Harvard Develops P2P Client that uses Bandwidth as “Currency”

In theory this system would work quite well in reality it has many problems.

1) For those people who have ISPs who severely limit their upload speeds they would be uploading for the rest of their lives trying to gain back all they have lost. This is a valid problem in bittorrent even now and switching to this new system would make it even worse. At least with the way it is now you have the option of joining a private tracker which logs your bandwidth, most people who do this know they are capable of uploading at a sufficient speed and can raise their ratio out of the gutter fairly quickly. In the new system the bandwidth would be constantly logged and that would be bad news for those who can’t afford fast connections.

2) Like all systems it is vulnerable to being manipulated. Even now in bittorrent there is software out there to cheat on your ratios (www.greedytorrent.com). The same problem will arise with the proposed new system, if you put a limit on someone against their will they will find a way around it. At least with private trackers it is voluntary and since you are doing it of your own free will you are more likely to give back.

The article:

Written by Ernesto on August 30, 2007

Harvard researchers have teamed up with the Tribler team to work on a P2P client with BitTorrent support that uses bandwidth as a global currency. They released Tribler V4.1 yesterday.

Yes, Harvard, the richest University in the world recently started a new line of P2P research. They have an army of law professors to protect them, so unlike others, they must feel safe to do this controversial research in the land of the free and the home of the RIAA/MPAA.

The Harvard project is all about a fresh new approach. To be honest, have we seen a new trick since eMule and Bittorrent started? Things have clearly slowed down in the last years.

The Harvard researchers are currently working on one of hardest P2P problems, ensuring uploads. P2P dies or thrives depending on how much upload people donate. By introducing electronic “currency” for uploads they think they can make P2P HDTV Video on Demand possible. With the minor detail that we all have to switch to their client…

The latest version of Tribler enhances the standard tit-for-tat BitTorrent algorithms with something they call the give-to-get algorithm (PDF article). This new algorithm allows their users to benefit from a good ratio without using a central server like private BitTorrent trackers do.

Tribler users can still join every BitTorrent swarm and play the tit-for-tat game with old-school BitTorrent users. But, when they meet another Tribler peer they switch to give-to-get mode where the currency meter is running. This turns the Tribler network into a private Tracker network without the central server. This basically means, the more you share, the faster your downloads will go.

Every Tribler client keeps an eye on MByte counts of fellow peers. They gossip around about who is a leecher and who is a top dog, without the details of which Hollywood movie it was. The only information displayed about this in the GUI is a list in your profile of the “Top 10 Tribler Uploaders”. For the next version of Tribler they plan to turn that list of top dog uploaders into a decentralized trust system and enable users to correct typos and add tags to the content. In short, BitTorrent would go “2.0″.

But let’s first see if they can really handle network pollution and spam without a central server. It will be quite tricky to get such “Google PageRank” trust algorithms working in P2P.

Source

How the RIAA Hoodwinks the Courts, Legislature and Public

(or, “Why the RIAA is full of BS”)

The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants you to believe that unauthorized music downloads are responsible for the music industry’s recent decrease in sales and profits. It has two primary arguments (and since they made The War on Bullshit Blog, you can probably guess what I think of them…)

Individual Downloads

Its first argument runs as follows:

1. “The U.S. music industry loses more than $300 million per year to street piracy alone” (http://www.riaa.com/faq.php)
2. Peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading is way bigger than street piracy (http://www.riaa.com/faq.php)
3. Therefore, the U.S. music industry loses way more than $300 million per year to peer-to-peer downloading.

Whether this makes sense depends on how you calculate a loss. If, every time someone downloads a song, you write that up as a $1 loss, then the RIAA has a point… wait… something smells like bullshit!

A peer-to-peer download only represents a loss to the music industry if, were that download unavailable, the downloader would have made a music purchase. Furthermore, even if the downloader were to buy the song on iTunes for, say, $1, that doesn’t imply $1 profit for the music industry. Profit = Revenue – Expenses. A peer-to-peer download does not create any expenses for the music industry. Recording, manufacturing and marketing a CD does.

