSP, an Internet security company
that investigates piracy for record companies and other high-tech
industries. "We looked at them, and the people who were downloading files
were not anonymous."
"We can easily target infringers on their network," said Matt Oppenheim,
senior vice president of the RIAA. He said Earth Station V "was throwing
stones at us because that's how they get more press and grow their pirate
network."
'At War' With Associations
Taylor, the company spokesman, said Earth Station V has roughly 710
employees in several countries, including Russia. Their software is
available in 28 languages, he said, although the Web site listed only about
15, and none was Arabic, the language spoken by Palestinians.
Business registration documents filed in June with the Palestinian Economy
Ministry said Earth Station V had $2.75 million in start-up capital and was
established to conduct "transactions in financial documents." The papers
listed Rony Hanouna, the owner of several cellular telephone stores in the
West Bank, as the company's representative in the West Bank town of
Bethlehem.
Hanouna said in an interview that he had no knowledge of Earth Station V's
activities and expressed surprise that the company was conducting business,
saying that as far as he knew, it existed only on paper.
Hanouna said he was approached by several people about 10 months ago and
asked to open an office for Earth Station V. But after filling out the
paperwork, Hanouna said, he never heard back from the people.
Initially, much of the publicity about the Earth Station V Web site came
from company statements distributed by PR Newswire, a public relations firm.
In one such statement, Earth Station V declared it was "at war" with the
RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), asserting that
"resistance is futile and we are in control now."
The Earth Station V Web site asserts that the RIAA and MPAA "have absolutely
no jurisdiction" over the company because "Palestine is not a signee of the
Intellectual Property Agreements."
--
Timothy Heald
Web Portfolio Manager
Overseas Security Advisory Council
U.S. Department of State
571.345.2319
The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S.
Department of State or any affiliated organization(s). Nor have these
opinions been approved or sanctioned by these organizations. This e-mail is
unclassified based on the definitions in E.O. 12958.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Graeme [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 9:08 AM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: Youth cleared of trying to hack Mossad Web site
This of course begs the question of would there have been an acquittal if it
had been a Palestinian youth?
-Kevin
> The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court acquitted Sunday an Israeli youth charged
> with attempting to hack the Web site of the Mossad secret service.
Presiding
> judge Abraham Tennenbaum, who found that Avi Mizrahi had not attempted to
> break into the site, but had merely been attempting to assess the security
> level, even praised the defendant for "acting in the public good."
_____
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