VERY,VERY HOT READS, I Would Read The News In This Thread This Thead Is To post Any Thing Ye Want About The News,,NEWS WAS MOVED,READ MY FIRST POST..CHEERS
By Charlie Demerjian: Monday 23 January 2006, 01:15
DRM IS A LIE. When an agenda driven DRM infection peddler gets on a soapbox and blathers about how it is necessary to protect the BMW payments of a producer who leeches off the talented, rest assured, they are lying to you. DRM has absolutely nothing to do with protecting content, it is about protecting the wallets of major corporations. The funny thing is they aren't protecting it from you, they are protecting it from each other.
Let's look at the shattering success of every DRM solution to date. Every single one has failed. The score card is hundreds if not thousands against, zero for. Name me one song, movie or software title that is DRM infected that has not found it's way to the net within a week of release, usually long before release. There are none. To protect content, DRM is an abject and total failure, and will continue to be.
It also hurts the user - there is no DRM infection that in any way benefits the consumer. It costs more to develop, costs to license, makes hardware more expensive and complex, and screws the user under legitimate uses. It has a negative value to the consumer.
So, it makes content less attractive, less playable, and is legally dubious, so why is the industry hell bent on infecting everything from your prophylactics to your computers? Simple, they want a bigger slice of the pie, and DRM is the way to get it. No, not bigger profit margins, the greedy bastards already do that with each format change, DRM infections are about edging each other out.
Here is the problem, every DRM infection is unique, patented, copyrighted, copywronged, and DMCAd ad nauseum, They protect their code in every way possible, and make it so you have to get their approval to use it. This is all done under the guise of protecting content, but that is a lie. If you are going to steal content, do you think violating another copyright on the DRM mechanism will make you lose more sleep? Not a chance.
If you are a rival company though, you can't really violate such things and get away with it for long, Sony, MS and most people swiping GPLd code are proof of that. So, you have to license it to play ball, or at least play music and movies. That is the true nature of DRM infections, to keep other big greedy companies out.
So, say you are a big immoral record company that see walking wallets, aka customers, as not giving you enough of their hard earned money, some have the gall to buy from other big greedy immoral companies. Bastards! What do you do? Make sure they have a hard time playing things from the other guys.
Let's take a good example of this, the first few generations of Sony's DRM infected failures of an almost MP3 player. Sony decided that its proprietary ATRAC format was better than MP3, and technically it could be, but that is irrelevant. They didn't support MP3s out of the box, but would do a one way conversion if you wanted to put your MP3s on the Walkman. Taking them off was a bit curious though.
Also, if you wanted to buy music, you could go to the wonderful (sarcasm people, sarcasm) Sony connect store, and buy almost anything that Sony licensed artists made. If you wanted a song by a Warner artist, well, tough. Stepping into the land of make believe for a minute, imagine that Time-Warner made digital music players, and lets pretend they have an encoding system and DRM infection called HURT-SCAM. You can buy a TW player and download any HURT-SCAM song, curiously this meant only titles from a Warner artist. If you have a Sony player, it doesn't support HURT-SCAM, and TW players don't support ATRAC.
Now, if this hypothetical TW player wanted to play ATRAC, they could reverse engineer it, and get bitten by the same DMCA laws they bought so many Congresspeople to implement, and the same is true for Sony wanting to implement HURT-SCAM. (Please note, I am not intoning that these companies buy government, remember this is make believe. The US governmental system is immune to such things, just ask them.). Basically, both sides have to license their bitter rivals before they can interoperate.
Now, lets step back into the land of reality. You have ATRAC, FairPlay (har har), Real, WMA, and a host of other DRM infections, and none can play any of the others. If you have a player that can do one, chances are that it can't do any of the others, almost like the license terms preclude it, but it would take someone much more cynical than I to say that. You have enough walled gardens to last a lifetime, and each one is filled with greedy execs trying to wrap their mind around how much money this will bring them. The stakes are high, they each want it all, and want all the others to go away, there is no middle ground.
The enforcement mechanism is quite simply the DRM infection Without DRM, the other guys could invade their garden and do thing that might benefit the user, I mean take away the profits they feel are rightfully theirs. In the mean time every piece of media thus 'protected' is available for download. DRM has done, is doing and will do nothing to stop piracy.
Basically, you and I are the innocent bystanders in this drive by shooting called DRM. The big companies are at war, and we are the casualties. So, they have to send their flying monkeys to sue single moms, 12 year olds and octogenarians to make it appear that they are doing what they say. Bull, they are lying. The sad part is that the public, and worse yet, the governments are listening to them.
The misinformation campaign seems to have sunk in, people don't even question that DRM is about protecting content any more, even though it has never done so. It hurts the users, and hurts the companies making it, but they have their eyes on the big prize. DRM infections are the only way to keep their rivals at bay, lobbing a few bullets at the users is a low price to pay for that. µ
p2p news / p2pnet: "If industry rumblings are correct, the recording industry may be preparing a legal assault against ISPs," says Paul Resnikoff in Digital Music News.
"Multiple industry sources to Digital Music News have pointed to the possibility, and recent comments by IFPI chairman John Kennedy correlate with the chatter," he declares.
Internet service providers, "may soon find themselves in court unless they cave in to record label demands that ISPs become cartel cops, acting against customers believed to be using the p2p networks," p2pnet suggested last Friday, referring to remarks in the latest IFPI disinformation piece..
Members of the Big Four record label cartel said they needed, "support for Digital Rights Management" as the, "key enabler of digital music services allowing new and flexible uses by consumers," as well as, "more cooperation from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in protecting music from piracy on their networks".
The observation came from Kennedy in the most recent IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) puff piece. In it, "It's been a year since I asked for (the ISPs') cooperation, and I've effectively had zero response," he says.
Supporting the contention that ISPs might soon join their customers as victims of EMI, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG, was the Financial Times which also had Kennedy calling for, "ISPs to monitor and limit access to users that trade files illegally, while leaving the door open to litigation if negotiations are unsuccessful".
But Resnikoff spells it out.
The MPAA and RIAA have been, "diligently pursuing lawsuits against individual file-sharers, and the RIAA alone has targeted 16,000 swappers," he says. "Still, those efforts have failed to reverse record levels of piracy, and they are yet to revive a sagging physical CD sector. That lack of progress could be creating pressure to target the ISPs, who are supplying users with the pipes necessary to share files ad nauseam.
"A Supreme Court victory [Grokster vs MGM] is nothing to sneeze at, though the opponent was a relative lightweight compared to the internet access industry. While their affect on the overall music industry has been profound, P2P companies are essentially minor league players in terms of overall earnings. Revenues mainly come from low-CPM banners, and most companies are forced to deliver spyware and adware just to keep the lights on. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ? which represented Grokster and Morpheus in the case ? is certainly a formidable opponent, but still one that the RIAA could defeat. Overall, the P2P industry simply has less weight to throw around, and file-sharing companies have a shelf life of only a few years at best."
Against that, "ISPs are multi-billion dollar corporations that dwarf the recording industry in terms of legal firing power, spending ability, and political clout," says Digital Music News, adding:
"If the recording industry was actually able to win a battle against the access providers, the effects would be momentous," says Digital Music News.
"Overnight, an industry would change, and ISPs would lose a critical component of their subscriber relationship. But if the ISPs prevailed, then the door could close on any future cooperation. While collective P2P licensing plans are unthinkable in major label quarters currently, they could become more attractive in a few years. The basic concept - which some access executives are reportedly open-minded to ? would include a small surcharge on ISP monthly charges in exchange for unlimited file-sharing. These surcharges would then be redistributed to content creators, publishers, and labels. The details of implementing such a plan are more than intimidating, but ISPs will be less likely to entertain the possibility following a drawn-out legal battle. After all, olive branches are less meaningful after an aggressive swordfight, and ISPs will probably be resentful after pouring millions into a distracting legal defense. Perhaps that is thinking too far ahead, but a defeat at the hands of the access industry could have severe and far-reaching implications for an already-battered recording industry."
http://p2pnet.net/story/7703
Kama Sutra Worm Gets Nasty
worm A potentially destructive new computer worm disguised as pornographic videos and other material is steadily infecting thousands of victims each hour with payload designed to destroy documents and files on victim machines. The worm appears programmed to do three things: spread, disable security software and overwrite certain files.
