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obama admin: it's time to make radio pay for its music from ars technica: The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists. This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK). Today, a letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. (We double-checked with Kerry's office; this is no April Fools' joke.) ... Congress has already tried locking both sides in a room to solve the issue; at some point soon, it will just have to vote.
fcc adviser advocates state-run propaganda 'megaphone' to counter alternative media from kurt nimmo: In order to counter alternative media, an adviser to the Federal Communications Commission has suggested using your tax money — or rather money the government borrows from bankers and then expects your children to pay off — to create “public media” that will serve as a “filter” and a “megaphone” for a network of government-funded journalists competing with other, non-government-backed reporters, according to Matt Cover, writing for CNSNews. Rutgers University law professor Ellen Goodman, who is a “distinguished” visiting scholar with the FCC’s Future of Media Project, submitted the proposal in a draft of the government takeover plan targeted at the internet called the National Broadband Plan [811kb PDF]. The feds are pushing their internet takeover plan under left cover, specifically touchy-feely platitudes about the disabled, and providing “free” internet as a form of democratic egalitarianism (nothing is “free,” especially when it is offered by government). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has addressed the issue in FDR-esque overtones, stating that broadband internet “is our generation’s major infrastructure challenge… It’s like roads, canals, railroads and telephones for previous generations. It’s like electricity in its transformative power.”
from bloomberg: Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, joining the refrain of media moguls who say an era of free Internet content is ending. The media and technology executive, whose company runs the Ask.com search engine and the Match.com dating service, said it’s “mythology” to view the Internet as a system of free communications. “It is not free, and is not going to be,” Diller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California. In addition to IAC, he is chairman of Expedia Inc., the online travel service, and Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. Diller, 67, joined a group of media chiefs, from Liberty Media Corp.’s John Malone to Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger, who are challenging the accepted model that consumers pay for Internet access and then content is free. Diller predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions. Disney, the world’s biggest media company, is developing a subscription-based product for the Internet, Iger said on July 22 at the conference. The Burbank, California-based company has opportunities to increase sales from the Web, Iger said. Online advertising can be improved, and marketers can target consumers by tracking their activities and interests. Subscription products are particularly promising to the company.
bills would kill dhs satellite surveillance office from fcw: A senior House Democrat has introduced legislation that would kill the controversial National Applications Office (NAO), a Homeland Security Department-run program to make intelligence and military satellite imagery available to civilian agencies for domestic purposes. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Homeland Security Committee’s Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee, introduced a bill on June 4 that would require DHS to immediately close the NAO. She also introduced a measure, co-sponsored by Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), to prohibit DHS from spending any money on the NAO or any similar program.
the internet 'absolutely' will become a 'paid system' within 5yrs from zdnet: The days of the free Internet will draw to a close over the next five years, according to the chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue. The only missing link, according to Barry Diller, who cut his teeth building up over-the-air and cable TV networks: a good billing system, akin to Amazon’s “one-click” button or the Apple iPhone’s slick downloading of paid applications. "I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid," Diller said in a keynote discussion opening up the Advertising 2.0 conference held at his company’s futuristic glass building alongside the Hudson River in Manhattan. "Not every single thing, but anything of value."
twitter breached again from threat level: A French hacker has posted screenshots backing claims that he breached Twitter’s administrative panel, threatening the security and integrity of high-profile accounts and exposing private information to the public, such as the account holder’s e-mail address, IP address, mobile phone number in some cases and list of accounts blocked by the user. The screen shots show internal settings and information for Twitter accounts belonging to U.S President Barack Obama, actor Ashton Kutcher, and singers Lily Allen and Britney Spears. The info reveals that the Obama account has blocked more than 90 users from sending it messages. The screen shots also revealed a list of users who have been blacklisted by Twitter. Twitter confirmed the intrusion and said that only ten accounts had been compromised and that no information in the accounts had been altered.
secret black box probe will monitor web activity from rinf: Spy chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over public surveillance. GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, is developing classified technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to land lines and mobiles. The £1 billion snooping project - called Mastering the Internet (MTI) - will rely on thousands of “black box” probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure. The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year, but its existence has been inadvertently disclosed through a GCHQ job advertisement carried in the computer trade press.
update1: rupert murdoch: 'internet will soon be over' from paul joseph watson: Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave a strange response when asked about plans for mainstream news websites to charge for content, declaring, “The current days of the internet will soon be over.” He was making reference to the fact that corporate media websites cannot continue to survive under their current failing business model. The establishment media is dying and advertising revenue has plummeted as people turn to blogs and the alternative media for their news in an environment of corporate lies and spin.
