Song Swapper Faces $5.5m Fine for Doing: 'What Kids Do'

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Science and Technology News
July 30, 2009

The major recording labels in the US are again going after an individual for swapping songs through file-sharing networks such as Kazaa.

In the previous case, in Minnesota, a single mother of four was fined more than $2 million for copyright infringement.

Tenenbaum is accused of downloading and distributing songs from bands such as Green Day and Aerosmith. The case centres on 30 shared songs, though the recording companies say he distributed many more than that.

The court heard that Tenenbaum was "a kid who did what kids do and loved technology and loved music".

The industry has typically offered to settle cases for about $US5000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. However, cases already filed are proceeding to trial.

Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor representing Tenenbaum, said his client - a graduate student in physics - started downloading music as a teenager, taking advantage of file-sharing networks that make it possible for computer users to share digital files with a network of strangers.

"He was a kid who did what kids do and loved technology and loved music," Nesson said in opening statements.

Nesson said the recording companies enjoyed decades of success but were slow to adapt to the advancements of the internet.

"The internet was not Joel's fault," Nesson said. "The internet sweeps in like the way the automobile swept into the buggy industry."

But Tim Reynolds, one of the lawyers representing the recording industry, said song-swappers such as Tenenbaum took a significant toll on the recording industry's revenues and on back-up singers, sound engineers and other people who make a living in music.

Reynolds said Tenenbaum used a computer in his parents' house in Providence and then at Goucher College in Baltimore, where he was a student, to download and distribute digital files.


He was flagged in August 2004 by MediaSentry, a private investigation company that was used by the recording industry to identify illegal song distribution.

Reynolds said that Tenenbaum continued distributing songs even after he had been confronted about it and that the defendant blamed his sister, friends and a foster child who had lived at the house.

"This defendant knew what he was doing was wrong at each step of the way," Reynolds said.

Under federal law, the recording companies are entitled to $US750 to $US30,000 per infringement but the law allows the jury to raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were wilful.

In the Minnesota case, the jury ruled Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, wilfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs and awarded damages of $US80,000 per song.

Nesson urged the jury to "find the minimum number of infringements" by Tenenbaum, if any at all.

The recording companies involved in the case are subsidiaries of Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony.


There's no subterfuge with Joel Tenenbaum.

The graduate student accused of copyright violations admitted in court on Thursday that he shared files and knew others were downloading the music he made available on Kazaa, according to a Twitter post from blogger Ben Sheffner.

Sheffner, a copyright lawyer who is covering the story from the courtroom, wrote "(Music industry) attorney getting scores of admissions from Tenenbaum. Joel doesn't resist."

The four major music labels, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI and Sony Music filed the copyright suit against Tenenbaum and in previous statements he denied sharing, according to Sheffner.

By admitting guilt, it appears Tenenbaum is going to take his chances that his attorney, Prof. Charles Nesson can convince the jury that sharing unauthorized music files doesn't cause that much harm and ordering defendants to pay big damages isn't justified.


Tenenbaum, along with Jammie Thomas-Rasset, are the only people accused of illegal file sharing that have taken their cases before a jury. In June, Thomas was found liable of copyright infringement and ordered to pay nearly $2 million.

Computer Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Science and Technology News
July 30, 2009

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.

They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?

The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.

A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.

The conference was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and in choosing Asilomar for the discussions, the group purposefully evoked a landmark event in the history of science. In 1975, the world’s leading biologists also met at Asilomar to discuss the new ability to reshape life by swapping genetic material among organisms. Concerned about possible biohazards and ethical questions, scientists had halted certain experiments. The conference led to guidelines for recombinant DNA research, enabling experimentation to continue.

The meeting on the future of artificial intelligence was organized by Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the association.

Dr. Horvitz said he believed computer scientists must respond to the notions of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence systems run amok.

The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.

This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.

“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are providing almost religious visions, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”

The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications.

“My sense was that sooner or later we would have to make some sort of statement or assessment, given the rising voice of the technorati and people very concerned about the rise of intelligent machines,” Dr. Horvitz said.

The A.A.A.I. report will try to assess the possibility of “the loss of human control of computer-based intelligences.” It will also grapple, Dr. Horvitz said, with socioeconomic, legal and ethical issues, as well as probable changes in human-computer relationships. How would it be, for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your spouse?

Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.

The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.

“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other.”

