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Child copyright spies

p2p news / p2pnet: Up to 200,000 Hong Kong children are being recruited as Hollywood copyright spies.

"The city's Customs and Excise Department has begun training youth groups to use a web page to report illegal file-sharing activities using BitTorrent technology," says Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Under this latest scheme, "youngsters will be given a blacklist of suspect websites to monitor and asked to report any illegal uploading activities that they discover through the customs web page," says the story.

This will come as no surpise to observers of projects conceived and launched by the movie, music and software cartels to brainwash young school-children while they're still impressionable.

Nor is this a first for Hong Kong Customs and Excise.

Together with the MPAA's MPA (Motion Picture Association) the department, the Scout Association of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Society initiated an MPA intellectual property merit badge.

Knowledge of intellectual property law law is, of course, absolutely essential for every growing child and should be part and parcel of all school lessons.

Accordingly, the cartels are spending literally billions of dollars around the world to make sure their long-term free educational programs reach teaching institutions and child oriented establishments at all levels. The Business Software Association's Willy the Weasel is among the most innovative.

The cartels are being assisted in this by the corporate press corps.

This new copyright spy campaign is, "also aimed at raising awareness about internet piracy issues," says DPA.

Also See:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur - Schoolchildren recruited as copyright 'spies' in Hong Kong, January 20, 2006
merit badge - Scouting with the MPAA: V, May 11, 2005
free educational programs - They're brainwashing YOUR child, July 4, 2005
Willy the Weasel - Anti-p2p propaganda in schools, May 24, 2005
corporate press corps - The Big Lie: Part II, June 8, 2005

(Friday 20th January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7675

 

i like brain washing my kid !!

 

DMCA review sparks some well-written comments from the public

1/20/2006 3:38:22 PM, by Peter Pollack

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains provisions that a review be conducted every three years by the US Copyright Office, in order to determine whether the much-maligned legislation is stepping on any toes it should otherwise avoid. In conjunction with that review, interested parties can submit comments during a one-month period to ask that certain exemptions be added to the DMCA.

The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make non-infringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of access controls.

In one of the most important and controversial aspects of the DMCA, any technology which is designed to circumvent copy-protection schemes, no matter how simple, is illegal. This has strong implications for the fair use aspect of US copyright law, which provides the consumer with the right to make copies of copyrighted material for personal use. In other words, if a manufacturer installs copy-protection in a product, the right to copy is guaranteed, but the ability to copy is prohibited.

If complaining about this sounds like a great idea to you, we're sorry, because the period for comment submission closed on December 1. However, on January 4, a new submission period opened, with the purpose of soliciting replies to comments submitted during the first round. During this time, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has run several articles discussing some of the first round comments, and as we've devoted some space in the past to the DMCA, we thought these articles might be worth pointing out.
Rootkits

The rootkit issue has garnered a lot of press in recent weeks with Sony BMG's recent debacle. Several of the submitted comments addressed concerns with rootkit copy protection methods, with a notable example submitted by Edward W. Felten and J. Alex Halderman—two computer science professors from Princeton University. Profs. Felten and Halderman host a blog dedicated to "issues related to legal regulation of technology," and are prominent critics of the DMCA.

The security holes created by these protection measures force consumers to choose between two equally unappealing options: to accept intolerable security risks in order to access lawfully purchased CDs or to circumvent the protection measures in order to gain lawful access and maintain a safe computing environment. This is a Faustian bargain. If consumers choose to listen they open their own systems as well as the broader Internet to countless security risks. The proposed exemption would allow users to take steps to ensure the security of their computers while enjoying access to the CDs they purchase without fear of liability under the DMCA for circumventing protection measures that undermine computer security.

It is interesting to note that both Prof. Felten and Prof. Halderman have come face-to-face with the DMCA, as each was threatened with legal action regarding research he had performed on copy protection methods. Although in both cases the threats were later dropped, the industry position—backed up by the DMCA—was made clear: not only is circumvention of copy protection actionable, but research into doing so is as well—even when, as in Prof. Felten's case, he was responding to a challenge laid down by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) to break their digital watermark.
Cell phone locking

The Wireless Alliance is a Colorado corporation which refurbishes and recycles mobile phones, with the goal of reducing the environmental waste created by many thousands of discarded handsets. Mr. Pinkerton is a businessman whose job takes him all over the world. Both of these parties have run afoul of the difficulties presented by cell phone locking, which is currently protected by the DMCA, and have jointly submitted a comment on the topic.

Cell phone locking is the process by which cell phones are rendered inoperable through firmware for use on a competing network. In this case, the handset you purchased from Network A doesn't work when attempting to access Network B. If you wish to change mobile carriers, you have to purchase a new phone containing the proper firmware for acceptance by the new network. Assuming similar network standards (such as GSM, CDMA, or TDMA), there is no technological reason for this incompatibility. The new carrier's goal is to get you to spend more money or be locked into a longer contract, while the old carrier simply wants to keep you locked in. Furthermore, world travel often involves the traveler confronting similar, yet incompatible, phone networks, leading to a choice between time-consuming and costly phone rental or just going without. This is something the Wireless Alliance and Mr. Pinkerton would like to see changed.

Using a mobile handset on a different network is clearly non-infringing activity. The customer is not copying the firmware, nor is he exercising any exclusive right the copyright owner has in the mobile firmware. Rather, the circumventor accesses the firmware merely to reprogram it to work on a different network, or to utilize a different SIM card. The customer merely wants the handset to run on the network of his choice.

Getting a cell phone which you own to work on different network should be a simple matter, however, attempts to alter or replace the firmware on current handsets can lead to legal trouble. This is a mere annoyance if you spend most of your time in the United States: consumers have been trained to toss their phones whenever they change carriers—it's just something we grin and bear. However, it isn't right (imagine buying a TV that only worked with Comcast; to switch to Dish or broadcast, you'd need a new TV), and in developing nations it can make the spread of cell phone technology disastrously slow.

By most accounts, the DMCA has been tremendously anti-consumer, and these are just two of the many issues that have received comments. While few would argue that companies should lack the right to protect what they have made, overreaching laws like the DMCA do more than just protect—they stifle consumer rights and create artificial monopolies. It doesn't look like the DMCA will be overturned any time soon, but in the meantime, we can try to keep chipping away at it. To that end, we encourage anyone who has been affected by these issues to file their own replies with the Copyright Office. As always, calm, well-written submissions are likely to have more effect than rants.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060120-6023.html




GPL 3 disses DRM

1/20/2006 4:18:28 PM, by Jeremy Reimer

The draft for the long-awaited third revision of the GNU Public Licence, a popular open-source license used for the Linux kernel and many other OSS projects, was posted earlier this week and has already generated heated discussion. One particular pair of paragraphs stand out, as they directly address the hot-button issue of Digital Rights Management, or DRM:

Some countries have adopted laws prohibiting software that enables users to escape from Digital Restrictions Management. DRM is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of the GPL, which is to protect users' freedom; therefore, the GPL ensures that the software it covers will neither be subject to, nor subject other works to, digital restrictions from which escape is forbidden.

3. Digital Restrictions Management. As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's intent. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights granted by this License.

The wording of the language makes it clear that GPL3 is aiming to exclude software and products that utilize DRM. This is not entirely unsurprising, as Richard Stallman, the creator of the original GPL and one of the two co-authors of GPL3, already hinted as such. "We might put in something refusing to allow DRM modifications. Maybe, maybe not," he said in an interview in April 2005. The use of the word "Restrictions" instead of "Rights" in the DRM acronym appears to further enforce their anti-DRM position.

Stallman created the GPL in 1989 to consolidate the various licenses he had written for many of his GNU utilities. GNU, which stands for GNU's Not Unix, was an effort to rewrite the proprietary Unix operating system, the rights for which were then owned by AT&T, as free and open software. Within a few years, Stallman had written a text editor (Emacs), a compiler (GCC) and a stable of utilities that mimicked their Unix counterparts. The only thing missing was a kernel, which was unstable and not ready for production use. In 1991, Linus Torvalds released his Linux kernel and adopted Stallman's GPL licence for it. Many people immediately rushed to create complete operating system distributions with the Linux kernel and the GNU utilities. As the Linux momentum took off, Stallman campaigned to get everybody to call it GNU/Linux instead, but the name never caught on.

Interestingly, Linus himself has a very hands-off approach to DRM. In a statement on a Linux developer mailing list, he stated that he has no strong feelings on the issue one way or another, and resented people trying to turn Linux into an anti-DRM crusade:

I've had some private discussions with various people about this already, and I do realize that a lot of people want to use the kernel in some way to just make DRM go away, at least as far as Linux is concerned. Either by some policy decision or by extending the GPL to just not allow it. [...] And like the software patent issue, I also don't necessarily like DRM myself, but I still ended up feeling the same: I'm an "Oppenheimer", and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to - which very much includes things I don't necessarily personally approve of.

However, Linus' wishes do not appear to have been respected. This raises the issue of whether or not Linux will adopt the GPL 3 when it is released, or whether it will stick with the older GPL 2 instead. If Linux does adopt GPL 3, issues may arise with companies such as TiVo, who currently use Linux and respect its licensing rules, but may be required to implement DRM measures if they want to legally display certain types of content (TiVoToGo already utilizes DRM, and the software respects the CGSM-A "broadcast flag" that some networks, like HBO, use to restrict copying of recorded material.)