The RIAA is trying to hoodwink the public and lawmakers into thinking that it’s being victimized by downloading – that downloaders are stealing millions upon millions of dollars from the music industry each year. But it’s all bullshit. They can’t establish that P2P file sharing is causing their decrease in profits. This causal relationship constitutes a theory, one that can be studied scientifically. And guess what?

There is no scientifically defensible evidence that an individual P2P download affects the profits of the music industry.

At this point, individual downloaders are off the hook as far as tort law is concerned. If the RIAA cannot establish that the individual accused had the accused effect, and they can’t, there is no basis for a lawsuit. End of story. (I sure hope a few judges read this…)

File Sharing as a Social Phenomenon

However, it could be argued that while an individual downloader is not responsible for the music industry’s losses, the social phenomenon of P2P file sharing is. This could still form a basis to outlaw this fine pastime.

The argument the RIAA can draw on goes as follows:

1. Before P2P file sharing caught on, CD sales (or profits, or revenues, or whatever) were rising
2. After P2P file sharing caught on, CD sales (or profits, or revenues, or whatever) have been falling.
3. Therefore, P2P file sharing caused the fall of CD sales.

This isn’t really bullshit, it’s just false. More specifically, this is a classical logical fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc, a Latin phrase meaning, “after this, therefore because of this.” This is akin to saying, ‘I drank green tea before that big earthquake, therefore, drinking green tea causes earthquakes.’

There is no scientifically defensible evidence that P2P downloading as a social phenomena affects the profits of the music industry.

In fact, there is significant evidence to the contrary.

Economic study on the effect of music downloads

According to this new study: “the estimated effect of file sharing on sales is not statistically distinguishable from zero,” (p. 3). This is a formal way of saying that the authors found no causal link between P2P file sharing and industry losses.

To make this claim, the authors construct a variety of mathematical models to estimate the effect of downloading on music sales. They conclude: “Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample,” (p. 38) If you read the full paper, you will find that the authors cannot wholly reject a relationship between downloading and sales. This is a limitation of statistical reasoning – statistically, you can fail to find evidence of a relationship, but it’s much harder (potentially impossible) to show definitively that two variables are completely unrelated. Thus, conservatively speaking, this study indicates that, if there is an effect at all, it must be very small.

Thus, in the absence of scientifically defensible evidence to the contrary, the RIAA’s claim that music downloading is diminishing the music industry’s profits are bullshit.

Source (article continues on the blog I only copied the first page)

GetAmnesty.com: MPAA Extortion at its Finest

Written by Ernesto on August 27, 2007

The MPAA and their fellow anti-piracy organizations send out thousands of infringement notices. Only a fraction of these are played out in court, and those that do make it into court are settled at an early stage. So why not circumvent the whole legal system, and gently coerce people to pay for “amnesty”?

GetAmnesty.com: MPAA Extortion At It’s FinestThis is exactly what the suits at the MPAA must have thought, because they asked Nexicon to develop a program to convert infringement notices into cash.

The GetAmnesty program is a combination of both enforcement activities and efforts to turn infringers into paying “customers”. It tracks down copyright infringers by using a wide variety of methods. But, instead of sending out the regular infringement notices, they now include links for people to get amnesty. Basically they are asking to pay them an X amount of money, and they promise drop everything and go away.

Here’s what you read on the website, and allegedly in the infringement notices:

If you receive a notice that means that we have evidence of you infringing a copyright holder that we represent. Please stop and consider what such a paper trail could do to one’s future. We understand that this notice may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but we sincerely believe that signing our agreement is in your best interest.

I’m not sure how we’re supposed to call this.. extortion? Intimidation? They are clearly trying to scare people into giving their money to the copyright holders without clear evidence.

They might have an IP address, but this doesn’t mean anything. The MPAA, or any other anti-piracy organization can’t sue someone simply because he or she pays the bills for the internet connection. Several cases (example 1/2) were dropped already because of this argument. An IP address is not a person.

Andrew Norton, a spokesperson of the US Pirate Party, said in a response to TorrentFreak: “These efforts to continually alienate their consumers will not do major rights holding groups any favors. Programs such as this are thinly veiled extortion efforts, and represent further efforts by media cartels to shore up their crumbling business models by intimidation, and violation of users rights.”