Tom Mitchell, a professor of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said the February meeting had changed his thinking. “I went in very optimistic about the future of A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions,” he said. But, he added, “The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives.”

Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”

A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”

Video About:Self-Improving Artificial Intelligence:


Video About: New Version Amazing Robot Asimo:

Unpaid Uills? Good Luck Starting Future Laptops

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Nautilus Science and Techology News
March 31, 2009

As wireless carriers begin to subsidize computers that come with wireless Internet access, they're faced with a quandary: What do they do if the buyer stops paying his bills?


The company can cut off the computer's wireless access, but the carrier would still be out a couple of hundred dollars. The buyer would be left with a computer that's fully usable except for cellular broadband.


LM Ericsson AB, the Swedish company that makes many of the modems that go into laptops, announced Tuesday that its new modem will deal with this issue by including a feature that's virtually a wireless repo man. If the carrier has the stomach to do so, it can send a signal that completely disables the computer, making it impossible to turn on.


"We call it a `kill pill,'" said Mats Norin, Ericsson's vice president of mobile broadband modules.


The module will work on AT&T Inc.'s U.S. third-generation network, and on many other 3G networks overseas.


AT&T late last year started subsidizing small laptops known as "netbooks," which normally cost about $400, so that RadioShack Corp. can sell them for $100. The buyer commits to paying $60 per month for two years for AT&T's wireless broadband access. Such offers have become very common in Europe.


It's unlikely that carriers would resort to wielding the "kill pill." But the technology, developed with Intel Corp., has other uses. For instance, a company could secure its data by locking down stolen laptops wirelessly. Lenovo Group Ltd. has said it will build this sort of feature into its laptops.


The new Ericsson modem can also stay active while a computer is off, listening for wireless messages. That means it could wake up and alert the user when it receives an important e-mail, or if someone is calling with a conferencing application like Skype.


Laptop makers that use Ericsson modules include LG Electronics Inc., Dell Inc., Toshiba Corp. and Lenovo.

FBI: Cyber Crime Escalates in 2008

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Nautilus Technology News
March 30, 2009

Cyber crimes hit record numbers last year, according to a new report (pdf) released today by Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). IC3, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (a Glen Allen, Va., congressionally funded nonprofit that trains law enforcement on how to investigate financial and cyber crimes), says that in 2008 it received 275,284 complaints (up 33 percent from 2007's total of 206,884) of cyber fraud, computer hacks, spam, child pornography and other online offenses—and that cyber scams costs consumers an estimated $265 million, 10 percent more than the $239.09 million reported lost in 2007.

Online transactions in which either the goods or the payment wasn't received accounted for 33 percent of complaints that the feds received last year (up 32 percent from 2007). Auction fraud (think eBay transactions gone bad) actually dipped from 28.6 percent in 2007 to 25.5 percent last year. Ponzi schemes, computer fraud, and check fraud complaints represented 19.5 percent of all IC3 complaints. Overall, fraud victims reporting average losses of $931 each.

Some 74 percent of those who contacted authorities said they had communicated with the scam artists via e-mail. Ironically, one of the year's biggest e-mail scams involved bogus e-mails, supposedly sent by the FBI, soliciting personal information, such as a bank account numbers, by falsely claiming that it needed such info to investigate an "impending financial transaction." Some of the bogus e-mails even claimed to have come directly from FBI Director Robert Mueller, Deputy Director John S. Pistole, or some other high ranking official or investigative unit within the bureau. (The report notes that the FBI does not contact U.S. citizens regarding personal financial matters through unsolicited e-mails.)

Another common scam reported to the IC3 in 2008 involved hackers who broke into personal e-mail accounts (read more on how this can be done), enabling them to send out e-mails to people in the victims' address books asking for money. Posing as the e-mail account holders, fraudsters claim that they are stranded in Nigeria (or some other country), where they were allegedly robbed and now need $1,000 or some other sum to cover hotel bills and travel expenses.

Computer Security: New Conficker Worm Alert!

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Nautilus Technology News
March 30, 2009

A gouvernment information security watchdog has issued a warning to take precautions against a fast-mutating malicious computer program poised to strike on Wednesday.
In a bulletin sent out on Monday, the Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team (SingCert) warned that the latest variant of the Conficker worm, known as Conficker.C, may 'become active on April 1'.

SingCert, a unit of technology sector regulator Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, identifies information security threats and coordinates computer security responses to events like hacking attacks.