It's a tricky issue, and not one that will be easily resolved simply by putting words on a piece of paper. The GPL 3 is currently being written by Stallman and Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University and legal council for Stallman's Free Software Foundation (FSF), a nonprofit organization that promotes the GPL and GNU software. Moglen did not respond to my questions about the GPL 3 and DRM.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060120-6024.html

 

P2P use remains steady, but lawsuits are rising

1/20/2006 3:22:37 PM, by Nate Anderson

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) has just released (PDF)
http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/library/digital-music-report-2006.pdf

its 2006 report on the state of the music business around the world. The report has much to say about P2P networks and the music industry's legal strategy against them, which we will cover in a moment, but the report is chock full of interesting tidbits that we need to discuss RIGHT NOW. For instance, do you know what the most downloaded song in all of Europe was in 2005? (We've got the answer below, just in case you are opposed on principle to reading anything produced by the music industry).

As we mentioned yesterday, the big story is that digital downloads are up—way up. The industry earned more than US$1.1 billion worldwide in 2005, and that's not including the 60 million digital music players that sold for another US$9 billion. Unfortunately for the industry, their 300 percent growth rate over 2004 could've been much higher if it weren't for all the dirty, dirty pirates swapping copies of "Don't Phunk with my Heart."

What we didn't cover yesterday was the way that the music industry plans to respond to the file-swapping threat: more DRM and more lawsuits. They claim that it's vital to the continued viability of the industry that DRM controls be better supported by both technology companies and governments. Oh, did we forget to mention that they're also good for the consumer? Thus saith John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the IFPI:

"Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a fundamental, yet sometimes misunderstood element of the digital music business. DRM is an essential tool for all industries trading in intellectual property in the digital era – from music to movies, games and TV. It helps get music to consumers in new and flexible ways and to recompense the many different rights owners involved. Technology companies need to support DRM, making their devices interoperable. Governments also have a key role to play by supporting DRM in managing the delivery and protecting the value of digital music."

Look, we understand where the music business is coming from on this issue. They are afraid of piracy, and it's a legitimate concern, but cloaking all this talk of DRM (which isn't really about piracy at all) in the guise of "more flexibility for the consumer" is utter bunkum, and everyone knows it, including the music industry. There is simply no way that slapping a song with more restrictions makes it less restricted. The sooner that groups like the IFPI stop saying so, the easier it will be to have real dialogue about what sorts of DRM are fair.

The music industry claims that their need for DRM is driven in part by file-swappers. So how are those file-swappers doing? Not too shabby, as it turns out, as they made more than 870 million songs available worldwide last year. The total number of file-swappers has stayed fairly constant, despite more than 20,000 legal cases filed in multiple countries. The music industry paints this as a success because broadband adoption has increased steadily over the last few years even as the number of file-swappers has remained even. They attribute this directly to their legal efforts and indicate that not only will they continue to pursue lawsuits, but they may attempt to increase their number. Kennedy told the BBC that

"Those who've got into the habit of consuming their music for free are very difficult to shift. And frankly it's an argument for increasing the scale of court cases because at the moment, people still don't think it's going to be them."

So there you go—straight from the horse's mouth. The lawsuits will continue. That news fits exactly with the RIAA's recent tactics, which do not at all resemble those of an organization prepared to give up the fight. In the middle of December, they launched a new round of lawsuits against 751 people in such places as Macon, Detroit, Omaha, Newark, Houston, and Green Bay. Merry Christmas! (And you can look forward to more of the same in the new year.)

So what was the most popular digital download in Europe for 2005? James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." Now you know.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060120-6021.html

 

Why Is My Hard Drive Slowing Down My PC?

Also: The pros and cons of screen savers, and archiving at a distance.

Lincoln Spector
From the February 2006 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2005

« Previous Page 1 2 Next »

Something is constantly accessing my hard drive, which has slowed my PC's performance to a crawl. How can I find the culprit?




Assuming that the symptoms you describe can't be attributed to a scheduled antivirus scan or other normal activity, the two most likely sources of the problem are a spyware or virus infestation, or (easier to diagnose) a mechanical problem with the drive itself.

Shut down your PC and restart it without loading Windows. To do this, you can use a bootable floppy or CD, or you can open your PC Setup program (when you turn your PC on, an on-screen message will tell you which key to press). If the hard drive continues to thrash when Windows isn't running, you probably have a hardware problem. Back up everything on the drive immediately, and buy a replacement. But don't assume that your hard drive is fine just because it doesn't make a racket with Windows closed. See this month's Hardware Tips column for descriptions of free and low-cost utilities that test your drive and your PC's other hardware.

If your hard drive is okay, the slowdown is likely due to malware. Don't trust your installed antivirus program; it may be compromised. Several free online virus scanners are more reliable; if one draws a blank, try another. First, read Erik Larkin's "Threat Alert: Antivirus Killers" from last November's issue. Scroll down to find links to two good virus scanners.

Other online virus scanners are available from BitDefender, McAfee, Panda Software, Symantec, and Trend Micro. Some of the scans require Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

Don't depend on just one antispyware program, either. I recommend three free spyware zappers: Lavasoft's Ad-aware, Safer Networking's Spybot Search and Destroy, and Microsoft AntiSpyware. See last November's "Best Defenders" to get these programs, as well as trial versions of our favorite low-cost security tools.

If you find these sites and programs blocked, you definitely have an infection. For advice on what to do next, read my column from last August, "Prevent Viruses From Disabling Your Protection."
http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,121213,00.asp


Here's a final suggestion: Sysinternals' free Filemon program will show you which files are accessing your hard drive at any given time (see Figure 1). You can download the version for 98/Me or for XP/2000 here.
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22271,00.asp


Screen Salvation?

Is there any good reason why I should use a screen saver to protect my monitor these days?

Alexander M. Hinz, Fairview Heights, Illinois

A conventional crt monitor theoretically can still suffer from burn-in--the problem that screen savers were invented to overcome. But I haven't heard of a burned-in PC monitor in what seems like ages (though it does remain a problem for screens on ATMs, airport displays, and both CRT and gas-plasma wide-screen TVs). Flat-panel LCDs don't have burn-in issues.

Screen savers won't cut your system's power consumption, either. For that, use Windows' Power Options: Right-click the desktop, choose Properties, Screen Saver, and click the Power button.

But a password-protected screen saver will keep others off your PC while you're at lunch. Right-click the desktop, select Properties, Screen Saver, and check On resume, password protect. Windows Me and 98 will ask you for a password; XP and 2000 use your log-on password.

And if this world still has room for some frivolity, there's one more reason to use a screen saver: They're fun.

Next Page: Archive Around Town

Archive Around Town


Advertisement




Last September, I recommended making multiple copies of important files ("Preserve Your Most Vital Data for the Long Haul"). This way at least one copy will likely be readable a few decades hence. Don Glenn of Bellevue, Nebraska, points out that you should store those copies in different locations. Keep one copy at home, and put the other at the home of a friend or relative, or in a safe deposit box. That way, if your house is burgled or burns down, your digital photos and tax information will still be safe.

http://pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,123800,00.asp

 

Is Your Computer Killing You?

desktopYou would think being forced to cancel a ski trip because of a work emergency would be punishment enough. But it's not. Toiling (or even playing) away on your computer is cramping more than your style — it's hurting your body and your mind. It's not doing your planet much good, either.

Rest assured, hard-core computer fans, we're not going to suggest that you abandon your dual-core screamer and take up knitting. This is an online tech journal, after all. Just as we recognize that automobiles can be dangerous but still love a music-blaring ride in a souped-up ragtop, we want you to know the dangers of computing — and how to avoid them.

Read on for the top ten ways computing can hurt you — but watch your posture, OK? Security Pipeline | Is Your Computer Killing You?


go here to read
http://www.securitypipeline.com/177101512?CID=rssfeed_pl_scp

You would think being forced to cancel a ski trip because of a work emergency would be punishment enough. But it's not. Toiling (or even playing) away on your computer is cramping more than your style — it's hurting your body and your mind. It's not doing your planet much good, either.

Rest assured, hard-core computer fans, we're not going to suggest that you abandon your dual-core screamer and take up knitting. This is an online tech journal, after all. Just as we recognize that automobiles can be dangerous but still love a music-blaring ride in a souped-up ragtop, we want you to know the dangers of computing — and how to avoid them.

Read on for the top ten ways computing can hurt you — but watch your posture, OK?

1. Repetitive Stress Injuries
When the Internet was in its infancy, a new generation of computer users began working on their keyboards for 15 hours at a stretch. Then something strange started happening. Some employees began complaining about pain that wouldn't go away. Worse, the pain seemed to be aggravated by using the computer.

"Bah, humbug!" sneered their managers (and peers), counting up their stock options. "These people are whiners and slackers."

How wrong they were. Repetitive stress injuries, including tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and even Blackberry Thumb are now accepted and frequently treated workplace problems.

The cause? Repetition. It turns out we weren't meant to perform the same actions over and over again. Our bodies, like our minds, crave variety. Repeat the same motion too many times (such as moving your wrist side-to-side while using a mouse), and your body can react with inflamed muscles, compromised joint health, and constant pain.

Your Best Defense: Fortunately, protecting yourself against repetitive stress injuries is as simple as sitting the right way, taking breaks, and stretching.