Norton continues: “It is impossible for any program to determine if something is infringing copyright, or if it comes under fair use. With the recent probes into the john-doe lawsuits and their usage, it is clear that this is a pathetic new method to try and shore up the outdated perceptions of the rights holders, rather than trying to adapt and change to suit the times. It is no longer the 1940s, and unlike FM, media conglomerates cannot wish or bury the internet, and modern technology.”

The MPAA and other content owners will use these methods because it’s an easy way for them to make money, and they save quite a bit on legal costs too. In fact, the RIAA already uses a website called P2Plawsuits where people can settle their cases online. I seriously question the legality of these extortion tactics.

GetAmnesty.com was launched a few days ago. If people receive infringement letters with links to this site, please contact us. In the meanwhile you might want to take a look at what SiteAdvisor says about GetAmnesty… Phishing or other scams … and that’s exactly what it is.

Source

A commenter on torrentfreak said :

The real question is how exactly do users know this is genuine, and not some attempt from scammers to collect money.

It would be quite easy for anybody to start sending out phishing emails requiring you to settle for downloading copyrighted stuff by signing onto some website. Considering that one third of internet traffic is bittorrent that would make most recipients likely to fall for it.

This is actually a very real possibility and if you do receive one of these notices I suggest you follow it up by attempting to verify it’s origin. At the very least it will buy you some time….also if you do end up getting sued be sure to also take a look at some of my old posts about this very subject.

The links are listed below….

Sued By the RIAA or MIAA? Part 1
Sued By the RIAA or MIAA? Part 2

Fake Torrents Uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA

A $13 billion fantasy: latest music piracy study overstates effect of P2P

By Eric Bangeman | Published: August 22, 2007 – 11:17PM CT

A new study (large PDF) from the Institute for Policy Innovation takes a different approach to quantifying the cost of music piracy. Instead of just focusing on what the lost sales cost the record labels, the new study measures the impact of piracy on the US economy. The total price tag? A cool $12.5 billion in lost output, if you trust the study’s numbers.

Along with the multibillion-dollar loss, piracy also is hindering job growth, according to the IPI. The US economy will lose 71,060 jobs due to piracy, with almost 38 percent of those (26,860) in the recording industry. That amounts to $2.7 billion in lost earnings. Piracy also hits Uncle Sam—as well as state and local governments—right in the pocketbook, with at least $422 million in lost tax revenues.

Problematic assumptions

The study makes for some alarming reading, but it suffers from a few significant flaws. First and foremost, it appears to fall into the “illicit downloads == lost sales” fallacy, the view that each song obtained over a P2P network is a lost purchase. “Unfortunately, there is no precise measure of the degree to which consumers of pirated CDs would continue to purchase those CDs at legitimate prices,” according to the study. “While the degree to which these legitimate purchases would occur differs by market, it appears nevertheless that such purchases would comprise a very significant fraction of the total number of pirated CDs now purchased… In this study, the weighted average substitution rate used for the physical piracy of recorded music is 65.7 percent. It is then assumed that only 20% (1 in 5) of these downloaded songs would have been purchased legitimately if piracy did not exist.”

That’s a bit better than the one-to-one argument, but not by much. It essentially assumes that one of every five downloaded songs would have been purchased, were it not for file-sharing. Although a 20 percent figure may not look like much, it is still a percentage not justified by our own knowledge of file-sharing trends. The study needs to make a firm argument for why this percentage is so high. It’s a flaw similar to that in a 2006 study commissioned by the MPAA.

Note that the assumption cuts both ways. Not only does it assume many would-be sales, but it also ignores sales that do stem from file sharing. P2P users buy a lot of music, after all. Three out of four P2P users said that they bought music after downloading it online, with 21 percent of the respondents to the survey commissioned by the Canadian Record Industry Association saying that they have bought previously downloaded music on more than 10 occasions. So here again, we have data not being taken into account, data which would necessarily lower the study’s estimates.