Kama Sutra Worm Gets Nasty
A potentially destructive new computer worm disguised as pornographic videos and other material is steadily infecting thousands of victims each hour with payload designed to destroy documents and files on victim machines.
This particular nastygram has earned different monikers from various antivirus vendors -- including "W32/Nyxem-D" (Sophos and F-Secure), "Tearac.A" (Panda Software), and "W32.Blackmal.E@mm" -- but the catchiest name I've seen so far is "Kama Sutra," taken from one of the e-mail worm's variable enticing subject lines.
The worm appears programmed to do three things: spread, disable security software and overwrite certain files. According to analysis from F-Secure, on the third day of each month the worm will overwrite the contents of certain files on infected machines, including Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, as well as Adobe PDF documents and compressed ZIP and RAR archives, among other file formats.
The worm also notifies a specific Web site each time it infects a new machine, increasing the number on a Web based counter with each visit. Security Fix isn't publishing the link to the counter for obvious reasons (if everyone who read this started visiting the link its accuracy for measuring the true spread of the worm would quickly decrease.) Just know that as of 12:30 a.m. ET on Sunday the counter showed 539,261 victims, up from 522,684 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, an average of about 2,500 new victims per hour.
Capture
As always, be extremely careful about clicking on attachments or links that arrive in e-mail or instant message, even if they appear to have been sent by someone you know. If you got hit with this worm and your antivirus software can't get rid of it, try the free removal tool for this worm from Symantec.
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/01/kama_sutra_wo...
Harder-to-Detect Oracle Rootkit on the Way
Kick-Ass... man, what a month this is going to be.
A security expert working on a new version of an Oracle database rootkit says the programs are easy to create and could soon be as common as those that target operating systems like Windows.
Alexander Kornbrust, of Red Database Security GmbH, told eWEEK that he is developing Version 2.0 of a rootkit program he first unveiled in April 2005. The new version, which Kornbrust hopes to unveil at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas in July, will be harder to detect on Oracle systems using standard administrative tools. Kornbrust claims his rootkits are not hacking tools but are designed to underscore weaknesses in databases from Oracle, Microsoft and others that make it easy to hide malicious activity.
Harder-to-Detect Oracle Rootkit on the Way
By Paul F. Roberts
January 23, 2006
Be the first to comment on this article
A security expert working on a new version of an Oracle database rootkit says the programs are easy to create and could soon be as common as those that target operating systems like Windows.
Alexander Kornbrust, of Red Database Security GmbH, told eWEEK that he is developing Version 2.0 of a rootkit program he first unveiled in April 2005. The new version, which Kornbrust hopes to unveil at the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas in July, will be harder to detect on Oracle systems using standard administrative tools. Kornbrust claims his rootkits are not hacking tools but are designed to underscore weaknesses in databases from Oracle, Microsoft and others that make it easy to hide malicious activity.
Kornbrust first introduced a proof-of-concept Oracle rootkit last April, at the Black Hat Conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. That version modified Oracle database dictionaries, sometimes referred to as "views," to disguise the presence of malicious accounts, database processes and so on.
PointerWhen is a rootkit not a rootkit? Click here to read more.
The new version of the database rootkit will modify the computer memory used to run Oracle. Administrators could detect the first version of the rootkit by noting changes in the size of the data dictionaries that had been modified. The new version will allow attackers to disguise malicious elements without modifying the database views, Kornbrust said.
Also, evidence of the hack will disappear whenever the database is restarted, Kornbrust said.
eWEEK.com Special Report: The Rise of Rootkits
Unlike operating system rootkits such as Back Orifice, Hacker Defender and FU, database rootkits are platform-independent and can run on any operating system, Kornbrust said.
The database rootkits are part of a larger project to port malicious code from operating systems to enterprise database environments, he said. Applications like Oracle and Microsoft's SQL Server have become so sophisticated that they are, in effect, operating systems in their own right, he said.
"Things like creating users, processes and jobs used to be part of the operating system. But now every database has similar commands to the operating system. You can kill processes, create users and so on," he said.
PointerLarry Seltzer claims some rootkits are worse than others. Click here to read his column.
Unlike operating systems, however, many enterprise databases do not have robust security features that could detect rogue accounts or suspicious activity, he said.
For example, tools that Oracle database administrators use to monitor user accounts just present information from the same data dictionaries that would be modified by the rootkit, Kornbrust said.
Traditional network security tools also aren't effective. "[Security] tools from the operating system world don't work in the database world," he said.
At the same time, database and network security staff often move in different circles, experts say.
"Security guys are used to dealing with packets on the network," said Shlomo Kramer, CEO of Imperva, a database security company in Foster City, Calif. "The assumption is the security guys don't know anything about databases."
However, malicious hackers and organized online criminal groups are figuring out that databases like Oracle and SQL are vulnerable to attack, Kornbrust said.
"I personally think that bad guys have better knowledge of how to exploit [database holes] than the good guys," he said.
Recent events like the Oracle "Voyager" show that malicious code writers are getting savvy about targeting enterprise databases, Kramer said.
Sony may offer standalone 200CD changer for Media Center PCs
Posted by Dan Bell on 23 January 2006 - 20:57 - Source: ehomeupgrade
We already heard about the Sony 200 CD changer that is a component in the Sony XL 1 Media Center PC. What's cool about this changer is that it can read and play the Cd's and the word on the street is you can load it up and it will rip all 200 to the hard disc unattended! Not only that, you can place some blanks in there and it will burn TV shows etc., to the blanks and free up disc space. But, this doesn't do anybody any good that likes to piece together their own rigs. Well, somebody got smart and asked at the CES about the chance of a standalone model and got us some good news!
According to Jason Alinen (user name, soundintegration on Remotetly Cool), he spoke with someone from Sony at CES who said that they would be offering their DVD changer on a standalone basis when the XL2 lauches:
From his post: "I spoke with some of the Sony people at CES this year and they mentioned that their CD/DVD changer will be available for purchase seperately for any MCE PC when the XL2 is launched. They said the cost would be around $600 or so. It uses firewire so as long as the dell mce has firewire you should be good to go."
This is definitely good news and at $600 I'd buy one for sure if it really worked and could in fact mass rip my CDs for me. It's such a pain having to rip them one by one right now and being able to do big batch jobs would be tremendously helpful. (Of course watch out for resistence from the RIAA on this product as I doubt they want you to be able to easily rip 200 CDs at once).
Well, the price is right and this will become a hot commodity if it pans out. In addition, if it sells well, hopefully it will spawn some competition from other vendors/manufacturers.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12986
TVMyPod iPod's pre-loaded DVDs questions DMCA & Fair Use
Posted by Seán Byrne on 24 January 2006 - 00:00 - Source: Yahoo News - Technology
So far, it seems quite clear that selling any device with preloaded copyrighted games, music or movies may be against the law if not accompanied by a license or without authorisation of the copyright holders. A clear example is a shop that sold modded Xbox's with its HDD filled with preloaded games. Well TVMyPod, a tiny Massachusetts company is selling iPods that come preloaded with movies and TV programs from DVDs of the user's choice. While this may signal a legal issue, apparently the consumer must purchase the DVDs they want transferred. TVMyPod then does the transfer process, puts the iPod back in its original packaging and delivers this along with the DVDs to the consumer.
As the company currently only charges the consumer for cost of the iPod and DVDs and the consumer gets all the DVDs they paid for to have transferred to the iPod, the company claims it is legal under the fair use provisions of the US Copyright Act. Apparently, even though it is illegal to bypass the CSS encryption system on DVDs under the DMCA, the company claims their process does not involve DeCSS. Later on the company aims to allow existing iPod owners to send in their iPod to have further content to be transferred. Thanks to both Hypnosis4U2NV and mickrick for letting us know about the following news:
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A tiny Massachusetts company named TVMyPod is selling iPods that come with movies and TV programs already loaded on them, a practice that raises questions of legality as it addresses consumer demand for convenience and portability.
Customers choose any content currently available on a DVD and which iPod they want. TVMyPod then puts the content on the player and ships the original DVDs along with the iPod restored to its original packaging.
TVMyPod co-founder Vijay Raghavan said most people don't have the time or the technology to convert DVDs into the iPod's required format, which is what gave him and his business partner the idea to start the service.
While connecting a DVD player up to a capture device does not involve breaking the CSS encryption, either the capture device would need to get around the Macrovision copy protection or the DVD player would need to be modified in some way to disable Macrovision. In either case, this still involves circumventing this copy protection which can run into problems with the DMCA.
