ISPs Facilitate Filesharing according to the IFPI

ISPs facilitate the illegal swapping on copyrighted music on a grand scale according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). This is one of the 10 inconvenient truths about the music industry they published today. Most of the “truths” are simply not true of course, they are nothing more than cheap propaganda.

ifpi inconvenient truthOn the IFPI website we read:

“ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.”

It’s kind of a strange statement, what is copyright infringing music anyway? As far as I know music in itself cannot infringe copyright. Apart from this (and other speling errors), their point just doesn’t make any sense. Sure, ISPs advertise their high speed connection with phrases like “download as much music as you want”, but they never say “download as much copyrighted music as you want”. I guess the IFPI doesn’t know that there are plenty of legal services available where you can download music for free, such as Jamendo.

To make it even more funny, the IFPI also takes on The Pirate Bay by stating:

“Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric.”

First of all, they probably mean advertisements, but even then their statement doesn’t make sense. Sure, The Pirate Bay generates revenue from the ads on their site, but most of it is used to pay the 20+ servers they need to keep the site up and running and the bandwidth bills. And even if they were millionaires, that doesn’t make the music less free does it?.

Those are not the only “inconvenient truths” that don’t make sense, there are a whole bunch of them. The “truth” that piracy doesn’t create jobs, tax revenues and economic growth for example, as far as I know it does. What about all the high speed internet connections pirates use, those are not free. Or iPods, harddrives, CDs and DVDs pirates use to store all their pirated stuff? There are plenty examples I can come up with that show that piracy is creating a lot of Jobs, tax revenues, and even economic growth.

The only thing that’s inconvenient about the inconvenient truths summed up by the IFPI is the fact that they’re not true.

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The REAL Reason Why People Don’t Buy Music CDs

For those of you too lazy to read the article I have posted below, here is the bottom line…The music industry would like to blame piracy for the decline in sales, but the the truth of the matter is that we only have a limited amount of free time. We have DVDs, On demand TV, the internet and many other forms of entertainment that did not exist in the past. That essentially means that we have other sources of entertainment that consume the hours of our day, music is no longer a main attraction.

The quality of cable TV has improved and so has the recording medium. DVD has been a huge leap from VHS. Whereas, music has remained at a stand still (or even backpedaled with the introduction of DRM). CD prices haven’t dropped, the quality of music hasn’t changed – yet everything else has (you can buy a DVD player and a few dvds from walmart for $30 – you can’t say the same for more than two music CDs).

The money is evidently spent elsewhere. Why buy a 45 minute music CD when I can buy up to four hours of video entertainment for the same price? After having said all that DRM and the legal issues surrounding the industry don’t help matters either.

Music CD, I’m just not that into you
By Aaron Pressman

There’s a fascinating if flawed story in the WSJ today about the decline in sales of music CDs. There’s much to and fro about what’s behind the drop. The industry as always wants to blame piracy. Critics want to blame poor quality of product, bad marketing tactics and digital rights restricting technologies. There’s even some far-sighted commentary about changing business models.

But this article, and similar ones you’ve no doubt read a thousand times in recent years over declines in music sales and movie attendance, miss the boat. And it’s a pretty big and obvious boat at that. There are only so many hours in a day for each of us — the consumers of entertainment — to consume entertainment. Various new forms of entertainment that catch on have to displace some of the time we spent on our former diversions.

While CD sales are down, the number of households with DVD players more than tripled over the past five years to 84 million and sales of DVDs rose to 1.1 billion from 313 million in 2001. Does anyone really think that consumers could buy 800 million more DVDs, worth $10 billion or more, without cutting back on some other entertainment spending? Similarly, the number of households with broadband Internet connections almost quadrupled to over 36 million. At $30 a month, that’s another $9 billion a year right there. The number of households with access to video on demand hit 24 million in 2005, ten times the 2001 level. And now Internet video is just starting up (Ironically, there’s a review in another section of the WSJ today touting Apple’s new Apple TV device to bring video and music purchased and downloaded from the Internet to your TV).

For investors, the lesson is that it’s tough to buck the odds. Established players almost always fail to adapt to change. It’s the nature of a free market. Today’s WSJ story about music sales reminded me of the accelerating drop in old-fashioned film sales that Kodak has experienced over the past few years. So you won’t be surprised to learn that if you look at the five-year stock market performance of the 130 or so sub-industry sectors tracked by Morningstar, radio, film and TV producers, broadcast TV, advertising and media conglomerates are five of the 12 worst performers, the very worst.