Another study even goes so far as to argue that the effect of file-sharing on legal music sales is “not statistically distinguishable from zero.” Published this past February in the Journal of Political Economy, the study tracked the effects of 1.75 million song downloads on 680 albums. The researchers concluded that the availability—and even increased downloads—of music on P2P networks did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales. “Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album’s weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero,” the study’s authors reported.

If there was no such thing as piracy…

The IPI study also assesses the increased demand for music if piracy didn’t exist and assumes the market would remain as “intensely competitive” as it is today. The problem is that music fans are largely disenchanted with the market. By and large, music fans think that music is too expensive, and that much of what is available isn’t very good. 58 percent of those responding to a study commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine and the Associated Press said that music is declining in quality. And although the DRM situation is looking up these days, it can still be a confusing morass with unanticipated side effects for consumers, as the recently announced closure of the Google Video Store demonstrates.

Consumer apathy aside, there are other factors at work in the music industry. One of the biggest is the transition from sales of physical media to digital media. CD sales have dropped sharply since the beginning of the decade, and projections indicate that there’s no end in sight to the decline. Sure, downloads have picked up since 2004, but not at a rate that will come close to overcoming the slide in CD sales. The individual song download angle is largely ignored by the IPI’s study as well, which is fixated on sales of physical media.

The IPI has a history of pushing what it calls a pro-market agenda with its research, including one study asking if open source has reached its limits and another similar to that under discussion here that attempts to quantify the economic impact of movie piracy. Given its track record (which includes this gem from the aforementioned open-source study: “Open source will go the way of other IT industry fads that were once trumpeted as the way of the future, like Macintosh computers, business AI, 4GL programming languages and Y2K”) and ideological bent, the results of this study are rather unsurprising.

When the discussion over dollar figures and economic impact comes to an end, most people will agree that file-sharing is a real issue for the recording industry and that there is a financial cost that goes along with it. It’s also true that piracy has something of a ripple effect, reaching beyond the artists and record labels. But studies that overstate the economic effect of piracy do little to further the discussion over issues of copyright, file-sharing, and DRM and obscure the fact that the music industry still has some serious work to do on its business model.

Source

Make Photoshop Faster For Free

By Phillip Andrews, April, 2006

The prevailing attitude is that the only way to speed up Photoshop is to spend loads of money to buy the latest and best gear on the market. While it’s true that better, faster, and more expensive gear will always drive those pixels around the screen with more speed than lower-priced systems, this is only part of the story. Many dedicated Photoshop users can get substantial speed gains from their existing, albeit modest, equipment by simply optimizing their computer and software so that it runs Photoshop more efficiently.

So to make sure that you are getting the best from the bucks you have already spent, here is Shutterbug’s collection of speed-enhancing tips for getting the most efficient run out of your software and computer:

1) Allocate a Scratch Disk

Photoshop uses RAM memory to run itself, store picture information, and to save undo and History State steps. Unless you are working with particularly small photo files it won’t take too many editing changes before the RAM is completely used up. At this point Photoshop cleverly uses a portion of hard drive space as “fake” RAM. This is not a new idea. Most operating systems use the same approach (called Virtual Memory) to ensure that enough memory is available for running essential programs. Photoshop calls this extra memory a “Scratch Disk,” and correctly setting up the disk will provide immediate speed and efficient benefits.

To set your Scratch Disk, select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks. Then choose a drive that has the most free space from those listed in the pop-up menu. If you have other drives listed you can also allocate these as extra Scratch Disks. Photoshop will make use of the drive listed first until it is full and then move to the next drive, even if more memory is needed. Most imaging professionals who regularly work with large files install a specific “fast access” drive just to be used as a Scratch Disk by Photoshop.

2) Set RAM percentage

Photoshop shares the RAM on your computer with the operating system (Windows or Mac OS X) and any other programs running at the same time. The percentage designated in the Photoshop Memory & Image Cache preferences determines the upper amount of RAM memory that can be used by Photoshop. Most new users push this setting as high as possible, some as much as 90 percent, thinking that this will speed up the processing of their files.

Unfortunately if this allocation is set too high, the operating system, as well as Photoshop, may need to move information from the fast RAM memory to the slower hard drive memory while processing. This action is called “page swapping” as the data is moved back and forth between the different memory spaces, and results in Photoshop actually running slower.

