Volume 12, Issue 49        Atari Online News, Etc.       December 3, 2010   
                                                                           
                                                                              
                  Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2010
                            All Rights Reserved

                          Atari Online News, Etc.
                           A-ONE Online Magazine
                Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
                      Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
                       Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor


                       Atari Online News, Etc. Staff

                        Dana P. Jacobson  --  Editor
                   Joe Mirando  --  "People Are Talking"
                Michael Burkley  --  "Unabashed Atariophile"
                   Albert Dayes  --  "CC: Classic Chips"
                         Rob Mahlert  --  Web site
                Thomas J. Andrews  --  "Keeper of the Flame"


                           With Contributions by:

                                Fred Horvat



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                                  =~=~=~=



A-ONE #1249                                                 12/03/10

   ~ FTC: Do Not Track Tool? ~ People Are Talking!    ~ Xbox-Modding Trial!
   ~ Will Do Not Track Work? ~ Galaxy Tablet A Rival? ~ Spam Mastermind Trial
   ~ Facebook Profile Scam!  ~ More Net Neutrality!   ~ IE6 Usage Plummets!
   ~ Bait and Switch Busted! ~ Playboy Collectors HD! ~ Modding Case Botched?

                  -* WikiLeaks Claims DoS Victim! *-
               -*  WikiLeaks Downed Again by Domain!  *-
           -* 82 Sites Shut Down for Copyright Violation *-



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->From the Editor's Keyboard              "Saying it like it is!"
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""



Well, I finally ran out of my Thanksgiving leftovers, and having a little
bit of withdrawal issues!  But, I'll get over it soon enough, I suppose.
I hope that all of you had an enjoyable holiday, complete with fine food,
family and friends.

And now it's time to focus on the current and upcoming holidays - Happy
Hanukkah to those of our readers who celebrate.  We've already been doing
some holiday shopping, trying to get it done as quickly and painlessly as
possible.  We both despise going to malls and such; my wife has been doing
a lot of shopping online, as she's done in the past.  Like most, money is
still tight around here, so we've been trying to plan accordingly.  A time
to pick up a few things that we need, a few that we'd like, and maybe an
item or two that's "fun".  And that will be it.  Oh yeah, and of course
we'll pick up a few gifts for the dogs; they like opening presents too!

The weather here in New England has been getting colder, but still dry for
the most part.  No snow yet, which is always a good thing as far as I'm
concerned!  Of course, I've already had the obligatory cold, and am trying
to shake off the effects of another one at the moment.

Until next time...



                                  =~=~=~=



->In This Week's Gaming Section  - Judge Bars Fair Use Defense in Xbox Modding Trial!
  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""    Xbox-Modding Judge Berates Prosecution!
                                   Government Botches Case Against Xbox 360 Hacker!
                                   


        
                                  =~=~=~=



->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News   -  The Latest Gaming News!
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""



             Judge Bars Fair Use Defense in Xbox Modding Trial


A California man charged with violating the DMCA by modifying Xbox 360
consoles wont be allowed to claim "fair use" at his scheduled jury trial
next week, a federal judge ruled Tuesday - a decision potentially
devastating to the defense, and not particularly favorable to anyone who
thinks they have the right to tinker with hardware that theyve bought and
paid for.

Matthew Crippen, 28, faces three years in prison on two allegations of
violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act for financial gain. Crippen, whos from Anaheim, allegedly
had a business modding Xbox 360s for between $60 and $80 a pop, allowing
the consoles to run pirated games or unapproved homebrew software. He was
indicted after allegedly performing the service for an undercover
corporate security investigator with the Entertainment Software
Association, then again for an undercover federal agent.

His trial is set to begin on November 30 in Los Angeles, and would be the
first federal criminal prosecution for console-modding to reach a jury.

Crippens lawyer hoped to convince that jury that Crippens alleged
modifications werent intended to enable piracy, but to allow Xbox owners
to make lawful "fair use" of copyrighted material, or for other
non-infringing purposes. The lawyer compared modding the console to jail
breaking an iPhone, an activity explicitly permitted under a recent DMCA
exception approved by the U.S. Copyright Office.

"The Copyright Office cited the fact that the only way for consumers to
exercise their fair-use rights by running non-Apple endorsed applications
was through circumvention of access controls," wrote Callie Glanton Steele,
a Los Angeles federal deputy public defender, in a court filing.

But U.S. District Judge Philip shot down that argument Tuesday, noting that
the DMCA makes it a crime to "circumvent a technological measure that
effectively controls access" to copyrighted material, even if theres no
proof that the circumvention was intended to facilitate piracy. The iPhone
exemption is irrelevant, he wrote, because the Copyright Office did not
extend that exemption to game consoles - just phones.

"[A]lthough the government will have to establish that the technological
measure that Mr. Crippen allegedly circumvented was used to control access
to copyrighted work, the Government need not show that the modified Xboxs
were actually used for infringing purposes," (.pdf) wrote Gutierrez.

The decision isnt a surprise, but it highlights the troubling conflict
created by the 1998 DMCA. Copyright law still allows for the fair use of
protected material - for example, an educator might be allowed to copy a
brief scene from a DVD movie for classroom instruction. But if a
hardware-maker deploys technology that prevents that fair use, bypassing
that technology for any reason is unlawful.

Other pre-trial issues remain to be decided in the case, including the
admissibility of a covert video recording of Crippen allegedly performing
the modification, and whether or not the jury can hear the testimony of
hardware hacking guru Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, whos agreed to testify for
the defense.