Even if there was no copy protection to get around, the former MP3.com once had a service where a consumer could access MP3 versions of their CDs if they let a tool on MP3.com to authenticate their discs. Unfortunately, the company got into legal issues and had to withdraw the service even though they only offered MP3 version of what ever the consumer had physical versions of on CD.
Hypnosis4U2NV add the following: This is very interesting because on one end the companies have the DMCA on their side and on the other we have the Fair Use rights which allow us to make legal copies of media we legally own.. The problem that I see with this service is that despite what the co-founder Vijay Raghavan says about not decrypting the DVD's that are loaded onto the iPods, we all know that practically all DVD's shipped already contain CSS encryption and we need software (DeCSS) to decrypt the protection to allow for a successful copy.. So is it legal for the corporate suits or the consumer? Maybe both? Maybe none?
mickrick also added: An excellent venture and hopefully one that will avoid persecution from the ca$h-hungry MPAA. This is one idea I would like to see taking off big time globally.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12987
France sees some of the toughest antipiracy laws yet drafted
Posted by Seán Byrne on 24 January 2006 - 01:04 - Source: Wired News - Technology
Just when France appeared like it was going to help consumers out by aiming to legalise online file sharing, some of the toughest anti-piracy laws yet have just been drafted in France that could put downloaders of copyright infringing content to jail and force certain software makers to add anti-piracy technology to its products for distribution within France. If software such as file sharing tools does not guard against unauthorised file sharing, the software makers could be held liable if users use its software for copyright infringement.
When it comes to unauthorised copying or downloading, users could face up to three years in jail and up to ?300,000 in fines. To help curb unauthorised file sharing, ISPs may be required to disconnect accounts that are suspected of copyright infringement. The proposal aims to make France comply with the EUCD, however this proposal goes well beyond the EUCD's original version of criminalising copyright infringement. Vivendi Universal, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Société des Auteurs et des Compositeurs de Musique all helped draft the text used in this proposal.
Unfortunately, this legislation proposal causes a serious problem for software developers as they would need to make sure their software complies with the anti-piracy enforcement where necessary just to make their software available in France, one of many EU countries. As a result, it will cost software makers more to deliver software to France if it means they have to fork out on extra costs on developing, implementing and testing these extra anti-piracy measures.
PARIS -- France may be about to introduce the most draconian anti-piracy laws yet.
Internet downloaders could face jail sentences and software makers may be required to add anti-copying technology to products distributed in France under draft legislation that's expected to go to a vote this week.
A last minute fight over the bill broke out late Wednesday, when an amendment was introduced that would legalize peer-to-peer downloads instead of criminalizing them. The amendment is not final, however, and the bill's original intent is expected to be restored.
The so-called emergency legislation would require software makers to include digital-rights management, or DRM, software in their products, according to a draft (.pdf) of the proposed legislation seen by Wired News. Software makers could be liable if their software is used for illicit purposes -- whether the software was designed for peer-to-peer networks or office intranets.
What makes this proposal interesting is that it contradicts a recent bill proposed that would require the removal of copy protection restrictions if enforced. One purpose is to allow consumers to play music purchased from music download stores on any MP3 player and not just the ones the shop will authorise, such as remove the restriction iTunes has where its purchased music can only be played back on an iPod.
Feel free to discuss about file sharing and its legal issues on our Music Download, Peer to Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues forum.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12988
this one is for everyone who has had time warner cable !!
Quote:
Claim Form
If you were a Time Warner Cable subscriber any time between January 1, 1994 and December 31, 1998, except if you are a Time Warner Cable employee, officer, director, or counsel, you may be eligible to participate in the Settlement. Only subscribers who were on a list of subscribers whose personal information may have been sold to other companies for marketing purposes qualify to get free services. If you believe you qualify as a Settlement Class Member, you can download a copy of the Claim Form and mail it to the address listed on the top of the Claim Form.
? To request a Claim Form in PDF format, please click here.
PARK CITY, Utah ? The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the leader in the global fight against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA's film ratings system.
The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" without the filmmaker's permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated "publicity stunt" to boost the film's profile.
ADVERTISEMENT
Scheduled to debut at the Sundance Film Festival on Wednesday night, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" examines what Dick believes are the MPAA's stricter standards for rating explicit depictions of sex than for gruesome violence. Dick also explores whether independent films are rated more harshly than studio films, whether scenes of gay sex are restricted more than scenes of straight sex, and why the 10 members of the MPAA's ratings board operate without any public accountability.
Michael Donaldson, a lawyer representing Dick, has written the MPAA demanding that it "immediately return all copies" of the film in its possession, and explain who approved the making of the copy and who within the MPAA has looked at the reproduction.
Dick said he was "very upset and troubled" to discover during a recent conversation with an MPAA lawyer that the MPAA had copied the film from a digital version he submitted Nov. 29 for a rating. ("This Film Is Not Yet Rated" was rated NC-17 for "some graphic sexual content," a rating upheld after Dick appealed.) The MPAA's copy of Dick's film was viewed by Dan Glickman, the MPAA's new president, the MPAA said.
The filmmaker said that when he asked MPAA lawyer Greg Goeckner what right his organization had to make the copy, Goeckner told him that Dick and his crew had potentially invaded the privacy of the MPAA's movie raters.
"We made a copy of Kirby's movie because it had implications for our employees," said Kori Bernards, the MPAA's vice president for corporate communications. She said Dick spied on the members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school.
"We were concerned about the raters and their families," Bernards said. She said the MPAA's copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is "locked away," and is not being copied or distributed.
The standard the MPAA is using for itself appears to be at odds with what the organization sets out for others: "Manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal," the MPAA's website says. "Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple?. ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences."
Donaldson said in an interview that the MPAA previously had promised in writing that it would not copy the film, but an e-mail exchange does not completely support that claim.
Donaldson added that while he is not planning at this time to sue the MPAA for copyright infringement, he reserved the possibility of filing a lawsuit later. "It's my practice and style to wait and see what they do, go over all of our options, and then make a decision," he said.
Dick, who was nominated for an Academy Award for 2004's documentary feature "Twist of Faith," said in an interview that his film crew acted appropriately in tracking down and identifying the anonymous members of the movie ratings board. But even if he didn't "follow all the rules," Dick said, "I don't know how that allows somebody else to break the law."
Bernards said the MPAA has made copies of other films submitted for ratings, but did not identify any by name.
When Dick submitted his film for a rating, he asked in an e-mail for assurances that "no copies would be made of any part or all of the film," according to a copy of the e-mail exchange.
In a reply e-mail, an MPAA representative did not specifically say the organization wouldn't copy the film, but did say "the confidentiality of your film ... is our first priority. Please feel assure (sic) that your film is in good hands."
The MPAA's Bernards, who said Glickman was unavailable for comment, said the organization was operating lawfully when it copied Dick's movie without his or his producer's authorization. "The courts recognize that parties are entitled to make a copy of a work for use as evidence in possible future proceedings," she said.
The MPAA has not brought any legal actions against Dick, but did call the police when the movie raters complained about being stalked and were worried about their safety. The raters had no idea they were being followed as part of a documentary.
Donaldson said he was unaware of any legal cases that supported the MPAA's position.
One expert on intellectual property and copyright law said that while he was unfamiliar with any cases specifically addressing the issue, the MPAA's argument might work.
"You can't make a copy as a general matter, but you can if you meet several tests," said Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School. It helps the MPAA, Lemley said, that it is not selling the copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" for commercial gain.
Dick "is right to say you can't make a single copy unless you have a legitimate defense," Lemley said. "But it seems that in this case, [the MPAA] may have a legitimate defense."
p2p news / p2pnet: More than 30 people have been arrested following attacks on release groups in Europe.
The raids, in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic, were organized by the Hollywood-owned German version of the MPAA, the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU).
"Rumors of the bust began circulating online today, as members attempted to warn each other," says Slyck.
"According to warning notices online, the following top providers have, for all intents and purposes, been eliminated; RELOADED, KNIGHTS, TFCiSO, Cinemaniacs, German-Friend, ParadieseBeach and Klapsmuehle. In addition, the leader of RELOADED was reported as arrested during the raids. The GVU confirmed the following release groups were eliminated; Unreality, DRAGON, Laboratory, Heaven, code talk, GTR, ECP, TRCD, AOS, MRM, SITH, GWL, Cine VCD, AHE, Cinemaniacs.