If you experience slower performance when raising the percentage of RAM allocated to Photoshop, try reducing the total amount to 50-60 percent for systems with up to 2GB, and 70 percent for computers with 4GB of RAM. Remember that you have to restart Photoshop after making any memory changes to ensure that these alterations will take effect.

3) Defragment your drives

As images and files are saved and resaved to disk they tend to become fragmented. This means that rather than the whole file being saved in one continuous space on the hard drive the information is broken into bits and stored in several locations (where ever there is empty disk space). Later, when the file is reopened, the document is reconstructed from each of the individual pieces. This file fragmentation slows down the opening and saving of files, as well as the running of programs such as Photoshop, if they were fragmented when initially installed. You can overcome this problem by regularly defragmenting the drives you use to store your images and load your programs.

To defragment a drive in Windows XP: Click Start>All Programs>Accessories> System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. Choose the drive to be defragmented and then select the Defragment button.

To defragment a drive in Mac OS X: Despite the fact that the latest version of Mac OS X contains automatic defragmentation of files smaller than 20MB, most Apple users prefer to defrag their drives with third-party utilities.

4) Minimize History States

The Photoshop History palette is a great feature, especially if you make mistakes as often as I do. Each successive edit is recorded as a step in the palette, enabling you to step back through the changes, gradually reversing your edits as you go. But this great feature does come at a cost. Each step uses memory resources and, when you make complex changes to large files, you can imagine how much memory is used to store a collection of steps.

Thankfully Adobe provides a setting in the Edit>Preferences>General dialog that can be used to alter the number of History States (or undo steps) stored by your system. By default it is set to 20, but if you find that Photoshop is running slowly after making a few editing changes then try reducing the number. Less History States does mean less opportunity to reverse editing changes, but this action frees up memory resources and can bring new life back to a slow running machine.

5) Reduce the number of open files

It may seem like stating the obvious, but the more pictures you have open in Photoshop the more of the total resources of the machine is taken up just maintaining each open file. When you add in the memory used to ensure undo or multiple History States for each file, it is not too hard to imagine that you will very quickly run out of RAM, forcing Photoshop to use the much slower Scratch Disk space. To speed up the processing, make sure that you only open (and keep open) files that are essential for your current editing task.

6) Run Photoshop by itself

A simple measure to speed up Photoshop is to make sure that no other programs are running at the same time. Seemingly simple utilities such as iTunes, Outlook, and Word all chew up memory and processor resources that could be used to drive Photoshop more efficiently. The golden rule is that if the program is not essential for the editing task then close the software.

7) Alter the tile size

When Photoshop processes a photo it splits the picture into smaller image sections called tiles, and works on each in turn. By default the size of each of these tiles is 132KB. You can increase the amount of memory used for the processing of each tile by activating the Bigger Tiles plug-in.

To enable the Bigger Tiles plug-in: Close Photoshop and find the ~Bigger Tiles plug-in file in the following directories:
Mac OS: Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Windows: Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins /Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Now rename the file and in the process remove the tilde (~) from the title. Restart Photoshop. Now if you assign from 261MB to 1GB of RAM in the Memory & Image Cache preference, the tile size increases to 260KB. Increasing the allocation to more than 1GB increases the tile size to 1MB. Larger tile sizes reduce the amount of time Photoshop takes to process an image, especially on computers with more than 1GB of RAM.

Scratch Disk vs. Virtual Memory

Both Photoshop and the Windows XP operating system use hard drive space as extra “fake” RAM. Adobe recommends that Photoshop Scratch Disks be positioned on a different drive to the one used by Windows for its Virtual Memory system. On most setups the Windows swap file is stored on the Startup or C drive. To help with overall Photoshop and Windows performance, ensure that you don’t position the Scratch Disk on the same drive. To set the location of your Scratch Disk select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks and choose the drive to use from the drop-down menu. Remember don’t select Startup or C drive unless you have no other choices.

9) Alter the Image Cache setting

Photoshop uses a special Image Cache to help redraw high-resolution images quickly. Instead of displaying all the information contained in these big files, Photoshop creates lower-resolution versions of the photo that are then used to update the screen quickly.