Here’s the context: The S&P 500 averaged a 6% annual gain over the past five years, the small-cap Russell 2000 rose 12% a year and even the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index climbed 5% annually. Meanwhile investors in media conglomerates saw their stocks rise less than 3% a year, in advertising just 2% and in TV broadcasters less than 0.3% annually. Owners of film and TV producers lost 1% annually and radio investors burned down the house losing an average of 9% a year over the past five years. Ouch.

Ironically, given all the complaining that the Motion Picture Association of America does about piracy, my entire “it’s just that simple” thesis is spelled out in the back pages of very informative research report that the group issued on the state of the 2005 U.S. entertainment industry.

If you flip near the back to page 51, you’ll see a table of how many hours a year the average consumer “spends” on various forms of commercial entertainment. In the four years from 2001 to 2005, overall time spent on these pursuits rose to 3,482 hours per person from 3,356 hours, about a 4% increase. But that didn’t benefit all forms of entertainment equally. Here’s a table I’ve created from the MPAA report showing the change in hours per person spent by activity:

Cable and satellite TV +125
Consumer Internet +52
Home video +29
Broadcast and satellite radio +26
Wireless content +15
Video games +12

Consumer books 0

Movies (at the theater) -1
Consumer magazines -3
Daily newspapers -14
Recorded music -50
Broadcast TV -65

You get the same picture when you look at the average dollars spent by entertainment consumers (from a chart on page 53). Overall spending per person rose to $890.77 a year from $675.35, a healthy 32% increase. Spending on television (cable, video on demand etc) plus home video (DVDs) soaked up more than half of the total increase. Throw in Internet spending and you’ve accounted for 90%. No surprise then that spending on newspapers and recorded music actually declined.

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Illinois raids welfare to pay for failed video game violence legislation

This brings new meaning to the words “Don’t you have anything better to do?”. I am sick of politicians and their witch hunts. I rarely go into politics on my blog, but this just made me angry. I am becoming tired of all the propaganda surrounding vidogames and their “supposed” contribution to violence in society. It is even more disgusting when they start diverting funds to fuel their tirade from people who really need the money. Funny thing is that what they are doing to videogames is exactly how they viewed comic books back in the day, it is all relative. Politicians seem to need things to complain about.

On another note I think the reason their seems to be more violence today is that we are far too concerned with safety. Kids can’t even be kids anymore, you can’t trow snowballs without being suspended in school. Those of you who read my blog regularly probably remember the article about cops arresting little children for things that in the past would be viewed as nothing more then pranks and part of growing up.

As someone said on digg.com:

“when are people going to realize that video games aren’t the problem… if we are worried about what kids will do with violent or sexually explicit games then we obviously have absolutely no faith in the parents ability to educate their kids on those subjects.

Also, it is horrible that a government would take money away from people who need it (welfare debate aside) only to try to keep the idea that it isnt the parents responsibility to educate the kids.”

The Article:

When the State of Illinois was tardy in paying its legal bills after attempting to defend a law that regulated the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games, the Entertainment Software Association wondered about the reasons for the delay. Now they know: the state was scouring department budgets, looking for the $1 million it cost to defend the unconstitutional legislation in court. Yes, you read that right—the State of Illinois spent one meeeellion dollars of taxpayer money on the litigation even as the state budget was starved for cash in other, more pressing areas. And worse yet, they spent it on a bill which, when introduced, was plainly unconstitutional.

The grand total was reported this week in a Quad Cities Online article which revealed that “the governor raided funds throughout state government to pay for the litigation. Some of the areas money was taken from included the public health department, the state’s welfare agency and even the economic development department.” A state representative who attended recent hearings on the issue said that Gov. Blagojevich’s staff simply spread the legal bills around by sticking them to agencies which had funds left in their budgets—even if the agencies had nothing to do with the issue or the litigation.

The Illinois law in question was struck down by both a federal court and an appeals court. In the final decision on the case, the justices noted that the law used a set of simplistic criteria to evaluate video games. They even used God of War as an example of the law’s failings.