In 2004 the GVU boasted the names of thousands of users of ?illegal Internet piracy? sites were being examined by German police.
Between 8,000 and 20,000 people were "unmasked," said Agence France Presse at the time.
"The pursuit of top providers is a primary concern to the entertainment industry, as the proliferation of pirated material often begins with these organizations," says Slyck. "From these FTP sources, pirated material (especially movies) trickle down to the Newsgroups, IRC, BitTorrent and finally P2P networks. Initially, these raids may place a damper on spread of pirated material, however the allure of public recognition is simply too great for many to avoid. With time, their role in the online warez community will most likely be replaced."
GVU, short for Gesellschaft zur Verletzung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen eV, says it's, "embedded in a worldwide network ... with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as the umbrella organization".
In 2003, it's pseudo cops were involved in the shut down the p2p Unreality file share server.
"Its statutes ... stipulate that it conduct its own investigations to the extent permitted by the law," it says on its site. "This takes place before any official inquiry, to substantiate initial suspicions that may lead to a preliminary inquiry."
Also See:
Slyck - Major Piracy Bust Against Top Providers, January 24, 2006
thousands - Big German file share probe, December 13, 2005
Unreality - German enforcers raid file share op, October 21, 2003
p2p news / p2pnet: America leads the world ----- as the Number One spam-relaying country.
So says UK security firm Sophos in its 2006 Dirty Dozen for the last quarter of 2005.
But, "although the United States still heads up the chart, it has made significant reductions, and for the first time accounts for less than a quarter of all spam relayed," says the company.
Meanwhile, the level of non-English language spam is, "continuing to increase, with the vast majority now being relayed by 'zombie' computers hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses under the control of hackers," says Sophos, going on:
"Sizeable increases are also happening in 'pump-and-dump' stock spam, designed to artificially inflate stock prices before spammers sell shares at considerable profit."
The bad news is, "the contribution of China is up by seven percentage points since October 2005, as the spam economy takes off over there," says Sophos spokesman Graham Cluley. "Further bad news - and perhaps more of a surprise - is the continued rise in the percentage of spam from France, which has gone from 1.2% a year ago, to 3.5% in October 2005, to 5%."
The top twelve spam relaying countries are:
* United States - 24.5%
* China (inc Hong Kong) - 22.3%
* South Korea - 9.7%
* France - 5.0%
* Canada - 3.0%
* Brazil - 2.6%
* Spain - 2.5%
* Austria - 2.4%
* Taiwan - 2.1%
* Poland - 2.0%
* Japan - 2.0%
* Germany - 1.8%
* Others 20.3%
The fact the dirty dozen is made up of of nations from four different continents, "gives an indication as to the nature of the spam problem," states Cluely.
"Zombie computers - responsible for relaying more than 60% of the world's spam - can allow spammers to escape country-specific legislation, as they no longer have to be located in the same country as the spamming machines they operate."
Also See:
Sophos - US tops stats again, as top spam-relaying countries revealed, January 23, 2006
p2p view / p2pnet: I am a fan of the Asbury Lanes, a tiny 1950's 16 lane bowling alley that survived, vintage interior intact, by changing its focus to music rather than the sport itself. Asbury Park is a flattened town, once one of the premier shore towns in the US and now victim of 1960's racial unrest, the collapse of the local economy, and a sustained deterioration of its infrastructure caused by neglect. It is the city Bruce Springsteen sings about in "My City of Ruins" and Bruce himself no doubt frequented these lanes in his youth when it was a bowling alley first and foremost. Depite the calamity it is still a rock-and-roll town.
If you look at the outside of the building you would swear that it was shuttered like almost everything else in Asbury Park. Indeed, the lanes are closed most of the day, opening in the late afternoon five days a week for music and bowling. The bowling costs $10 per person for the night, a bargain anywhere. That's OK because this is a rock club first. Rather than enter a club sporting some mock-vintage deco, the inside of the Asbury lanes is original and straight out of the space race/Danish modern era. A time of fins on cars and pastel colors layered between white and chrome.
No, the Asbury Lanes never closed. It has been in operation for over 50 years with the present owners running it since 1961. They witnessed the full descent of this town as the business is located only a block from the water. It survives now playing on the old movie/rock cliché - as the bands perform on a stage built over the middle four lanes bowlers continue to bowl all night on the remaining twelve. Surprisingly, the loud sound of ball striking pin is muted by the lanes sound system and never interrupts the band we came to see.
Predator Dub Assassin is one of the most polished unsigned artists I have heard in a long time. They have the whole package, playing great original songs that are a dead ringer for the roots reggae tunes that are the basis for their sound. Their music is as authentic as the Asbury Lanes and of all the mediocrity I hear on the FM band as I commute to my day job it again makes me wonder aloud who is spinning the vinyl at the local radio stations these days. These guys should be stars.
Before the show I spoke briefly with the band's front man Tim Boyce. I asked him about independent bands and how his group is utilizing the Net. Tim told me he was signed to a label once, but money never seemed to come in. Their latest CD was self produced and they sell it themselves at their shows. He then volunteered the economics for me.
When you are signed to a label you get $0.70 per CD. Break even costs run about $9.00. Tim then told me that the PDubs latest CD cost them (including studio efforts and disc manufacturing) about $2.50 a CD. They sell them for $10, pocketing $7.50 or ten times more than a label would pay them.
As for the Internet, their Website offers three of their tunes online for free. Tim confessed he had concerns about giving everything away for free and so gave away his mixed feeling about file sharing and the P2P applications that foster this activity. The person who managed their site went MIA recently and so the band is looking for someone else to update it regularly for them. A peek at the shows section of their site confirms this as September 2005 is the last performance promoted on it. For those interested, they play at McCann's in another shore town, Belmar, NJ, every Friday night.
Yup, it's tough to be an indie band. While the Net helps empower artists to earn their own revenues from their music, labels still offer the marketing muscle to rise above the white noise of millions of aspiring acts. Like the Whos shouting "We're Here, We're Here" in hopes they are heard from their life-bearing speck on the head of a clover, talent like the PDubs have to find their own mix to be heard over the din of society. Despite a growing fan base it's not easy.
keysWebsense Security Labs has received reports of a malicious website which is hosting a Trojan horse keylogger. This keylogger is designed to steal end-user information when the user accesses certain online banks and e-commerce websites.
The file name of the code is "logo.wmf." This code attempts to utilize the recent Microsoft® Windows® WMF vulnerability, assuming the user has not applied the recent Windows patch to solve this issue. The code runs, without user-intervention, when the user accesses an infected website. If the code runs, it drops a file called "web.exe" onto the user's machine and runs it. This file is designed to compromise the end-users' confidential information and may also include a Trojan horse backdoor.
The site that hosts the malicious code is located in the UK and was up at the time of this alert. It is difficult to determine if the site's security has been compromised or if it was intentionally setup. The site contains little content, as it simply pulls links from the real London Olympics 2012 website. Websense® - Security Labs Alert: Crimeware: Fake London Olympic Site hosting Keylogger
Websense® Security Labs? has received reports of a malicious website which is hosting a Trojan horse keylogger. This keylogger is designed to steal end-user information when the user accesses certain online banks and e-commerce websites.
The file name of the code is "logo.wmf." This code attempts to utilize the recent Microsoft® Windows® WMF vulnerability, assuming the user has not applied the recent Windows patch to solve this issue. The code runs, without user-intervention, when the user accesses an infected website. If the code runs, it drops a file called "web.exe" onto the user's machine and runs it. This file is designed to compromise the end-users' confidential information and may also include a Trojan horse backdoor.
The site that hosts the malicious code is located in the UK and was up at the time of this alert. It is difficult to determine if the site's security has been compromised or if it was intentionally setup. The site contains little content, as it simply pulls links from the real London Olympics 2012 website.
http://www.websensesecuritylabs.com/alerts/alert.php?AlertID=404
virusA mass mailing computer virus that is coded to delete files on February 3 may have spread to more than 500,000 servers, if evidence from a Web counter can be trusted.
