31 Jan 08    What lies beneath, blog.foreignpolicy.com, Carolyn O'Hara
12 Jan 08    Virginia Considers Ban On Driving While Texting, WP, Anita Kumar
5 Jan 08    Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children, NYT, JOHN MARKOFF
20 Nov 07   Pay Me for My Content, NYT, JARON LANIER
10 Oct 07   Generation Q: too quiet, too online, for its own good, NYT, THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
19 Sep 07   Murdoch's Choice: Paid or Free for WSJ.com?, WSJ, SARAH ELLISON
18 Sep 07   Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site, NYT, RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
29 Aug 07   Japan's Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future, Washington Post, Blaine Harden
26 Aug 07   Minding the Meeting, or Your Computer?, NYT, DEAN HACHAMOVITCH
24 Jun 07   Bit Wars: When Computers Attack, NYT, JOHN SCHWARTZ
9 jui 07   L´industrie du disque amende fortement le piratage, Le Temps, Anouch Seydtaghia
25 May 07   E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone', WP, Mike Musgrove
20 May 07   Telemarketing: Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist, NYT, CHARLES DUHIGG
25 Mar 07   Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic, NYT, STEVE LOHR
18 Mar 07   How to Soften the Edges of Technology, NYT, ANNE EISENBERG
15 Mar 07   Basics - Guidelines for Using a Cellphone Abroad, NYT, ERIC A. TAUB
14 Mar 07   Cyber-Criminals and Their Tools Getting Bolder, More Sophisticated, WP, Brian Krebs
14 Feb 07   Google - the Copiepresse fallout, Guardian, Mark Sweney
20 Jan 07   Don’t Call. Don’t Write. Let Me Be., NYT, Damon Darlin
7 Jan 07  Tips for Protecting the Home Computer, NYT, John Markoff
7 Jan 07   Attack of the Zombie Computers Is Growing Threat, NYT, John Markoff
17 Dec 06   Website scammers clone in on Cherie and her learned friends, The Observer, Denis Campbell
6 Dec 06   Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself, NYT, BRAD STONE
6 Oct 06   Commerce Department Targeted; Hackers Traced to China, WP, Alan Sipress
29 May 06   Web censorship: Correspondent reports, BBC NEWS
28 May 06   Amnesty to target net repression, BBC NEWS
20 Jan 06    Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL turned over records Feds sought, mercurynews.com, Michael Bazeley et al.
20 Jan 06   Paper Closes Reader Comments on Blog, Citing Vitriol, NYT, Katharine Q. Seelye
20 Jan 06   Google Resists U.S. Subpoena of Search Data, NYT, KATIE HAFNER et al.

The Washington Post stopped accepting reader comments on one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper's ombudsman.

The closing was the second time in recent months that a major newspaper has stopped accepting feedback from readers in a Web forum. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site.

The Post's blog, which had accepted comments from readers on its entries since it was first published on Nov. 21, stopped doing so indefinitely yesterday afternoon with a notice from Jim Brady, executive editor of www.washingtonpost.com.

Mr. Brady wrote that he had expected criticism of The Post on the site, but that the public had violated rules against personal attacks and profanity. "Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we've decided not to allow comments for the time being," Mr. Brady wrote. "Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about."

In an interview, Mr. Brady said the site had been overwhelmed with what he described as vicious personal attacks against Deborah Howell, the newspaper's ombudsman. She wrote a column about Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion, and said that several Democrats "have gotten Abramoff campaign money," apparently intending to say that they received campaign money from Mr. Abramoff's clients.

Her column generated complaints, and after saying she thought her views were being misrepresented, she was attacked again, prompting her to say she would not post any more replies.

The complaints escalated into what Mr. Brady said were unprintable comments that started "sucking up the time of two people" to keep them from appearing on the blog. "We were taking them out by the hundreds," he said. "It was just too much to handle." He added that he believed that the problem was "more issue-based than site-based," noting that The Post has more than two dozen other blogs where no such thing occurs. "This particular issue has inflamed the far left, and it seems to be something they've decided they'll fight," he said.

Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon.com, an online newsmagazine that allows open comment from the public, said that The Post had probably drawn such attacks to its site in part because it represents the mainstream media. "While we're an established news organization, we're not 'the establishment,' " she wrote in an e-mail message, noting that Salon has had to take down only a handful of comments since its blog went live three months ago. In both the Post and Los Angeles Times cases, she wrote, "there was an element of novelty and rebellion and being able to talk back to 'the man.' "

Still, she said, "I think it's a shame that neither organization saw it through, because I think the more obnoxious comments would have died down, and they'd have ultimately gotten the kind of debate they wanted."

Mr. Brady said he expected to reopen the comments at some point, but he needed to figure out how to patrol the site better and "keep it clean."

Mr. Brady held an online question-and-answer session on Friday to address reader concerns about the
incident. Many participants complained that The Post was practicing censorship and silencing its critics. Mr. Brady responded that the Post was doing no such thing, pointing to the online discussion and the fact that of 30 blogs maintained by The Post, only one was shut off from outside comment. "We don't have an obligation to keep every one of those avenues open if we run into problems like we did yesterday," Mr. Brady wrote.

Mr. Brady said that Ms. Howell would address the Abramoff matter in her Sunday column, prompting some participants to complain that she should be thinking more about the online audience rather than adhering to a print schedule.

Others asked how Mr. Brady intended to proceed. He said he was considering prescreening of comments, but he did not like that option. "Real-time debate about the issues of the day is exciting, and what the Web can provide," he wrote. "Any prescreening makes that harder, but in certain subject areas, it may be the way we have to go."

He also said that The Post was planning to introduce an online debate next week between bloggers and journalists "to start getting to some of the tough questions this issue has raised, specifically how to make sure the dialogue between the media and its consumers can flourish online."

Correction: Jan. 20, 2006
An earlier version of this story reported incorrectly that The Washington Post had closed a blog. The blog
has not been shut; it has stopped accepting comments from readers.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 19 - The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries as part of the government's effort to uphold an online pornography law.

Google has been refusing the request since a subpoena was first issued last August, even as three of its competitors agreed to provide information, according to court documents made public this week. Google asserts that the request is unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.

The dispute with Google comes as the government is moving aggressively on several fronts to obtain data on Internet activity to achieve its law enforcement goals, from domestic security to the prosecution of online crime. Under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, for example, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those efforts have encountered resistance on privacy grounds.

The government's move in the Google case, however, is different in its aims. Rather than seeking data on individuals, it says it is trying to establish a profile of Internet use that will help it defend the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose Web sites carried material deemed harmful to minors.

The law has faced repeated legal challenges. Two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction blocking its enforcement, returning the case to a district court for further examination of Internet-filtering technology that might be an alternative in achieving the law's aims.

The government's motion to compel Google's compliance was filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., near Google's headquarters in Mountain View. The subpoena and the government's motion were reported on Thursday by The San Jose Mercury News.

In addition to records of a week of search queries, which could amount to billions of search terms, the Google subpoena seeks a random list of a million Web addresses in its index.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said on Thursday that three Google competitors in Internet search technology - America Online, Yahoo and MSN, Microsoft's online service - had complied with subpoenas in the case.

Mr. Miller declined to say exactly how the data would be used, but according to the government's filings, it would help estimate the prevalence of material that could be deemed harmful to minors and the effectiveness of filtering software. Opponents of the pornography law contend that filtering software could protect minors effectively enough to make the law unnecessary.

The government's motion calls for Google to surrender the information within 21 days of court approval.

Although the government has modified its demands since last year, Google said Thursday that it would continue to fight. "Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and their demand for information overreaches," said Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, referring to government lawyers. "We intend to resist their motion vigorously."

Philip B. Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was hired by the Justice Department to analyze search engine data in the case, said in legal documents that search engine data provided crucial insight into information on the Internet. "Google is one of the most popular search engines," he wrote in a court document related to the case. Thus, he said, Google's databases of Web addresses and user searches "are directly relevant."

But Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch, an online industry newsletter, questioned the need for a subpoena. "Is this really something the government needs Google to help them with?" he said.

As for Google's rivals, MSN declined to speak directly to the case but released a statement saying it generally "works closely with law enforcement officials."

Mary Osako, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said the company complied with the subpoena "on a limited basis." And Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for AOL, said that company gave the Justice Department a generic list of anonymous search terms from a one-day period.

Susan P. Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, said she could understand why the companies complied. "There's this real perception that if you're not with us you're against us," she said. "So the major companies will cooperate with enormously burdensome requests just to avoid future vengeance being wreaked on them" by the Justice Department.

In its brief history, Google has made "Don't be evil" an operating principle, even as it has come to endure scrutiny and criticism over its increasing inroads into a variety of businesses beyond Web searches, from advertising to mapping.

And Google and its rivals have been criticized for their business practices in China, where Google and MSN have filtered keywords like "human rights" and "democracy" out of their search-engine results. Last fall, it was revealed that Yahoo had cooperated with authorities seeking the identity of a Chinese e-mail subscriber who had distributed a government warning about protests; he is now serving a 10-year prison term.

While its court filings against the Justice Department subpoena have emphasized the burden of compliance and threat to its trade secrets, Google also pointed to a chilling effect on its customers. "Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services," it said in an October letter to the Justice Department. "This is not a perception Google can accept. And one can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information about a specific Google user, which is another outcome that Google cannot accept."

For its part, the Justice Department said the data received from Google's rivals showed that the search query information did not contain "any additional personal identifying information" and that trade secrets would be protected under procedures at the trial court. "Google thus should have no difficulty in complying in the same way as its competitors have," the government's motion said.

Critics of the effort to subpoena Google say the immediate issue is not pornography or privacy, but whether the government has established its need for the information. "The government's attitude, apparently, is that it's entitled to information without justification," said Aden Fine, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the fight against the 1998 pornography law. "Like everyone else in litigation, they need to justify their request for information."

Even as the government has yet to put the 1998 law into effect, the pornography industry has faced a legal offensive on other fronts. Congress in recent years has increased the resources and sharpened the laws available to the Justice Department to go after makers of hard-core videos and other content.

At the same time, though, the industry is booming, recording $12.6 billion in revenue in 2005 from distribution of sexually explicit content, and from other forms of entertainment, like strip clubs. A big reason for the growth is technology, with sales from Internet distribution hitting $2.5 billion in 2005, according to testimony given to the Senate on Thursday.

American Web sites that show explicit content get as many as 60 million visitors a day, according to testimony given to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by Paul Cambria, general counsel for the Adult Freedom Foundation, an organization that represents the interests of the pornography industry.

In fighting the 1998 law, the civil liberties union has argued that whether or not pornography is available on the Internet, the law is unconstitutional because it will limit the distribution of acceptable forms of free speech. Under the law, Web site operators face criminal charges for publishing sexually explicit material unless they have a way of verifying that viewers are over 17.