“Because the (Illinois law) potentially criminalizes the sale of any game that features exposed breasts, without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game’s social value for minors, distribution of God of War is potentially illegal, in spite of the fact that the game tracks the Homeric epics in content and theme,” the judges wrote.

Spending this sort of money on important causes is one thing; spending it on video game regulation approaches that have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional in other states is quite another. The situation might be more understandable were it not for the fact that Illinois could have easily seen this coming, either by paying attention to what other states are encountering or by opening a dialogue with the likes of the ESA. Instead of taking that cautious approach, the Governor decided to press on, and now the taxpayers will bear that burden. The fact that some of the money was pulled from public health and welfare only makes the situation worse.

Source

I also strongly urge people to read the following articles if you have further interest:

Is Modern Society More or Less Violent

Violence In Video games Is Not Going To Disappear

How-To Turn your iPod in to a Universal Infrared Remote Control

Sometimes, you look around at all these gadgets and in a rare moment of inspiration or madness, you look at them all a little different— connected in a way they are currently not, but perhaps should be, or at least “could” be. There might not be anything “new” but there are countless combinations of disparate technologies, and we think this is a great example of combining a couple of those.

This week’s How-To is a fun one, we take an iPod and turn it in to a universal infrared remote control which can be used to control all your home electronic equipment, or just about anything that uses a remote control, for example in our place we have our iPod controlling our TV, DVD Player, Direct TV, Ultimate TV PVR, Media Center PC, Xbox, XM Satellite Radio, Roomba and a few other random things like a Robot.

How did we do this? Basically, we “recorded” the “sounds” an infrared remote makes on a PC and then put them on an iPod as songs. Adding a special sound-to-IR converter then turns those sounds back to IR and allows you to use your iPod as a remote control. As an added bonus, it works up to 100 feet. It’s a slick all-in-one unit and we’re never going back to 6 remotes ever again.

Go to Engadget For The Guide

Free your Mac of Microsoft Office with NeoOffice

Mac OS X only: NeoOffice is a free, full-featured office suite for your Mac.

The suite includes most of the must-have applications that a lot of Mac users end up shelling out hundreds of bucks for in MS Office for Mac, like a word processor, spreadsheet app, presentation app, and a drawing program (all of which are compatible with their MS Office counterparts). NeoOffice is based on previously mentioned OpenOffice.org, but its design, integration, and even the installation are much more “Mac-like.” Like OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice can be a bit slow when it’s firing up, but in general it’s a really nice program.

Download Neooffice

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Speed up Adobe Reader 8

All you want to do is view that PDF, but Adobe Reader takes forever to load, especially on an older PC. If an Adobe Reader alternative isn’t a possibility for you, the Arsgeek weblog’s got a quick speedup tip for Adobe Reader 8’s excruciatingly slow load time. Just remove the “accessability.api” file.

To remove this ‘feature’ simply navigate to your %Program Files%\Adobe\Reader 8.0\reader\plug_ins folder, and rename (delete, copy elsewhere) the ‘accessability.api’ file. The same file exists, but in slightly different locations, in older version of Acrobat Reader.

Arsgeek warns that removing the accessability.api file will take with it Adobe’s ability to read documents out-loud. I’m willing to trade Adobe reading my documents out-loud like Ben Stein for the increase in speed. Goodbye, accessability.api!

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Make Windows Passwords A Little More Secure (All Windows)

To access the registry go to Start>Run..> type “regedit” then navigate to the locations that are specified and make the necessary changes. To those who have never modified the registry before a word of warning, create a system restore point.

Step 1: Set Minimum Password Length

You can force Windows to reject passwords that do not meet a minimum password length. Useful to help stop people from using trivial passwords where security is an issue. This is useful for network administrators
Open your registry and find the key below, if the Network sub-key does not already exist then create it.

Create a new binary value named ‘MinPwdLen’, and set the data to the minimum number of characters required for a password to be accepted.

Note: This does not apply to existing passwords, only new or changed.

Registry Settings

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Network]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Network]
Value Name: MinPwdLen
Data Type: REG_BINARY (Binary Value)

Step 2: Require Alphanumeric Windows Password

Windows by default will accept anything as a password, including nothing. This setting controls whether Windows will require a alphanumeric password, i.e. a password made from a combination of alpha (A, B, C…) and numeric (1, 2 ,3 …) characters.