Health professionals are unanimous in saying you must take a break from computing. Some say every half hour, some say every hour. Pick the one that's most compatible with your work style and stick with it. Stand up, stretch, and walk around. Deliver in person a message you might have ordinarily e-mailed. Work at home? Walk to the mailbox and back.

Try some exercises and stretches designed to target RSI trouble spots. I like the ones at My Daily Yoga's Web site.

Here's an example:

Opening The Mid-Back
Hug your body, placing the right hand on your left shoulder and left hand on your right shoulder.

Breathe into the area between your shoulder blades. On the exhale, bring the lower arms perpendicular to the floor, the palms facing each other.

Stretch the fingers up, and on the next exhale, raise the elbows up to shoulder height.

Hold for a few breaths and then repeat on the other side.



Text and animated graphic courtesy of My Daily Yoga

That's just one exercise in the sequence; see My Daily Yoga for the full RSI routine. Also see the site's RSI Prevention Checklist.

And don't forget to use comfortable and ergonomically enhanced equipment such as ergonomic keyboards, trackball alternatives, and adjustable chairs. For some examples, see our overview of innovative input devices.

These are all preventative measures. If you're already experiencing pain or numbness in your fingers, hands, elbows, arms, or shoulders, seek medical help now.

2. Extra Weight
Desk jockeys beware. While a desk job might be the stuff blue-collar workers dream of, it's also a great way to pack on the pounds. The American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported in August, 2005, that a man who sits at a desk for six hours a day or more is more than twice as likely to be overweight than those with more active jobs.

That paunch packs a serious punch.

In case you've been trapped in a cave for the past 40 years, here's some news: Overweight people are at greater risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, hypertension, some cancers, and a litany of other health concerns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports:

"During the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States. In 1985 only a few states were participating in CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and providing obesity data. In 1991, four states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19 percent and no states had rates at or above 20 percent. In 2004, 7 states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19 percent; 33 states had rates of 20-24 percent; and 9 states had rates more than 25 percent."


U.S. Obesity Map 2004, courtesy of the CDC

Your Best Defense: Move it. It can be as simple as wearing a pedometer and aiming for 10,000 steps a day. For those with serious weight control issues, the United States Department of Agriculture recommends an average daily amount of exercise equal to one and a half hours.

While that may seem exhausting, take heart. Everything you do counts toward that goal. Take the stairs, take a ten-minute walk during lunch, rake leaves, walk the dog. Keep a diary of your activity level for two weeks and adjust accordingly.

Dieting can aid in your goal to stay trim, but dieting without exercise is proving to be a short-term solution only.

3. Laptop-Induced Shoulder And Back Injuries
Laptops are the devil. They cause cramped finger positioning while keying, the pointer control options are awkward, their position on your lap can induce a crooked neck, and their portability means you're always on call. But did you know "Laptop Shoulder" may be the new "Blackberry Thumb"?

A laptop computer can weigh quite a bit on its own — anywhere from four to ten pounds. Add in the AC adaptor, several printed reports, a cell phone, a PDA, keys, business cards, etc. — and before you know it, your portable computer isn't so portable. Nevertheless, we sling them on our collective shoulders and take off where work demands.

That's bad news for your shoulder and back. Picture yourself in the airport security line: two hours with 20 pounds of pressure bearing down on your right shoulder. What you think may be tension is in fact an injured muscle.

And let's not forget the wrenching movements we make when slinging our laptop bags over our shoulders. We underestimate the weight and the risk.

Your Best Defense: Lift slowly and carefully when picking up your laptop. Consider a notebook backpack, which distributes the weight evenly between both shoulders, or invest in a rolling laptop carrier. Finally, when rolling, push your laptop (and your luggage) in front of you instead of dragging it behind. You're in better control that way and less likely to injure yourself.


4. Eyestrain
Once, in the heat of battle during an online game of Quake, I went so long without blinking that my contact lens became stuck to my cornea. Not pleasant.

As it turns out, it's not such an unusual thing. When we concentrate intently on what is on our computer monitor, we blink less, reducing the natural lubrication in our eyes.

Further, staring at a computer monitor is in itself a challenge. Although what we see on the screen may appear to be constant, it isn't. Each monitor has a refresh rate that continually updates the image. While this update appears seamless, it isn't — and your eyes know that. They register this flicker, and that's a major contributor to eyestrain for those spending long hours on the screen. Don't think your fancier LCD screen will eliminate the problem, either. Both LCD and CRT monitors have refresh rates.

What's more, your eyes aren't designed to focus on something two feet away from you for hours at a time. Our eyes perform best looking at things 20 feet away or more. To look at something closer, your eyes turn inward and your pupil constricts. This puts strain on your eye muscles and cranial nerves, which can result in symptoms ranging from sore, itchy eyes to blurred vision to increased sensitivity to light. While these symptoms often disappear with rest, double vision while driving home in afternoon traffic is a seriously dangerous situation.

Your Best Defense: For every hour spent on your computer, take a five-minute eye break. Look out a window and focus on something far away. Walk around and give your eyes a chance to rest.

Make a conscious effort to blink. If you find you're still troubled with dry eyes, try moisturizing drops. One caveat: Look for drops that are made for moisturizing, not for getting rid of redness.

See OhioHealth and Quick Online Tips for more computer eyestrain reducing tips.

If you follow these steps and still experience ongoing pain, difficulty focusing, or any other problems with your eyes, see an optometrist.

5. Poor Circulation
E-mail, e-commerce, e-zines, and now e-thrombosis.

It sounds scary because it is. Deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) — blood clots forming in the legs and then moving to the lungs — is the condition that scared the e-tickets out of air travelers a few years ago.


Courtesy of The British United Provident Association (BUPA)

The bad news is that it can happen to computer users. The good news is that it doesn't happen that often.

In 2003, the European Respiratory Journal reported a case in which a young New Zealander had developed DVT after sitting at his computer for more than 18 hours a day. That's a long stretch, but not unimaginable.

Your Best Defense: Again, step away from your computer. Stretch your legs, flex your ankles. If you feel soreness or tightness in your legs, do some light exercises to get the blood flowing.

YogaEverywhere.com has, as you might suspect, yoga exercises you can do everywhere — including specific exercises for your feet and legs.


6. Back And Neck Damage From Bad Posture
We must place the blame for our aching necks and backs squarely on our own shoulders. In short, we slouch. Too many of us literally hunker down at our computer, arching our backs and either lowering or raising our chins to see the monitor. If you've ever typed while your elbows resting on your thighs, you're doing yourself a disservice.

First the neck: If you look either down or up to view your monitor, you're putting an unnatural strain on your cervical spine for long periods of time. That leads to inflammation and possible permanent injury.

Now your back: Slumping over your keyboard or crouching down means you're crunching your back. Between your vertebrae are discs that act as cushions or shock absorbers, keeping the vertebrae from rubbing together and preventing nerves from being squeezed in the process. Too much pressure for too long can cause these discs to slip out of place, and that means pain — serious, get-me-to-the-doctor-right-now pain. Less serious injuries can be caused by pulled muscles.

Your Best Defense: Posture, posture, posture. Sit erect while at your computer. Pretend to be balancing a book on your head.

Your workspace is as important to your efficiency as which processor you use. Keep your monitor high enough so that you don't lower your head to view the screen. And invest (or persuade your boss to invest) in ergonomically correct furniture — the expense today will save medical bills tomorrow.


Courtesy of Michigan State University

Stand and stretch when possible. Here are some more everyday, anywhere yoga exercises from My Daily Yoga.

Finally, listen to your body. Tension you feel in your back or neck may not be caused by emotional stress from your job. It may be a simple matter of readjusting your work position.

7. Headaches And Migraines
Headaches and migraines are the phantom symptoms of computer use.

Some speculate that migraine sufferers are more sensitive to the refresh rate of monitors, making them more vulnerable. Others speculate that it is the stress of spending long hours on the computer, not the computer use itself, that's at fault. Still others say computer users are experiencing eyestrain and calling it a headache. Whatever the cause, the fact remains that computing can deliver a serious kick to the head.

Your Best Defense: Break it up. Drag your eyes away from the monitor. Stay alert for the beginning signs of a headache. If you develop a twinge, best to nip it in the bud by walking away from your workstation. You might also to use this time to tackle other tasks, such as returning phone calls or filing, to reduce the tension.

Also keep in mind the last time you ate, drank fluids, or had caffeine. Not all headaches are caused by computers, and recognizing your triggers is something only you can do.

8. Insomnia
It's often difficult to unwind after work. Working at a computer may make it doubly so.

The University of Maryland Medical Center cites excessive computer use as a cause of insomnia. It's not because you're chomping on the bit to get back to the report that's due. It's a little more complex. A Japanese study found that performing exciting tasks on computers with bright monitors at night reduces the concentration of melatonin and influences the human biological clock, interfering with sleep.

Your Best Defense: Limit the amount of time you spend in front of your computer late at night. You may be better off waking up early to put in those extra hours as opposed to burning the midnight oil.

9. Internet Addiction And Other Risky Behaviors
Increasingly, physicians and health workers are treating patients who say they feel compelled to be online all the time — e-mailing, instant messaging, shopping, in chat rooms, playing video games, whatever — often to the detriment of work, school, and family life.

The popular term for this condition is Internet addiction; however, many health professionals are skeptical that the desire to be online is a true physiological addiction. Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize Internet addiction as a medical condition.