Whatever the courts ultimately decide on the pornography law at issue, however, Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the Google case pointed to a larger struggle for the identity of the Internet. "Search engines are at the center of that battle, both here and in other countries," said Professor Wu. "By asserting its power over search engines, using threats of force, the government can directly affect what the Internet experience is. For while Google is fighting the subpoena, it's clear that if they lose, they will comply."

............
mercurynews.com

San Jose Mercury News

Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2006
Feds after Google data
By Howard Mintz Mercury News

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a
federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad

range of material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago
by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant

to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends
it needs the Google data to determine how often

pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google
has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last

year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google
searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of
grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of

its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort
``vigorously.''
``Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,'' Wong said.
The case worries privacy advocates, given the vast amount of information Google and other search engines
know about their users.
``This is exactly the kind of case that privacy advocates have long feared,'' said Ray Everett-Church, a
South Bay privacy consultant. ``The idea that these

massive databases are being thrown open to anyone with a court document is the worst-case scenario. If
they lose this fight, consumers will think twice about

letting Google deep into their lives.''
Everett-Church, who has consulted with Internet companies facing subpoenas, said Google could argue that
releasing the information causes undue harm to

its users' privacy.
``The government can't even claim that it's for national security,'' Everett-Church said. ``They're just using it
to get the search engines to do their research for

them in a way that compromises the civil liberties of other people.''
The government argues that it needs the information as it prepares to once again defend the
constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act in a federal

court in Pennsylvania. The law was struck down in 2004 because it was too broad and could prevent adults
from accessing legal porn sites.
However, the Supreme Court invited the government to either come up with a less drastic version of the law
or go to trial to prove that the statute does not

violate the First Amendment and is the only viable way to combat child porn.
As a result, government lawyers said in court papers they are developing a defense of the 1998 law based
on the argument that it is far more effective than

software filters in protecting children from porn. To back that claim, the government has subpoenaed search
engines to develop a factual record of how often

Web users encounter online porn and how Web searches turn up material they say is ``harmful to minors.''
The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but
not Google.
``The production of those materials would be of significant assistance to the government's preparation of its
defense of the constitutionality of this important

statute,'' government lawyers wrote, noting that Google is the largest search engine.
Google has the largest share of U.S. Web searches with 46 percent, according to November 2005 figures
from Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo is second with 23

percent, and MSN third with 11 percent.
 

NewsYahoo, Microsoft and America Online turned over records to the government that Google is refusing to
relinquish, raising divisions within the nation's

biggest search engines over what information should be private.
The legal dispute over whether the federal government can force Google to give up information from its
search engine index is a reminder of the vast amount

of personal information Internet companies collect on their users -- and the possibility it could reach third
parties.
Some privacy experts said the Department of Justice's request is worrisome , particularly in an era when
the government has stepped up surveillance in

efforts to combat terrorism -- even admitting it has spied on Americans.
The Bush administration apparently never asked for any explicitly personal information. And Google is not
refusing the order on privacy grounds. But it

clearly was concerned about public reaction.
``Google's acceding to the request would suggest it is willing to reveal information about those who use its
services. This is not a perception that Google can

accept,'' Google attorney Ashok Ramani wrote in an Oct. 10 letter to the Justice Department.
``We think companies should be pushing back,'' said Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for
Democracy and Technology. ``They're only going to be

asked for more. These things are gradual. They see if they can get what they're asking for, and it gets
bigger and bigger.''
AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to the requests, although one attorney involved in the case said Yahoo
never turned over any personal information.
``We're rigorous defenders of our users' privacy,'' spokeswoman Mary Osako said. ``In our view, this is not a
privacy issue.''
A Microsoft statement said, in part, ``We did comply with their request for data in regards to helping protect
children in a way that ensured we also

protected the privacy of our customers. We were able to share aggregated query data (not search results)
that did not include any personally identifiable

information.''
The case stems from the Bush administration's attempt to resurrect the Child Online Protection Act, struck
down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make content accessible to minors.
The government contends it needs the data to determine how often pornography shows up in online
searches.
In its original subpoena, dated in August, the government asked the four companies for ``all URLs that are
available to be located through a search query on

your company's search engine as of July 31, 2005.'' Also requested were records of ``all queries'' entered
between June 1 and July 31. The subpoena said

authorities did not want any ``additional information . . . that would identify the person'' who typed in the
query. .
The government later narrowed the scope of its request to a million URLs and search queries over a
one-month period.
Government officials would not detail how they planned to use the information. But a source close to the
case said it is interested in what types of Web pages

appear when people type in various search terms.
``My understanding is, we were seeking what keywords are put in and URLs,'' said Justice Department
spokesman Charles Miller. ``Nothing personal.''
Google called the request ``overbroad, unduly burdensome, vague and intended to harass.''
Its October letter to the Justice Department said the government appeared to want to create ``a sample
world-wide web'' so it could test the effectiveness of

pornography filters.
``Google objects to Defendant's view of Google's highly proprietary search database -- the primary reason
for the company's success -- as a free resource that

Defendant can access and use, some levels removed, to formulate its own defense.''
Google also objected that the request would reveal ``privileged, confidential or trade-secret information.''
It suggested the government seek its information from the Internet Archive, a non-profit archive of Web
pages that Google said more appropriately reflects

the breadth of the Web.
Although he said the case was worrisome, privacy expert Alan Westin said it does not appear to raise
direct privacy issues.
``If there are not responses that reveal personal information, you don't have a privacy issue,'' said Westin,
founder of the Privacy and American Business think

tank. ``If you say, `If you stick in this query and 67 pornographic responses come back,' that's not a privacy
issue to me.''
Internet companies have been amassing large storehouses of personal information about their users.
Amazon.com is the classic example; it collects credit card

information and keeps track of what books, CDs and other items its customers buy so it can make
shopping recommendations.
But search engines have been getting increasingly personal, too. Google and other search engines collect
and store records of which search terms their users

type in and what pages they visit. Google now offers to personalize its search results for people based on
their previous searches. Companies such as Yahoo

and Ask Jeeves encourage users to store bookmarks of Web pages they find on company servers.
``That's the constant trade-off between greater personalization and this one-stop for managing your life,''
said Ray Everett-Church, a South Bay privacy

consultant. ``You're making it easier to issue subpoenas or warrants for anything.''
 

Contact Michael Bazeley at mbazeley@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5642, and read his blog at
www.siliconbeat.com.

............
http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/mercurynews/news/google0119.pdf
http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/mercurynews/news/GoogleMcElvain.pdf
http://www.mercurynews.com/multimedia/mercurynews/news/GoogleNotice.pdf
.............
economist.com

News Corporation

Old mogul, new media

Jan 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Can Rupert Murdoch adapt News Corporation to the digital age?

IN JUNE 2005 Ross Levinsohn, head of new media at News Corporation, a media conglomerate, presented
an internet strategy to a gathering of the

company's top managers. It was a daunting prospect: many of them were deeply sceptical about the
internet, having watched the dotcom bust of 2000-02.

Sure enough, Mr Levinsohn found himself interrupted. “We really can't do that,” objected a senior executive.
Before Mr Levinsohn could respond he heard

another voice: “What do you mean, we can't do that? Of course we can do that.” It was Rupert Murdoch, the
firm's chairman and chief executive.

In his 74th year, Mr Murdoch is very much in charge of the global media group he constructed over the last
four decades. But he and his firm face two

fundamental issues that relate to News Corporation's traditional media businesses. The first is what to do
about the emergence of the internet, both as a

medium in its own right, and as a way to distribute media content. The second is how News Corporation's
portfolio should be best configured in response to

rapidly shifting technologies related broadly to digitisation. Its film and television production units are
vulnerable to digital piracy; its broadcast-television

business is losing advertising revenue to the internet; and the satellite-television distribution businesses
face a stronger cable industry and new entrants. The

company's challenge is typified by, but not limited to, its newspaper business—it owns dozens of titles.
Last year Mr Murdoch warned in a much-noted speech

that the industry would inevitably decline if it fails to adapt to the internet.

Searching for answers to these problems, Mr Murdoch spent $1.4 billion on three young internet companies
in 2005, which, together with News

Corporation's existing websites, now form Fox Interactive Media, the division that Mr Levinsohn runs. On the
internet, News Corporation has now moved

ahead of its big traditional media rivals, with the exception of Time Warner, which agreed to be taken over in
2000 by AOL, an internet-access provider. But

can News Corporation lead the way for other “old” media and successfully navigate its way forward?

It might seem an unfair question. Compared with its past, News Corporation is calm and profitable. It is
convinced that it needs scale and a broad range of

businesses embracing both content and distribution—it has no intention of splitting itself up. In the past
couple of years it has made heavy investments in

satellite television in America and Italy. Those bets seem to be paying off. Most of its businesses are
thriving and many are throwing off large quantities of cash.

The company's revenues and profits are growing at a double-digit rate, faster than rivals'.

Investors are unimpressed, however. That is partly because they are so gloomy about traditional media
companies' prospects: they reckon that the internet is

stealing its audiences and that new technologies will combine to wreck established business models (see
chart).

Some of the reason has to do with Mr Murdoch himself. Investors are fearful about who will lead the
company after him (see article). But the really big issues

are how the company will adapt to the internet and the rise of digital media. The problem with creating new
business models for the internet and a digital

environment is that these can cannibalise existing, more lucrative businesses. One of the biggest problems
for News Corporation's film- and

television-production business is digital piracy. At the moment Hollywood film studios wait for five months
after releasing a film in cinemas before sending it

out on DVD, which leaves their content extremely vulnerable to pirates. News Corporation is looking at
bridging that gap by offering video-on-demand. But

it is difficult to price such an offering to be as profitable as a DVD, and without angering powerful retailers,
such as Wal-Mart.

Keeping up with technology in one bit of News Corporation's business sometimes damages another part. To
maintain the attractiveness of satellite television,

for instance, News Corporation has subsidised digital video recorders for its customers, which allow them to
record programmes and watch them when they

like. DVRs, as they are known, are disruptive for advertising-funded television, however, because they allow
people to fast-forward through advertisements.

“In content, we could not be happier,” says Mr Murdoch. News Corporation's film studio came second for
box-office receipts after Warner Brothers in 2005

and it claims the highest margins in Hollywood. Its TV studio is a leading producer of prime-time
programmes. Its cable channels are growing fast, and Fox

News, especially, continues to benefit from America's divided politics and the war on terror.