Open your registry and find or create the key below.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value, called “AlphanumPwds” and set it according to the value data below.

Exit your registry; you may need to restart or log out of Windows for the change to take effect.

Registry Settings

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Network]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Network]
Value Name: AlphanumPwds
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disabled, 1=enabled)

10 dumb things users do that can mess up their computers

Takeaway: Users find plenty of ways to run into trouble, from gunking up their system with shareware to leaving it exposed to attackers to forgetting about using surge protectors. Share this list with your own users so they can sidestep preventable problems like these.

We all do dumb things now and then, and computer users are no exception. Inadvertently pressing the wrong key combination or innocently clicking OK in the wrong dialog box can change important settings that alter a computer’s behavior or even crash the system.

Nervous newbies are often fearful that one wrong move might break the computer forever. Luckily, short of taking a sledge hammer to the box, the consequences aren’t usually quite that dire. Even so, users often do create problems for their computers and for your network. Here’s a description of common missteps you can share with your users to help them steer clear of preventable problems.

#1: Plug into the wall without surge protection

Here’s one that actually can physically destroy your computer equipment, as well as the data it holds. You may think your systems are in danger only during an electrical storm, but anything that interrupts the electrical circuit and then starts the current back again can fry your components. Something as simple as someone turning on an appliance that’s plugged into the same circuit (especially a high voltage one such as a hair dryer, electric heater, or air conditioner) can cause a surge, or a surge may be caused by a tree limb touching a power line. If you have a power outage, you may experience a surge when the electricity comes back on.

You can protect your systems against damage from power surges by always using a surge protector, but it’s important to be aware that most cheap surge protectors will survive only a single surge and need to be replaced afterward. An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is better than a surge protector; it has a battery that keeps power flowing smoothly even when there’s an outage, to give you time to gracefully shut down.

#2: Surf the Internet without a firewall

Many home users plug their computers right into their spiffy new cable or DSL modems and hop onto the Internet without realizing that they’re putting themselves at risk from viruses and attackers. Every Internet-connected computer should be protected by a firewall; this can be a firewall built into the broadband modem or router, a separate firewall appliance that sits between the modem/router and the computer, a server at the network’s edge running firewall software, or personal firewall software installed on the computer (such as ICF/Windows Firewall built into Windows XP or a third-party firewall program like Kerio or ZoneAlarm).

One advantage of personal firewalls on laptop computers is that they’re still with you when you take the computer on the road and plug into a hotel’s DSL or cable port or connect to a wireless hotspot. Just having a firewall isn’t enough, though. You must also be sure it’s turned on and configured properly to protect you.

#3: Neglect to run or update antivirus and anti-spyware programs

Let’s face it: Antivirus programs can be a royal pain. They’re always blocking some application you want to use, you often have to disable them to install new software, and they have to be updated on a regular basis to do any good. Seems like the subscription is always expiring and prompting you to renew it–for a fee, in many cases. But in today’s environment, you can’t afford to go without virus protection. The malicious programs that AV software detects–viruses, Trojans, worms, etc.–can not only wreak havoc on your system but can spread via your computer to the rest of the network. In extreme cases, they can bring down the whole network.

Spyware is another growing threat; these are programs that install themselves on your computer (usually without your knowledge) and collect information from your system that is then sent back to the spyware program’s author or vendor. Antivirus programs often don’t address spyware so it’s important to run a dedicated spyware detection and removal program.

#4: Install and uninstall lots of programs, especially betas

You like to be on the cutting edge, so you often install and try out new software. Beta programs are usually free and give you a chance to sample neat new features before most people. There are also many freeware and shareware programs made available as Internet downloads by their authors. We know you’d never do it, but some users even install pirated software or “warez.”

The more programs you install, the more likely you are to run across ones that either include malicious code or that are poorly written and cause your system to behave improperly or crash. The risk is greater with pirated programs.

Even if you install only licensed, final-release commercial software, too many installations and uninstallations can gunk up the registry. Not all uninstall routines completely remove program remnants and at the least, this practice can cause your system to slow down over time.

You should install only the programs that you really need, stick with legitimate software, and try to minimize the number you install and uninstall.