Known as the Blackmal.E or Nyxem.E virus, the program travels as an attachment to e-mail messages with suggestive subject lines such as "School girl fantasies gone bad" and "Re: Sex Video". The virus will completely compromise systems whose users open the attachment, attempting to disable security software and making extensive changes to the registry. Half-million PCs infected by e-mail virus
Half-million PCs infected by e-mail virus
Published: 2006-01-23
A mass-mailing computer virus that is coded to delete files on February 3 may have spread to more than 500,000 servers, if evidence from a Web counter can be trusted.
Known as the Blackmal.E or Nyxem.E virus, the program travels as an attachment to e-mail messages with suggestive subject lines such as "School girl fantasies gone bad" and "Re: Sex Video". The virus will completely compromise systems whose users open the attachment, attempting to disable security software and making extensive changes to the registry.
The virus will increment a Web counter hosted at Internet service provider RCN. The counter, which can be accessed via a Web address, surpassed 500,000 this weekend, according to antivirus firm F-Secure. The counter may not be accurate, as it could have started above zero and logs any browser that also goes to the Web address, counting observers as well as compromised PCs in a sort of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for the Internet.
The number falls short of the largest documented infection to date--the MSBlast, or Blaster, worm--which spread to at least 25 million computers, according to data gathered by Microsoft.
Computers that remain infected on February 3 will have a eleven types of data deleted from the hard drive, including any Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF documents. However, a similar threat posed by the Sober virus, which was supposed to download additional functionality on January 5, largely failed to happen. Because the Blackmal virus does not rely on external Web sites, however, it's unlikely that it will be as easily hobbled.
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/113?ref=rss
What happens when an organization that is best known for inveighing against the unauthorized copying of movies gets caught doing exactly that? The Motion Picture Association of America was caught with its pants down, admitting to making unauthorized copies of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated in advance of this week's Sundance Film Festival.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated looks at the motion picture ratings system created and run by the MPAA. Director Kirby Dick submitted the film for rating in November. After receiving the movie, the MPAA subsequently made copies without Dick's permission. Dick had specifically requested in an e-mail that the MPAA not make copies of the movie. The MPAA responded by saying that "the confidentiality of your film is our first priority."
Dick later learned that the MPAA made copies of the film to distribute them to its employees, despite the MPAA's stance on unauthorized copying. Ah, there's nothing like the smell of hypocrisy in the morning-apparently the prohibition against copying films without the copyright owner's consent doesn't apply to the MPAA. A lawyer for the MPAA justified the organization's apparent hypocrisy by saying that Dick had invaded the privacy of some MPAA staffers, which justified the MPAA's actions.
"We made a copy of Kirby's movie because it had implications for our employees," said Kori Bernards, the MPAA's vice president for corporate communications. She said Dick spied on the members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school.
A little background: This Film looks at how the rating system functions, specifically at how some types of content are treated differently by the MPAA. Dick feels that the MPAA is full of?surprise?double standards, especially when it comes to how they treat graphic violence vs. sexual content, heterosexual vs. homosexual sex, and big-studio vs. independent films. As part of the documentary's creation, Dick trailed and identified some of the previously anonymous members of the ratings board. Dick's conduct became a cause for concern for both the MPAA and its employees, leading to their calling the police on some occasions.
According to Mark Lemley, a professor at the Stanford Law School, the MPAA may have been within its rights to make copies of the film. Given that the MPAA's intent isn't financial gain and that the whole situation may rise above the level of trading barbs through the media into legal action, making a copy may be justified. Personally, I can't see any justification for an organization such as the MPAA ignoring a directive from a copyright owner, but IANAL. A "digital version" of the movie was submitted for screening, according to Dick's attorney, Michael Donaldson. If that digital version turns out to be a DVD, the MPAA could also find itself in hot water for violating the DMCA. Oh, the irony! Either way, the MPAA can't be happy about being put into a position where they are forced to justify the same actions they decry when undertaken by a consumer.
It's difficult to see how This Film Is Not Yet Rated?which ended up with an NC-17 rating for graphic sexual content?is being harmed. If nothing else, Dick is reaping a bountiful crop of free publicity on the eve of the Sundance Film Festival. The MPAA's decision to make copies of the film without the copyright-holder's permission reinforces the documentary's message that the MPAA's actions often reek of self-interest and hypocrisy.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060124-6036.html
Ratings systems work fairly well, when people pay attention to them and follow the guidelines. People don't take their preschoolers to see R-rated movies like Silence of the Lambs, and you don't buy "Adults Only" videogame titles like Leisure Suit Larry for an eighth-grade graduation present. There comes a point, however, where ratings become pointless. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has arrived at such a point with his suggestion that porn sites receive ratings.
I thought it was a joke when I first saw the headline myself, and the punchlines are obvious: "this site is rated A for..." Unfortunately, Sen. Stevens isn't joking. During a committee hearing on the Child Online Protection Act last week, he put the adult entertainment industry on notice that if it didn't come up with a rating system, Congress would do one for them.
As asinine as rating adult content sounds (adults-only means no kids, right?), there is apparently a method behind the madness. The vision is that a rating system will somehow magically turn into a better content filter, enabling parents, schools, and other concerned parties to more easily keep children from looking at smut on the 'Net. So if all porn sites are forced to carry an "XXX" rating, and filtering software is tweaked to detect the ratings, it could conceivably work to block those US-based sites that are forced to use ratings.
There's always a catch, and in this case, it's the same issue faced by every other piece of legislation that tries to legislate the Internet. The online world is no respecter of political boundaries. Even if adult sites located in the US comply with a government-mandated ratings system, ratings-based filters wouldn't do a lick of good when faced with European and Asian porn sites.
The ever-popular ideas of .xxx domains for porn and .kids for child-friendly content was raised as well. ICANN signed off on a new .xxx top-level domain last summer, but then backed down late last year in the face of concerns from some parties that it would just end up resulting in "more opportunities to distribute smut on the Internet."
Keeping racy and violent videogames along with porn away from the eyes of children is a popular theme with politicians these days. What other explanation is there for the continued advocacy and passage of laws that have no chance of passing constitutional muster? Ratings are useful as a guideline as to what kind of content a game or movie contains. They're not meant to function as some kind of a technological barrier separating children from inappropriate content. And they shouldn't?that's the parents' job.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060124-6035.html
Back in the dark days of the Internet, a war raged on over who would control the prepubescent HTML. Some folks pressed for a text-based approach, others advocated following the open-standards-based World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and Netscape tried to institute its own set of standards using the "embrace and extend" philosophy of adding its own extensions to W3C HTML.
Netscape understood that open standards work only as far as an extremely dominant market force will carry them. In other words, if a browser has enough market muscle (as Netscape Navigator did in the mid-'90s), web page designers will build their pages to look good in that browser and marginalize everything else. Old-timers will recall that thousands of web pages once sported "Netscape Enhanced" logos, contained messages saying something like "This page doesn't look right? Download Netscape now!," or simply failed to load with other browsers.
This is an old idea, and at a minimum dates back to the growth days of the phone company, when all audio equipment had to play ball with AT&T or die. The pattern was later repeated by Microsoft when it released Internet Explorer, and for a while, conscientious designers had three sets of HTML "standards" to worry about?W3C, Netscape extensions, and IE extensions. As the web grew more complex, scripting languages, databases, and active pages became commonplace, and it simply became too complex to try to cover every base. W3C finally caught up with the desires of web designers and open standards have finally started to make a comeback.
Did somebody mention RSS? Just because the browser world has stabilized somewhat is no reason to think that developers have stopped trying to control the Internet with proprietary standards. Now that everyone and their cat has a blog, RSS is the Hot New Thing® and the next item up for bids in the Price is Right. This time, our latest culprit is not everyone's favorite Evil Empire, but Apple.
Apple recently unveiled iPhoto 6, which contains a new feature called Photocasting. Essentially, Photocasting is a way to publish and share photos in the same way that a blog shares words (or Flickr shares photos). All well and good?different product, similar goal. But note the following tidbit from the Apple web site:
...if Aunt Sophia doesn't have iPhoto or she has a computer that runs Windows, she can still subscribe to your Photocasts via any RSS-compatible browser or RSS reader.
Turns out, this claim of RSS compatibility isn't entirely true. In user tests, Photocasts have been demonstrated to work nicely in Safari, but result in error in FireFox and Opera. Similarly, some dedicated RSS clients can display Photocasts, while others can't. What's going on? Software developer Mark Pilgrim has called Apple out on the software and its RSS compatibility.