“Distribution systems, on the other hand, are proliferating,” says Mr Murdoch, and “while that is great for
content, it raises questions about the long-term

economics of distribution.” The internet is emerging as a distribution system in its own right, and telecoms
firms are already trying to deliver television using

internet technology. News Corporation has spent enormous amounts of money and energy over the years
on satellite-television platforms in America, Britain,

Italy and Latin America. Now investors are worried that satellite is losing its competitive advantage.

Its most immediate challenge is from the cable industry, which has invested heavily in its infrastructure and
is now offering a bundle of digital television,

broadband and voice service. At the moment, satellite cannot offer this “triple-play” option: it has only TV.
Neither can it sell as full a video-on-demand

service, because it beams the same television signal across whole regions. That will become a serious
drawback as video-on-demand quickly becomes a

standard product, says Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York. In Britain and Italy
satellite also has to vie with attractive free

digital-terrestrial television services.

In response, News Corporation is rushing to add broadband and voice to its satellite-television products
around the world. In Britain BSkyB bought Easynet,

a broadband internet-access company, for $385m in 2005. News Corporation is also working on a way to
add broadband to DirecTV's portfolio, and expects

to announce a solution in the near future.

As for video-on-demand, News Corporation plans to store as many popular television shows and movies as
it can on digital video recorders for instant

playback. For more obscure material it will provide a broadband option. In Britain it took a first step in this
direction on January 10th by allowing its

subscribers to download films and sports highlights from the internet on their home PC free of charge.

The most challenged of all of News Corporation's divisions is its newspaper business, which contributes
one-fifth of its operating income. Newspapers are

suffering from the internet more than the rest of “old” media, as classified advertising moves online and
young people are using the net to get their news. No

other media conglomerate owns newspapers in any significant number. Mr Murdoch recently sold the
educational supplements of the British Times because

he thought they were too dependent on classified advertising. But he does not appear to have any bolder
solution. “Despite his speech, only a tiny fraction of

News Corporation's energy appears to be going into securing its newspapers' future online,” says Simon
Waldman, director of digital publishing at the

Guardian. In Britain the Murdoch-owned Sun, Times and News of the World together attracted 6.7m unique
visitors in November 2005, only the same as the

Guardian alone, and far fewer than the 21.4m who visited the news site of the BBC, a publicly funded
broadcaster.

Many investors would like Mr Murdoch to reduce News Corporation's exposure to newspapers. The main
reason that he does not, says a shareholder, is that

he's “an empire builder who refuses to sell things”. This investor would also like the company to sell its
television stations, which are struggling to grow

because America's advertising market is mature and because advertisers are moving money away from TV
to the internet. One executive at the company

agrees that “we've never been very good at selling things, except under duress.”

Mr Murdoch says that he will not get rid of newspapers. “That may be emotional”, he says, “but we're a
communications company, not just a content company,

and we want to improve the world.” Owning newspapers, of course, has given the group clout with politicians
and regulators. He argues that a sale would

lose a large slice of value on capital-gains tax.

If he is a stickler on that front, there is no denying that Mr Murdoch appears to have become an internet
evangelist for his group as a whole. The first time he

invested enthusiastically on the internet, everything ended disastrously. During the boom of the 1990s, he
refused to join the frenzy until 1999, then spent

hundreds of millions of dollars on ePartners, a dotcom investment division, only to wind it down a year or so
later.

This time around, his interest in the internet started last year after he noted that America's economic growth
was not showing up in advertising on TV, radio

or print, but that the internet was starting to grab a meaningful share. At the same time, he saw that
broadband internet access was becoming widespread.

Once most people have broadband, he reckons, they will want video as well as music, still pictures and
text. News Corporation owns a huge amount of the

entertainment and sports programming that young people are likely to want to access via broadband.

A flurry of deals followed that insight. None of them is transformative—the amounts involved remain small by
comparison with News Corporation's huge

turnover or its $54 billion market value. But the message is clear: News Corporation “gets” the internet and
is determined to embrace it.

This came across loudest in July 2005 when News Corporation surprised everyone by buying Intermix
Media, owner of MySpace.com, a social-networking site,

for $580m. The following month it acquired Scout.com, a college sports site. And in September it bought
IGN Entertainment, a video-gaming and

entertainment site, for $650m. More such acquisitions are likely to follow. Richard Bilotti, media analyst at
Morgan Stanley, says the firm may spend $500m to

$1 billion a year in the next three to five years.
 
 

Do you have a MySpace?
The sites' combined traffic, added to News Corporation's own web properties, FoxSports.com,
FoxNews.com and Fox.com, has pushed News Corporation up

among the giants of the internet (see chart 2). Google, an internet search firm, is taking note of News
Corporation's purchases. Mr Murdoch has passed on to

colleagues that Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, told him that buying MySpace.com will prove to be the
best deal of his life. That News Corporation has

chosen to buy an unusual site where users create the content shows that the company is not merely
reproducing itself online, but thinking differently about

the future of the internet.
 
 
 
 
 

Since May 2005 the number of people who visit MySpace.com each month has grown from 16m to 27m,
and 150,000 people are registering each day. Like

Google before it, MySpace.com has entered the English language. Its appeal is that its members create an
anarchic mix of their own content. The site is a

collection of individuals' homepages with photographs, music, links to friends and blogs.

As an internet business, MySpace.com considers itself to be an entirely new breed. Chris DeWolfe, its
co-founder, says he wanted the company to take

inspiration from sociology as well as from technology, and for that reason he based it in Los Angeles rather
than Silicon Valley. The community has grown

virally, with no advertising. Some of the photographs verge on the pornographic, and MySpace.com has
about ten people in a room at its headquarters in

Santa Monica, Los Angeles, weeding out explicit photographs. With its young members, its 24-hour
discussion groups on everything from graffiti to

independent film-making, and its thousands of undiscovered bands, MySpace.com has the ambition not
just to be useful, like Google, MSN or Yahoo!, but cool.

While no one doubts that News Corporation has tapped into a powerful social phenomenon, some people
question if there is much money to be made from

it. The company expects to make $300m of revenue on the internet this year, and Mr Murdoch said he
wants the company to make $1 billion from it in five

years' time. “MySpace has been run by creative types who have not thought much about earnings and are
frightened of being corporatised,” says Mr Murdoch,

“but now their job is not just to grow but to monetise traffic.” MySpace.com is profitable, but it has not
translated its popularity into big advertising revenues.

IGN, on the other hand, the most popular site on the internet for young men, has a more developed
business model based on advertising. Together the sites

make modest tens of millions of dollars in profits.

Now News Corporation will try to convert their traffic into more advertising revenue. If it does so too
obtrusively, there is a risk that their free-spirited

members will move somewhere else. To avoid that happening, Mr Levinsohn plans to create scarcity of
space and to charge a high price. The premium will be

justified, he says, by the attractively young demographic—predominantly 13 to 34—of the audiences, and
the amount of information News Corporation has

about each user, which will allow advertisers to target precisely. Despite its huge audience, MySpace.com
still has a lot to prove to advertisers, says Rob

Norman, director of interaction at Group M, the media-buying arm of WPP. “It's not yet clear what the value
of user-generated content is to brand owners,”

he says.

Owning internet properties is also a way for News Corporation to establish its content online. Before the
company started talking to MySpace.com, the

biggest four discussion groups on the site were about three programmes made by Fox, its
subsidiary—“Family Guy”, “The OC” and “The Simpsons”—and a

film from Fox Searchlight Pictures, “Napoleon Dynamite”. IGN has developed technology to allow the
downloading of large video files from the internet. In

2006, as a start, News Corporation will use this to distribute “Family Guy” episodes made exclusively for
the internet across Fox's websites. The company is

already feeling a marketing benefit from its web communities. One of Twentieth Century Fox's films,
“Transporter 2” did far better than expected after being

promoted on MySpace.com and IGN.

Nevertheless, it is News Corporation's big legacy businesses that will mostly determine whether the
company can adapt to a new era for the media industry.

That is why Mr Murdoch will need to keep focusing on making money from television, films and newspapers
as well as his trendy new web communities.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Family affair

Jan 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition
 

Investors are fretting about who will succeed Mr Murdoch

ON TOP of its strategic challenges, News Corporation faces the tricky question of who will take over from
Mr Murdoch. One view is that his eventual

departure will be followed by a break-up of the company, because it consists of his particular choice of
assets and may prove too unwieldy for anyone else to

hold together.

So far, Mr Murdoch's plan to pass control of News Corporation to one of his children is going badly. Last
year his eldest son, Lachlan, left the business after

losing a power struggle with other (non-Murdoch) senior executives, and his daughter Elisabeth abruptly left
BSkyB in 2000. Now only James, at 33 the

youngest of his adult children, remains in the business—he is currently chief executive of BSkyB.

Does James want the burden of running the whole company? Executives at News Corporation reckon that
he has the necessary ambition, and he has won the

respect of shareholders. But with no experience of running any of News Corporation's big American
divisions, it is hard to imagine James taking over soon.

Investors expect that if anything happened to Mr Murdoch, or if he stepped down, Peter Chernin, the group's
chief operating officer, would take over.

Meanwhile, Mr Murdoch has failed to see off John Malone, boss of Liberty Media, whose 18% voting stake
is not far off the 29.5% that the Murdochs collectively

own. In 2004, to the dismay of shareholders, News Corporation's board agreed to a poison-pill defence to
prevent Mr Malone buying more voting shares.

Eventually, Mr Murdoch hopes to overcome the impasse by buying back Mr Malone's shares in return for
one or more of the group's assets. “We're waiting

on him to come up with a scheme that will satisfy his tax issues,” Mr Murdoch says. He rejects the
possibility that Mr Malone intends to grab control of News

Corporation. “He's a great financial engineer, but he doesn't have the management,” Mr Murdoch says.

For the moment, News Corporation intends to keep its poison pill, even though investors dislike it. News
Corporation argues that senior people at big

fund-management firms do not have a big problem with the poison pill, and that it is only
corporate-governance specialists who are making a fuss. Perhaps,

but the company would doubtless like more fund managers to buy its shares. Many will not do so until the
poison pill is gone and there is clarity about who

will end up in charge.

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Extra, extra

Jan 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition
 

Desperate times bring desperate measures

The DVD wars

IN A letter about pay-rises to staff at the Sun last year, Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, Rebekah Wade,
its editor, remarked that in future the paper's

success would probably depend more on free CDs and DVDs than on its journalists. British newspapers are
frenziedly giving things away, and in Germany,

France, Italy, Poland and throughout Latin America papers are also increasingly relying on freebies to try to
attract new readers. In Britain the circulation of

national newspapers fell by 3% in 2005, following a 2% decline in 2004. The same pattern of falling
circulation is being repeated across Europe and the United

States. So are all the free gifts a sign of desperation from newspapers, or an entirely sensible new
marketing strategy?