Huang told Threat Level last month that hes prepared to offer expert
testimony that the Xbox 360 hack doesnt circumvent a copy control
mechanism within the meaning of the DMCA. The government has asked
Gutierrez to block his testimony.



     Xbox-Modding Judge Berates Prosecution, Puts Trial on Hold


Opening statements in the first-of-its kind Xbox 360 criminal hacking
trial were delayed here Wednesday after a federal judge unleashed a
30-minute tirade at prosecutors in open court, saying he had "serious
concerns about the governments case."

"I really dont understand what were doing here," U.S. District Judge
Philip Gutierrez roared from the bench.

Gutierrez slammed the prosecution over everything from alleged unlawful
behavior by government witnesses, to proposed jury instructions harmful to
the defense. When the verbal assault finally subsided, federal prosecutors
asked for a recess to determine whether they would offer the defendant a
deal, dismiss or move forward with the case that was slated to become the
first jury trial of its type. A jury was seated Tuesday.

Among the judges host of complaints against the government was his alarm
that prosecutors would put on two witnesses who may have broken the law.

One is Entertainment Software Association investigator Tony Rosario, who
secretly video-recorded defendant Matthew Crippen allegedly performing the
Xbox mod in Crippens Los Angeles suburban house. The defense argues that
making the recording violates California privacy law. The other witness
is Microsoft security employee Ken McGrail, who analyzed the two consoles
Crippen allegedly altered. McGrail admitted that he himself had modded
Xboxes in college.

"Maybe two of the four government witnesses committed crimes," the judge
said from the bench. "I think it is relevant and the jury is going to hear
about it" - both crimes."

The government had fought to keep the witness conduct a secret from the
jury.

Crippen is charged with two counts of violating the anti-circumvention
provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and faces a maximum
five years for each count if convicted. The government maintains Crippen,
a hotel car-parking manager, ran a small business from his Anaheim home
modifying the firmware on Xbox 360 optical drives to make them capable of
running pirated copies of games.

The judge on Wednesday even backtracked on an earlier ruling that had
prohibited Crippen, 28, from raising a "fair use" defense at trial.

Crippen was hoping to argue to jurors that it was legal to hack the
consoles because the modification had non-infringing purposes, like
allowing the machines to run homebrew software, or permitting limited fair
use of copyright material such as backup copies of video games.

While the judge ruled last week that such a defense was not permitted by
the DMCA, he seemingly changed course during his speech.

"The only way to be able to play copied games is to circumvent the
technology," Gutierrez said. "How about backup games and the homebrewed?"

The fair-use issue came up as the judge berated prosecutor Allen Chius
proposed jury instructions, which included the assertion that the
government need not prove that Crippen "willfully" breached the law, in
what is known as "mens rea" in legal parlance. The judge noted that the
governments own intellectual property crimes manual concerning the 1998
DMCA says the defendant has to have some knowledge that he was breaking
the law.

"The first prosecution 12 years later, and youre suggesting a mens rea
that is akin to exactly contrary to the IP manual: that ignorance of the
law is no excuse?" the judge barked.

"You didnt even propose a middle ground," Gutierrez continued. "Whats
getting me more riled, it seems to me I cannot communicate the severity to
you of whats going on here."

As the judge worked through his laundry list of complaints over the
prosecution, word of the unusual judicial rebuke spread through the
courthouse, drawing a trickle of about a dozen prosecutors and defense
attorneys into the courtroom to watch from the gallery.

"I apologize to the court," Chiu said at the end.

Court is recessed until 1:30 p.m.



    Government Botches Case Against Xbox 360 Hacker, Drops Charges


A 28-year-old Southern California man facing up to 10 years in prison
for allegedly modifying Xbox 360s to play illegal versions of games is
free and clear after federal authorities abruptly dropped their case
against him.

Opening statements in the trial were delayed yesterday after the judge
hearing the case verbally flayed the prosecution, admitting he had
"serious concerns about the government's case," and at one point stating
"I really don't understand what we're doing here."

The case against Matthew Crippen, a hotel valet service manager alleged
to have run a side business modifying Xbox 360s to play pirated games,
was the first of its kind to come to trial.

Make that the first of its kind to also get pushed off a cliff. According
to Wired, the government bailed yesterday, telling the judge its decision
to withdraw was "based on fairness and justice."

Things fell apart on Wednesday as the government opted to proceed with
opening testimony. Tony Rosario, its first witness and an undercover
agent with the Entertainment Software Association, added a testimonial
wrinkle it failed to disclose to the defense--that Crippen had placed a
copy of a pirated video game into an Xbox 360 to verify his modification
was working.

The prosecution then moved to dismiss the case, admitting its error,
though the reversal wasn't a tacit admission of defeat. The case was
dropped on a technicality, not on its merits in relation to the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, which among other things attempts to criminalize
the modification of technology to circumvent copyright protection measures.
This case, had it gone forward, would have been the first to test the
DMCA's application to modified game consoles.

In other words, not the first or last we've heard of it.

While it's routinely assumed modifications to game consoles exist to
circumvent piracy measures, some have lobbied against the DMCA because
of its potential to stifle creativity. For instance, modified game
consoles can also be used to engage legitimate software crafted by a
community of enthusiasts. Removing that ability, some say, would be like
outlawing aftermarket modifications to just about anything.

What's the difference between modifying an Xbox 360 to enable supplemental
functionality and jail-breaking an iPhone, something already considered
legal "fair use" in the United States?

Downloading and playing pirated games is illegal, there's no ambiguity on
that point. But modifying technology to unlock additional functionality
falls in a different column, whether you're arguing on legal or
philosophical grounds.

