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Today's Topics:
1. The Voice of Harry Potter Can Keep a Secret (Monty Solomon)
2. German police excuse angry computer user for outburst
(Williams, Gregory S.)
3. RIAA spends thousands to obtain $300 judgment
(Williams, Gregory S.)
4. Webcasters' Fates Still Uncertain ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
5. VoIP Provider SunRocket Suddenly Closes (George Antunes)
6. FCC asks for comments on network neutrality, gets 27, 000 of
them (Rob)
7. Hackers Crack Microsoft's DRM Technology...Again
(Williams, Gregory S.)
8. A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not (Monty Solomon)
9. 'The challenge of imperialism' (Monty Solomon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:52:13 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] The Voice of Harry Potter Can Keep a Secret
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
The Voice of Harry Potter Can Keep a Secret
By MOTOKO RICH
The New York Times
July 17, 2007
Jim Dale is either one of the luckiest men in America or one of the
most tortured.
A little less than two months ago, Mr. Dale, the veteran Broadway
actor turned voice of Harry Potter, finished recording the audio
version of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and
final installment in the colossally successful series by J. K.
Rowling.
So that means that he knows how it ends.
His grandchildren, who visited from England after he completed the
recording, literally twisted his arms trying to get him to divulge a
clue. His wife is still in the dark. Everywhere he goes, people want
to know What He Knows.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/books/17dale.html?ex=1342324800&en=eb5a95476da0185c&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:31:13 -0400
From: "Williams, Gregory S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] German police excuse angry computer user for
outburst
To: <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1114812007
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who startled his neighbours when he hurled his
computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for
disturbing the peace by police who sympathised with his technical frustrations.
Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after
responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a
loud crash in the early hours of Saturday.
Officers found the street and pavement covered in electronic parts and
discovered who the culprit was.
Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said
he had simply got annoyed with his computer.
"Who hasn't felt like doing that?" said a police spokesman.
While escaping any official sanction the man was made to clear up the debris.
Gregory S. Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
?
?
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:00:01 -0400
From: "Williams, Gregory S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] RIAA spends thousands to obtain $300 judgment
To: <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070716-riaa-spends-thousands-to-obtain-300-judgment.html
By Eric Bangeman | Published: July 16, 2007 - 12:48PM CT
What's the cost of file-sharing? For Terri Frye of Hickory, NC, it was $300.
That's the amount she'll have to pay the RIAA after agreeing to a judgment in a
file-sharing case. Frye is a single mother living in state-supported housing
who received one of the RIAA's settlement letters in November 2005. Wanting to
defend her innocence, she immediately contacted a lawyer. "She did a good
thing, finding a lawyer as soon as she found out [the RIAA] was pursuing her,"
Joey Long, one of her attorneys, told Ars Technica. "It's what every person
should do when they receive a settlement letter."
Despite contacting Frye in late 2005, the RIAA did not actually file suit until
March of this year. In the intervening period, Frye repeatedly informed the
RIAA that they had the wrong person. Even if she was guilty of infringement,
another of Frye's attorneys, Matthew K. Rodgers, told the labels that she
couldn't afford to pay damages of up to $750 per song due to her financial
situation.
The correspondence between the RIAA's legal counsel and Frye's between the time
of the settlement letter and the filing of the lawsuit paints a picture of the
RIAA's unwillingness to budge at all from its position that Frye was either
directly or indirectly responsible for infringement, despite her protestations
to the contrary. It also showed a troubling lack of communication within the
RIAA. According to a filing by Frye, the RIAA agreed to give her until May 16
to file an answer to their complaint. Then, on May 4, the plaintiffs informed
Long that they were going to file for a default judgment, saying that the
agreed-to extension was "not in the file."
As early as December 2005, Frye offered to work with the labels "to avoid any
liability and will agree to any reasonable condition that would avoid the
payment of any penalties." The following month, she was informed that the RIAA
would not "release" her from the claims of infringement, and even if she
offered the RIAA an affidavit identifying the person she believed responsible
for the infringement, the record labels would not agree to drop their claims
against her without having the affidavit in hand.