Ideally, a giveaway attracts brand-new readers who keep on buying the paper. Newspapers particularly hope
that CDs and DVDs will appeal to the

young—who are increasingly getting their news online. For a paper selling copies in the hundreds of
thousands each day, it costs about $1m-1.5m to give a

DVD away at the weekend, and less for a CD. A good film can push a day's circulation up by 20% or more.
But the strategy covers its costs only if new

readers stay during the rest of the week, and the paper gains a larger base for its advertising sales.
 

Plenty of newspapers still regard giveaways as beneath their dignity. Quality papers in America, for
instance, do not go in for them (so far). It looks much

more respectable, says Michael Smith, of the media department of Northwestern University, if freebies
dovetail neatly with a newspaper's brand. In Latin

America, he says, several papers, such as La Nueva Provincia in Argentina, have given CD collections of
regional folk music. In Britain this week the Financial

Times (which owns a 50% stake in The Economist) gave away the first of a weekly series of condensed
editions of business books.

Elsewhere, newspapers have managed to charge more for editions that come with an extra something.
Italy's La Repubblica is charging a few euros more on

the days when it encloses one of a series of books, and Le Figaro and Le Monde in France also lift their
price when they carry DVDs or other giveaways.

Some newspaper bosses take an entirely cynical view of the practice. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sun
and the Times, said last November that he dislikes it

because “people grab the paper, tear the DVD off and throw away the paper”. Despite his views, points out
a rival newspaper executive, his titles in Britain

have given away far more freebies than their competitors have, and are still handing them out. In fact, many
newspapers have little choice but to give away

things, because everyone else is at it. “It all started with some integrity,” says Marc Sands, director of
marketing at the Guardian, “but now people are doing

anything to get a spike in circulation.” Yes indeed: on January 14th, the largest headline on the front page
of the Guardian screamed “Free DVD”.
 

Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

» Postmortaler Persönlichkeitsschutz «
von Ludwig Greven
Ein Berliner Hacker legt acht Jahre nach seinem mysteriösen Tod die deutsche Seite des Web-Lexikons
Wikipedia lahm. Damit wird ein Rechtsstreit von

grundsätzlicher Bedeutung ausgelöst.
Als Hacker ist er bis heute eine Legende. Unter dem Pseudonym "Tron" knackte ein Berliner
Informatikstudent in den 90er Jahren die Verschlüsselung des

Pay-TV-Senders Premiere und von Telefonkarten. Im Oktober 1998 wurde er erhängt in einem Berliner Park
gefunden. Selbstmord, ermittelte die Polizei.

Mord, glauben bis heute einige Freunde und Fans. Bücher und ein Film beschäftigten sich mit seinem
Leben und seinem Ende.

Gut sieben Jahre später legte "Tron" jetzt indirekt die deutsche Ausgabe des Internetlexikons Wikipedia
lahm - in einem Rechtsstreit von grundsätzlicher

Bedeutung. Seit Donnerstag darf der deutsche Wikipedia-Trägerverein nicht mehr von seiner Seite auf die
deutschsprachige Ausgabe der Web-Enzyklopädie

weiterleiten. Erwirkt haben das die Eltern von "Tron" durch eine einstweilige Verfügung des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg. Denn in einem

Wikipedia-Beitrag wird seit Mai 2005 der volle Name des Hackers genannt. Dagegen wenden sich die
Eltern, die darin eine Verletzung des "postmortalen

Persönlichkeitsrechts" sehen.

Das Gegenteil erreicht
Über de.wikipedia.org und die englische Mutter-Site ist der Artikel und damit auch der Name allerdings
weiter zu lesen. Denn eine erste einstweilige

Verfügung, die sich gegen die Wikipedia Foundation in Florida richtete, der die beiden Domains gehören,
wurde bis heute offenbar nicht zugestellt.

Der deutsche Verein hat nun Widerspruch eingelegt. Voraussichtlich schon nächste Woche will das
Gericht darüber entscheiden. Es muss klären, ob hier

tatsächlich Persönlichkeitsrechte verletzt wurden und wer für Einträge in einem solchen Web-Lexikon
verantwortlich ist - der Anbieter oder der Autor.

Wikipedia jedenfalls sieht sich nur als "Plattform des Wissens", so der Anwalt des Vereins, Thorsten
Feldmann. Und als Lexikon will man nicht darauf

verzichten, alle Fakten und Namen zu nennen.

Der Hamburger Medien- und Internetrechtler Till Kreutzer wundert sich, dass die Weiterleitung generell
untersagt wurde, "obwohl es doch nur um einen

Artikel geht". Fürs Erste haben die Eltern jedoch das Gegenteil erreicht: Nun sprechen und schreiben
wieder ganz viele über ihren Sohn.

Aus der FTD vom 20.01.2006
© 2006 Financial Times Deutschland

Internet users are being urged to stand up for online freedoms by backing a new campaign launched by human rights group Amnesty International.

The campaign will highlight abuses of rights the net is used for, and push for the release of those jailed for speaking out online.

It will also name hi-tech firms aiding governments that limit online protests.

Pledge bank

Called Irrepressible.info, the campaign will revolve around a website with the same name. While the human rights group has run separate campaigns about web repression and the jailing of net dissidents before now, Irrepressible.info will bring them all together.

It aims to throw light on the many different ways that the freedom to use the net is limited by governments.

For instance, said a spokesman for Amnesty, around the globe net cafes are being closed down, home PCs are being confiscated, chat in discussion forums is being watched and blogs are being censored or removed.

 AMNESTY INTERNET PLEDGE
I believe the internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference. I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the internet and on companies to stop helping them do it

Ms Allen added that there were growing numbers of cases in which those who have turned to the net to discuss change or protest about government policies have been jailed for what they said.

For instance, she said, Chinese journalist Shi Tao is serving a 10-year jail sentence for sending an e-mail overseas which detailed the restrictions the Chinese government wanted to impose on papers writing about the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

 HAVE YOUR SAY
The internet is an international tool for free thought
Elliot, Exmouth, Devon

"We condemn punishment of any activity internationally recognised as free expression, whether that punishment takes place in China or anywhere else in the world," she said.

She added the company had received "a valid and legal demand" for information and responded to it as required by the law.

She went on: "The choice in China or other countries is not whether to comply with law enforcement demands for information. Rather, the choice is whether or not to remain in a country.

"We balance the requirement to comply with laws that are not necessarily consistent with our own values against our strong belief that active involvement in China contributes to the continued modernization of the country - as well as a benefit to Chinese citizens - through the advancement of communications, commerce and access to information."

Profit and principles

The Amnesty campaign will seek to get net users to sign a pledge that opposes repressive use of the net. The pledges will be collated and presented to a meeting of the UN's Internet Governance Forum that is due to meet in Athens in November 2006.

Amnesty wants to get people using an icon in e-mail signatures or on websites that contains text from censored sites.

The group also wants to run an e-mail campaign to target companies to stop putting "profit before principles" and respect human rights everywhere they operate.

Reports will be prepared on those countries that place restrictions on what can be said online or use it to keep an eye on those expressing discontent.

"Irrepressible.info will harness the power of the internet and of individuals to oppose repression and stand up for free speech," said Ms Allen.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Published: 2006/05/28 09:32:35 GMT

As human rights group Amnesty International launches a global campaign to try to halt censorship of the internet by governments, BBC correspondents report from some countries where web users face difficulties.

 
CHINA: RUPERT WINGFIELD-HAYES in BEIJING
Officially China does not censor the internet. According to the Chinese government, its internet regulation is no different from that in America, Britain, or anywhere else in the world.

China says it only blocks internet sites that are damaging, such as pornographic sites, or ones promoting things like terrorism.

The reality of China's internet is very different.

Just try logging on to the BBC News website from an internet cafe in China. You can't. The same goes for websites for The New York Times, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a host of others which could hardly be described as pornographic or "dangerous".

China probably has the most sophisticated internet monitoring and censorship system in the world. In the last few years it has spent tens of millions of dollars building what has come to be known as the "Great Firewall of China". In the past, whole websites were blocked. Today the system can block out individual parts of websites.

In its quest to control the internet China has sought help from overseas. Some large, US-based computer software companies are believed to have sold Beijing the sophisticated software needed to run its filtering system. Companies like Google and Yahoo! have also been accused of co-operating in China's internet censorship.

Google, for example, has modified its Chinese language search engine so that it does not show results for sites the Chinese government deems "harmful".

Inside China there is an even larger effort to control the country's own internet.

Internet service providers (ISPs) are required by law to monitor their own websites and chat-rooms for "dangerous content". Every ISP in China has its own staff of "web police". On top of that government employs thousands more who constantly scan the Chinese web, closing down any site or blog that is considered subversive.

For those Chinese who persist in using the internet to criticize Communist party rule, the end result can be a prison cell. Three young men were recently sentenced to prison terms of eight to ten years for using the internet to send "sensitive" information to foreign based websites.
 

CUBA: STEPHEN GIBBS in HAVANA
Cuba has vowed to be a force to be reckoned with in the digital era.

Cuba's licensed internet terminals are meant only for tourists

But at the same time the government is working hard to prevent its citizens from surfing the net without restraint. Shops in Havana might appear to sell high-quality computers, but actually making a purchase is impossible for Cubans without special approval, which is rarely granted.

Similar restrictions are in place for anyone who might want to open up an account with the state internet service provider. Exceptions include senior government officials, academic researchers, and foreigners.

The authorities say these regulations are in place in order to ensure the internet in Cuba is used for "social and collective use."

'Prioritising'

Although all Cuban media is rigorously state controlled, the government rejects accusations that it is censoring the net.

It concedes that some sites are blocked, but say these are "terrorist, xenophobic, or pornographic". Websites based in the US which publish articles by dissidents from within Cuba are generally inaccessible.

The government says that what it is doing is "prioritising" the internet, for use by sectors such as education and health. Essential, it says, given Cuba's limited resources, and limited bandwidth.

The bandwidth problem is blamed on the United States. As a result of the US trade embargo, Cuba cannot link up to the web via a direct fibre optic line. Instead it has to use more expensive satellite links.

Thousands of Cubans get around their governments restrictions and access the internet via the black market. User IDs and passwords are sold by state employees whose jobs give them legal access. Some log on via home made computers built from smuggled parts.

A legal alternative is to go to one of the cyber cafes that are being set up across the country. But these have another barrier - cost. Half an hour surfing the web costs around $3. That might be comparable to the price in other parts of the world, but in Cuba, where the average salary is $15 a month, it is substantial.
 

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: JULIA WHEELER in DUBAI
In the United Arab Emirates, internet censorship centres on two distinct areas; pornography and the criticism of Gulf governments. While the majority of the multi-national population welcomes the blocking of pornography sites, the same cannot be said for the more politically motivated cases.