No one likes to be told what they can and can't do with something they've
purchased. Applying the DMCA to console modification would open the door
for protectionists (private or governmental) to start locking down the
games industry. That's the wrong approach, as far as I'm concerned,
especially as piracy-proof distribution mediums increase in popularity,
from "games-on-demand" digital downloads through Steam or Xbox Live
Marketplace, to playing "in the cloud" with distributed computing services
like OnLive.



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                           A-ONE's Headline News
                   The Latest in Computer Technology News
                       Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson



            WikiLeaks Says Was Denial-of-Service Attack Victim


The online website WikiLeaks on Sunday blamed the temporary outage of its
site on a denial-of-service attack by unknown hackers trying to prevent
its release of hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department
documents.

WikiLeaks said on Twitter early Sunday that its website was "under a mass
distributed denial of service attack" but promised that Spain's El Pais,
France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel, Britain's Guardian newspaper and
The New York Times "will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if
WikiLeaks goes down." WikiLeaks had given the media outlets prior access
to the diplomatic cables to publish in conjunction with their Sunday
release on its site.

There was no reason to doubt WikiLeaks' claim; the website was inaccessible
for much of Sunday, though several hundred cables were posted on its site
by late afternoon. The cables, many of them classified, offer candid,
sometimes unflattering assessments of foreign leaders, ranging from U.S.
allies such as Germany and Italy to other nations like Libya, Iran and
Afghanistan.

In a typical denial-of-service attack, remote computers commandeered by
rogue programs bombard a website with so many data packets that it becomes
overwhelmed and unavailable to visitors. Pinpointing the culprits is
impossible because the Internet's structure does not allow for the tracing
back of the data packets used in such attacks, computer security expert
Bruce Schneier told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Hackers have used denial-of-service attacks over the years to target
corporate and government websites.

Last month political bloggers in Vietnam said they were victimized by
cyberattacks designed to block their websites to stifle government dissent.
Other targets have included U.S. and South Korean government websites in
2009 and computer networks in Estonia, which were crippled for nearly three
weeks in 2007 by what were believed to be Russian hackers.

In the weeks leading up to the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia,
Georgian government and corporate websites were hit with denial-of-service
attacks. The Kremlin denied involvement.

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert and a senior fellow at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, said it's unlikely the U.S. or some
other government would use denial-of-service attacks against WikiLeaks.

His best guess is it's "a bunch of geeks who've decided they're annoyed
with WikiLeaks."

"Denial of service is usually the amateur's approach," he told the AP on
Sunday. "Usually it's the hacker community ..."

Lewis said he's never heard of the U.S. trying to attack a website like
this.

"Usually they're more interested in exploiting, that is getting into
WikiLeaks to figure out what's going on. Or they're interested in doing
some kind of damage, and denial of service really doesn't do any damage."

Such an attack would only stall WikiLeaks, not prevent the information
from being released.

Schneier also said he seriously doubts any U.S. government agency would
be involved in such an attack because it amounts to a mere "nuisance"
and could not stop Wikileaks from releasing the diplomatic cables. He
notes that there are many ways to distribute information online.

An encrypted file that was made available online using BitTorrent
file-sharing technology in late July is believed to hold the cables. All
Wikileaks would need to do to unlock the file is distribute the key.



               WikiLeaks.org Downed by Domain Hosting Service


WikiLeaks' main website could not be accessed on Friday through its
WikiLeaks.org domain name after a subsidiary of Dynamic Network Services
terminated its domain name service.

Dynamic Network Services' subsidiary, EveryDNS.net, terminated the
WikiLeaks.org domain name because repeated DDOS (Distributed Denial of
Service) attacks against WikiLeaks "have, and future attacks would,
threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables
access to almost 500,000 other websites," it said on its website.

EveryDNS.net said it notified WikiLeaks by email, Twitter and the chat
function available through the WikiLeaks.org website that its domain
name service would be terminated in 24-hours. That 24-hour period ended
Dec. 2 at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.

"Any downtime of the Wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure
to use another hosted DNS service provider," EveryDNS.net said.

WikiLeaks put out a note on Twitter saying, "WikiLeaks,org domain killed
by U.S. EveryDNS.net after claimed mass attacks," and implored
supporters to keep WikiLeaks strong with continued donations.

The WikiLeaks comment appeared at odds with an earlier WikiLeaks Twitter
post saying that DDOS attacks against its servers reached 10 Gigabits
per second on Nov. 30. Amazon Web Services also confirmed the DDOS
attacks, saying in a blog posting that, "There were indeed large-scale
DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against."

The domain name service termination comes just days after Amazon Web
Services stopped hosting WikiLeaks on its servers for breaking user rules
saying that websites must use their own content and not carry data that
might injure others. The U.S. Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman, had also asked Amazon to stop
hosting the controversial
website.

WikiLeaks has come under fire for publishing classified U.S. documents,
including videos and documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as
well as sensitive cables sent between U.S. embassies and the U.S. State
Department. WikiLeaks continues to post the cables.

Dynamic Network Services is a U.S. company based in Manchester, New
Hampshire. Its EveryDNS.net subsidiary said all of its systems were
functioning normally.



              FTC Proposes Do Not Track Tool for Web Marketing


Federal regulators are proposing to create a "Do Not Track" tool for the
Internet so that consumers could prevent marketers from tracking their Web
browsing habits and other behavior in order to target advertising.