After months of back-and-forth between the RIAA and Frye, the RIAA filed suit
in March of this year. This came despite Frye's assertions that she had told
the owner of the PC associated with the account about the RIAA's inquiries and
that the owner subsequently deleted all the incriminating evidence.
"The RIAA wanted us to reveal who actually committed the infringement," said
Long. But absent any assurances that she would not be held liable for
infringement herself, she was unwilling to divulge the information herself.
The end result is that the RIAA likely spent thousands of dollars to obtain a
$300 judgment. And although Frye agrees to be enjoined against future copyright
infringement, she does not admit to any wrongdoing. We asked Long if Frye was
going to work with the record labels to identify the person actually
responsible for the infringement now that the case has been closed and a
judgment entered. "I can't disclose any of the information about that," Long
told Ars. "It's between us and them."
The RIAA's prelitigation settlement letters say that defendants are liable for
costs of $750 per song. MediaSentry flagged 706 songs on the computer that
became the basis for the lawsuit, and at $750 per song, that works out to a
total of $529,500. The RIAA settled for a minuscule fraction of that number,
one curiously close to the 70?-per-track figure a record industry attorney said
is close to the labels' share of each track sold. File-sharing defendants have
argued that the $750-per-track damages sought by the RIAA are excessive, and
here we have them accepting a judgment for about 40? per track. The RIAA
appears willing to extract even a miniscule settlement from a single mother on
federal assistance who was willing to help them discover the true identity of
the alleged infringer rather than walk away emptyhanded.
Gregory S. Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
?
?
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:25:45 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Medianews] Webcasters' Fates Still Uncertain
To: medianews@twiar.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Webcasters' Fates Still Uncertain
With Fee Deadline Past, Many Stations Remain Online
By Kendra Marr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; D02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601484_pf.html
Sunday was the deadline for Internet radio stations to pay higher fees
set by a federal agency, but the debate over when and how much they will
pay has not been decided.
As evidence of that, some of the stations that said they would have to
shut down because of the higher costs remained online yesterday.
The battle began in March, when the Copyright Royalty Board, part of the
Library of Congress, decided to more than double royalty rates paid by
Web-radio operators by 2010 and impose an annual $500 fee per channel.
Such fees were endorsed by SoundExchange, a group representing the
recording industry but vocally opposed by thousands of webcasters, who
said the higher costs would force them out of business.
As the deadline approached and webcasters lost hope of immediate court
or congressional intervention on their behalf, a trade organization
representing the Web radio operators said it struck a last-minute deal
with SoundExchange to cap the per-channel fee at $50,000.
According to the Digital Media Association, the deal would require
webcasters to report the names of the artists whose music they play and
adopt technology to limit the copying of broadcasts, but would also
allow larger operators with thousands of channels to stay in business.
As of yesterday, SoundExchange said it had not formally approved the deal.
The disputed status of the deal had some Internet radio operators
claiming that negotiations were tantamount to a reprieve on the deadline.
SoundExchange denied that assertion and said nonpaying webcasters would
be charged retroactively with interest, said Richard Ades, a spokesman
for the group.
"It's not clear what the right thing to do is," said Tim Westergren,
founder of Pandora, one of the largest Internet radio providers, which
was online yesterday. "Each webcaster is treating the situation
differently."
The decision of the Copyright Royalty Board is law, so any negotiation
or compromise approved by the industry groups would require approval
from Congress.
There are bills in the House and Senate that would reduce the amount
webcasters would pay. Another House bill would delay the payment of the
fees.
For some, the whole confusing fight has made technologists throw their
hands up at the way things are done in Washington.
"I just want to get back to helping webcasters get business and figuring
out how get more ad revenue," said Johnie Floater, general manager of
media at Live365. "We've been spending all of our time playing lawyers
and lobbyists."