#5: Keep disks full and fragmented

One of the results of installing and uninstalling lots of programs (or adding and deleting data of any kind) is that it fragments your disk. Disk fragmentation occurs because of the way information is stored on the disk: On a new, clean disk, when you save a file it’s stored in contiguous sections called clusters. If you delete a file that takes up, for example, five clusters, and then save a new file that takes eight clusters, the first five clusters’ worth of data will be saved in the empty space left by the deletion and the remaining three will be saved in the next empty spaces. That makes the file fragmented, or divided. To access that file, then, the disk’s read heads won’t find all the parts of the file together but must go to different locations on the disk to retrieve it all. That makes it slower to access. If the file is part of a program, the program will run more slowly. A badly fragmented disk will slow down to a crawl.

You can use the disk defragmenter built into Windows (Programs | Accessories | System Tools) or a third-party defrag program to rearrange these pieces of files so that they’re placed contiguously on the disk.

Another common cause of performance problems and application misbehavior is a disk that’s too full. Many programs create temporary files and need extra free space on the disk to operate. You can use Windows XP’s Disk Cleanup Tool or a third-party program to find and delete rarely used files, or you can manually delete files to clear space on your disk.

#6: Open all attachments

Some folks just can’t help themselves: Getting an e-mail message with an attachment is like getting an unexpected gift. You just have to peek inside to see what it is. But just as that package left on your doorstep could contain a bomb, that file attached to your mail message could contain code that will delete your documents or system folder or send viruses to everyone in your address book.

The most blatantly dangerous attachments are executable files–those that run code–with extensions like .exe, .cmd, and many others (see http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/fileextview.htm for a list of file extensions for different types of executables). Files that aren’t themselves executables, such as Word .doc files and Excel .xls files, can contain embedded macros. Scripts (Visual Basic, JavaScript, Flash, etc.) aren’t directly executed by the computer but are run by other programs.

It used to be that you could assume plain text (.txt) or graphics (.gif, .jpg, .bmp) files were safe, but not anymore. File extensions can be spoofed; attackers take advantage of the Windows default setting that doesn’t display common file extensions to name executables something like greatfile.jpg.exe. With the real extension hidden, it shows up as greatfile.jpg. So the recipient thinks it’s a graphic, but it’s actually a malicious program.

You should open attachments only when they’re from trusted sources and only when you’re expecting them. Even if the mail with the attachment appears to come from someone you trust, it’s possible that someone spoofed their address or that their computer is infected with a virus that sent the attachment to you without their knowledge.

#7: Click on everything

Opening attachments isn’t the only type of mouse click that can get you in trouble. Clicking on hyperlinks in e-mail messages or on Web pages can take you to Web sites that have embedded ActiveX controls or scripts that can perform all sorts of malicious activities, from wiping your hard disk to installing a backdoor program on your computer that a hacker can use to get in and take control of it.

Clicking the wrong link can also take you to inappropriate Web sites that feature pornography, pirated music or software, or other content that can get you in trouble if you’re using a computer on the job or even get you in trouble with the law.

Don’t give in to “click mania.” Think before you click a link. Links can also be disguised in phishing messages or on Web sites to appear to take you to a different site from the ones they really point to. For example, the link might say www.safesite.com, but it actually takes you to www.gotcha.com. You can often find out the real URL by hovering over the link without clicking it.

#8: Share and share alike

Your mother taught you that it’s nice to share, but when you’re on a network, sharing can expose you to dangers. If you have file and printer sharing enabled, others can remotely connect to your computer and access your data. Even if you haven’t created any shared folders, by default Windows systems have hidden “administrative” shares for the root of each drive. A savvy hacker may be able to use these shares to get in. One way to prevent that is to turn off file and printer sharing–if you don’t need to make any of the files on your computer accessible across the network. This is especially a good idea if you’re connecting your laptop to a public wireless hotspot. You can find instructions on how to do so at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1277222,00.asp.

If you do need to make shared folders accessible, it’s important that they be protected by both share-level permissions and file-level (NTFS) permissions. Also ensure that your account and the local administrative account have strong passwords.