The proposal, inspired by the government's existing "Do Not Call" registry
for telemarketers, is among the recommendations outlined in a privacy
report released Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission. The report lays
out a broad framework for protecting consumer privacy both online and
offline as personal data collection becomes ubiquitous - often without
consumer knowledge.

The FTC hopes the report will help guide the marketing industry as it
develops self-regulatory principles to define acceptable corporate
behavior. The FTC also is trying to influence lawmakers and other
policymakers as they draft new rules of the road to protect privacy. The
agency has limited authority to write those rules itself, so new
regulations would likely require congressional action.

Protecting consumer privacy, the agency says, is critical since
marketers - particularly online marketers - are increasingly analyzing the
websites that consumers visit, the links they click, Internet searches,
online and offline purchases, the physical locations of wireless devices
and all sorts of personal information disclosed on social networking
sites.

So far, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said Wednesday, the marketing industry
has not done nearly enough to ensure that consumers understand what personal
information is being collected about them or to give them adequate control
over that data collection.

The agency envisions a Do Not Track tool as one important way to let
consumers decline, or "opt out" of, much of the tracking that occurs online
- a practice the industry calls behavioral advertising. The tool would most
likely take the form of a browser setting that would apply across the board
as consumers jump from site to site. It would clearly inform sites when
tracking and targeted advertising are off limits for a particular browser.

The concept is loosely based on the FTC's National Do Not Call Registry,
which was launched in 2003 and has been widely credited for allowing
Americans to eat their suppers in peace. More than 190 million people
have listed their phones on the registry, which prohibits calls from
telemarketers. Violating the registry subjects telemarketers to civil
penalties up to $16,000 per violation.

Leibowitz, who first floated the idea of Do Not Track last summer, said
that although the technology has not yet been widely deployed for
consumers, browser companies are experimenting with it. And lawmakers do
appear interested in the concept. Bobby Rush, chairman of the House
Commerce subcommittee that deals with consumer protection issues, will
hold a hearing on potential Do Not Track legislation on Thursday.

The new FTC report comes at time of mounting concern about Internet
privacy in both Washington and Europe.

The National Information and Telecommunications Administration, part of
the Commerce Department, is also preparing a report on the issue. And
the Obama administration's Office of Science Technology Policy has
created a new group to develop broad principles on online privacy to
guide legislative action and regulatory policy.

Meanwhile, last month the European Union said it plans to update its
privacy regulations to give consumers more control over online tracking.



        Will A 'Do Not Track' Browser Option Protect Your Privacy?


The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday provided more details on its
"do not track" browser proposal, though it was met with skepticism by
security experts at Symantec.

David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, told
the House Energy and Commerce Committee that a "do not track" option
would be a "more uniform and comprehensive consumer choice mechanism for
online behavioral advertising" than the options currently available.

Joe Pasqua, vice president of research at Symantec, however, said
the idea is "conceptually reasonable but technically difficult."

Vladeck appeared on Capitol Hill one day after the FTC unveiled a broad
plan for online privacy, which included the "do not track" provision.
Basically, it suggests that browser companies add a feature that allows
users to surf the Web without having any of their activities tracked; no
information sent to advertisers or data miners, for example.

At this point, the FTC plan is just a proposal and not enforceable. The
agency is asking for stakeholders to submit comments on the plan by
January, and it will issue a revised proposal sometime next year. The
FTC said its ideas could be used as best practices as Congress considers
online privacy legislation, however, which is why Vladeck appeared
before the committee on Thursday.

"The most practical method of providing uniform choice for online
behavioral advertising would likely involve placing a setting similar to
a persistent cookie on a consumer's browser, and conveying that setting
to sites that the browser visits, to signal whether or not the consumer
wants to be tracked or receive targeted advertisements," Vladeck said.
"To be effective, there must be an enforceable requirement that sites
honor those choices."

Most browsers offer private browsing features, which do not track user
activity, but Vladeck pushed for mechanisms that are "more clear,
easy-to-locate, and effective."

If Congress does choose to take up the issue, Vladeck asked members to
consider several issues: bills should not undermine online behavioral
advertising entirely since some consumers do benefit from it; it would
not operate like the "do not call" program since there is no persistent
identifier for computers like phone numbers (IP addresses change); and
the FTC should have the authority to enforce the legislation and impose
civil penalties.

Also in attendance was Daniel Weitzner from the National Telecommunications
and Information Administration (NTIA) within the Commerce Department. He
acknowledged that users currently have the option to avoid tracking through
private browsing features, and issued support for a "voluntary,
multi-stakeholder process, backed up, in the end, by FTC enforcement of
the privacy commitments made to consumers through such a system."

The Commerce Department's Internet Policy Task Force, meanwhile, will also
"start to convene industry and consumer groups to discuss the next steps
toward achieving voluntary agreements on implementation methods for a
do-not-track requirement," Weitzner said.

Symantec's Pasqua, however, was doubtful. "We are unsure exactly how a
Do-Not-Track mechanism would be all that different from the opt-out link
currently offered by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI)," he said.
"Perhaps the most significant difference might be that the NAI includes
only a limited number of companies, but a Do-Not-Track registry would
presumably be universal."

"Our vision is for a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to
obtain a secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential such as
a smart identity card or a digital certificate on a cell phone, from a
variety of public and private service providers, to authenticate
themselves online for different types of transactions," Pasqua said.

Deciding what is intrusive is also an issue, he continued. "What one
user considers excessive tracking might be completely reasonable to
others."

Browser companies like Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla have all pledged to
review the FTC's privacy plan and consider its suggestions.