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:01:55 -0500
From: "George Antunes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] VoIP Provider SunRocket Suddenly Closes
To: "Media News" <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
VoIP Provider SunRocket Suddenly Closes
Associated Press
July 17, 2007 1:26 AM (ET)
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070717/D8QE56P81.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Internet phone service provider SunRocket, which had as
many as 200,000 customers nationwide, has ceased operations without warning.
The move by SunRocket, which offered service via Voice over Internet
Protocol, or VoIP, was first reported Monday on The New York Times' Web
site.
It was confirmed by Martin Pinchinson, a spokesman for Sherwood Partners LLC
of Palo Alto, Calif., who said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that the
financial consulting company was handling SunRocket's liquidation.
A message left at SunRocket's Vienna, Va., headquarters was not immediately
returned. The privately held company's Web site was still up Monday night.
But SunRocket's customer service line offered callers a brief recording: "We
are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye."
SunRocket laid off almost 200 employees at its Springfield, Mo., call center
Monday, The Springfield News-Leader reported.
The company also laid off what its chief marketing officer called "a
significant number" of employees July 3, five days after the firings of two
top executives, Chief Technology Officer Mark Fedor and Chief Information
Officer Robert Kramer. The company's chief financial officer, David Samuels,
resigned July 2.
Some people identifying themselves as SunRocket customers on Internet
discussion boards were complaining about outages Monday, while others said
their service was working. The company has been known to have periodic
outages in the past.
SunRocket, which started in 1994, was one of the first companies to offer
Internet phone technology, and reported about 200,000 customers as of April,
second only to Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) as a stand-alone VoIP provider.
---
On the Net:
SunRocket: http://www.sunrocket.com
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:48:39 -0500
From: Rob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] FCC asks for comments on network neutrality, gets
27, 000 of them
To: Media-News <medianews@twiar.org>, Tom and Darryl
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
FCC asks for comments on network neutrality, gets 27,000 of them
By Nate Anderson
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-fcc-asks-for-comments-on-network-neutrality-gets-27000-of-them.html
The FCC reply comment period for network neutrality came to an end
yesterday, with hundreds (if not thousands) of last-minute filings from
businesses and consumers alike. In fact, the complete docket now runs to
nearly 27,000 unique comments, including one from an angry Brazilian who
speaks "from a great University of brazil (sic) and we will create chaos
if they destroy net's neutrality." The FCC can also "kiss my ass."
Another commentator told the agency, "This is rediculous (sic)."
Passions, it appear, are running high.
All the major players have submitted comments: Hands Off the Internet,
Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the CTIA, etc.
Many have also submitted "reply comments" which were due by yesterday.
That's not surprising, but what is fascinating to note is how many
ordinary people and unlikely organizations have gotten involved in the
debate. Even Senators Dorgan and Snowe, who have cosponsored a network
neutrality bill, submitted additional comments yesterday?a highly
unusual event for an FCC Notice of Inquiry.
The senators want to "demonstrate our continuing interest" in network
neutrality, and one of the points they make strongly is that the market
will not, in fact, take care of itself because there is no truly
competitive market for broadband. "Some believe the market will take
care of competition and ensure that those who own the broadband networks
won't discriminate," they write in the filing, but add that this "cannot
be so when at best consumers have a choice of two providers."
Other bits of government have also provided opinions. The Wisconsin
Department of Public Instruction, for one, submitted comments supporting
network neutrality and the broader positions of the American Library
Association. The DPI believes that in a non-neutral world, "libraries,
which do not have deep pockets, will be among the disadvantaged. Failure
to retain an open Internet will result in libraries unable to provide
their patrons with access to all the content that is available now via
the Internet."
Plenty of comments?in fact, these appear to be the vast majority?were
submitted over e-mail by ordinary Internet users. Many appear to have
used a template, but others chose to go it alone. "The internet is my
most important source of news and political opinion," reads one. "Please
leave the internet alone."
Such comments exemplify one of the issues with private comments: many
are not directly addressing the questions raised by the FCC. Those that
are can be ambiguous. "Please leave the internet alone" is the rhetoric
used by both sides in the debate, though in one case this means
regulation and in the other, no regulation.