...the "photocasting" feature centers around a single undocumented extension element in a namespace that doesn't need to be declared. iPhoto 6 doesn't understand the first thing about HTTP, the first thing about XML, or the first thing about RSS. It ignores features of HTTP that Netscape 4 supported in 1996, and mis-implements features of XML that Microsoft got right in 1997. It ignores 95% of RSS and Atom and gets most of the remaining 5% wrong.
That's fairly strong stuff, but don't take his word for it. Dave Winer, one of the creators of RSS, has also noted iPhoto's incompatibilities.
It's pretty bad. There are lots of errors, the date formats are wrong, there are elements that are not in RSS that aren't in a namespace.
Engadget quoted Jobs as saying they were using "industry standard" RSS. Even if we used terminology like that (we don't, there's no standards body for RSS) one company can't on its own say it's standard, esp when it has so many mistakes in it. It's a fairly damaging lie. Yeah, companies lie, I know - but then sometimes bloggers have to say they're lying.
Errors aside, there is evidence that Apple's feed contains a Javascript application which determines whether your client can support their format. If it can't, you get an error message. That's unusual behavior for standards-compliant software. We are left to wonder where Apple is headed with this. Since RSS has no real standards body to oversee it, Apple might be innocently aimed in the wrong direction in a simple case of bad planning and sloppy programming. On the other hand, they may be gambling that Photocasting will become popular enough over the next couple of years to force their version of it (and RSS) on everyone else. Now that the enmity between Atom and RSS has quieted somewhat, it will be interesting to see if we are up for another standards battle. I suppose when iPhoto 7 comes out in a year or so, we'll find out if the incompatibilities have been eliminated as bugs or enhanced as features.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060123-6033.html
FireFox 2.0 - What you can expect.
Hmmm... sounds pretty good. So... where is it?
From a development point of view, the idea of FireFox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become FireFox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed FireFox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).
- Mozillazine.org
Racing Towards 2
It's going to be an exciting year. Not since the run up to FireFox 1.0 have I been so excited about the content of a release. FireFox 2 is going to be great.
I've updated the FireFox 2 Roadmap Page on mozilla.org with some more detail about how we're going to get there, based on Chris Beard's blog about Mozilla Product Strategy. I'll summarize briefly here, and call out some of the important work that's getting done right now.
Firstly, FireFox 2 is based off the same Gecko branch that shipped FireFox 1.5, so they should be compatible from a web developer's point of view. APIs might be added, but none should be changed.
From a development point of view, the idea of FireFox 2 is to deliver significant user experience enhancements on top of a relatively stable rendering engine as significant retooling is done on the main development trunk for what will become FireFox 3, and deliver them in a timely fashion. By being deliberately cautious with our goals for the rendering engine, we hope to avoid long cycles of shake and bake that delayed FireFox 1.5 (which had more substantial Gecko changes than user interface changes).
Key Engineering Objective: Deliver an enhanced product mid-year 2006.
In order to ship a FireFox 2 around the middle of the year, we must be solidly feature complete by the end of Q1.
So, without further ado, some of the most important features from the planning brainstorming page:
New Bookmarks and History
Improve the browser's Bookmarks and History systems to improve their effectiveness as renavigation aids while at the same time improving the back end for speed and extensibility.
Tabbed Browsing Enhancements
Make tabs behave more like windows in the operating system environment, making them behave more as users would expect.
Improved Basic Content Type Handling
For things like RSS/Atom feeds, mail links etc. Improve discovery and handling user interfaces.
Web Search
Improve the discoverability and adaptability of the search UI within FireFox.
Bug Fixing
Bug fixing at all levels where risk is low and yield high, e.g. the blank tab download bug, platform stability, etc.
Some additional things we would like to look at in the FireFox 2 timeframe include:
Visual Uplift
A freshen of the visual design of FireFox while maintaining high levels of system integration.
Inline Spell Check
The rise of applications like web mail, blogging etc highlight the weaknesses of HTML's textarea widget. We should at the very least offer people the ability to spell check their submissions.
Exit Survey
We'd like to know why people leave FireFox. A survey on uninstall would help us find ways to make the software better in future versions.
UI Consolidation and Simplification
Consolidate and simplify user interface in the browser window tying together features in meaningful ways where possible.
There are many other ideas floating around, this is just a brief snapshot of some of the high priority items on our plates. If we get this done, we'll be satisfied!
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009607.html
* 18:09 24 January 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Barry Fox
For over 30 years, Barry Fox has trawled the world's weird and wonderful patent applications each week, digging out the most exciting, intriguing and even terrifying new ideas. His column, Invention, is exclusively online. Scroll down for a roundup of previous Invention articles.
The mood player
Walt Disney would surely be pleased with some of the new ideas being patented by Disney's Californian headquarters.
Alongside digital downloads for fast food restaurants, the company has devised a media player that selects songs based on its owner's latest mood.
The device has wrist sensors that measure body temperature, perspiration and pulse rate. It uses these measurements to build a profile of what music or video the owner plays when they are hot, cold, dry or sweaty, and when their pulse is racing or slow.
The device then comes up with suggestion to fit each and every profile, either using songs or videos in its library or downloading something new that should be suitable.
If the owner rejects the player's selection it learns and refines the profile. So, over time the player should get better and better at matching body measurements with the owner's moods.
The patent suggests that the device could display animated cartoons when the owner is particularly happy. Walt would surely be proud.
Read the mood player patent here.
Radiation error detector
Most conventional radiation detectors use a Geiger-Muller vacuum tube to sense radioactivity, making them bulky, fragile and power hungry.
Now, thanks to some lateral thinking from inventor Robert Minemier of Arizona, US, a compact microchip and single AA battery could soon perform the same job for a fraction of the price.
Minemier's invention exploits that fact that integrated circuits are very sensitive to radiation, which can cause them to malfunction. Modern circuits can cram millions of transistors onto a silicon chip the size of a fingernail.
But each transistor is sensitive to a direct hit from a neutron or alpha radiation particle, which will cause its "logic state" to flip from "0" to "1", or vice versa. Normally this would cause a circuit to malfunction, but for Minemier's device it provides the ideal radiation alert.
The new detector will use one integrated circuit shielded from radiation and another that is exposed. The device then feeds a signal through both circuits and compares the number of errors that appear in the unprotected unit.
Detectors with a digital display could be small enough for emergency workers to wear as a badge, according to the patent filing.
Read the radiation error detector patent here.
In-flight early warning
Researchers at the Applied Physics Lab at John Hopkins University in Maryland, US, have been looking for ways to make a plane automatically send out an emergency signal in the advent of hijacking. There may be little physics in their solution, but it's a clever use of simple technology.
All crew members would wear a hidden, passive radio transponder containing a unique identifying code. Radio devices designed to communicate with the transponders would then be hidden around the aircraft - in seats the rest area and the toilets - and would be programmed to recognise normal crew movements during a flight.
If hijackers should commandeer the plane and forced the crew out of their routine, the radio devices will to detect the telltale change and silently transmit a distress beacon.
Read the in-flight early warning patent here.
Read previous Invention columns:
Cellphone distress beacon, the spy-diver killer, preventing in-flight interference, the inkjet-printer pen, sonic watermarks, the McDownload, Hot-air plane, Landmine arrows, Soldiers obeying odours, Coffee beer, wall-beating bugging, Eyeball electronics, phone jolts, Personal crash alarm, Talking tooth, Shark shocker, Midnight call-foiler, Burning bullets, A music lover's dream, Magic wand for gamers, The phantom car, Phone-bomb hijacking, Shocking airport scans, Old tyres to printer ink and Eye-tracking displays.
Printable version Email to a friend RSS Feed
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8629&feedId=online-ne...
* 16:38 24 January 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Will Knight
In a landmark court case, a US man has pleaded guilty to hijacking more than 400,000 computers and using them to attack commercial websites and bombard internet users with spam email and pop-up ads.
On Monday, Jeanson Ancheta admitted hacking into computers and installing software enabling him to control them remotely. Prosecutors have accused him of creating a massive army of "zombie" computers, or "bots", which he used to launch attacks against websites and to send out huge quantities of spam email.
To increase the size of his network of infected computers, Ancheta programmed his zombie machines to automatically scan the internet for further vulnerable machines.
The size of the zombie network controlled by Ancheta highlights the scale of the problem faced by websites subjected to so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which are designed to block legitimate traffic.