Whether it's technically an addiction or not, however, there's no denying that spending excessive amounts of time online can have serious repercussions on a person's life. What's more, the Internet can be used to feed other addictions — sex, gambling, even shopping, in some cases leading to lost jobs, wrecked relationships, and drained bank accounts. If addiction needs fuel, think of your Internet connection as the closest gas station.

We may think of excessive computer use as a problem only in the technology-obsessed United States, but it's not. In March of this year, a government-sponsored center for Internet addictions was opened in Beijing, China, aimed at helping Internet abusers regain balance in their lives. One person receiving treatment reported spending 24-hour stretches in front of his computer. The result: treatments that include counseling and electroshock therapy.

Your Best Defense: Here's where we step away from the keyboard. If spending time on your computer begins to negatively affect your job, your interpersonal relationships, your sleep, or your financial stability, you might be in trouble. Here are some organizations that can help.

* The Center for Online Addiction
* Virtual-Addiction.com
* Sex Addicts Anonymous
* National Institute on Drug Abuse
* No More Gambling
* Addictions.co.uk



10. Environmental Impact
Enough of the direct-to-the-consumer harm. Did you know that feeding your computer jones can damage the planet? Our yearning for bleeding-edge toys has us throwing out hard drives, cell phones, and PDAs the minute something flashier rears its head. While we may take delight in being on the cutting edge of technology, the planet is suffering from the digital detritus.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition bills itself as a "diverse grassroots coalition that engages in research, advocacy, and organizing around the environmental and human health problems caused by the rapid growth of the high-tech electronics industry." Its findings aren't encouraging.

Computers contain heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium. When these computers become outdated, they end up in landfills, poisoning the ground and our groundwater. Despite the efforts of environmental organizations, less than 10 percent of computers are recycled, and of those that are, only a fraction are recycled safely.

What's more, you may literally not see the problem. Greenpeace International reports:

"E-waste is routinely exported by developed countries to developing ones, often in violation of the international law. Inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found as much as 47 percent of waste destined for export, including e-waste, was illegal. In the UK alone, at least 23,000 metric tonnes of undeclared or 'grey' market electronic waste was illegally shipped in 2003 to the Far East, India, Africa and China. In the US, it is estimated that 50-80 percent of the waste collected for recycling is being exported in this way."


A child sits among a pile of wires in Guiyu, China. Children often dismantle e-waste containing hazardous chemicals that can damage their health.
© Greenpeace / Natalie Behring

Your Best Defense: Take responsibility for your own computer materials and make sure they land safely when you're finished with them. Trashing them isn't the only option. Contact local charities to see if they have a place for a slightly outdated computer. Post a sign in your neighborhood to see if anyone wants it, or advertise it as a freebie on Craig's List. You may have moved on, but not everyone has.

No luck? Don't try to discard your computer yourself. Get some professional help. Dial 1-800-CLEANUP for state-specific information on how to safely discard your computer equipment. You can also visit the Earth 911 Web site for tips.

For example, after inputting my zip code at Earth 911, I was given four locations, all within a ten-mile drive from my home, that accept discarded computers. Two of them charge a small fee for accepting monitors, but it's money well spent.

If you're extra-dedicated, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition offers a list of U.S. recyclers who have signed the Electronic Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship.

Important: Whether you donate, recycle, or dispose of your computer, be sure to safely remove personal data from your equipment first. See Data Disposal: A Crushing Problem? for tips.

 

Weird News

Physician offers free vasectomy for Broncos tickets

FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Broncos fans are willing to do just about anything to get tickets to Sunday's AFC Championship game.

They're offering to pay thousands of dollars or to trade wedding photography, a fly fishing trip - even a diamond engagement ring. But a Fort Collins physician has come up with perhaps the strangest ticket-trade offer of all.

"The offer is a full service vasectomy," says Dr. Steven Broman of Associates in Family Medicine, "which includes pre-op and post-op visits, all the lab tests and things that go along with that, for two Broncos tickets. Anywhere in the stadium is fine."

Broman came up with the idea after seeing what other fans were offering on the Internet. "There's plumbers, electricians, landscapers - that's all great," says Broman. "I don't do plumbing. This (vasectomies) is the kind of plumbing I do."

Broman says the 20-minute procedure is practically painless and his vasectomy patients have all been satisfied with the results.

"Everybody knows that once you have it done you don't have the stress, you don't have concerns about unwanted pregnancies, you don't have to deal with those kinds of issues and so virility goes up.”

Broman is a dedicated Broncos fan who has a John Elway screensaver on his laptop and a pair of seats from the old Mile High Stadium outside his office door. "If you live in Colorado you've got to follow the Broncos," he says.

Anyone interested in accepting Broman's offer can contact him at his office: 970-484-1757.


courtesy KUSA 9NEWS

 

DRM Manifesto

p2p news / p2pnet: Until recently, Digital Rights [read Restriction] Management (DRM) was a phrase well-known on the Net, but unfamiliar to most people without online accounts.

But now, thanks largely to Sony BMG and the spyware it tried to weasel onto customers' computers through music CDs they'd innocently bought, DRM is fast becoming a term familiar to everyone.

"I've been trying to come up with a list of what ought to be the principles of 'Responsible DRM'," says Wendy Grossman. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Digital Rights Manifesto revealed
By Wendy M. Grossman – The Inquirer & NewsWireless.net

It's strange, but it turns out that Sony, with its damn-fool rootkit attempt at digital rights management, might actually turn out to have done the world a huge favour. Until that story broke in November, DRM was such an arcane subject that only weirdos like us wanted to talk about it much. After all, anyone who was against DRM was a thief and a pirate by nature, surely.

Then Sony did its evil deed, and the next thing you know, DRM is in the headlines and all of a sudden everyone cares. Even the National Consumer Council, which this week called for legislation to regulate DRM use in testimony given to the All Party Internet Group, which has just finished accepting comments as part of its consultation on DRM. It's wonderful.

Then, this past Tuesday I was asked to talk about "Should ideas be free?" at the Café Scientifique in Brighton. Imagine: 60 people, or thereabouts, showing up to sit around and argue about intellectual property law and what it should be. I once met a lawyer who had studied intellectual property law something like 20 years ago; the entire group of people interested in it in his graduating class could have fit in a broom cupboard.

So what with one thing and another, I've been trying to come up with a list of what ought to be the principles of "Responsible DRM". Herewith.

DRM should not violate the user's computer. This ought, you would think, to go without saying, but the Sony rootkit fiasco has taught us that apparently it doesn't. By "violate", I mean the software should not: hide its presence, send back information about either the user or the computer without permission (and what gets sent should be fully auditable by the user), or do other things that, if Sony were a teenaged hacker dressed in black working out of a back bedroom would send it to jail. A company whose DRM breaks the law ought to be fined and treated exactly like a wanton environmental polluter. - DRM should respect the public domain. That means it should automatically expire, leaving the content freely accessible, on the date when the work enters the public domain. While this is a long way off in the case of a movie released in 2006, it is not a long way off for, say, a novel written in 1923 whose author died in 1937 (life plus 70 years, work reaches the public domain in 2007) or a 50-year-old recording (at least in the EU).

When a work is in the public domain, companies wishing to claim copyright in the design, formatting, typography, layout, and graphics they include in something like an ebook should be required to make it plain in their clickwrap licenses that the public domain work is not included in the copyright, and should be required to design the product so that the raw text may be copied or circulated freely. The same goes for public domain movies and songs released on DVD/CD.

DRM should not be allowed to apply more restrictions to a work than that same work would have in the analog world. This actually would be a difficult one to put into force. For example, it's straightforward to say it means that if you can loan a book to a friend you should be able to loan an ebook to a friend, and your TV shouldn't be spying on you to find out how many friends are watching that DVD in your living room, but less so with respect to backups, say, which no one had with dead tree libraries.

Circumventing DRM should not be a crime (as of course it is under the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in and of itself. For one thing, because taking things apart to understand how they work is an important part of learning. For another, because if there is harm to rightsholders and artists, removing DRM is not the cause, merely a contributing element. Finally, because making removing DRM a crime puts too much control in the hands of a relatively small set of companies; copyright law has always been about balancing the public interest with the need to create incentives for artists and creators, and DMCA-like laws tip the balance too far. What matters is what is done with the copies once they're opened. While I am tolerant of file-sharers, the young Chinese woman who came down my street the other day wearing a backpack and offering "cheap DVDs" for sale was unquestionably committing a crime; so are the fraudsters that swamp eBay with so many counterfeit DVDs that I won't buy there any more.)

Rightsholders who do not incorporate features to allow disabled access should be required to allow third parties to do so.

When a new format is adopted and new work begins being released on it, the technical specifications for how to build a reader (and a copy of the player) should be filed in the copyright libraries.

How's that for a start?

(Saturday 21st January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7681

 

'I'm not a bad guy anymore!'

p2p news / p2pnet: Oh joy! Oh happy day! I'm not going to be a bad guy anymore.

Right now, I'm a hardened, cold-blooded criminal. I routinely commit acts that make me eligable for the same amount of jail time as somone who tortures small puppies. What goes on in this criminal mind of mine? What makes me tick? What drives me to commit these heinous crimes?

I own a VCR with a functioning Record button.

In Australia, we don't have "fair use" laws. Anyone in the the fair old land of Oz who's ever popped a tape to record The Simpsons or ripped a CD or downloaded just about anything from the p2p networks is a pirate.