               FCC Net Neutrality Plan Faces Battle with GOP


Just hours after the head of the Federal Communications Commission said he
would push ahead with rules to prohibit broadband providers from blocking
or discriminating against Internet traffic flowing over their networks,
the battle lines are being drawn.

The proposal has won grudging support from several big phone and cable
companies, including AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., and at least a few
public interest groups. It faces withering criticism from Republicans in
Congress and at the FCC, who are calling it an effort to regulate the
Internet.

But the fate of the "network neutrality" plan crafted by FCC Chairman
Julius Genachowski may ultimately lie with his two fellow Democrats on
the five-member commission. For now, it's unclear how they will vote
when the agency considers the proposal later this month.

"Today is the beginning of an important discussion, and not the end," one
of those two commissioners, Michael Copps, said in a statement Wednesday.
"At issue is who will control access to the online experiences of
consumers - consumers themselves or Big Phone and Big Cable gatekeepers."

Genachowski's widely anticipated plan, which he laid out in a speech
Wednesday, is the product of months of negotiations to find middle ground
in a policy dispute that pitted phone and cable giants against a number of
Internet companies and public interest groups. Net neutrality rules were
one of the Obama administration's top campaign pledges to the technology
industry and have been among Genachowski's priorities since he took over
the FCC more than a year ago.

Many big Internet companies, such as search leader Google Inc. and calling
service Skype, insist regulations are needed to ensure broadband companies
can't use their control over Internet connections to dictate where
consumers can go and what they can do online. They are particularly
concerned that without strong net neutrality protections, phone and cable
companies could slow or block online phone calls, Web video and other
Internet services that compete with their core businesses. Internet
companies and public interest groups also want regulations to prevent
broadband providers from favoring their own online traffic or traffic from
business partners that can pay to take priority over other online services.

But Genachowski has fought an uphill battle against phone and cable giants,
which insist they need flexibility to manage network traffic so that
high-bandwidth applications - such as online video - don't hog capacity and
slow down their networks. The communications companies also argue that
after spending billions to upgrade their lines for broadband, they need to
be able earn a healthy return by offering premium high-speed services. They
warn that burdensome regulations would discourage them from continuing to
invest in their systems.

Genachowski's plan, which builds on a set of FCC principles established
under the previous administration in 2005, would require that broadband
providers let subscribers access all legal online content, applications
and services over their wireline networks. But it contains several key
concessions to the phone and cable companies.

For one thing, it would give broadband providers flexibility to manage
their systems to deal with problems such as network congestion and
unwanted traffic including spam as long as they publicly disclose their
network management practices.

The proposal would give wireless carriers even more leeway to manage
data traffic, since wireless systems have more bandwidth constraints
than wired networks. It would, however, prohibit wireless carriers from
blocking access to any websites or competing applications such as
Internet calling services on mobile devices, and would also require the
carriers to disclose their network management practices.

In addition, the proposal would let broadband providers experiment with
routing traffic from specialized services such as smart energy grids and
home security systems over dedicated networks, as long as the practice
doesn't slow down the public Internet.

The proposal drew cautious praise from AT&T, which said, "The FCC
appears to be embracing a compromise solution that is sensitive to the
dynamics of investment in a difficult economy and appears to avoid
over-regulation."

Comcast, too, said the plan "strikes a workable balance between the
needs of the marketplace and the certainty that carefully-crafted and
limited rules can provide to ensure that Internet freedom and openness
are preserved."

Reaction among public interest groups was more mixed. Although several
said they could support the proposal, one key group, Free Press,
denounced it as "fake" net neutrality that would provide less protection
for wireless consumers at a time when more Americans are going online
using mobile devices. Free Press also said allowing dedicated networks
for certain services could lead to a two-tiered Internet with a fast
lane for companies that can pay for priority and a slow lane for
everyone else.

In one other key concession to the phone and cable companies, Genachowski's
proposal would leave in place the FCC's current regulatory framework for
broadband, which treats broadband as a lightly regulated "information
service."

The agency has been trying to come up with a new framework since a federal
appeals court in April ruled that the FCC had overstepped its existing
authority in sanctioning Comcast for discriminating against Internet
file-sharing traffic on its network. Comcast's behavior violated the very
net neutrality principles that Genachowski now hopes
to adopt as formal rules.

To ensure that the commission would be on solid legal ground in adopting
net neutrality rules and other broadband regulations following that
decision, Genachowski had proposed redefining broadband as a
telecommunications service subject to "common carrier" obligations to treat
all traffic equally. But that effort triggered a fierce backlash from the
phone and cable companies, as well as from many Republicans in Congress,
prompting Genachowski to back down.

His new plan is based in large part on a proposal that Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., the outgoing chairman of the House Commerce Committee,
unsuccessfully tried to push in Congress several months ago. Waxman, too,
ran into opposition from Republicans who say net neutrality rules amount
to unnecessary regulation.

Republicans went on the attack again Wednesday against Genachowski's latest
proposal. Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker, the two Republicans
on the FCC, said they could not support the proposal. McDowell said
Genachowski's effort "to adopt sweeping regulations of Internet network
management" is an "ill-advised maneuver."

And two top Republicans on the House Commerce Committee, Joe Barton of
Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida, sent a letter to the FCC chairman
asking him to explain where the agency gets authority to mandate net
neutrality.

With Republicans set to take over the House next year, Genachowski is
certain to face even more resistance in the next Congress, adding to
pressure on the chairman to get his plan through the FCC this month.



        Courts Shut Down 82 Sites for Alleged Copyright Violations


Two U.S. government agencies have obtained seizure orders from courts
across the nation for the domain names of 82 websites accused of selling
products that infringe copyright law, including music, movies and handbags.