Numerous comments also opposed the idea of government-mandated network
neutrality, of course. Two weeks ago we covered a paper which argued
that a non-neutral network would require nearly double the peak capacity
to operate at the same level of service. The lead authors, Shivkumar
Kalyanaraman of Rensselaer Polytechnic and Murat Yuksel of the
University of Nevada-Reno, submitted a copy of that paper into the FCC
record.
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:45:58 -0400
From: "Williams, Gregory S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Hackers Crack Microsoft's DRM Technology...Again
To: <medianews@twiar.org>
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,289546,00.html
Tuesday , July 17, 2007
AP
SEATTLE -
Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch
of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected
digital music and movies.
The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft's
digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was
published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes
exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit
against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to
identify them.
The third version of FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. PC users
can turn the protected music files they bought online - either a la carte or as
part of a subscription service like Napster - and turn them into DRM-free tunes
that can be copied and shared at will, or turned into MP3 files that can play
on any type of digital music player.
* Get all your high-tech headlines in FOXNews.com's Personal Technology Center.
"We knew at the start that no digital rights management technology is going to
be impervious to circumvention," said Jonathan Usher, a director in Microsoft's
consumer media technology group, in a phone interview.
Usher said Microsoft employs a full-time team to combat such breaches, and that
the Windows Media DRM system was designed to be quickly modified to shut down
this type of attack.
He did not say how many songs have been stripped of copy protection, or how
long it will take for Microsoft to combat the hack again. But the music
industry is aware of the nature of Microsoft's technology, he said, and added
that he does not expect record labels to lose patience with the process.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group, declined to
comment.
While Usher said Microsoft will remain committed to copy protection, attitudes
around the industry are starting to shift.
Apple Inc. has modified its own online store, iTunes, to block similar efforts
to break its FairPlay copy protection scheme. But Apple's chief, Steve Jobs,
started calling for an end to digital music-locking earlier this year.
"There are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their
hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get
free (and stolen) music," Jobs wrote in an online essay in February. "They are
often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content
using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets.
It is a cat-and- mouse game."
Apple's iTunes store started selling DRM-free music from EMI Group PLC's
catalog in May. The same month, Web retailer Amazon.com Inc. said its
much-anticipated digital music store will sell tracks in the unprotected MP3
format.
Josh Bernoff, an industry analyst at research group Gartner Inc., said he
expects music DRM to fade out in the next couple of years as record companies
begin to realize selling unprotected tracks online won't hurt sales. After all,
Bernoff said, the same tracks are already circulating unprotected, copied from
CDs and on file-sharing networks.
Gregory S. Williams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
?
?
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:01:05 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Prototype
A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not
By MICHAEL FITZGERALD
The New York Times
July 15, 2007
PATENTS are supposed to give inventors an incentive to create things
that spur economic growth. For some companies, especially in the
pharmaceutical business, patents do just that by allowing them to
pull in billions in profits from brand-name, blockbuster drugs. But
for most public companies, patents don't pay off, say a couple of
researchers who have crunched the numbers.
"Today, over all, patents don't work; for the information technology
industry especially, they don't work," said James Bessen, who became
a lecturer at Boston University's law school after a career in
business. In 1983, he created the first computer publishing software
with Wysiwyg (an acronym for "what you see is what you get") printing
abilities. He also founded a desktop publishing company, Bestinfo,
later acquired by Intergraph.
Neither Mr. Bessen nor his company patented anything, in part because
his lawyers told him that software couldn't be patented at the time.
He ultimately became interested in whether patents spurred
innovation, since the software industry for years innovated steadily
without using many patents. He and a colleague, Michael J. Meurer,
are readying a book on the topic, "Do Patents Work?," due in 2008. (A
synopsis and sample chapters are at
researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/.)
The two researchers have analyzed data from 1976 to 1999, the most
recent year with complete data. They found that starting in the late
1990s, publicly traded companies saw patent litigation costs outstrip
patent profits. Specifically, they estimate that about $8.4 billion
in global profits came directly from patents held by publicly traded
United States companies in 1997, rising to about $9.3 billion in
1999, with two-thirds of the profits going to chemical and
pharmaceutical companies. Domestic litigation costs alone, meanwhile,
soared to $16 billion in 1999 from $8 billion in 1997.