These attacks are often linked to attempts to extort money. Gambling sites, and others that rely on uptime (uninterrupted site-availability) for revenue are a particular target.
It is possible to counter a DDoS attack, says Mike Prettlejohn, of UK internet monitoring company Netcraft, by ignoring packets of data sent from unknown machines, or by filtering out packets that are not normally received. However, both techniques may result in blocking some legitimate web users. "That's just part-and-parcel of the strategy," Prettlejohn told New Scientist. "If a site is successfully DDoS-ed, then no one can get to it at all."
Military networks
Ancheta has also admitted to causing pop-up advertising to appear on infected machines, in return for payment from advertisers. He has confessed to being paid $3000 in return for providing access to networks within his zombie network, selling networks of 10,000 machines on 30 different occasions.
Prettlejohn adds that creating zombie machines is becoming increasingly complex for hackers as software companies like Microsoft have improved their software maintenance policies. But he warns that hackers are also focusing on new techniques for spreading viruses and other forms of malicious code, such as malicious instant messaging programs.
Ancheta is accused of infecting computers at the Weapons Division of the US Naval Air Warfare Center in California and others used by the Defense Information Systems Agency in Virginia. In federal court in Los Angeles, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the US Computer Fraud Abuse Act and anti-spam laws, and to causing damage to US military computers.
In a deal with prosecutors, Ancheta agreed to plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence of between six and eight years in prison. He will appear before a US district judge for sentencing on 1 May. In addition to paying restitution to the US government, Ancheta has agreed to forfeit his ill-gotten gains, which include $60,000 dollars in cash, a BMW luxury car, and assorted computer equipment.
Printable version Email to a friend RSS Feed
Could the video iPod spur DMCA change?
Posted by Dan Bell on 24 January 2006 - 17:12 - Source: C|Net
DamnedIfIknow used our news submit to tell us about a little commentary over at C|Net that speaks to present DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act law and how it conflicts with todays society and the products available to it. Specifically, a part of this legislation effectively trumps our Fair Use Rights by allowing content providers to not only add controls to stop us from copying our purchased content but also to make it illegal to "circumvent" the controls. Don't believe me? Ask 321 Studios, they were drummed out of business for trying to provide a product enabling DVD backups, because it was bundled with software that removes Content Scrambling System protection (CSS).
This may have been fine and dandy way back when, but now, people want to use their products they purchase in new ways. You can't exactly stuff a DVD in the side of an iPod so how the heck can we easily grab content for our devices? We can't, unless we want to set drumming our fingers and capture it as it plays, then encode it etc., etc. Or pay for a third party to do it for us.
What the author is wondering here is, can a hardware device or lifestyle become so popular, that it can produce the pressure required to change the law? Can need trump greed?
Apple Computer"s video iPod may not be the first portable movie player, but it is by far the best. The one serious flaw in this svelte little device is how difficult it is to load with video. Apple"s otherwise handy iTunes application flatly refuses to transfer a legally purchased DVD to the iPod. Don"t blame Apple for this glaring oversight. You can thank our esteemed public servants in Congress.
In 1998, politicians bowed to pressure from the entertainment industry and voted overwhelmingly for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Part of that law made it a federal offense to sell or distribute software that can rip DVDs. In other words, believe it or not, Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be guilty of a federal felony if iTunes transferred DVDs to an iPod as easily as it can music from a CD.
"Our best hope for getting amendments to the DMCA is for more regular consumers to feel the pinch of the DMCA," says Fred von Lohmann, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Earlier legal tussles over the DMCA were more arcane and didn"t cripple gadgets prized by millions of Americans. (About 14 million iPods, including the Shuffle, Nano and video versions, were sold in the last quarter of 2005.)
You can check out the entire commentary by following this link. I for one never did understand how it was legal to add these copyright controls to begin with, considering the Fair Use law that came first. We need to get active now, as it seems that corporations are seeing the handwriting on the wall and have put together a new set of controls for the next gen format that uses the blue laser - "Managed Copy". Managed Copy does allow for consumers to stream content among other things, but they also added the wonderful concept of charging us for the right to do so. Think they wont try? Guess again! All that is needed is for the public to abandon the DVD player and CSS and make the move to high definition blue laser discs. Right now, there is too big a base of inexpensive DVD players to introduce a new copy controls scheme...but it's coming.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12990
Federal courts cause 321 Studios to shut down
Posted by Dan Bell on 03 August 2004 - 00:10 - Source: 321 Studios
disctracker used our news submit to tell us that 321 is throwing in the towel. The maker of several CD and DVD copy programs, they say that the legal system has made it impossible to continue.
Thank you for visiting 321 Studios. 321 Studios regrets to inform you that it has ceased business operations including, but not limited to, the sale, support and promotion of our products.
Despite 321 Studios? best efforts to remain in business, injunctions entered against 321 Studios by three US Federal courts earlier this year has resulted in 321 Studios no longer being able to continue operating the business. If you are a 321 Studios customer looking for customer support, please visit our online Technical Support Knowledge Base and FAQ?s, prior to the 1st day of August, 2005, where you should be able to resolve most of your concerns. After this date, customer support will no longer be available.
You may visit the 321 Studios website for further information. Whether you like their software or not, we have to give Robert Moore and the 321Studios crew credit for using a good portion of the revenues from said programs, to fight for fair use.
Thanks guys, you put up a good fight against impossible odds.
Understanding Your Rights: The Public's Right of Fair Use
By Robin D. Gross
What does the "fair use privilege" mean?
Several important limitations to the author's exclusive rights exist under copyright law to encourage citizens to fully and openly exchange and build upon information to increase the public's knowledge. The most important limitation to the author's exclusive rights is the public's right to exercise a "fair use privilege" regarding copyrighted works. Fair use refers to an individual's right to use copyrighted material in a reasonable manner without the consent of copyright owner. In Sony v. Universal City Studios; the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a 'fair use;' the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use." The fair use privilege was originally a judicially created doctrine, but has subsequently been codified by the copyright statute.
Why does the public have a "fair use" right to use copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission?
At the doctrine's core is a fundamental belief that not all copying should be banned, particularly in socially important endeavors. The Supreme Court explained, "the fair use doctrine exists because copyright law extends limited proprietary rights to copyright owners only to the extent necessary to ensure dissemination to the public."
Copyright law serves as a regulatory scheme designed to balance the competing rights of creators to exploit their work, entrepreneurs to receive a return on their investment, and the public's interest in gaining access to works. The fair use doctrine and other public rights are designed to further the ultimate goal of disseminating knowledge to the public. In developing an information infrastructure that serves the public interest and encourages the open flow of information, it is essential to continue to balance the competing interests and preserve the public's fair use rights in an electronic environment as it has in more traditional formats.
How do I know if my use of copyrighted material would be considered a fair use?
Whether a particular use of a copyrighted work will be considered a fair use not subject to copyright depends upon the particular facts and circumstances involved. The biggest problem with the right is often trying to determine whether it applies to a specific action. This is because the law on fair use is murky and no real definition has ever emerged.
There is no "bright line" test that can tell if a particular use would be considered "fair," but the Copyright Act lists particular activities generally considered fair (this list is not to be construed as exclusive or limiting in any way). Some examples of uses listed in the statute that would generally be considered a fair use to copy copyrighted material include: Criticism, comment, parody, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, or personal use such as time or format shifting.
What are the factors to balance to determine if a use is fair?
The copyright statute lists four factors to balance together on a case-by-case basis to determine if a particular use would be considered fair. The law's language does not preclude consideration of other factors however. The factors to consider include:
0. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes -- Courts are more likely to find fair use where the use is for noncommercial purposes.
1. The nature of the copyrighted work -- A particular use is more likely to be fair where the copied work is factual rather than creative.
2. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole -- A court will balance this factor toward a finding of fair use where the amount taken is small or insignificant in proportion to the overall work.
3. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work -- If the court finds the newly created work is not a substitute product for the copyrighted work, it will be more likely to weigh this factor in favor of fair use.
Due to the difficulty in determining exactly when the fair use privilege would allow you to exercise one of the rights otherwise reserved for the copyright holder (and the penalties for guessing incorrectly can be extremely costly, even including jail time), it is wise to consult experienced counsel as well as to review previous judicial opinions where courts have analyzed whether a particular use would qualify as fair.