From the UAE, attempting to access sites like www.uaeprison.com or www.arabtimes.com (published in the United States) brings up an apology for the site being blocked and an explanation; it is "due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."

It is not clear how the monopoly internet provider, Etisilat, determines what contravenes the country's values. There is a right of reply on any blocked site message though, allowing surfers to suggest it be made accessible.

For many, the censorship of sites which question, discuss or oppose the ruling families of the Gulf states and their absolute power, is anachronistic. The UAE is one of the fastest developing countries in the world, but this development is far more economic than political.

Satirical blogs, parodying the city and its residents, such as secretdubai.blogspot.com, www.dubaienquirer.com and onebigconstructionsite.blogspot.com can be found.

Internet users in Dubai's commercial free zones - like Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Knowledge Village - are able to sidestep the strict state censorship by using a different proxy. The more technically savvy users in other parts of the country are also finding ways to access the banned sites they want to view.

In March, there were reports internet cafe users could have their personal details recorded and kept on file. The explanation from the authorities was that this was to curb "cyber crime" including hacking and sending spam emails, but it has brought into focus questions of personal privacy.

The opening-up of the telecoms sector which is due to allow another state-run company, Du, to operate from later this year is unlikely to change the position on blocked sites.

Perhaps one of the biggest annoyances for the mostly expatriate population in the Emirates is the inaccessibility of internet telephony sites like www.skype.com. This is widely seen as economic censorship; the state wanting to ensure continuing large profits through migrant workers making international telephone calls.

Hackers operating through Chinese Internet servers have launched a debilitating attack on the computer system of a sensitive Commerce Department bureau, forcing it to replace hundreds of workstations and block employees from regular use of the Internet for more than a month, Commerce officials said yesterday.

The attack targeted the computers of the Bureau of Industry and Security, which is responsible for controlling U.S. exports of commodities, software and technology having both commercial and military uses. The bureau has stepped up its activity in regulating trade with China in recent years as the United States increased its exports of such dual-use items to the growing Chinese market.

This marked the second time in recent months that U.S. officials confirmed that a major attack traced to China had succeeded in penetrating government computers.

"Through established security procedures, BIS discovered a targeted effort to gain access to BIS user accounts," said Commerce Department spokesman Richard Mills. "We have no evidence that BIS data has been lost or compromised."

The significance of the attacks was underscored in a series of e-mails sent to BIS employees by acting Undersecretary of Commerce Mark Foulon since July, informing them of "a number of serious threats to the integrity of our systems and data." In an August e-mail, Foulon reported that the bureau had "identified several successful attempts to attack unattended BIS workstations during the overnight hours." Then, early last month, he wrote: "It has become clear that Internet access in itself is a vulnerability that we cannot mitigate. We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient."

A source familiar with the security breach said the hackers had penetrated the computers with a "rootkit" program, a stealthy form of software that allows attackers to mask their presence and then gain privileged access to the computer system. The attacks were traced to Web sites registered on Chinese Internet service providers, Commerce officials said. "We determined they were owned by the Chinese," a senior Commerce official said. He did not say who in China was responsible or whether officials had even been able to identify the culprits. Although bureau employees were informed of the problem in July, commerce officials declined to say when the attacks were discovered and how long they had been going on. Only over time did bureau officials realize the extent of the damage from the breach.

"The more we learned, the more we did," the senior official said.

Since Sept. 1, the bureau has blocked employees from accessing the Internet from their own computers. Instead, several separate computers unconnected to the BIS computer network have been set up so employees can try to continue carrying out their duties.

Commerce officials have also decided they cannot salvage the workstations that employees had been using and instead will build an entirely new system for the bureau in the coming months with "clean hardware and clean software," the senior official said. Foulon told employees in late August that they hoped to replace all the bureau's workstations within three months.

The official acknowledged that some of the emergency measures have made it more difficult for the bureau to communicate with other government agencies and the public, including companies that turn to BIS for export licenses.

In July, the State Department confirmed that hackers in China had broken into its computers in Washington and overseas. Last year, U.S. officials reported that the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies were under relentless attack from unidentified computers in China.

China has long been a focus of high-level attention at BIS and was the destination for the largest number of licenses approved by the bureau in 2004, according to the bureau's most recent annual report. In weighing applications for licenses, bureau officials seek to protect U.S. national security interests without hamstringing legitimate commercial trade.

Commerce officials recently reported that they had taken significant steps to enhance computer security at the department, both by deploying new software and improving the management of the system.

These steps came after the General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office) issued a scathing report five years ago, which concluded that "significant and pervasive computer security weaknesses place Department of Commerce systems at risk." The report found that outsiders could gain unauthorized access to the computer system and access confidential data. "Intruders could disrupt the operations of systems that are critical to the mission of the department," the report found.

Hearing from a lot of new friends lately? You know, the ones that write “It’s me, Esmeralda,” and tip you off to an obscure stock that is “poised to explode” or a great deal on prescription drugs.

You’re not the only one. Spam is back — in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet.

Much of that flood is made up of a nettlesome new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors that look for telltale phrases. Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day, Ironport says.

The antispam industry is struggling to keep up with the surge. It is adding computer power and developing new techniques in an effort to avoid losing the battle with the most sophisticated spammers.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Three years ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, made an audacious prediction: the problem of junk e-mail, he said, “will be solved by 2006.” And for a time, there were signs that he was going to be proved right.

Antispam software for companies and individuals became increasingly effective, and many computer users were given hope by the federal Can-Spam Act of 2003, which required spam senders to allow recipients to opt out of receiving future messages and prescribed prison terms for violators.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, the volume of spam declined in the first eight months of last year.

But as many technology administrators will testify, the respite was short-lived.

“At the beginning of the year spam was off our radar,” said Franklin Warlick, senior messaging systems administrator at Cox Communications in Atlanta.

“Now employees are stopping us in the halls to ask us if we turned off our spam filter,” Mr. Warlick said.

Mehran Sabbaghian, a network engineer at the Sacramento Web hosting company Lanset America, said that last month a sudden Internet-wide increase in spam clogged his firm’s servers so badly that the delivery of regular e-mail to customers was delayed by hours.

To relieve the pressure, the company took the drastic step of blocking all messages from several countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa, where much of the spam was originating.

This week, Lanset America plans to start accepting incoming mail from those countries again, but Mr. Sabbaghian said the problem of junk e-mail was “now out of control.”

Antispam companies fought the scourge successfully, for a time, with a blend of three filtering strategies. Their software scanned each e-mail and looked at whom the message was coming from, what words it contained and which Web sites it linked to. The new breed of spam — call it Spam 2.0 — poses a serious challenge to each of those three approaches.

Spammers have effectively foiled the first strategy — analyzing the reputation of the sender — by conscripting vast networks of computers belonging to users who unknowingly downloaded viruses and other rogue programs. The infected computers begin sending out spam without the knowledge of their owners. Secure Computing, an antispam company in San Jose, Calif., reports that 250,000 new computers are captured and added to these spam “botnets” each day.

The sudden appearance of new sources of spam makes it more difficult for companies to rely on blacklists of known junk e-mail distributors. Also, by using other people’s computers to scatter their e-mail across the Internet, spammers vastly increase the number of messages they can send out, without having to pay for the data traffic they generate.

“Because they are stealing other people’s computers to send out the bad stuff, their marginal costs are zero,” said Daniel Drucker, a vice president at the antispam company Postini. “The scary part is that the economics are now tilted in their favor.”

The use of botnets to send spam would not matter as much if e-mail filters could still make effective use of the second spam-fighting strategy: analyzing the content of an incoming message. Traditional antispam software examines the words in a text message and, using statistical techniques, determines if the words are more likely to make up a legitimate message or a piece of spam.

The explosion of image spam this year has largely thwarted that approach. Spammers have used images in their messages for years, in most cases to offer a peek at a pornographic Web site, or to illustrate the effectiveness of their miracle drugs. But as more of their text-based messages started being blocked, spammers searched for new methods and realized that putting their words inside the image could frustrate text filtering. The use of other people’s computers to send their bandwidth-hogging e-mail made the tactic practical.

“They moved their message into our blind spot,” said Paul Judge, chief technology officer of Secure Computing.

Antispam firms spotted the skyrocketing amount of image spam this summer. A technology arms race ensued. The filtering companies adopted an approach called optical character recognition, which scans the images in an e-mail and tries to recognize any letters or words. Spammers responded in turn by littering their images with speckles, polka dots and background bouquets of color, which mean nothing to human eyes but trip up the computer scanners.

Spammers have also figured out ways to elude another common antispam technique: identifying and blocking multiple copies of the same message. Pioneering antispam companies like the San Francisco-based Brightmail, which was bought two years ago year by the software giant Symantec, achieved early victories against spam by recognizing unwanted e-mail as soon as it hit the Internet, noting its “fingerprint” and stopping every subsequent copy. Spammers have defied that technique by writing software that automatically changes a few pixels in each image.

“Imagine an archvillain who has a new thumbprint every time he puts his thumb down,” said Patrick Peterson, vice president for technology at Ironport. “They have taken away so many of the hooks we can use to look for spam.”

But don’t spammers still have to link to the incriminating Web sites where they sell their disreputable wares? Well, not anymore. Many of the messages in the latest spam wave promote penny stocks — part of a scheme that antispam researchers call the “pump and dump.” Spammers buy the inexpensive stock of an obscure company and send out messages hyping it. They sell their shares when the gullible masses respond and snap up the stock. No links to Web sites are needed in the messages.

Though the scam sounds obvious, a joint study by researchers at Purdue University and Oxford University this summer found that spam stock cons work. Enough recipients buy the stock that spammers can make a 5 percent to 6 percent return in two days, the study concluded.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought dozens of cases against such fraudsters over the years. But as a result of the Can-Spam Act, which forced domestic e-mail marketers to either give up the practice or risk jail, most active spammers now operate beyond the reach of American law enforcement. Antispam researchers say the current spam hot spots are in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia.

While spammers are making money, companies are clearly spending more of it to fight the surge. Postini says that the costs for companies trying to fight spam on their own have tripled, mostly because of increased bandwidth costs to handle bulky image spam and lost employee productivity.

The estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, since antispam companies are eager to hawk their expensive filtering systems, which can cost around $20,000 a year for a company of 1,000 employees. But the onslaught of junk e-mail does affect business operations, even if the impact is difficult to quantify.

At the headquarters of the Seattle Mariners this summer, the topic of the worsening spam problem came up regularly in executive meetings, and the team’s top brass began pressuring the technology staff to fix the problem. Ben Nakamura, the Mariners’ network manager, said he tried to tighten spam controls and inadvertently began blocking the regular incoming press notes from opposing teams.