The seizure orders, from courts in eight states and Washington, D.C.,
have allowed the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to shut
down sites including Torrent-finder.com, DVDscollection.com,
Sunglasses-mall.com, and NFLjerseysupply.com, officials from the
agencies said Monday.

News reports of multiple site closures surfaced in the last few days,
but officials with the two agencies talked about the actions during a
press conference Monday.

"With today's seizures, we are disrupting the sale of thousands of
counterfeit items," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said. "We are
cutting off funds to those looking to profit from the sale of illegal
goods and exploit the ingenuity of others. And, as the holiday shopping
season gets underway, we are also reminding consumers to exercise
caution when looking for deals and discounts online. To put it simply:
If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Sites targeted by the two agencies displayed a notice on their home pages
saying that ICE had seized the domain names. "Willful copyright
infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time
offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture
and restitution," the notices read. "Intentionally and knowingly trafficking
in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first
time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine,
forfeiture and restitution."

Some commentators questioned the seizure of Torrent-finder.com, a search
engine for BitTorrent files that didn't host any files itself. Another
version of the site remained online at Torrent-finder.info Monday morning.

ICE "went way beyond its mandate to seize a whole bunch of domain names,"
wrote Mike Masnick, founder of the TechDirt blog. "Many of the operators
of the domain names seized in this round state they hadn't received any
notification of complaints, let alone demands to be taken down."

The seizure of search engines is "ridiculous," Masnick added. "For anyone
who actually understands how the internet works (i.e., clearly not Homeland
Security) this is a massively troubling move, suggesting that if Homeland
Security doesn't like how your search engine works, it can simply seize your
domain and put up a really scary looking graphic, claiming it has taken over
your website," he wrote.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, praised the action by the DOJ and ICE. The seizures
targeted "rogue websites," said Leahy, who has sponsored legislation
this year that would make it easier for the DOJ to shut down infringing
websites.

"The innovative use of the tools currently available to law enforcement to
seize these domain names is similar to the remedy that would be
specifically authorized under the bipartisan Combating Online Infringement
and Counterfeits Act for websites that are registered in the United
States," Leahy said in a statement. "We can no longer sit on the sidelines
while American intellectual property is stolen and sold online using our
own infrastructure. This costs American jobs, hurts our economy, and puts
consumers at risk."

Also cheering the seizures was Mitch Bainwol chairman and CEO of the
Recording Industry Association of America.

"Federal law enforcement authorities have now hung a 'closed for business'
sign on some of the most notorious music websites that were havens for
copyright theft," he said in a statement. "No anti-piracy initiative is a
silver bullet, but targeted government enforcement against the worst of
the worst rogue sites sends a strong message that illegally trafficking in
creative works carries real consequences and won't be tolerated."



            Man Pleads Not Guilty to Running Vast Spam Network


A 23-year-old Russian man accused of masterminding a vast worldwide
spamming network pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in Wisconsin
to violating a U.S. anti-spam law.

The judge ordered Oleg Y. Nikolaenko held without bond, saying he was a
flight risk because of his access to cash and his lack of ties to
Wisconsin or the U.S.

Nikolaenko was brought into court wearing bright orange prison pants and
matching sweatshirt and shackled at the ankles. His attorney entered the
plea as a Russian interpreter translated for the Moscow man.

Prosecutors say Nikolaenko ran a network that involved placing malicious
code on unsuspecting users' computers and then hijacking the infected
machines to blast out billions of e-mails.

Internet security experts say the network was so massive that on some
days it accounted for one of every three unwanted e-mails in the world.

Nikolaenko is charged with violating the CAN-SPAM act by intentionally
falsifying header information in commercial e-mail messages and sending
at least 2,500 spam e-mails per day, the minimum threshold for the
charge. Prosecutors say his network was capable of sending up to 10
billion messages per day.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a
$250,000 fine.

Nikolaenko, unshaven with disheveled hair, sat silent and expressionless
during the 20-minute proceedings.

His attorney, Christopher Van Wagner, said he intended to mount a
vigorous defense and would examine whether broad pre-trial publicity
might jeopardize his client's ability to receive a fair trial.

"Some people still harbor Cold War images of people from Russia," he
told reporters on the courthouse steps. "You take one look at Oleg, he
looks like a kid you find in a basement munching nachos and playing Wii"
video games.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Erica O'Neil said the prosecution's case would
hinge on "voluminous" records including e-mails Nikolaenko allegedly
sent and information gleaned from computer hard drives. She said a
computer-crimes expert from the U.S. Department of Justice is assisting
because of the complexity of the case.

Van Wagner hinted that he may try to cast doubt on the validity of the
e-mail records.

"When you respond to an e-mail you don't know who's typing it," he said.

Nikolaenko was arrested last month at the Bellagio Hotel while he was in
Las Vegas for a car show. He is being tried in Milwaukee because that's
where an undercover FBI investigator ordered Viagra through an e-mail
distributed by Nikolaenko's alleged operation and received bogus herbal
pills instead, an FBI spokesman said.

O'Neil said Nikolaenko is being held at a U.S. Marshal detention
facility in Milwaukee.

In arguing that Nikolaenko should be granted release on bail, Van Wagner
noted that his client's wife and young daughter were in the process of
requesting travel visas in Russia so they could be with Nikolaenko in
Milwaukee for the trial. They wouldn't be doing that if Nikolaenko were
planning to flee, he said.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Gorence wasn't convinced, saying
Nikolaenko had two passports and $4,000 in cash when he was arrested.
She said Van Wagner could request a new bond hearing once the defense
arranged for a place for Nikolaenko to live, a request Van Wagner said
he would "absolutely" make.