Do I have the right to make a copy of my CD for my own personal use?
Yes. The fair use doctrine allows an individual to make a copy of their lawfully obtained copyrighted work for their own personal use. Allowing people to make a copy of copyrighted music for their personal use provides for enhanced consumer convenience through legitimate and lawful copying. It can also enlarge the exploitable market for the rights holders. The fair use privilege's personal use right is what allows an individual to make a backup copy of their computer software as an essential defense against future media failure.
Personal use also permits music fans to make "mix tapes" or compilations of their favorite songs from their own personal music collection or the radio for their own personal enjoyment in a more convenient format, or "format shifting." Another example of acceptable personal use copying of a copyrighted work is "time-shifting," or the recording of a copyrighted program to enjoy at a later and more convenient time.
As new media present new ways for people to enjoy music, the public's fair use rights accompany them into the electronic frontier. Now, music fans have the right and ability to copy their own music collection onto their own computer storage device and create customized play lists for their own personal use and enjoyment of their music.
It is important to note that while consumers have the right to listen to their own music collection for their own personal use, they do not have the right, however, to make their music collections available to others by uploading them onto the Internet for public downloading.
** To learn more about copyright law's fair use privilege, check out Stanford University's Copyright and Fair Use Web Page at: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
Netflix to support both HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies
Posted by Dan Bell on 25 January 2006 - 00:33 - Source: PR NewsWire
The following text is a complete press release, unmodified by CD Freaks. If you don't want to view these kind of news posting you can disable them in your preferences page once logged in. Please send your press releases to news@cdfreaks.com
Online DVD Rental Leader Embraces 'Next Wave of Consumer Excitement'
LOS GATOS, Calif., Jan. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Netflix Inc.
(Nasdaq: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, today
announced it will carry the first movies available in HD DVD when the new
high-definition format launches in late March, according to plans recently
outlined by several major movie studios, and said it will similarly offer
titles in the Blu-ray format when that product launches, expected to be later
this year.
"High-definition DVD is the next wave of excitement in home entertainment
and we'll be there at its inception," said Netflix Chairman and CEO Reed
Hastings. "With far sharper images, better sound and more features, we expecthigh-def will greatly enhance DVD's consumer appeal and extend its popularity over the next decade or more."
With Toshiba's new high-def DVD player now available to be ordered for
March delivery at several leading online and big-box retailers, a number of
Hollywood studios have announced plans to launch both new and catalog titles on HD DVD beginning late that month. Warner Home Video said at the recent Consumer Electronics Show that it will introduce 24 titles in HD DVD on March 28. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment and The Weinstein Company made similar announcements.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment,
Lionsgate and Paramount also said at the Consumer Electronics Show that they have each selected between 10 and 20 titles to launch concurrent with the debut of Blu-ray hardware later this year.
Netflix said it will make the high-def DVD titles available at launch as a way of supporting the next-generation DVD format and signaling its belief that while initial adoption may be limited the market will eventually migrate to high-definition.
"For those subscribers who have an immediate interest in renting movies in
high-def, we're committed to making the full range of titles available at
Netflix the moment they're introduced," said Mr. Hastings.
About Netflix
Netflix is the world's largest online movie rental service, providing more
than three million subscribers access to over 55,000 DVD titles. Under the
company's most popular program, for $17.99 a month, Netflix subscribers rent
as many DVDs as they want and keep them as long as they want, with three
movies out at a time. There are no due dates, no late fees and no shipping
fees. DVDs are delivered for free by the USPS from regional shipping centers
located throughout the United States. Netflix can reach more than 90 percent of its subscribers with generally one business-day delivery. Netflix offers personalized movie recommendations to its members and has more than 1 billion movie ratings. Netflix also allows members to share and recommend movies to one another through its Friends(SM) feature. For more information, visit http://www.netflix.com.
InterVideo H.264 codec and NVIDIA accelerate high-definition decoding
Posted by Dan Bell on 24 January 2006 - 04:20 - Source: Business Wire
The following text is a complete press release, unmodified by CD Freaks. If you don't want to view these kind of news posting you can disable them in your preferences page once logged in. Please send your press releases to news@cdfreaks.com
January 23, 2006 08:00 AM US Eastern Timezone
InterVideo H.264 codec Combines With NVIDIA Hardware to Accelerate High-Definition Decoding
FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 2006--InterVideo(R), Inc. (NASDAQ:IVII), an industry leader in DVD, MPEG and high-definition (HD) multimedia software technology, announced today that its H.264 codec now supports the new NVIDIA PureVideo(TM) H.264 decode acceleration available on GeForce(TM) 6 and 7 Series graphics processors from NVIDIA(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).
H.264 is the digital video codec specified for the Blu-ray (BD) and High-definition DVD (HD DVD) formats. The H.264 specification, which is also known as the Advanced Video codec (AVC) specification or MPEG 4-Part 10, delivers two to three times the compression efficiency of solutions such as the MPEG-2 standard, which is used in DVD video. H.264 also delivers high-definition video with six times the resolution of standard definition DVDs.
InterVideo's H.264 codec technology leverages highly advanced algorithms to deliver superior quality and performance on today's personal computers. One of the key new features is the ability to divide the decoding tasks among several hardware cores and hardware threads on both the CPU and the GPU. Using traditional single thread decoding techniques, H.264 with high definition would not be feasible on today's personal computers because much of the overall processing power is unused. InterVideo's H.264 codec partitions the decoding tasks through algorithm and data decomposition into multiple threads to use all the processing power of the dual core and hyper threading technologies from Intel(R) and AMD(R) CPUs, as well as the GPU acceleration from NVIDIA graphics hardware.
The GeForce 6 and 7 Series graphics processors feature NVIDIA PureVideo(TM) technology, a combination of hardware and software that brings home theater quality video to the personal computer and provides hardware acceleration for H.264 encoded movies, providing a smooth frame-rate and image quality unachievable with CPUs alone. A perfect partner to InterVideo's advanced H.264 codec along with the NVIDIA ForceWare(TM) software suite and Unified Driver Architecture (UDA), the GeForce 6 and 7 Series deliver industry-renowned compatibility and reliability for an enhanced user experience.
"InterVideo's H.264 technology is the ideal complement for our GeForce 6 & 7 processors," said Scott Vouri, general manager, multimedia products at NVIDIA. "Combined, they will set the pace for OEMs and ODMs in the evolution of next-generation consumer electronics and PCs."
"NVIDIA has been a driving force in the delivery of the latest advancements in audio and video through its digital media processing technology," said Steve Ro, president and CEO of InterVideo. "With NVIDIA's hardware acceleration and deinterlacing capabilities, the InterVideo H.264 codec can deliver a whole new level of picture clarity."
Availability
NVIDIA ForceWare drivers featuring the NVIDIA PureVideo H.264 decode acceleration will be available in Q1'06. For more information on NVIDIA products, visit http://www.nvidia.com.
InterVideo's H.264 codec, applications, sample application code and documentation are available for licensing to OEMs, system integrators and other third parties. Licensing and customer support information on InterVideo's codec technology can be obtained by calling InterVideo at 510-651-0888 or visiting InterVideo's Web site, www.intervideo.com.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The Company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.
About InterVideo, Inc.
InterVideo is a leading provider of DVD software. InterVideo has developed a technology platform from which it has created a broad suite of integrated multimedia software products that allow users to capture, edit, author, burn, distribute, and play digital video. InterVideo's software is bundled with products sold by the majority of the leading PC OEMs. The company is headquartered in Fremont, CA with regional offices in Europe, Taiwan, China and Japan. For more information, contact InterVideo at 510-651-0888 or visit the company's Web site at www.intervideo.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
Except for the historical statements contained herein, the foregoing release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding InterVideo H.264 codec. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially due to several factors, including but not limited to the ability to forecast customer behavior and recognize or respond to emerging trends, changing preferences or competitive factors, the market acceptance of our new products and product enhancements, the resolution of any notices of claims regarding alleged infringement of third parties' intellectual property rights, the ability to maintain or expand our relationship with PC OEMs and other risks and uncertainties. Please consult the various reports and documents filed by InterVideo with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to InterVideo's Form 10-Q for other risk factors that could cause actual results to differ. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and InterVideo disclaims any responsibility to update or revise any forward-looking statement provided in this news release.
InterVideo and WinDVD are registered trademarks of InterVideo, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12989