Two weeks ago, the situation grew so dire that the team switched from software provided by Computer Associates, whose suite of security programs sat on the team’s internal server, to a dedicated antispam server from Barracuda Networks, which gets regular updates from Barracuda’s offices in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Nakamura said the new system had greatly improved the situation. On a single day last week, the team received 5,000 e-mail messages and the Barracuda spam appliance blocked all but 300. Still, some employees continue to see two or three pieces of spam in their in-boxes each day.

Some antispam veterans are not optimistic about the future of the spam battle. “As an industry I think we are losing,” Mr. Peterson of Ironport said. “The bad guys are simply outrunning most of the technology out there today.”

Cherie Booth and her fellow barristers at Matrix Chambers are usually involved in fighting discrimination, protecting human rights and exposing injustice. But Britain's best-known team of lawyers have had to resort to legal action to defend themselves against internet pirates who are using Matrix's personnel, host of awards and high reputation in an apparent money-making scam.
Matrix called in the police after they became the latest victims of the growing phenomenon of cyber-cloning, in which a firm finds that its website has been copied by rivals. A previously-unknown outfit called Lando Attorneys, which purports to be run by two experienced barristers based in London, has copied the entire layout of Matrix's site and much of the material used to promote the chambers's services - including their description in the prestigious Legal 500 guide as 'arguably the finest concentration of talent at the Bar'.

'Matrix is very annoyed,' said Lindsay Scott, Matrix's chief executive. 'They have cloned part of our website. Matrix is taking all appropriate action to ensure that the cloned site is taken down as soon as possible.' Matrix has also sought help from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Bar Council and the Office of Fair Trading in its attempts to shut the Lando website. It has put one of its barristers in charge of tackling the problem and has written to the firm which hosts the site, warning them to close it. Matrix was expecting it to be removed early last week, but it was still operating yesterday. The site claims the entire back-up staff and a host of Matrix barristers - such as Philippe Sands, QC, though not Booth - as their own personnel.

It uses modified versions of the CVs of two Matrix barristers, lifted from the Matrix website, as the fake details of the two men who claim to run Lando Attorneys: Grey Patrick and David Monlay. It is unclear if either man, whose photographs are on the Lando website, really exists or is a qualified solicitor or barrister.

Patrick and Monlay give a contact number with their profiles, which turns out to be Matrix's switchboard. Neither responded to attempts by The Observer to talk to them. Matrix is concerned that the Lando site may be part of a scam to get unsuspecting clients to part with money for advice on immigration and asylum cases, an area where Matrix specialises, which then may not materialise. They also fear that Matrix's reputation - Chambers of the Year in 2005, according to the Lawyer magazine, another gong which Lando claims it won - may be sullied.

However, Dr Simon Moores, an internet security expert, said Matrix may not succeed in banishing the Lando website from cyberspace: 'In my opinion as a non-lawyer, Lando Attorneys are exploring the gap between "passing off" [pretending that someone else's property is your own], which is illegal, and cloning, which isn't. This isn't in my opinion a visible attempt at passing off, though it comes close, because Lando have not used Matrix's name on their site. I think this is cloning. This is a grey area of the law, which is ambivalent, in regards to websites.'

In their persistent quest to breach the Internet’s defenses, the bad guys are honing their weapons and increasing their firepower.

With growing sophistication, they are taking advantage of programs that secretly install themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, band these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and use the collective power of the dragooned network to commit Internet crimes.

These systems, called botnets, are being blamed for the huge spike in spam that bedeviled the Internet in recent months, as well as fraud and data theft.

Security researchers have been concerned about botnets for some time because they automate and amplify the effects of viruses and other malicious programs.

What is new is the vastly escalating scale of the problem — and the precision with which some of the programs can scan computers for specific information, like corporate and personal data, to drain money from online bank accounts and stock brokerages.

“It’s the perfect crime, both low-risk and high-profit,” said Gadi Evron, a computer security researcher for an Israeli-based firm, Beyond Security, who coordinates an international volunteer effort to fight botnets. “The war to make the Internet safe was lost long ago, and we need to figure out what to do now.”

Last spring, a program was discovered at a foreign coast guard agency that systematically searched for documents that had shipping schedules, then forwarded them to an e-mail address in China, according to David Rand, chief technology officer of Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based computer security firm. He declined to identify the agency because it is a customer.

Although there is a wide range of estimates of the overall infection rate, the scale and the power of the botnet programs have clearly become immense. David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher who is a co-founder of Damballa, a start-up company focusing on controlling botnets, said the consensus among scientists is that botnet programs are present on about 11 percent of the more than 650 million computers attached to the Internet.

Plagues of viruses and other malicious programs have periodically swept through the Internet since 1988, when there were only 60,000 computers online. Each time, computer security managers and users have cleaned up the damage and patched holes in systems.

In recent years, however, such attacks have increasingly become endemic, forcing increasingly stringent security responses. And the emergence of botnets has alarmed not just computer security experts, but also specialists who created the early Internet infrastructure.

“It represents a threat but it’s one that is hard to explain,” said David J. Farber, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist who was an Internet pioneer. “It’s an insidious threat, and what worries me is that the scope of the problem is still not clear to most people.” Referring to Windows computers, he added, “The popular machines are so easy to penetrate, and that’s scary.”

So far botnets have predominantly infected Windows-based computers, although there have been scattered reports of botnet-related attacks on computers running the Linux and Macintosh operating systems. The programs are often created by small groups of code writers in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and distributed in a variety of ways, including e-mail attachments and downloads by users who do not know they are getting something malicious. They can even be present in pirated software sold on online auction sites. Once installed on Internet-connected PCs, they can be controlled using a widely available communications system called Internet Relay Chat, or I.R.C.

ShadowServer, a voluntary organization of computer security experts that monitors botnet activity, is now tracking more than 400,000 infected machines and about 1,450 separate I.R.C. control systems, which are called Command & Control servers.

The financial danger can be seen in a technical report presented last summer by a security researcher who analyzed the information contained in a 200-megabyte file that he had intercepted. The file had been generated by a botnet that was systematically harvesting stolen information and then hiding it in a secret location where the data could be retrieved by the botnet master.

The data in the file had been collected during a 30-day period, according to Rick Wesson, chief executive of Support Intelligence, a San Francisco-based company that sells information on computer security threats to corporations and federal agencies. The data came from 793 infected computers and it generated 54,926 log-in credentials and 281 credit-card numbers. The stolen information affected 1,239 companies, he said, including 35 stock brokerages, 86 bank accounts, 174 e-commerce accounts and 245 e-mail accounts.

Sensor information collected by his company is now able to identify more than 250,000 new botnet infections daily, Mr. Wesson said.

“We are losing this war badly,” he said. “Even the vendors understand that we are losing the war.”

According to the annual intelligence report of MessageLabs, a New York-based computer security firm, more than 80 percent of all spam now originates from botnets. Last month, for the first time ever, a single Internet service provider generated more than one billion spam e-mail messages in a 24-hour period, according to a ranking system maintained by Trend Micro, the computer security firm. That indicated that machines of the service providers’ customers had been woven into a giant network, with a single control point using them to pump out spam.

The extent of the botnet threat was underscored in recent months by the emergence of a version of the stealthy program that adds computers to the botnet. The recent version of the program, which security researchers are calling “rustock,” infected several hundred thousand Internet-connected computers and then began generating vast quantities of spam e-mail messages as part of a “pump and dump” stock scheme.

The author of the program, who is active on Internet technical discussion groups and claims to live in Zimbabwe, has found a way to hide the infecting agent in such a way that it leaves none of the traditional digital fingerprints that have been used to detect such programs.

Moreover, although rustock is currently being used for distributing spam, it is a more general tool that can be used with many other forms of illegal Internet activity.

“It could be used for other types of malware as well,” said Joe Stewart, a researcher at SecureWorks, an Atlanta-based computer security firm. “It’s just a payload delivery system with extra stealth.”

Last month Mr. Stewart tracked trading around a penny stock being touted in a spam campaign. The Diamant Art Corporation was trading for 8 cents on Dec. 15 when a series of small transactions involving 11,532,726 shares raised the price of the stock to 11 cents. After the close of business that day, a Friday, a botnet began spewing out millions of spam messages, he said.

On the following Monday, the stock went first to 19 cents per share and then ultimately to 25 cents a share. He estimated that if the spammer then sold the shares purchased at the peak on Monday he would realize a $20,000 profit. (By Dec. 20, it was down to 12 cents.)

Computer security experts warn that botnet programs are evolving faster than security firms can respond and have now come to represent a fundamental threat to the viability of the commercial Internet. The problem is being compounded, they say, because many Internet service providers are either ignoring or minimizing the problem.

“It’s a huge scientific, policy, and ultimately social crisis, and no one is taking any responsibility for addressing it,” said K. C. Claffy , a veteran Internet researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

The $6 billion computer security industry offers a growing array of products and services that are targeted at network operators, corporations and individual computer users. Yet the industry has a poor track record so far in combating the plague, according to computer security researchers.

“This is a little bit like airlines advertising how infrequently they crash into mountains,” said Mr. Dagon, the Georgia Tech researcher.

The malicious software is continually being refined by “black hat” programmers to defeat software that detects the malicious programs by tracking digital fingerprints.

Some botnet-installed programs have been identified that exploit features of the Windows operating system, like the ability to recognize recently viewed documents. Botnet authors assume that any personal document that a computer owner has used recently will also be of interest to a data thief, Mr. Dagon said.

Serry Winkler, a sales representative in Denver, said that she had turned off the network-security software provided by her Internet service provider because it slowed performance to a crawl on her PC, which was running Windows 98. A few months ago four sheriff’s deputies pounded on her apartment door to confiscate the PC, which they said was being used to order goods from Sears with a stolen credit card. The computer, it turned out, had been commandeered by an intruder who was using it remotely.

“I’m a middle-aged single woman living here for six years,” she said. “Do I sound like a terrorist?”

She is now planning to buy a more up-to-date PC, she said.

Botnet programs and other malicious software largely take aim at PCs running the Microsoft Windows operating system, because Windows’ ubiquity makes it fertile ground for network-based attacks.

Using a non-Windows-based PC may be one defense against these programs, known as malware; in addition, anti-malware programs and antivirus utilities for the PC are available from several vendors. Windows users should use the Windows Update feature.

Microsoft itself entered the computer-security business last year and now offers a free malware-removal tool for download from its Web site. The company says the program removes about two million pieces of malware each month, of which 200,000, or about 10 percent, are botnet infections.

Like Windows, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is also a large, convenient target for code-writing vandals. Alternative browsers, like Firefox and Opera, may insulate users. Microsoft’s most recent browser release, Internet Explorer 7, is said to offer significantly improved defenses.