See, our current copyright laws date back to 1968. To be fair, there's been a little tinkering with them over the past few years, but at no time has our government thought Australians should have the right to copy stuff for our own private use. We landed some great "fair dealing" exceptions (in 1980) which, for example, make it legal to perform a copyrighted work at home. But they but contain nothing that actually allows you to copy it in the first place, (eg, you can invite a few mates over to watch a rented video, but not one that you've taped off the TV yourself).

Even the Issues Paper put out by the federal government in May last year acknowledges, "some consumers may believe that they can make a copy of an item that they have purchased containing copyright material, provided they do not sell the copy. On the other hand, some copyright notices placed on copyright material appear to claim that any copying is unlawful. Neither position is accurate."

In the words of one of the Australian Copyright Council's publications (imaginitively entitled "Information Sheet G79"):

"In a recent case, the Federal Court stated that whether a dealing is fair or not is to be judged by the criterion of a fair minded and honest person".

Courts will look both at whether an objective viewer would consider that:

a.. the person is genuinely using the material for one of the purposes set out in the Act; and

b.. their use of it is fair in that context.

Factors that may be taken into account in working out whether a use is "fair" include whether the person using the material is doing so for commercial purposes, and whether the copyright owner is out of pocket from the use (for example, where a person copies the whole of a work that is available for sale). However, the mere fact that the person using the material is not making a profit does not make it fair."

You'll note a fundamental flaw in the logic of the last paragraph, but it's coming from a copyright holder's back-patting club, so you should be used to reading that kind of trash by now.

Luckily, our fearless attorney-general Philip Ruddock is now looking to make some serious changes to Australian copyright laws. "We should have copyright laws that are more targeted at the real problem," he said late last month as thousands of Aussies were busily becoming criminals, thanks to the new iPods they'd received for Christmas. "We should not treat everyday Australians who want to use technology to enjoy copyright material they have obtained legally as infringers where this does not cause harm to our copyright industries."

Wow! That's so cool it almost makes you forget about the national ID card he's trying to foist on us, doesn't it?

Under the Australian system, "fair dealing" is very different from "fair use". Fair dealing means you're allowed to copy stuff only if the copying falls under one or more of the specific exceptions set out in the Copyright Act. Australians are only allowed to copy certain things in the specific ways that the government says are okay. This is a pretty bad system because it relies on the government actively working out what's okay to copy and thinking about that kind of thing on a regular basis.

We all know that goverment is a slow-moving beast at the best of times, and sloth-like it it's normal state, which is how most Australians came to be copyright infringers in the first place.

In essence, the current system means copyright holders get a better legal position through government inaction in the same way that a loan shark won't hassle you for a while, but will one day kick down your door to demand payment right now.

Australian copyright holders could simply wait until something becomes popular (like p2p), then throw a RIAA-style dummy spit and start litigating.

What's on the table now is a chance to get the whole system reversed - the government states generally what you're allowed to do and then leaves it up to the courts to decide if anything in the future should go on the list of no-nos.

I'm kind of aprehensive about this whole change. At this point, no one in Australia is being sued for downloading like they are in the US, so we could just leave everything the way it is and not have any immediate problems.

The downside to is that one day, someone in some kind of anti-terrorism squad will work out that a great way to get search warrants is to claim there's "probable cause" for someone to be a copyright criminal (like if they've bought a DVD burner on their credit card) and use it as a pretext to stark kicking down doors all over the country.

Stranger things have happened and we've all been lulled into a false sense of insecurity...

If we do get "fair use" laws though, there's also the danger that the Australian laws will someday be "harmonized" with US law, meaning the good people of Oz may be restricted from doing quite common things under something resembling the DMCA, which everyone else in the world currently uses to ridicule Americans for not keeping a hand on their governmental tiller.

(Note to anyone not familiar with the "harmonizing" of laws - In theory, this is when two countries agree to work under the same law for the purposes of making it easier to trade with each other. In practice, it means that the US has worked out how to export their laws,as well as their products, to other countries . Being in legal harmony with America basically means they get to decide what you're allowed to do until you elect a government with enough balls to tell them "thanks, but no thanks".)

Copyright owners have an incentive to meet user expectations. That's not me speaking, that's the federal government's position via attorney-general Ruddock, and while I'm tempted to say something sarcastic about that statement (like "No shit, Sherlock") I think I'll have to wait until I see how badly they bollocks it up before commenting further.

Looking at the Australian government's past performance in this area, I might have to wait a while for that chance.

With that all said, I think I'll go revel in my criminal genius by watching something I taped off the TV last week.

Alex H, p2pnet - Sydney, Australia
[Alex is an operations manager for an ATM (automatic teller machine) supplier and he specialises in infrastructure development and maintenance, and logistics. He’s also an[other] active member of the Shareaza community who's just started his own blog called Tech Loves Art where you'll find past p2pnet posts, together with other goodies to come ; ]

(Saturday 21st January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7680

 

Air cooled Presler XE benchmarked at 4.27 GHz

Two fans, two boards and... two Preslers compared!



By Nebojsa Novakovic: Saturday 21 January 2006, 15:41
SINCE GETTING my hands on the 3.46 GHz Presler XE chip late last month, I was somewhat surprised at the relative ease this MCM (multi-chip module)-like two-chip CPU device was overclocking.

That was the case even with the mediocre stock heat sink & fan unit that comes with the D975XBX mainboard. So, before going into the wet world of water coolers, I decided to max it out on the thin air alone, just with a better fan - the wacky Zalman 9500 LED monster with its vertical fan surrounded by a dense ring of sharp, thin copper fins.

The goal in this case was to see how far we could go while keeping stable and reliable operation in benchmarks and stress test, without excessive voltage ups - both while keeping the 1066 FSB but changing the multiplier, and while attempting to speed up the FSB but with a fixed multiplier. After all, two hungry cores on a single FSB do pose some strain on it, so any extra bandwidth to share would be helpful to achieve more balanced system performance.

To play safe and ensure it's not a fluke, i.e, one "special" chip in a thousand, I got the following two setups, each with its own Presler XE; one based on the Intel D975XBX mainboard and Zalman 460W PS; and the other one using Asus P5WD2-E 975X-based board and MGE XG Magnum 500W PS - running both the stock cooler and Zalman one on each board setup, by the way. Both board sets used Corsair TwinX5400UL low latency DDR2 memory running at CL 3-2-2-6 at 533 MHz, CL 3-2-2-7 at 600 MHz or CL 4-3-3-9 at 800 MHz (see photos).

The graphics portion was taken care of by two X1800XT cards, one HIS reference design, another ASUS EAX1800XT Top, a black monster using active cooling with an external laptop-type power supply. For performance testing in 3DMark05 CPU, both were running at 650 MHz GPU/1500 MHz RAM.

The Intel 975XBX platform
By rights, let's start first with the stock Intel cooler that comes with the CPU and mainboard: it seems to be a good heat sink, with large copper surface for CPU. We booted fine at 3.467 GHz - went into Windows, all benchmarks done, but the temperatures were touching 78 deg C at times during stress test and benchmark runs - again, good for extra-cold European winters, but not once the summer comes (or for me in Singapore, the city of eternal summer). Yet there was no throttling on ThrottleWatch.

OK, fine. I upped the multiplier by a notch (14X) to 3.733 GHz - again back to the same Windows benchmarks, the heat sligthly jumped to 80 deg C, but otherwise, there was no throttling. Another jump to 4.0 GHz at default 1.3 v voltage? Booted into Windows, and the heat actually went down to like 77 deg C! Why? Because the CPU started heavily throttling according to ThrottleWatch graphs. In fact, the Sandra2005 results I got in this case were slightly slower than on the standard 3.46 GHz setup. The 4.267 GHz 16X multiplier config also booted Windows, but it did not manage to complete any of the benchmarks, in fact Windows stopped responding after about 3 minutes or so.

Surprisingly, on the same Intel board with Zalman fan, overclocking Presler was a breeze - as long as you enable the "Enhanced Power Slope" in BIOS chipset settings (which I did for the above stock cooler test too). After one hour of trials with different settings, I managed to get the CPU working with 16X multiplier at 4.267 GHz - stable in all benchmarks and stress tests for days without any throttling observed by either ThrottleWatch or speed results - at 1.2875 volts, a voltage slighty BELOW the default 1.3 v out-of-the-box 3.46 GHz setting! Also, the memory worked fine at CL 3-2-2-6 DDR2-533 at 1.8 volts minimum voltage. This means I've got a comparatively cool and "power saving" system at an outrageous speed, at least when measured in raw GHz.

Now, since the 16X setting worked so great without a hitch, why not try the 17X setting for 4.533 GHz clock? No luck, mate - when you select the 17X setting on this board, it instead runs as 1X clock setting, i.e. running the CPU at 266 MHz! OK, that's not exactly a runner, so I reverted back to the 16X multiplier.

Next round was "burn in" (Intel's polite term for overclocking) the system by upping the overall base clock rate for CPU and memory by some per cent - I tried 3% first. Well, it complied, but to no effect - both BIOS and Windows showed the same 4.267 GHz CPU with 1,066 MHz FSB, even if trying to up the voltage by a notch. Next step? Reduce the multiplier to 12X, but force the FSB to 1,333 MHz, another option in the BIOS. Oh yes, it complied too - only for an immediate system hang up upon restart (which was solved gracefully by switching to the maintenance mode). Same results even after upping the FSB and North Bridge voltage - so too bad, this FSB just can't run at 1,333 MHz with three loads (two CPU cores and north bridge).