Prosecutors say they sniffed out Nikolaenko's trail during the
prosecution of another man convicted in Missouri of conspiring to
traffic in counterfeit Rolex watches. The say details emerged that led
them on a far-flung investigation that eventually helped them tie
Nikolaenko to one of the most sophisticated spamming networks in the
world - "Mega-D," which investigators said accounted for 32 percent of
all worldwide spam.

Investigators say Mega-D was a botnet, short for "robot network," in
which users' computers are infected with so-called malware that allows
someone to remotely hijack the computer and have it send out spam
e-mails. The Mega-D network included more than half a million infected
computers.

Nikolaenko is due in court Dec. 21 for a scheduling conference. Gorence
said his trial must start no later than Feb. 11.



               Facebook Scam: 'See Who Has Viewed Your Profile'


Curious to see who views your Facebook profile page?

You're out of luck. Status updates, Facebook groups, and pages claiming
to let users see who has viewed their Facebook profile pages are scams,
often linking users to ad-filled sites.

In recent days, for instance, you may have seen your Facebook friends
speaking in bizarrely adolescent chatroom vernacular:

"OMG OMG OMG... I cant believe this actually works! Now you really can
see who viewed your profile! on [LINK]."

"If you're tempted to click on the link, you're taken to a webpage that
encourages you to go a little deeper and permit an application to have
access to your Facebook profile," wrote Graham Cluley, a senior technology
consultant at Sophos, in a blog post.

According to Sophos, over 60,000 people clicked into the claim in a few
hours.

But as Facebook noted in July, there is no way anyone can see who has
viewed their profile, and no way others can create such a function.

"We're working hard to block and remove websites, Pages, and
applications that claim to do this. If you see one, don't be fooled, and
report it to us immediately," the company wrote on its security page.


Clicking into these links usually directs people to ad-filled pages.
Others might promise to exchange a profile-viewing feature if a user can
generate enough likes and linkshares.

"If you've been hit by a scam like this, remove references to it from
your newsfeed, and revoke the right of rogue applications to access your
profile via Account/ Privacy Settings/ Applications and Websites,"
Cluley suggests.



Senate Passes Bill to Protect Online Shoppers from Bait and Switch Tactics


A bill to protect online shoppers from bait-and-switch scams was approved
Wednesday by the U.S. Senate. The measure is aimed at a practice called
"post transaction advertising" that has bilked millions of Americans of
billions of dollars by secretly subscribing them to services without their
consent.

"This is a victory for American consumers," declared Sen. John D. (Jay)
Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) in a statement. "This bipartisan legislation
provides new standards that make sure businesses can't bill online shoppers
for services they did not want to buy."

The legislation was drafted after an extensive probe by the Senate Commerce,
Science and Transportation committee, which Rockefeller chairs.

"Last year, the committee learned that unscrupulous businesses used
offers of rebates and rewards as a smokescreen to pick the pockets of
millions of online shoppers," he said. "It's not the way business should
be done in America and it will end. We're slamming the door on this
billion dollar scam."

The sales tactic, used by companies like Affinion, Vertue and Webloyalty,
works like this. Following checkout after buying something at a website, a
shopper is offered some kind of perk - free shipping or a cash rebate.
When the shopper accepts the offer, they're automatically enrolled in some
kind of subscription service without their knowledge and their credit is
charged for it.

The tactic works because hundreds of shopping sites were willing to share
their customers' billing information with the companies for a cut of the
action.

Under the bill, called the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, the
following protections would become law:

    * Companies would be prohibited from using misleading
      post-transaction advertisements by requiring them to clearly
      disclose the terms of their offers, and to obtain billing
      information, including full credit or debit card numbers, directly
      from consumers.

    * Internet retailers and other commercial websites would be
      prohibited from transferring a consumer's billing information,
      including credit and debit card numbers, to post-transaction third
      party sellers.

    * Companies that use negative options" on the Internet would be
      required to meet certain minimum disclosure and enrollment
      requirements, so consumers will not end up paying recurring fees
      for goods and services they did not intend to purchase.

The bill now goes to the House for action.



                  iPad Has Real Xmas Rival in Galaxy Tablet


Last Christmas anybody asked if they wanted a "tablet" probably thought
they were being offered a pill to ease indigestion caused by a little bit
of festive over-indulgence.

But this year, millions of people around the world will be glued to their
iPad or other tablet computer instead of watching yet another re-run of a
movie on TV.

Samsung Electronics says it has sold over 700,000 of its Galaxy Tab device
in the six weeks since its launch and believes at least a million will be
in people's hands by the end of the year.

But that's still miles behind the iPad, which only went on sale in South
Korea - Samsung's home turf - for the first time on Tuesday.

Apple has sold more than eight million of the gadgets since it went on
sale in April but could have sold more, experts say, were it not for
problems making enough to meet demand.

Sony, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM), Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard,
Motorola, Dell, Asus, Acer - most of the big global brand names in the
technology sector have a tablet computer on the market or in the pipeline.

Technology research firm Gartner last month said sales of tablet computers
are expected to soar from nearly 20 million units this year to 55 million
next year and over 208 million in 2014.

The Galaxy Tab has a seven-inch (18-centimetre) touch screen -
significantly smaller than the iPad's nearly 10-inch display. But Samsung
says it will introduce "new tablets of different sizes in the near
future".

Apple's first generation iPad does not have a camera, does not function
as a phone and the company does not allow the Flash video standard on
the gadget.