Adding software to your browser like Noscript, a plug-in utility, can limit the ability of remote programs to run potentially damaging programs on your PC.

Security experts also offer these tips:
¶Don’t share your computer (on which you pay your bills) with your children (who download games).
¶Use a firewall program that warns you about outgoing connections that botnets make to communicate with control software.
¶Don’t use the same password on more than one financial site.
¶Don’t let your browser store your password for such sites.
¶Don’t buy anything offered by a spammer.
¶Don’t click if someone offers you something too good to be true. It is.

JOHN MARKOFF

The fears of the direct marketing industry came true. Once a do-not-call list was created, people did register, in droves.

The list was created in 2003, not as a way to protect privacy, but to remove a powerful irritant from the lives of Americans. The Federal Trade Commission, which administers the list, says that more than 137 million phone numbers have been placed on the list by people tired of interruptions during dinner or their favorite TV show.

The popularity of the do-not-call list unleashed a demand for other opt-out lists. A consumer can now opt out of the standard practice of their banks or loan companies selling their information to others. Other opt-outs stop credit card companies from soliciting consumers or end the flow of junk mail and catalogs.

While most of the opt-outs are intended to make life less annoying, they can also have the side effect of protecting personal information that can be misused by identity thieves or unscrupulous merchants.

“Over the years, it has gotten so much easier to opt out,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group that lobbies Congress on privacy issues. “There are still gray areas.”

While financial companies have to provide an opportunity to opt out of sharing personal information, other kinds of companies do not. Some that tell you they will share the information do not offer the option to protect personal information (other than not doing business with the company).

For those who just can’t take it anymore, here is a master list of where you can take control:

PHONE SOLICITATIONS To stop them, go to donotcall.gov. Or call toll free, (888)382-1222, from the number you are going to restrict.

Remember to register if you get a new phone number. You can register cellphone numbers as well. A listing is good for five years, after which you’ll have to repeat the process. But you need not worry about forgetting. You will know when you start receiving sales calls again.

JUNK MAIL You can try to opt out of direct mail solicitations, but it will probably not work very well. A private organization, the Direct Marketing Association, handles that list and not every merchant with pages of hot leads is a rule-abiding member.

If you want to give it a shot anyway, write the association, in care of the Mail Preference Service at P.O. Box 643, Carmel, N.Y. 10512. There is an online form at www.the-dma.org/consumers/offmailinglist.html. If you want to get more mail, there is also a place to sign up to get on the lists.

E-MAIL Whatever you do, do not respond to an unsolicited e-mail message when it gives you the option to opt out of receiving more e-mail. That is a trick used by spammers to confirm they hit a live address. Once that happens, your address goes to a prime list and is sold to other spammers. You may even find legitimate businesses eventually using addresses on that list.

So how do you prevent spam? Unfortunately, other than spam filters, there really is no good way.

You can try to make it harder for spammers to get your address in the first place by never posting your address in public forums. Spammers employ software to scrape the sites of anything with that @ symbol. Instead spell it out in a unique way like “the nameofthiscolumn at nytimes.com.”

CREDIT CARD OFFERS Almost as annoying as the direct marketing call is the mailbox stuffed with credit card solicitations. The more you ignore their offers, the more you will receive.

One way to stop the offers is to sign up for so many cards and run up such high levels of debt that you become a credit untouchable. That is not a good plan. Instead, call (888) 567-8688, but be ready to give out some personal information like your Social Security number.

The major credit bureaus, like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, that collect information on your borrowing habits let you opt out of what they call prescreened offers of credit at https://www.optoutprescreen.com. You can do it for a period of five years or permanently.

Opting out of prescreened offers of credit might also be useful when you apply for a mortgage. When you seek a loan, the credit bureaus notice and they put you on a “trigger list.” The information that you are a ripe prospect is then sold to other lenders in as little time as 24 hours. Suddenly, other lenders are calling.

“It hurts the image of our members,” said Harry Dinham, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers. His group also objects because it could be “an avenue to identity theft.” He said, “We actually don’t know who they sell it to.”

Still, some callers may actually have better deals than the one your mortgage broker or bank is offering. “Do you want to opt out and never learn how to save money,” asked Stuart Pratt, president of the Consumer Data Industry Association, a trade group.

Will opting out protect your identity from thieves? Mr. Pratt said that “lender data tells us that prescreened offers of credit result in lower levels of fraud.” Nonetheless, he did recommend using a paper shredder on the offers you do reject.

CREDIT FREEZE The ultimate opt-out for your credit is a credit freeze. You’ll sometimes hear it recommended as a way to protect yourself from fraud because once you sign up to have your credit report frozen, no company can get access to your credit report without your expressed permission. That means no one can open up a credit card or take out a loan in your name.

Think long and hard before you do this. It sounds great at first, but doing so can backfire. You might be buying an expensive flat-screen TV at a warehouse store and want to get the instant credit card to score another 5 percent discount. You will not be able to. But about half the states have passed laws making credit reporting companies quickly unfreeze a report, some in as little as five minutes.

Not that preventing the opening of one more store account is a bad thing. Remember that everyone of those cards can hurt your credit score, which determines what your interest rate is when you borrow money.

Use the credit freeze only if you are a true victim of identity theft, which means that some criminal has your personal information and is opening up credit card accounts, borrowing money or buying property with your credit history.

If you suspect you may be a target, but have not been harmed yet, a better form of protection is asking the credit bureaus to flag your report with a fraud alert, which is supposed to make lenders take extra precautions.

OTHER OPT-OUTS Your personal information is accessible in less obvious ways. For instance, your computer tracks where you have visited online. DoubleClick, a company that collects data for online advertisers, offers a way to prevent your computer from giving it information at http://www.doubleclick.com/us/about-doubleclick/privacy/dart-adserving.asp.

But again, it is only a piecemeal solution. Other online advertising companies will still put “cookies” on your computer to collect the same data. So the next-best solution is to frequently run software that cleans out cookies. You can get Spyware Blaster, Spybot, or Ad-Aware at www.download.com free.

Your personal information, including parts of your Social security number, are available in publicly available data bases that you may never see. The most common ones offer a way to opt out of a listing. Nexis, one of the biggest, says you can opt out of its people-finding lists by going to www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data/remove.asp. Nexis does not make it easy because it requires that you prove you are a victim of identity theft before it will consider your application.

The Center for Democracy and Technology provides addresses and forms for other companies, like ChoicePoint, that do not let you opt out online (http://opt-out.cdt.org).

REAL ESTATE FILINGS You have to file deeds with the local government office and once you do, companies swoop in to compile lists of new homeowners from the public records. That’s why you get the discount coupons from Home Depot and other merchants right after you buy. Birth certificates and marriage licenses are also scraped for data.

There is little you can do about it because the records are intended to be public. Any good lawyer can show you how to make it a little harder for personal information to be listed on a deed. But it will cost money, which is probably not worth it if all you are trying to do is stop solicitations from Swifty’s Mortgage Lending and Used Car Sales.

E-mail: yourmoney at nytimes.com

The Belgian court copyright infringement ruling against Google News will not ultimately damage the search engine service, but it will bring the company to the negotiating table with publishers who are concerned about how their content is being used online.
Losing Copiepresse's content will not in itself cause Google News too many problems.

Many publishers see the Google News service as a fantastic traffic driver that ultimately results in a potential increase in revenue.

However, if other content providers start winning similar copyright infringement court rulings around the world, Google and leading other online content aggregators - including Microsoft and Yahoo! - would be in trouble.

The most likely outcome of the stand-off between content providers and aggregators is a compromise offering publishers greater control of what material is picked up by Google News and its peers, and how it is used.

But Google and other aggregators will stop short of agreeing to pay for content, according to industry experts. Following the Belgian court ruling, Google said it will appeal the decision, that its service is "entirely legal", and that if Copiepresse wanted out of Google News it could have done so easily. "Hundreds of news publishers in Belgium and around the world are delighted to be included in Google News because it helps more people find their websites and read their articles," said a defiant Rachel Whetstone, the Google European director of communications and public affairs, on the company's official blog. "That's why Google receives far more requests for inclusion than requests for removal," Ms Whetstone added.

"If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News, we remove their content from our index - all the newspaper has to do is ask. There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs."

While Ms Whetstone is absolutely right - a small piece of common technology called robots.txt can opt out content from Google News - for publishers the issue is about Google's negotiating tactics, or rather, lack of them. Larry Kilman, the director of communications at the World Association of Newspapers, said: "Overall, the underlying issue is that publishers and content providers have to be part of the discussion. "This lawsuit has come around because of the unilateral decision by Google - and others - on how content will be used."

The answer, say content providers, could be a system called automated content access protocol - or Acap. Developed and funded by the European Publishers Council, the International Publishers Association and the World Association of Newspapers, Acap will be a "permissions information" technology that can be attached to content on a media organisation's website.

Acap will tell the web crawlers - used by Google to aggregate content - what they can do with each piece of information, such as how long the piece can stay on Google News, image rights, and how long an article can be. Content publishers on board to test the product include AFP, Reed Elsevier and the Independent. Google is involved on the technical board.

Mr Kilman said that the idea is that, just as a news agency such as Reuters has a commercial relationship with those that want to use its content, so Acap might be an option for any content provider who wants to charge for use via Google. "The status quo [Google News aggregating content for free] is fine with some publishers. It definitely has value," added Mr Kilman. "But it is not for all, there have to be commercial agreements if some content owners demand this route. We don't think law suits are the answer. We do think that co-operation is the way forward."

Pressure from unhappy publishers like Copiepresse is likely to have played a part in Google - along with Yahoo! and Microsoft - joining the discussion about content aggregation.

However, the continued defiant stance adopted by Google is a probable indicator that it will ultimately balk at any development of Acap that proposes payment. "Losing Copiepresse listings will do no damage to Google News, but if things escalated and it lost very member of WAN, then that would hurt," said Struan Robertson, a senior associate at law firm Pinsent Masons.

"Google will discuss the Acap proposal and will decide if it is workable for them. Technically it is straightforward change, it comes down to a commercial decision for Google to decide and if it wants to go down that route," he added. "Google is likely to agree on Acap specifications, it wants to keep publishers happy, but it is likely to draw the line at paying."

Mr Robertson said that wealthy Google is readily seen as a target - evidenced by companies such as Viacom threatening legal action over copyrighted video clips to improve its negotiating position with Google-owned YouTube. "Most newspapers - including those represented by Copiepresse - want to be found by Google's search engine," he added.