update2: facebook 'bug' revealed personal email addresses from gadgetwise: Facebook inadvertently gave a “curious” former Peace Corps volunteer and National Guardsman a slew of personal–and likely private–e-mail addresses for other Facebook users, including six Google executives and board members and 61 reporters and editors at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Mike Sheppard, a 29-year-old from Holland, Mich., who earned a masters in statistics in December and has no advanced computer training, sent a mass-blast e-mail to each of The Times and Journal reporters describing a Facebook programming glitch that made it possible. “I wanted to make sure the press knew so Facebook could correct it,” he said in an interview.
pentagon to create force for digital warfare from ap: The U.S. military must reorganize its cyber operations and will use a new command at a Maryland Army facility to create a force for digital warfare, the director of the National Security Agency said Tuesday. Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the Pentagon's leading cyber warfare commander, said the U.S. is determined to lead the global effort to use computer technology to deter or defeat enemies, while still protecting the public's constitutional rights.
authorities hunt hackers in breach of virginia health data from washington post: The FBI and Virginia State Police are searching for hackers who demanded that the state pay them a $10 million ransom by Thursday for the return of millions of personal pharmaceutical records they say they stole from the state's prescription drug database. The hackers claim to have accessed 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions collected by the Prescription Monitoring Program. "This was an intentional criminal act against the commonwealth by somebody who was trying to harm others," Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) said. "There are breaches that happen by accident or glitches that you try to work out. It's difficult to foil every criminal that may want to do something against you." Although the hackers had threatened to sell the data if they did not receive payment by Thursday, the deadline passed with no immediate sign that they followed through.
update: german cops raid wikileaks server over acma list from threat level: Eleven German police officers raided the homes of Wikileaks amicus Theodor Reppe Tuesday night in an emergency raid and seized an employer-issued laptop, following Wikileaks publication of the Australian government's list of banned websites. Apparently, the Germans, like the Australians, want the list taken down. The police claimed they were on the hunt for child pornography writings (908kb PDF) and were seeking to shut down wikileaks.de, a domain name the 22-year-old hacker purchased to help out the whistleblowing website. The German domain name simply redirects surfers to a web proxy in Sweden that points to Wikileaks' real servers, Reppe told Threat Level by phone. "They said they want all my hardware and to take Wikileaks down but that is impossible for me," Reppe said. Police first raided his parents' home, but he had moved from there into a shared flat nearby some three months ago.
french & uk officials confirm nuclear subs collided in atlantic from washington post: Nuclear submarines from Britain and France collided deep in the Atlantic Ocean this month, authorities said Monday in the first acknowledgment of a highly unusual accident. Officials said the low-speed crash did not damage the vessels' nuclear reactors or missiles or cause radiation to leak. But anti-nuclear groups said it was still a frightening reminder of the risks posed by submarines prowling the oceans powered by radioactive material and bristling with nuclear weapons. The first public indication of an accident came when France reported in a little-noticed Feb. 6 statement that one of its submarines had struck a submerged object - perhaps a shipping container. But confirmation of the collision came only after British news media reported it. France's Defense Ministry said Monday that the sub Le Triomphant and the HMS Vanguard, the oldest vessel in Britain's fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, were on routine patrol when they collided in the Atlantic this month. It did not say exactly when, where or how the accident occurred.
nypd cuts cops, keeps spycams for terror defense from danger room: Turning New York's financial district into a panopticon was just supposed to be phase one. The real heart of the New York Police Department's "Lower Manhattan Security Initiative," I was repeatedly told, was going to be 800 more officers, protecting the bridges, tunnels, skyscrapers, and landmarks of the most visible terrorist target on the planet. But now, bad economic times are forcing the NYPD to "slow down plans to assign 800 officers to the area near Ground Zero and Wall Street," Newsday reports. The surveillance cameras are remaining, however, at least for now. 300 of a planned 3,000 specially-equipped electronic eyes have already been deployed. Thousands more are actually owned by the companies of the financial district, and are already in place - if not hooked up to the network. "On the street, 30 police cars with two roof-mounted cameras have begun reading license plates of passing and parked cars," WCBS TV notes. And a 28th-floor command center is up and running, monitoring the spycam feeds. Many of lower Manhattan's most important sites, like the New York Stock Exchange, are already guarded with vehicle barriers, bomb-sniffing dogs, and M-4-carrying officers. But the larger plan, to cover the 1.7 mile area below Canal Street with cops, is now officially a question mark.