Back to the "standard" 4.267 GHz setting. With HT enabled, the CPU did produce some record-breaking benchmarks (see table), and, while running four or more heavy tasks at one time (i.e. 3-task stress test plus Sandra 2005 or PCMark05 at the same time, with hardware monitor and ThrottleWatch all on), the temperature never exceeded 75 C as measured. Over 10 days or so of continued use, there were no problems or issues, the platform performed consistently without throttling, and the heat sink fins were never warmer to touch than the (a bit feverish?) human body. In summary, this is (probably) a base for a stable, fast everyday-use platform.

The Asus P5WD2-E platform
Asus' new high-end 975X-based board shows many similarities with the Intel offering in terms of features, except its overclocking options are supposed to be even wider - including setting the FSB clock in 1 MHz increments, for instance. I used another 3.46 GHz Presler XE chip on it as a comparison.

With the standard Intel stock cooler, the board also booted fine at 3.46 and 3.73 GHz in Windows, but the Windows didn't boot at all at 4.0 GHz in this case - however, with Zalman fan, it booted all the way to 4.26 GHz just like the other CPU on the Intel board. That's where the difference comes - it had intermittent problems completing the various benchmarks, sometimes PCMark or 3DMark, sometimes Sandra. I ran ThrottleWatch on it, but it couldn't show the throttling graph at all. Even though I ran the CPU either at default 1.3 v or bit higher 1.312 volts (the 1.287 volts didn't work here), things didn't get better till I disabled HyperThreading in BIOS. Then, at 4.267 GHz, the tests completed fine (see table). Then, up the multiplier to 17X for 4.53 GHz? The system refused to boot back even into BIOS.

Then I tried something else - since the Asus P5WD2-E allows fine-grained FSB clock setting, why don't we try doing what I did sometimes ago with single-core Pentium 4 XE, i.e. a 4,200 MHz CPU on a 1,200 MHz FSB? After all, such a setup should give you better real-life performance than a 4,267 / 1,066 one as the two cores get 12% faster memory access. So, I gave the memory an extra 0.1 v to 1.9 v, and upped the figures - i.e. 14X multiplier and 300 MHz FSB clock. The Windows booted! Now, even though HT was off, the "intermittent" benchmark errors continued, but after a few runs I managed to get correct (presumably throttle-free looking at the numbers) benchmark results for both the 4,200 / 1,200 and 4,270 / 1,216 settings (closest CPU clock match to the 4,267 / 1,066 setup). As you can see, even in synthetic benchmarks, there is a benefit of faster FSB here. Too bad it just wasn't stable.

Talking about stability, I wondered if it's the CPU that is of kind of lower grade than the other one in the Intel board, so I swapped them - guess what? The second CPU performed flawlessly in the Intel board, running stable at 4.26 GHz with HT enabled through all the runs and with similar temperatures as the first CPU, so it is the board after all. I suspect that the early Asus board either had some issues with power delivery (that "enhanced power slope" on Intel board without which you can kiss goodbye to running this beast at 4++ GHz stable) and / or enhanced thermal management support.

Now, back to the Asus board - with fast 1,200 FSB, I upped the multiplier to 15X and voltage to 1.32 volts - and got the system running at 4,500 MHz sharp. It went into Windows smoothly, but, again, froze after starting Sandra. So, looks like non-starter anyway (or, maybe, this speed really needs liquid cooling?). I think the Asus board will probably have some of these issues solved in the next BIOS update, so don't ignore it, OK? Who knows, maybe even 4.8 GHz at 1.2 GHz FSB might be possible then with a good water / phase-change cooler - I'll try it soon anyway, I guess.

A good overclocker
Again, for a dual-chip MCM with two hot CPUs and shared three-load FSB, 3.46 GHz Presler XE overclocks incredibly even on thin air, if you give it a device to dissipate heat into that thin air efficiently (like the Zalman heat sink here). The 23% CPU overclocking, from 3.467 to 4.267 GHz should give you anywhere between 15% and 20% actual speedup on most apps - remember these cores have big 2 MB caches each, so a lot of stuff can be accessed from within at full clock speed. Also, by swapping the CPUs, I proved to myself that the chips themselves seem to consistently scale up to this speed, i.e. while it is not guaranteed of course, many Presler XE's should be able to do this kind of clock speed in stable everyday operation with a top-notch heat sink.

If using good liquid cooling for both CPU and North Bridge on a mainboard with good power delivery and thermals, I believe the 4,500 GHz / 1,200 FSB might not be unattainable goal either - that would give you an 18 GFLOP little desktop supercomputer on a side, and probably the last machine with such boastful clock speeds for some time. Remember, the next one, Conroe, will not run at such clocks any time soon, at least not till its 45 nm - made successor appears sometime around end of next year or so. What doesn't mean it will be slow - besides doing 50% more work per clock, Conroe should come out at least at 3 GHz and, possibly (as Charlie mentioned) at 3.33 GHz for XE variety with 1,333 MHz FSB. How about cooling that one to 4 GHz? µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29153

 

New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill would freeze Fair Use
Posted by Dan Bell on 22 January 2006 - 00:37 - Source: EFF

DamnedIfIknow used our news submit to tell us about this EFF article which helps us to understand the implications of a proposed legislation that threatens Fair Use as we have come to know it. In the past, innovations were judged after they hit the marketplace such as the VCR. If the new legislation is accepted as is, then prior permission from the FCC will be necessary to introduce new products in the marketplace.

Draft legislation making the rounds in the U.S. Senate gives us a preview of the MPAA and RIAA's next target: your television and radio. (Please write your Senator about this!)

You say you want the power to time-shift and space-shift TV and radio? You say you want tomorrow's innovators to invent new TV and radio gizmos you haven't thought of yet, the same way the pioneers behind the VCR, TiVo, and the iPod did?

Well, that's not what the entertainment industry has in mind. According to them, here's all tomorrow's innovators should be allowed to offer you:

"customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law."

Had that been the law in 1970, there would never have been a VCR. Had it been the law in 1990, no TiVo. In 2000, no iPod.

Fair use has always been a forward-looking doctrine. It was meant to leave room for new uses, not merely "customary historic uses." Sony was entitled to build the VCR first, and resolve the fair use questions in court later. This arrangement has worked well for all involved -- consumers, media moguls, and high technology companies.

Now the RIAA and MPAA want to betray that legacy by passing laws that will regulate new technologies in advance and freeze fair use forever. If it wasn't a "customary historic use," federal regulators will be empowered to ban the feature, prohibiting innovators from offering it. If the feature is banned, courts will never have an opportunity to pass on whether the activity is a fair use.

Voila, fair use is frozen in time. We'll continue to have devices that ape the VCRs and cassette decks of the past, but new gizmos will have to be submitted to the FCC for approval, where MPAA and RIAA lobbyists can kill it in the crib.

You can check out the entire story by following this link. Even though the private citizen should be alarmed at this, we would hope that technology companies would see this and also voice an opposition. Maybe this is a battle that can be won.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12983

the story

New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill Would Freeze Fair Use

Draft legislation making the rounds in the U.S. Senate gives us a preview of the MPAA and RIAA's next target: your television and radio. (Please write your Senator about this!)

You say you want the power to time-shift and space-shift TV and radio? You say you want tomorrow's innovators to invent new TV and radio gizmos you haven't thought of yet, the same way the pioneers behind the VCR, TiVo, and the iPod did?

Well, that's not what the entertainment industry has in mind. According to them, here's all tomorrow's innovators should be allowed to offer you:

"customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law."

Had that been the law in 1970, there would never have been a VCR. Had it been the law in 1990, no TiVo. In 2000, no iPod.

Fair use has always been a forward-looking doctrine. It was meant to leave room for new uses, not merely "customary historic uses." Sony was entitled to build the VCR first, and resolve the fair use questions in court later. This arrangement has worked well for all involved -- consumers, media moguls, and high technology companies.

Now the RIAA and MPAA want to betray that legacy by passing laws that will regulate new technologies in advance and freeze fair use forever. If it wasn't a "customary historic use," federal regulators will be empowered to ban the feature, prohibiting innovators from offering it. If the feature is banned, courts will never have an opportunity to pass on whether the activity is a fair use.

Voila, fair use is frozen in time. We'll continue to have devices that ape the VCRs and cassette decks of the past, but new gizmos will have to be submitted to the FCC for approval, where MPAA and RIAA lobbyists can kill it in the crib.

The new legislation, being circulated by Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), is the first step down that path (and is eerily reminiscent of the infamous 2002 Hollings Bill). It would impose a broadcast flag mandate on all future digital TVs and radios, much like legislation discussed by the House last year.

We've covered the broadcast flag and radio flag extensively in the past. These measures would impose federal regulations on all devices capable of receiving digital television and digital radio signals. What's worse, the regulations won't do a thing to stop "piracy," since there are plenty of other ways to copy these broadcasts.

Sen. Smith's bill would retroactively ratify the FCC's broadcast flag regulations, rejected by the courts last year. This effort to impose content protection mechanisms in all future TVs is still just as terrible an idea now as ever.