"They know exactly how to keep Google out, using a technical change that requires maybe five minutes' effort. But they choose not to do that. "Instead, Copiepresse's members want a slice of Google's wealth and they're hoping copyright law will cut it. The newspapers involved have been dropped from Google News and newspapers across Europe could follow suit if they were so inclined. But I don't see that happening."

Robert Hoyler thought hackers who broke into his computer stole only his bank account information. But it turned out that the thieves also left something behind: a hidden software virus that recorded his every keystroke.

So when Hoyler's bank issued him new account numbers and passwords, the hackers got all that information, too. His health insurance, online shopping and Social Security data went into a file in a master database at a Web site controlled by the attackers, stashed among personal information on more than 3,220 U.S. residents.

"These guys got everything, but all I knew was that my financial accounts were compromised," said the 66-year-old Fairfax engineer, who learned of the virus from a reporter who used forensic tools from computer-security firm Sunbelt Software in February to locate the Web server hosting Hoyler's private information.

Such attacks are evidence of the sophistication and depth of technical manipulation by hackers, and the challenges facing consumers and law enforcement agencies in fighting them.

Online crime is easier, in part because tools for carrying out attacks are readily available and harder to purge from computers. Moreover, for consumers like Hoyler, there is often no surefire way to know how or what information has been stolen. Notifying individual victims is time-intensive and expensive, and law enforcement agencies and credit bureaus say it's not their job.

Many viruses that send junk e-mail also include password-stealing components, and some combine such technology with fake Web sites mimicking trusted online brands, which can be particularly deceptive. More than 1,000 fraudulent sites known as "phishing" sites are erected each day, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry organization. Scammers can net 20 to 100 victims per case, according to CastleCops, a volunteer group of security experts that analyzes malicious software and phishing sites and provides information to police, Internet service providers and affected companies.

Contributing to the proliferation of Web-based crime is the broad availability of online tools.

"Basically we're at the point where the scammer can go into the virtual tackle store and buy all the equipment he needs to get a phishing scam working," said Lance James, founder of security-software developer Secure Science. "There's the guy who writes the [virus] who says, 'Here's your phishing rod, here's some of our best bait, here are the best sites to attack, and if you pay me an extra $200, I'll tell you some of the best sites you can hack into.' "

The virus that stole Hoyler's information came from Web sites based in Eastern Europe, according to the information tracked by Sunbelt Software. It infiltrated the new-accounts department of a major U.S. bank, a medical patient database in Georgia and an Alabama district attorney's office containing a database used by police departments to trace people, according to information obtained with the Sunbelt software.

Hoyler's bank told him in January that someone had tried to wire money out of his account. Days later, Fidelity Investments notified him that someone tried to use his log-in information to purchase thousands of shares of an adult-entertainment company.

The government has acknowledged a need to do more for identity-theft victims. Last year, the Bush administration created an identity-theft task force that has proposed creating a center that would help victims.

Federal law enforcement officials said they routinely provide data they uncover on compromised credit and debit accounts to MasterCard, Visa and other credit-card issuers. The FBI also said it recently began sharing caches of stolen consumer data with the fraud departments of the three major credit-reporting bureaus.

But because credit-card companies often do not get any more information about the extent of the breaches, victims of viruses or scams may think that their problems have been resolved after being issued new credit or debit cards. And such agencies as the FBI handle too many incidents to notify online crime victims individually.

"We're just getting overwhelmed with this [compromised] consumer data, but it's not exactly law enforcement's job to call each victim and explain the situation," said Dan Larkin, an FBI agent who heads the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance in Pittsburgh.

Credit bureaus are not required to notify consumers.

"The credit bureaus work on behalf of banks and companies that grant credit," said Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a consumer advocacy group in Washington. "They're not set up to be consumer-oriented businesses."

And the credit bureaus say they are not in the habit of reaching out to consumers whose private information may have been compromised.

"Normally we would not put a fraud alert on a file without a consumer being involved" or initiating it, said Maxine Sweet, a vice president with Experian, one of the three major credit-reporting bureaus. "That's just not something we generally do."

As a T-Mobile subscriber, Ken Grunski, a businessman in San Diego, knew that his cellphone would work during a trip to Tanzania. What he did not expect was the bill: $800 for 10 days’ use. “I didn’t think I was going to use my phone that much,” Mr. Grunski said. “But two to three 10-minute calls a day, and it adds up.” What a shame that Mr. Grunski did not heed his own company’s advice. If he had, he would have saved himself a bundle.

Mr. Grunski owns Telestial, a company that sells SIM cards, small chips that replace those in cellphones sold by T-Mobile and Cingular and lower the costs of calls when overseas. While his American phone worked abroad without one, Mr. Grunski was paying sky-high rates because he was roaming in a foreign country. T-Mobile charged him $5 a minute to roam in Tanzania. If Mr. Grunski had used one of the SIM cards he sells, he would have paid $1.15 a minute to call the United States and his calls — averaging 16 minutes a day — would have cost him $184, rather than $800.

While Americans have embraced the convenience of using cellphones, trying to dial from overseas often brings surprises. Even if the phone works, voice mail may not. Depending on the handset, coverage can be spotty. Make the wrong choices, and you may find a huge bill. The right tactics to avoid those headaches depend on which carrier you use, the length of your trip and your destination.

GSM vs. CDMA
A majority of the world’s cellphone subscribers — 82 percent — use the GSM technology standard, according to the GSM Association. In the United States, the major carriers use two systems. Cingular (now AT&T) and T-Mobile use GSM, while Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, an incompatible technology.

CDMA technology is found in North America, as well as some Asian countries, but it is basically nonexistent in Europe. As a result, Sprint and Verizon customers can use their phones in just 26 countries. (AT&T and T-Mobile customers can potentially use theirs in over a hundred.)

When traveling in non-CDMA countries, Sprint and Verizon customers can rent or purchase GSM phones from those providers. Sprint rents a Motorola Razr for $58 for the first week, and $70 for two weeks, plus $1.29 to $4.99 a minute of airtime. Verizon charges $3.99 a day to rent, plus $1.49 to $4.99 a minute. Verizon also sells three combo CDMA-GSM models, priced from $150 to $600 with a two-year contract.

Cingular and T-Mobile customers have more options — if their existing phones can pick up multiple frequencies. To complicate matters, the American GSM standard operates on 850 and 1,900 megahertz, while the rest of the GSM world uses 900 and 1,800 megahertz.

To use an American GSM cellphone in a foreign country, the handset you own must be tri-band or quad-band and able to operate on one or both of the frequencies used outside the United States. The Cingular and T-Mobile Web sites, as well as Telestial’s and others, list the predominant frequencies used in each country, and show if your phone can operate on one or both overseas bands.

To protect against fraud, American cellphones are typically blocked from making calls when used abroad. Before traveling, call your provider and ask to have that restriction removed.

A Temporary SIM Card
GSM phones use SIM cards (subscriber identity modules), tiny electronic chips that hold a cellphone’s “brains,” including the subscriber’s contact numbers and phone number. (CDMA phones store such information directly in the hardware.)

GSM customers can avoid sky-high roaming charges by replacing their American SIM cards with ones from other countries. For example, travelers to Britain can pick up a SIM card from the British carrier Vodafone; once inserted, it gives the phone a temporary British phone number. Calls within Britain and to the United States would be much cheaper.

For example, T-Mobile charges its customers 99 cents a minute for using their phones in Britain, whether calling a pub in London or your home in New Jersey.

Insert a prepaid British SIM card from a company like Telestial instead, and local calls drop to 26 cents a minute, while calls back to the United States cost 9 to 14 cents a minute.

Another benefit when using overseas SIM cards is that incoming calls are typically free in most countries.

Overseas SIM cards can be purchased before you travel from companies like Cellular Abroad (www.cellularabroad.com) and Telestial (www.telestial.com) or at local shops in foreign countries.

Unlocking the Phone
Even if you have a GSM phone that operates on both overseas frequencies, domestic cellphone providers do not want you to use your phone with another company’s SIM card, because they do not make any money when you do. To prevent your doing so, cellphones bought through Cingular and T-Mobile are electronically locked — they accept only their own company’s SIM cards.

Before you throw your phone off the Eiffel Tower in frustration, know that there are several ways to unlock your phone and avoid those high overseas roaming rates.

Cingular and T-Mobile will unlock their customers’ phones under certain conditions. Cingular will provide unlock codes to customers whose contracts have expired, who have canceled their service and paid an early termination fee, or who have paid a full rather than subsidized price for their phones, according to Rich Blasi, a Cingular Wireless spokesman.

T-Mobile has more lenient policies. It will provide the unlock code to any customer after 90 days of service, but no more than one unlock code will be provided every 90 days, said Graham Crow, a T-Mobile spokesman.

If you do not meet these requirements, you can still get your phone unlocked from a private company. For a few dollars, the Travel Insider (www.thetravelinsider.com) and UnlockTelecom (www.unlocktelecom.co.uk) will provide your phone’s specific unlocking code.

Other GSM Phones
Cellphone customers with dual-band GSM phones that cannot be used overseas can always purchase unlocked quad-band phones from third-party providers. These phones can be used solely when traveling outside the United States. Since they are unlocked, they can also be used instead of your current phone on your American network.

Because the phone is not subsidized by a carrier, the price is higher. For example, an unlocked quad-band Motorola Razr V3 can be bought for $140 from Cellular Blowout (www.cellular-blowout.com). Cellular Abroad and Telestial also sell unlocked phones.

A Few More Tips
When entering numbers in your phone, always add the plus (+) sign and the country code; that way, the number can be dialed automatically no matter from what country you are calling.

Store your GSM phone’s numbers in the phone itself, rather than the SIM card. Then the numbers will still be available to you when you use an overseas SIM card. To transfer them to a new phone easily, store them on a device like Backup-Pal (www.backup-pal.com), an external U.S.B. memory unit.

While you will not pay any charges for incoming calls when you use a foreign SIM card, tell your American callers to get an overseas calling plan from their phone company before you ask them to ring you. If they do not, they could be paying the same sky-high rates that you just avoided.

And if you take your American phone overseas, make sure that its battery charger is dual voltage; without one, all the effort to get your phone to work in other countries may go up in smoke the first time you plug it in.

Correction: March 17, 2007

An article in the Circuits pages of Business Day on Thursday about using cellphones overseas misstated the charge to T-Mobile USA customers for placing a call in Britain. It is 99 cents a minute, not $1.99. The article also referred incorrectly to the status of CDMA cellphone technology in Australia. While CDMA phones from American carriers do not operate there, other CDMA phones are in use; they are not “basically nonexistent.” And the article also referred incompletely to a source of low rates for calls from Britain. The rates — 26 cents a minute for local calls and 9 to 14 cents a minute for calls to the United States — are available with use of a SIM card sold by Telestial.

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