67 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab from ap: The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico is missing 67 computers, including 13 that were lost or stolen in the past year. Officials say no classified information has been lost. The watchdog group Project on Government Oversight on Wednesday released a memo dated Feb. 3 from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration outlining the loss of the computers... The security administration memo said the "magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued given their treatment as property management issues."
do we need a new internet? from nytimes: Two decades ago a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours.
The program was intended to be a digital “Kilroy Was Here.” Just a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heralding the arrival of a darker cyberspace, more of a mirror for all of the chaos and conflict of the physical world than a utopian refuge from it.
Since then things have gotten much, much worse.
Bad enough that there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.
What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.
“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”
That was driven home late last year, when a malicious software program thought to have been unleashed by a criminal gang in Eastern Europe suddenly appeared after easily sidestepping the world’s best cyberdefenses. Known as Conficker, it quickly infected more than 12 million computers, ravaging everything from the computer system at a surgical ward in England to the computer networks of the French military.
Conficker remains a ticking time bomb. It now has the power to lash together those infected computers into a vast supercomputer called a botnet that can be controlled clandestinely by its creators. What comes next remains a puzzle. Conficker could be used as the world’s most powerful spam engine, perhaps to distribute software programs to trick computer users into purchasing fake antivirus protection. Or much worse. It might also be used to shut off entire sections of the Internet. But whatever happens, Conficker has demonstrated that the Internet remains highly vulnerable to a concerted attack.
“If you’re looking for a digital Pearl Harbor, we now have the Japanese ships streaming toward us on the horizon,” Rick Wesson, the chief executive of Support Intelligence, a computer consulting firm, said recently.
masonic big brother is watching, but seniors don’t mind from jeffrey kurz: Sensors keep track of just about everything Shirley Player does in her apartment, but she’s not worried that Big Brother is watching. Far from it. “I feel very safe with it... It’s nice to know you’re being watched.” Player is one of 68 residents of the Masonicare retirement community participating in a study that aims to determine whether keeping a technological eye on seniors can help them live longer independently in their own homes.
microsoft wants to get under your skin from the register: Microsoft's HealthVault, the medical records database, is to be integrated with VeriMed's human-embedded RFID tags, allowing doctors to access the medical records of unconscious patients with a quick scan of the arm. VeriMed consists of an RFID tag that is embedded in the arm of a hopefully willing participant, and responds with a 16-digital identity code when queried at 134KHz. This code can then be used to identify the person through VeriChip's website, and will soon be able to link to their medical records as stored on Microsoft's HealthVault system. "VeriMed adds an exciting RFID-based option for HealthVault users trying to keep themselves and their families safe," says Sean Nolan, the chief architect for HealthVault, quoted in RFID Journal. If you're excited about the idea of being electronically indexed then this is probably the technology for you.
and from there, it just gets worse...
cheney admits detainee-abuse role from consortium news: Vice President Dick Cheney said for the first time Monday that he helped get the “process cleared” for the brutal interrogation program of suspected terrorists. In an interview with ABC News, Cheney was matter-of-fact and unapologetic about the harsh techniques used against the detainees — including waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning considered torture since the days of the Inquisition. “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the [Central Intelligence] Agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do,” Cheney said. “And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.”
feds say antiwar cd's included in 'suspicious packages' sent to nat'l guard from ap: (Editor’s note: This stinks to high heaven of a COINTELPRO operation designed to make anti-war activists look like terrorists.) Suspicious packages have been sent to National Guard and Reserve facilities in 36 states, federal authorities said Wednesday. Initial reports from the Guard that one of the packages contained a powdery substance turned out to be incorrect, officials said. The 51 packages included anti-war compact discs and began arriving at locations around the country last Friday, said National Guard spokesman Mark Allen.
details emerge on failed nuke inspection from danger room: It ain't easy for an Air Force unit to pass a nuclear inspection these days. Air Force Times has details on the flunked test that we first reported on Saturday. It sounds like paperwork issues blew the exam for the 90th Missile Wing. "Inspectors failed the 90th Missile Wing after discovering the maintenance group had not properly documented tests done to its missiles, even leaving some tests completely undocumented," the paper's Michael Hoffman reports. "An unsatisfactory grade on any portion of the NSI [nuclear surety inspection] fails the entire wing."