Conficker targets computers running Microsoft Windows software, automatically jumping from an infected computer to another over a local network or by hitching a ride on a portable storage devices like USB-drives. Only computers that have not been updated with new security signatures are vulnerable. The worm is one of the more sophisticated such programs developed to date.

Unlike earlier versions like 2004's Sasser worm, which was easily found and subsequently de-wormed by a vigilant user, Conficker's creator, who remains at large despite a US$250,000 (about S$380,000) bounty put up by Microsoft, regularly comes up with new and improved versions of the worm to foil such efforts.

The newest variant, Conficker.C, the fourth incarnation of the worm since it was first discovered last year, disables security features like Microsoft Windows Automatic Update. One of Conficker's key features is its ability to call up a 'master computer' via the Internet for directions, which is also present in its newest variant in a new and improved form.

On Wednesday, Conficker.C infected computers will do just this, SingCert warned on Monday, although 'the exact nature of the activity that will occur on that day is not known at this time.'

Since it was released last year, Conficker has claimed more than ten million victims worldwide, including computers used by the British Parliament. While definitive statistics of Conficker infections here are not available, at least 269 companies have been infected as at January, according to security company F-Secure.

Visit SingCert's website at www.singcert.org.sg for instructions on how to check if your computer is infected, and how to remove the worm.

Information States Disney, Hulu.com Resume Talks for Bringing ABC Shows

By: Marco A. Ayllon
Nautilus Technology News
March 30, 2009

According to Friday reports from paidContent. org, citing unnamed sources, with talks between the Walt Disney Co and Hulu. com having resumed, there are chances of ABC shows coming to the popular online video site; along with content from Disney's cable networks, like ESPN and Disney Channel.

Disney, which is the ninth rank-holder among the video sites in the US, has long been trying to negotiate a deal with the fourth ranker Hulu - as well as other web-based content distributors - in an attempt to increase the viewership of the ad-supported ABC shows being offered on ABC. com and its local TV affiliates like AOL. com, and Fancast site by Comcast Corp.

Though there has been no official confirmation about the supposed resumption of talks from either Hulu or Disney, "inside sources" say that Disney is also keen on an equity stake in Hulu, similar to the equal ownership stakes held by NBC Universal and News Corp; both with 45 percent stake apiece. In case the deal comes through, Hulu would have three of the biggest broadcast TV networks, excluding CBS.

However, it is still not clear about which of the ABC shows will be brought over to the Hulu site, there are indications that the shows being considered for the crossover include ABC prime time shows like `Lost,' `Desperate Housewives,' and `Ugly Betty'.

Attention, Bargain Hunters: Circuit City Is Now Closing

Nautilus Science & Technology News
By: Marco Ayllon
March 7, 2009

It’s coming to a close a bit sooner than expected: Circuit City’s going-out-of-business sale will end Sunday, March 8. Great American Group, one of four firms managing the liquidation of the once-great electronics chain, has announced that Circuit City’s $1.7 billion in inventory is just about gone. So if you’re looking for a killer bargain on whatever’s left in stock -- or even store fixtures like display shelves, a ratty office chair, or the manager’s coffee mug -- now’your last chance.

I’ve seen Circuit City ads over the past few days that promote discounts of 90-percent or so, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the 65-inch plasmas and Blu-ray players are all gone. What’s left? When it comes to the final days of a liquidation sale, you can never tell. Maybe there’s a 32-inch HDTV with a cracked bezel, an open 50-pack of DVD-R discs (with a few missing), or a demo laptop that may or may not boot.

Liquidation sales are always a bit sad: Roped-off areas to shrink the retail space; open boxes with manuals, cables, and other flotsam scattered everywhere. Harry McCracken of Technologizer captured the mood beautifully in his The Tragic Last Days of Circuit City pictorial. It’s hard to believe that Circuit City was once the second-largest consumer electronics retailer in the United States.

If we’ve learned anything about going-out-of-business sales over the past few weeks, it’s this: Don’t bother going the first week. That’s when the liquidator, hoping to reel in the suckers, cuts prices a measly 10 percent. You’ll almost always find better deals at competing retailers, particularly if you comparison-shop online. The real deals come deeper into the sale -- say, weeks 4 to 6 -- but by then you run the risk of missing out on the items you want.

If you’re planning to stop by your local Circuit City this weekend, it’s wise to call first. Some of CC’s 567 stores in the U.S. have already closed their doors.