These are all big advantages for Samsung, the company says.

"The Tab sets itself apart from other similar smart media devices by
featuring optimal portability, Flash support, dual cameras and phone-call
functions," Samsung Electronics spokesman Nam Ki-yung told AFP

"Owning a Tab is like having your personal library, entertainment system,
office workstation and e-learning resources rolled into one device - that
snugly fits into your pocket."

While Apple has its own App store where iPad owners can buy software and
games to run on its array of gadgets, Samsung and most other tablets run
on Google's Android, with apps available from the Android Market store.

Sales in tablet computers should see exponential growth in the next 12
months, analysts say.

"Tablets are basically new creatures," Young Park, a tech analyst for South
Korea's Woori Investment and Securities, told AFP.

"So this is a brand new market which is set to grow substantially. It will
be interesting to watch how the market evolves over the next year or so.

"As more and more tablet devices come onto the market, that will inevitably
eat into Apple's lead."

Sales of tablet computers, Hong Kong-based Young believes, will remain
steady during the run up to Christmas but will not increase significantly.

"A tablet computer such as Apple's iPad or the Samsung Galaxy Tab is hard
to give as a Christmas gift," Young said.

"The main problem is most of them require a subscription with a network
and you have to sign a 12 or even 24 month contract. That makes it
difficult to give as a surprise. Plus, they're not cheap."

The cheapest iPad costs 499 dollars in the US while the top model is
priced at 829 dollars. Samsung's Galaxy Tab costs around 600 dollars, when
bought without a subscription to a network.



                  Playboy Releases Back Issues on Hard Disk


Struggling to stay relevant in the Internet era. Well, Hef and Co. have
come up with a revenue booster just in time for the stocking-stuffer
season: 56 years of Playboy on a 250GB hard drive.

The "collector's edition" costs $300 and includes every print issue from
December 1953 through December 2009. "That's 56 incredible years of
Playboy - over 650 issues, more than 100,000 pages - all at your
fingertips," reads the publisher's promo copy.

Yes, there's a "fingertips" joke in there somewhere. Feel free to share
in the Comments section.

The Playboy drive comes with Bondi Digital Publishing's magazine-browsing
software, which is also used by magazine's online archive of back issues.

The pocket-sized USB drive is compatible with both Mac and Windows PCs.
Oh, yeah, it's hot-swappable too.



                  Internet Explorer 6 Usage Plummets...Finally


Internet Explorer 6 was originally released in the summer of 2001. At the
time, it was a significant step forward for Microsoft and helped to
establish Internet Explorer as a dominant force in Web browsers. The
venerable browser has put up a good fight, but new usage statistics suggest
it may finally be on its proverbial death bed.

Almost a decade and two major browser revisions after its launch, Internet
Explorer 6 is almost universally criticized for its incompatibility with
Web standards and its poor browser security. Despite the criticism, though,
IE6 has refused to die. In fact, broken down by version, Internet
Explorer 6 is still the number three browser, and has more market share
than Internet Explorer 7.

Internet Explorer 9 in public beta and expected to be officially released
sometime in the next year. Never mind any of the other improvements and
features of these subsequent browsers, the security controls alone should
be all the justification that organizations need to abandon IE6 and upgrade
to IE8.

Apparently, all of the lobbying and anti-IE6 campaigns, combined with
persistent prodding from Microsoft is finally paying off. Roger Capriotti,
Director of Product Marketing for Internet Explorer, states in an
Exploring IE blog post, "In the last six months, IE6 usage is now declining
faster among enterprises than it is among worldwide consumers. We believe
this reflects how organizations are recognizing the need to migrate to a
modern browser."

Microsoft, with the help of Net Applications, has dug beneath the standard
browser market share tracking to examine browser usage by organizations as
opposed to individual consumers, and the results are encouraging. Small
and medium businesses are leading the IE6 exodus, but overall only about
12 percent of browser usage in organizations - regardless of size - comes
from IE6.

Many jump to the conclusion that Internet Explorer usage is directly
linked with the market share of Microsoft Windows. The implication of
that assumption being that IE6 is primarily still popular because
Windows XP is still a dominant operating system. Capriotti explains,
though, "While XP usage contributes to IE6 usage, the vast majority of
commercial XP machines have already upgraded to IE7 or IE8. Less than 20
percent of web browsing on commercial XP machines comes from IE6."

One of the main reasons that organizations have been reluctant to
upgrade from IE6 to IE8 is that they have nearly a decade of investment
and development of custom business-critical applications that are
designed to work with IE6. Migrating the browser requires also testing
and updating those applications, which number in the thousands for some
customers.

The reality of making the switch is not nearly as daunting as the
apprehension would suggest, though. I spoke with Roger Capriotti and he
told me that he hears regularly from customers that the process turned
out to be much easier than had been anticipated, and that upgrading also
provided an opportunity to inventory the apps that are out there and
eliminate those that aren't even used any more.

There are two ways for IT admins to approach the browser upgrade. One is
to put it off and just migrate by attrition when moving from Windows XP
to Windows 7. IE8 is the default browser in Windows 7 already, so no
additional effort would be required. For organizations planning to
switch to Windows 7 in the near future, this might be the way to go.

However, switching everything at once - which might also include a
hardware refresh - introduces a wide variety of variables simultaneously.
If there are any issues with critical Web apps, troubleshooting will be
more complicated. Organizations that are heavily invested in IE6 apps
should consider upgrading the browser independently to focus specifically
on the browser and minimize the number of moving parts involved.



                                =~=~=~=




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