#9: Pick the wrong passwords

That brings us to another common mistake that can expose you to attacks: picking the wrong password. Even if you don’t belong to a network where the administrator forces you to select strong passwords and change them regularly, you should do so. Don’t pick passwords that are easy to guess, such as your birthdate, loved one’s name, social security number, etc. Longer passwords are harder to crack, so make your password at least eight characters long; 14 is even better. Popular password-cracking methods use “dictionary” attacks, so don’t use words that are in the dictionary. Passwords should contain a combination of alpha, numeric, and symbol characters for best security.

A long string of nonsense characters may create a password that’s tough to crack, but if you can’t remember it, you’ll defeat the purpose by writing it down (where an intruder may be able to find it). Instead, create a phrase you can remember easily and use the first letters of each word, along with logical numbers and symbols. For example: “My cat ate a mouse on the 5th day of June” becomes “Mc8amot5doJ.”

#10: Ignore the need for a backup and recovery plan

Even if you follow all these suggestions, an attacker may crash your system or your data may be corrupted or get wiped out by a hardware problem. That’s why it’s essential that you always back up your important information and have a plan for recovering from a system failure.

Most computer users know they should back up, but many never get around to it. Or they make an initial backup but don’t update it regularly. Use the built-in Windows backup program (Ntbackup.exe in Windows NT, 2000, and XP) or a third-party backup program and schedule backups to occur automatically. Store backed up data on a network server or removable drive in a location away from the computer itself, in case of a natural disaster like flood, fire, or tornado.

Remember that the data is the most important thing on your computer. The operating system can be reinstalled and so can applications, but it may be difficult or impossible to recreate your original data. (See “10 ways to protect your data” for additional suggestions.)

Nonetheless, you can save time and frustration by backing up your system information too. You can create mirror images of your disks using popular ghost or clone programs. This will allow you to restore the system quickly instead of going through the tedious installation process.

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YamiPod: A Portable Itunes For Your Ipod

YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do. But long story short it is probably best described as a portable itunes.

All iPod generations were reported to be working under:

- Mac OS 10.2 or newer
- Windows 98SE or newer
- Any linux distribution with GTK 2.0

Here’s a brief description of the features in YamiPod:It is a stand alone program, no installation required.

- iPod is automatically recognized
- mp3 and AAC files can be copied to/from iPod
- read/write access to mp3 id3 and AAC infos
- playlist support (On-The-Go included)
- playlists import (PLS,M3U)
- playlists export (PLS,M3U)
- full unicode support
- auto-download new versions
- advanced song import/export settings
- 2 restore features
- built in music player
- iPod informations
- 2 search features
- remove duplicated tracks
- find lost music files
- easy ratings edit
- PC to iPod synchronization
- create and edit notes (with unicode support)
- automatically update song playcounts
- News RSS and podcasts to iPod upload
- Growl support (Apple only)
- export song lists to HTML or plain text files
- multiple iPods support
- Last.fm support

Download YamiPod

Free iPods from FreeiPods.com? Engadget gets the scoop

So Gratis Networks has set up a site called FreeiPods.com that is giving away your choice of an iPod mini, a 15GB iPod, or a $250 gift certificate to the iTunes Music Store. All you have to do is sign up, click on one of their offers, and then convince five other people to do the same. We smelled a scam in there somewhere, or possibly scamola, and since our whiny emails to the company asking them to explain how exactly this worked went unanswered, we decided to just call them up to try and sort things out.

The company rep we spoke to insisted that this thing was for real and that they had already given away about 400 iPods to people. To get it to work you actually have to sign up for one of their sponsors’ offers (like the Columbia House DVD club, the GM credit card, AOL for Broadband, etc.) and also get five other people to also take them up on one of their offers. Gratis Networks picks up a decent referral fee for every one that’s completed, and since it’s a lot harder than it sounds to also get five of your friends to sign up for AOL (for example), they only have to ship out free iPods to a relatively small percentage of people, while simply pocketing the cash for anyone who is able to only get four people or fewer to sign up (the company rep admitted that they lose money whenever someone gets five people to complete orders, since it means they have to ship out an iPod). Anyway, if you’ve got five friends you can convince to do this who also think they each have five friends they can convince to do this, you might just find yourself just maybe getting a free iPod.

Source

Note to my readers, go to your school and try and get all your friends to sign up. Even if they all sign up to AOL for one month (£14.99/$30 US) multiplied by 5 people would be $150. That is well below the price of practically any ipod. So even if you pay for your friend’s subscriptions you still end up saving money.