Things have probably become worse since then. For instance, patent
litigation is up: there were 2,318 patent-related suits in 1999, and
2,830 in fiscal 2006 (though that's down from the peak year, 2004,
when 3,075 were filed). Mr. Bessen said awards in patent cases also
seemed to be up, though he was less confident in that data. Worse, he
says, companies doing the most research and development are sued the
most.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/yourmoney/15proto.html?ex=1342152000&en=17ab981b1b3cf1dd&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:26:11 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] 'The challenge of imperialism'
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
'The challenge of imperialism'
Fifty years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy shook the foreign policy
establishment with a speech that questioned Cold War verities -- and
anticipated America's problems in the Middle East today
By Ted Widmer | July 15, 2007
FIFTY YEARS AGO this month, a young senator from Massachusetts with
his eye on the White House took a big gamble. On the Senate floor,
before his astonished colleagues, John F. Kennedy gave a
controversial speech that questioned nearly all of the assumptions of
American foreign policy and delved deeply into a hot-button topic
that no one wanted to talk about. He was instantly denounced by the
White House, the State Department, American allies, and the press.
But the speech eventually won him admirers around the world, and
brought him that much closer to his party's nomination for president.
The immediate subject of Kennedy's speech was the war that France had
been fighting for three years against insurgents in Algeria -- a war
that was revealing a pattern of entrenched guerrilla conflict that
would become all too familiar. But he went beyond that topic to
address the larger question of how America could effectively promote
change in the Middle East.
Most politicians, then as now, preferred to stick close to safe and
popular utterances. Kennedy went straight into the hornet's nest of
Arab discontent with the West in a speech that anticipated many of
the problems faced today. It rejected the tired "us vs. them"
structure of Cold War thinking; it criticized the military option as
a clumsy tool of foreign policy, and it suggested that real advocates
of "freedom" were just as likely to be opposed to Western
intervention as they were to Communist takeovers.
At first glance, Algeria was not even an American problem. France had
been fighting its ugly war to keep Algeria within what was left of
the French empire, committing more than 400,000 soldiers to subdue a
restive Islamic population. Both sides were capable of great
violence, including torture, assassination, and roadside bombs --
which the French routinely denounced as terrorism. (Pentagon
strategists recently rediscovered the harrowing 1966 film "The Battle
of Algiers," which recalls that conflict's uncomfortable similarities
to Iraq.)
But Kennedy had traveled widely, taking trips to Indochina, to the
Middle East, and behind the Iron Curtain. And to a surprising degree,
this child of privilege was growing concerned about the huge economic
disparities in the world and the particular quandary of former
colonial peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Arab countries. That was
not an issue most Cold Warriors concerned themselves with. But it was
a growing problem all the same, and Kennedy was disenchanted with the
complacent answers coming from the Eisenhower Administration and its
high priest of platitudes, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
When Kennedy rose to deliver the speech, on July 2, 1957, he began
with a ringing statement. "The most powerful single force in the
world today," he said, "is neither communism nor capitalism, neither
the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be
free and independent." Hardly anyone would disagree with that. But he
continued with a provocative thought -- that "imperialism" was the
chief foe of freedom, and that the Western form of imperialism was
very nearly as bad as the Soviet version. By emphasizing America's
desire to spread freedom in the Middle East, he couldn't have sounded
more like today's neoconservative architects of the Iraq war. By
stressing the impossibility of spreading freedom through force, he
couldn't have sounded more different.
>From the moment he spoke on Algeria, it was no longer possible to
dismiss Kennedy as a callow young man whose office had been bought
for him by his father -- a canard that was widely circulating at the
time. With the Algeria speech, he proved himself a serious
foreign-policy thinker, and a most viable candidate for the highest
office in the land.
...
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/07/15/the_challenge_of_imperialism/
------------------------------
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