The bill would also give the FCC authority to regulate the design of digital radios (both terrestrial HD Radio and XM and Sirius satellite). The bill envisions an "inter-industry" negotiation with a preordained outcome -- federal regulations mandating content protection mechanisms in all future HD Radio and satellite radio receivers.

The FCC regulations could make room for "customary historic uses of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law." Presumably, that means you could design a digital device just as good as an analog cassette deck, but no better.

Sorry, Sen. Smith, but American innovators and music fans deserve better.

UPDATE: For more on this, check out Public Knowledge's analysis, as well as Boing Boing's.
Posted by Fred von Lohmann at 02:16 PM | Intellectual Property | Permalink | Technorati
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/

 

New MPAA, RIAA buzz phrase

p2p news / p2pnet: "Fair use, meet your successor, 'customary historic use,' says Ars Technica's Hannibal, picking up on EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Deep Links warnings centering on RIAA and MPAA attempts to, "freeze the progress of consumer electronics technology and then start turning back the clock on all of us".

Customary historic use seems innocuous enough and it shows up in broadcast flag draft legislation sponsored by senator Gordon Smith (right), "that contains provisions which appear to limit digital broadcast media reception devices to 'customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted content over digital networks'," says Hannibal.

But innocuous it isn't.

Under it, any device, "whether it's an attached device or the receiver itself" which, "does anything heretofore unheard of with the digital content that it receives," is illegal," declares Ars Technica.

"And if it does anything 'customary' that could also possibly lead to unauthorized redistribution, then it's also illegal. So all the bases are covered!"

The broadcast flag is, "embedded in the signal like a special tag that defines the content's terms of use, while the secure moving technology acts as a sort of DRM wrapper/sandbox for the content that ensures that any (compliant) playback device not only respects the restrictions dictated by the broadcast flag but also does absolutely nothing novel or unexpected with the content that the broadcast flag's terms did not or could not anticipate," adds Hannibal.

"So, if you were planning to launch a startup and make millions off the coming digital broadcast media revolution by inventing the next iPod or by combining digital radio with Web 2.0 and VoIP and Skype and RSS and WiFi mesh networks, then forget about it.

"When digital broadcast nirvana finally arrives, the only people who'll be legally authorized to make money off of music and movies are the middlemen at the RIAA and the MPAA."
http://p2pnet.net/story/7687

 

File sharing rises in Hong Kong

p2p news / p2pnet: P2p file sharing is either being "contained" or "steadily pushed back".

Both views are simultaneously espoused by John Kennedy who runs the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) jointly owned by the Big Four record labels, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI.

The organization also helps the Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department (HHIPD) with statistics and the latter's 2005 survey admits the number of file-sharers has almost doubled from 3.5% in 2004 to 6.8%, says a Business and Finance News, Hong Kong, story.

HHIPD director Stephen Selby cleary hadn't read the IFPI's latest disinformation piece.

An enthusiastic advocate of introducing intellectual property law into junior school class-rooms, Selby says his department now needs to, "focus on public education, enforcement and legislation in this area".

This year, "we shall look more closely at legal downloading of files on the Internet to see whether that is gaining more public acceptance," Selby is quoted as saying by Business and Finance News.

Selby said the TV announcement featuring California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and movie star Jackie Chan, "has attracted people's attention, adding another series of TV publicity messages is in the pipeline," the story adds.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong children are being recruited as Hollywood copyright spies by the HK Customs and Excise Department.

(Thanks, Michael)

Also See:
Business and Finance News - Peer-to-peer file sharing on rise: survey, January 19, 2006
simultaneously espoused - Record labels threaten ISPs, January 20, 2006
people's attention - Schwarzenegger in MPAA movie, November 18, 2005
recruited - Child copyright spies, January 20, 2006

=====================

If you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.

Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.

(Sunday 22nd January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7685

 

Super Bowl vs the Net

p2p news / p2pnet: The last time iPod was linked to Super Bowl ads was when, in a mind-boggling display of cynicism, Apple, Pepsi and the RIAA used 16 teenaged Big Four record label victims to pump Apple, Pepsi and the RIAA. Then Janet Jackson 'accidentally' flashed her left mammary

In 2006, "Despite nagging worries about declining TV viewership as more people plug in to their iPods and the Internet, the Super Bowl has proven to be a resilient stronghold of truly mass media," says the Associated Press.

And, "To make sure they get their money's worth several advertisers plan to leverage the impact of their spots this year by rolling out online promotions and other tie-ins," says the story.

What does a Super Bowl ad cost these days?

Estimates put the price of a 30-second spot at about $2.5 million, "way more than the top price of $750,000 for a spot on the Olympics," says AP.

But Jackson won't be reprising her 2004 appearance. This year's events will, rather, feature Jessica Simpson and the Muppets.

Also See:
mind-boggling display - New Apple Intel ad, January 17, 2006
'accidentally' flashed - Janet Jackson's right breast, February 8, 2004
Associated Press - More Super Bowl advertisers make online tie-ins to splashy ads, January 20, 2006

(Sunday 22nd January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7690

 

Wi-Fi speed boost

p2p news / p2pnet: IEEE Task Group "N" has voted to confirm the proposal for the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, says Geekzone.

The specification, from the Joint Proposal team, was developed by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) and became the first official draft of the 802.11n standard, by passing the confirmation vote, says the story

"Full approval of similar specifications have typically taken about a year but the progress is unique to each standard and its associated participants," it says, going on:

"The proposed IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard will enable high-performance, next-generation wireless local area networking (WLAN) products. The draft supports speeds of up to 600 Mbps, a significant leap over today's Wi-Fi networks which promise speeds of up to 108Mbps, and will enable wireless systems to deliver greater range.

"This will allow wireless products across multiple market segments to support advanced multimedia applications."
http://p2pnet.net/story/7689

 

Google's chaotic video site ....

p2p news / p2pnet: Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft are touting TV download sites, but only Google actually has a site up and running, as the New York Times' David Pogue points out.

But he's not impressed.

The site is chaotic, he says. "Some videos are copy-protected, others not. Some can be downloaded, others viewed only online. The resolution and production quality vary widely. Some have ads. Some offer a three-minute preview, others only 10 seconds. Some videos are free, some cost money. (The price can be anything, although the sell-your-own-video feature won't go live for a couple of weeks. Google keeps 30 percent.)"

And, "With inconsistency comes disappointment and frustration," states Pogue. "Why is it that you can download a Charlie Rose talk show to have and to hold forever, but a 'CSI' episode self-destructs after 24 hours?"

Have and to hold forever?

The Register's Ashlee Vance says people bought Charlie Rose segments, "only to receive an e-mail saying that Google would eventually tell them how to download the video."

The email didn't show up, " but payment for it nonetheless went to Google, he says, continuing, "Now, we get this. 'You may have noticed some problems with some of the video(s) that you downloaded and we have issued you a full refund for these purchases, Google wrote in a customer service e-mail. Rest assured, the affected video files have been replaced and are now available on Google Video. In addition to the refund, the episode that you purchased are available for re-download at no charge'."

Vance's refund arrived, "although without interest," he says.

But back to Pogue, "According to Google, the current Google Video is a beta test, a dry run intended to solicit feedback and suggestions for improvement," he says, adding, "That's fortunate, because at the moment, the site is appallingly half-baked. Quarter-baked, in fact."

Everything is, though, ultimately fixable, says the story – except for one thing:

Google's home-grown Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

"You can't burn the shows to a CD or DVD, and can't play them back on portable players like iPods," states Pogue, adding:

"In fact, most of the TV shows don't play back at all without an active Internet connection, which, for most people, also rules out laptop playback on planes, trains and automobiles.

"This is sickening news for anyone who thought that two incompatible copy-protection schemes - Apple's and Microsoft's - were complex and sticky enough already. And compared with the ABC and NBC shows available on the iTunes store, the value of the CBS shows looks even worse."

Also See:
New York Times - Google Video: Trash Mixed With Treasure, January 19, 2006
The Register - Google's botched video store starts coughing up cash, January 21, 2006
home-grown - Google's very own DRM, January 7, 2006

(Sunday 22nd January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7688

 

DVD Cold War

The battle to control the future of high-definition DVD is raging hot, but the outcome is not as critical as many claim.

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Las Vegas isn't the sort of place usually given to premonitions of the apocalypse. But at the Consumer Electronics Show, the world's largest trade fair of electronic gadgetry, the talk earlier this month was of total war. The headlines said it all: gloves off in digital war. two tribes go to war.

The casus belli is about who will define the format of high-definition video-discs—a technology, some claim, that will determine who reigns supreme in the world of video for at least a decade to come. The contest is already splitting the tech world into opposing camps. One leader is Toshiba, which is pushing its HD DVD format as a low-cost alternative that "stretches" current DVD technology to accommodate the data loads required by high-definition video. It's opposed by Sony's Blu-ray Disc Association, which is betting on a more radical (and costly) departure that, it claims, will create far greater data capacity and what Sony chairman and CEO Howard Stringer has hailed as a "revolutionary" and "amazing" new viewing experience. Sony can count on all the major motion-picture studios but one, and most of the key video-hardware makers, while Toshiba has recruited Microsoft and Intel.

Both sides came to Vegas ready to open fire. Toshiba announced it would ship the first HD DVD players in March, priced at just $499. By contrast, the earliest delivery date for a Blu-ray player is sometime this summer, at a price of $1,800. Sony believes it can overcome its rivals' head start by rolling out Blu-ray in the hotly anticipated PlayStation 3, due later this year.