'war on terror' a generational conflict, bush says from afp: The United States' "war on terror" will continue for many years to come, President George W. Bush said Wednesday in a speech on his national security legacy. Bush, who leaves office on January 20, compared the fight against terror to the Cold War of the post-World War II years. "Like the struggle against Communism during the Cold War, the struggle against terror will be a generational conflict," Bush told military officers at the US Army War College. That struggle is "one that will continue long beyond my presidency," Bush said.
iraq spokesman: US troops might be needed for another decade from mcclatchy: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last month sold the Iraqi people on a security pact with the U.S. He called it a “withdrawal agreement” to end the presence of American forces in his country by the beginning of 2012. However, his top government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, undercut that claim this week when he said in Washington that the U.S. might be needed in Iraq for another 10 years. Al-Dabbagh’s statement reverberated with political leaders in Baghdad and renewed criticism of the deal.
the failed logic of supporting the troops from global research: In the United States, a growing number of leftists are voicing their opposition to the Israeli occupation. They condemn the demolition of homes, the jailing of Palestinians without charge, and the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements. They don't support the Israeli troops or their mission, nor do they give a free pass to those who are just "doing what they are told." Nonetheless, many of these same individuals support the US troops in Iraq. Dangerously, most Americans put forth the notion that the troops' intrinsic heroism provides them with the impunity to destroy any bogeymen who stand in their way, cultivating a code of silence that strongly discourages dissent. It is under this premise that we support our "brave" and "noble" soldiers: we know their stories well, they miss their families, they are "just like us," and we should respect their service. While one may comprehend the mindset of the troops, this understanding does not validate support for them. If the invasion of Iraq, the mission, and the occupation as stated policy are all wrong, then support for the armed forces carrying out the mission must also be wrong.
as usual being done under the anti-porn pretext... 'won't somebody please think of the children!' from paul joseph watson: Both individual proposals to roll out free nationwide wi-fi Internet access across the United States contain language indicating that political websites deemed “offensive” will be filtered out and blocked.
The implementation of a universal wi-fi network covering the entire country is moving closer following the approval of House Representatives Anna Eshoo and Edward Markey after it was discovered the network would not interfere with incumbent wireless telcos such as AT&T and Verizon, who had raised concerns over potential signal interference.
Two competing parties, M2Z Networks and the FCC, are jockeying for the rights to roll out the network, but both have already stated their intent to install filters that block out pornography and anything else deemed “harmful”.
According to a Daily Tech report, “Both proposals stipulate that any free wireless offerings have mandatory content filters, preventing users from viewing any material that 'would be harmful to teens and adolescents,' including pornography and anything “contemporary community standards” deem as obscene. Free-speech advocates call this condition unconstitutional.”
As we have previously reported, similar free wi-fi networks on smaller scales include mandatory content filters that screen out even mildly political websites that are not part of the corporate establishment media.
charging by the byte to curb internet traffic from nytimes: Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files. For years, both kinds of Web surfers have paid the same price for access. But now three of the country’s largest Internet service providers are threatening to clamp down on their most active subscribers by placing monthly limits on their online activity. One of them, Time Warner Cable, began a trial of “Internet metering” in one Texas city early this month, asking customers to select a monthly plan and pay surcharges when they exceed their bandwidth limit. The idea is that people who use the network more heavily should pay more, the way they do for water, electricity, or, in many cases, cellphone minutes.
isp's confirm '2012: the year the internet ends' from ipower.ning.com: Editors Note: I was tipped to this article and have talked with several others in trying to confirm its legitimacy. It has over 11,000 diggs and it seems legit.
Update: Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.
Dylan Pattyn *, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and is interviewing a marketing representative from TELUS who confirms the story and states that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren't in the subscription package for mobile Internet access. They could not confirm whether it would happen in 2012 because both stated it may actually happen sooner (as early as 2010). Interviews with these sources, more confirmation from other sources and more in-depth information on the issue is set to be published in Time Magazine soon.
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from wsj: The top communications regulator won support to pass contentious new rules for Internet traffic, a move likely to face legal challenges and create uncertainty about Internet regulation. The Federal Communications Commission is set to approve on Tuesday Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposed rules governing net neutrality - a concept aimed at preventing Internet providers from interfering with web traffic. The rules are expected to bar providers from discriminating against legal Internet traffic and require more transparency. They also would let broadband providers for the first time charge more to companies that want faster service for delivery of games, videos or other services. Net neutrality has become a contentious issue as worries grow that large phone and cable companies are growing too powerful as Internet gatekeepers. Start-ups and small businesses that rely on the Internet to provide shopping, information or other services to consumers are particularly concerned.