No doubt the stakes are considerable. In 2005 consumers purchased some $15 billion worth of DVDs, and that was a relatively slow year. The movie industry is hoping that high-def video formats can stem the steady erosion of DVD sales, which have long since outpaced sales of movie-theater tickets and thus represent one of the industry's primary sources of income. Meanwhile, customers are watching the spectacle warily. Who wants to pony up hundreds of dollars for a disc player, only to discover in a year or two that the other side's format has won the day?

Behind all these worries lies the memory of the Mother of All Format Battles: the —tug of war over videocassette formats between Sony and Panasonic in the 1970s and early '80s. The victor then, of course, was Panasonic: its VHS format became the universal standard, leaving Sony's technologically superior Betamax machines gathering dust on store shelves. VHS vs. Betamax became a classic B-school case study, emphasizing the importance of garnering early support for big investments on new technology.

But much has changed in 30 years. In the 1970s, cassettes of one kind or the other were the only current or potential options for watching video. That's not the case today. Toshiba vice president Yoshihide Fujii passionately defends HD DVD, accusing the Blu-ray side of dispensing "propaganda" and unfounded claims of technical superiority. But he's also quick to acknowledge that optical discs aren't the only means of delivery anymore. The format battle is important, he says, "but 15 years from now DVD will no longer exist. So disc capacity, to me, is not so important." His counterparts at Sony, he suggests, are fixated on "physical format" for its own sake. "The Blu-ray guys are optical-disc guys. But in the future, flash memory or hard-disc drives or even optical holograms" may turn out to play a bigger role.

It's tough to pick a likely winner, but many analysts point to hard-disc drives, known as HDD (think of the "brain" inside your PC, possibly shrunk to fit into handheld gadgets). "Every single month that there isn't an HD DVD out on the market, it's good for networks and HDDs," says Richard Doherty, research director at the Envisioneering Group. "People are getting more and more used to having content in their personal video recorders," which also run on HDDs.

The explosion of options has Bill Gates, among others, declaring that the fight between Blu-ray and HD DVD is "the last of the format wars." In Vegas he demonstrated how Microsoft's Windows Media Center will store content, making DVDs unnecessary. Ikuo Matsuhashi, a consumer-electronics analyst for Goldman Sachs, says HDDs will emerge as "the easiest and most convenient way of recording movies or TVs," marginalizing DVDs. "Within a couple of years people might not even remember what this DVD-format competition was about," he says. Some of the combatants aren't ready to concede. Andy Parsons, a spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, says options like cable and video on demand have yet to undercut DVDs because people still prefer the tangibility of traditional "package media," like the DVD, which they can carry home and collect in libraries.

Lately the lines between the opposing camps have started to blur as major players hedge their bets. Paramount and Warner plan to release films in both formats. Samsung and Hewlett-Packard, once committed solely to Blu-ray, have hinted they will support HD DVD, too. Meanwhile, every player in the field is looking beyond DVD, including the leaders of the rival camps, argues Matsuhashi. He says that from the larger earnings perspective DVD may not matter as much as other strategic projects—for example, in Toshiba's case, making good on huge investments in flat-panel TVs. "We're not even sure that the next-gen DVD-format war is really that important," he says. At a minimum, this war will not be as decisive as the last one.

 

EMI attacks French p2p plan

p2p news / p2pnet: French moves to legalise online music file-sharing are an "aberration," says EMI boss Eric Nicoli, urging the country to re-think its policies..

When Big Four record label cartel executives speak, they expect governments to listen, and hard.

"The French government is expected to publish new proposed amendments to its copyright bill soon, after suffering a rebellion by many of its own lawmakers last month," says Ireland Online.

"The deputies voted changes that would introduce a so-called 'global licence' - allowing Internet subscribers who opt to pay an additional monthly fee to copy as much music as they like online. The additional revenues would be distributed among artists and other copyright owners."

Speaking at this year's MidemNet Music & Technology conference in Cannes, Nicoli, who ran a biscuit company before joining EMI, warned the French government to, "reconsider and reverse these proposals" because, "Protection of copyright is of utmost importance in any business relationship within the digital arena," says the story.

He didn't say what EMI or the other cartel members, Sony BMG (Japan, Germany), Vivendi Universal (France) and Warner Music (USA) might do if France doesn't toe the EMI line.

Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy said last week that the global licence amendment was unacceptable, adds Ireland Online.

Also See:
file-sharing - Will France legalize file sharing?, December 23, 2005
Ireland Online - EMI boss attacks French moves to legalise file-sharing, January 21, 2006

(Sunday 22nd January 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7691


EMI boss attacks French moves to legalise file-sharing
21/01/2006 - 16:50:20

The chairman of EMI Group PLC, the world’s No. 3 record company, today condemned French moves to legalise online music file-sharing as an “aberration,” and urged a rethink by the government.

“If France continues down this road it could jeopardise the promising growth we’re now seeing in the legitimate online market,” Eric Nicoli said.

The French government is expected to publish new proposed amendments to its copyright bill soon, after suffering a rebellion by many of its own lawmakers last month.

The deputies voted changes that would introduce a so-called “global licence” - allowing Internet subscribers who opt to pay an additional monthly fee to copy as much music as they like online. The additional revenues would be distributed among artists and other copyright owners.

Consumer groups welcomed the vote, but music labels, retailers and artists - including venerable French rocker Johnny Hallyday – have lined up to condemn it as an effective green light to piracy.

“France has always respected copyright and supported creative industries, so it seems an aberration that the government has taken a first step towards a global licence,” Nicoli said, in a keynote speech at Midem, a global music industry gathering in the French Riviera town of Cannes.

“I urge the French government to reconsider and reverse these proposals,” he said. “Protection of copyright is of utmost importance in any business relationship within the digital arena.”

A crackdown on piracy is bound to be politically delicate in France, a year before presidential and legislative elections.

Growth in revenues from legal music downloads outpaced the decline in CD sales for the first time in France last year, according to a new study. But it also found that French internet users downloaded about 1 billion music tracks in 2005 - double the previous year’s number. Of these, legitimate music purchases accounted for only 20 million, or 2%.

Faced with increasing pressure from some of France’s best-known celebrities, the government now shows signs of reining in its rebels.

Ministers plan to push a compromise that would drop the global licence, according to French press reports, but that would also weaken penalties for people who deliberately disable the copy-protection on CDs or other media.

Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy – who also leads the conservative ruling party Union for a Popular Movement – said last week that the global licence amendment was unacceptable.

“No other country has taken this approach,” Sarkozy said. “Artists and rights holders want to be compensated according to their talent and their work, not in a collectivist way.”


http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=170061280&p=y7xx6y986

 

RIAA and MPAA call a halt on digital progress

"Customary Historic Use" mooted

By Theo Valich: Sunday 22 January 2006, 16:30
BASTION OF digital rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has found a cause for concern when it comes to the future of consumer electronics.

It seems that both the RIAA and MPAA are keen to squish innovation by pushing measures through Congress that ensure no new digital media format will do anything that can't already (legally) be done.

The EFF unearthed draft legislation sponsored by a Republican Senator, Gordon Smith, which seeks to limit future digital broadcast media inventions in a number of ways.

The legislation proposes a "broadcast flag" be added to a digital signal by the broadcaster so that the content receiver will monitor and protect the content by means of a "Secure Moving Technology".

This it defines as "a technology that permits content covered by the Broadcast Flag to be transferred from a broadcast receiver to another device for rendering in accordance with customary historic use of broadcast content, to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted content over digital networks," (our Italics).

In essence, the suggestion is that nothing should be invented in the sphere unless the RIAA and MPAA ok it first.

Are hallucinogenic drugs very popular with the venerable gentlemen at those organizations? I mean, stopping the progress of future content distribution standards, how barmy is that?

This of course, is prompted by the worries over future TV and radio (HDTV and digital radio) stations. Under the draft, the Fair Usage model would be replaced with "Customary Historic Use" - a model in which the distribution of digital content would be outlawed after the content is delivered to the subscriber of a service.

Want to save that historic 2007 SuperBowl? In the US, forget it. Your offspring debuted on national TV network? Sorry, no saving the tape unless your kid brings the it home from the station (and even that could be illegal too).

Add to that that no standard could be developed without the express permission of the RIAA/MPAA committee. Which brings us to a possible scenario: You want to develop a next-gen memory card and submit your idea to the board consisting of very technical folk... "Can it be used to save broadcast content? Yes? Well, we'll ring you back... never."

All that your humble journalist can conclude is the following: the US really wants to end up as a technological backmarker, after Japan, China, Britain, Germany and who knows what other countries... Heck, even in my Croatia with it's 4.5 million inhabitants has 3G providers, DVB-T digital TV, pay-per-view cable TV operators... and yeah, people can freely save that phenomenal documentary or a TV series on HBO. Why we want to? Well, maybe because I was at work while the show was on.

I wonder what it would take to get Americans to take a really deep look at their nation and choose progress instead of repression. Since I have lived in an unusually-liberal communist country, I can't say I have experience like my colleagues from behind the iron curtain, but suggestions inside this draft just sound... USSR-style. µ
L'INQs
EFF Article
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004340.php

PDF of Legislation Draft
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/dcp_act_2006.pdf

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29160