You can elect to store from 1-8 cached versions of the photo. A value of 1 disables the caching. Higher values store multiple versions of the file, which in turn produces faster screen redraws. The default setting is 4, but inputting higher numbers will help speed up the redraw process.

When a high cache number is set, it will take longer to open files as Photoshop creates the low-resolution versions of the photo at this point. To alter the Image Cache setting select Edit>Preferences> Memory & Image Cache and enter a value from 1-8 in the Cache Levels text box.

Source (The source also includes images which this post does not)

Compare and merge files and folders with WinMerge

When several people are updating and making copies of the same files, multiple versions easily blossom out of control. Figuring out what’s changed, what hasn’t and merging it all back together can be a huge pain in the ass, but it doesn’t have to be. Say your kids downloaded images from the digital camera repeatedly to folders all over your hard drive. You and your co-worker lost track of who made the latest changes to that PowerPoint presentation. You want to merge the changes between two updated files into one.

Compare and merge folder contents

winmerge_context.pngYou’ve got two directories of photos downloaded from the camera – some were cropped and de-redeyed, some weren’t, new photos were taken and old ones re-downloaded. Here’s how WinMerge can help. First, in Windows Explorer, select the two directories of photos (in this example, c:\photos\ and c:\pics\, and choose “WinMerge” from the context menu. You’ll get a file listing that displays all the files in both folders, which are identical and which exist on the “left” or “right” folder.

Differentiate and merge text files

Not only can WinMerge detail differences in file listings, but it can also visually identify differences within files it can understand, like text files. This is especially useful to people like me who are programmers and helps us see changes we made to our code

Thank you, Lifehacker for finding this gem.

Source

Restarting Windows Without Restarting Your PC (Vista or XP)

A modern PC with Vista Home Edition takes about one and a half minutes to boot. An older machine with XP is about the same. That’s 30 seconds for the PC itself (the BIOS) to boot up, plus a minute for the Windows operating system to boot. Sometimes, you need to reboot Windows (e.g. when installing new software), but there is no need to restart BIOS, too. However, the default is to reboot both. (That’s called doing a “cold boot,” rather than a “warm boot.”) There’s a trick that works on both XP and Vista to get it to do a warm boot instead, thus saving you 30 seconds per cycle.

The trick is to hold down the SHIFT key when invoking the restart.

Windows Vista: Select Start, then hover over the right arrow that is to the right of the padlock icon until the pop-up menu appears that contains “restart” as one of it’s choices. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “restart” choice.

Windows XP: Select Start. Select “Shut Down…”. Change the drop-down combo box under “What do you want the computer to do?” to “Restart”. Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “OK” button.

Source

Half Of Consumers Are Not Aware Of Online Threats?

Frankly, I believe the number is real…there are many people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing on a computer. All they know how to do is maybe open a word document, check e-mail and maybe surf the internet. Even then I still see people who don’t even know how to attach a file to an e-mail…some will argue that no one is dumb enough to click on a spam e-mail because they ask their friends and they say they always ignore spam. Well obviously if your friend clicks on an e-mail he thinks it is real but it is in fact spam the answer he gives you would be inaccurate.

To him he hasn’t clicked on any spam e-mails but the only way to know would be to sit beside him and watch….The problem with security is that if the person themselves does not know what they are doing no amount of software can compensate for that. Software and computers are only as effective as the person using it.

By Todd Haselton | Published: August 14, 2007 – 03:30PM CT

Nobody is a stranger to messages from wealthy folks in Nigeria offering millions of dollars, and we all know that if we need information on Viagra or penny stocks, all we have to do is check our inboxes. Of course, those e-mails are just trash, and we all delete them, right? Well, not according to a recent survey sponsored by Microsoft.

The May 2007 survey, which included 2,482 American adults, revealed that 17 percent of U.S. adults have fallen victim to an Internet scam. Worse yet, 81 percent of the victims admitted that they were at fault by opening e-mails or sending information to companies that seemed legitimate just because they had professional logos or recognizable names. With all of the anti-virus software pre-packaged on new computers and firewalls built into operating systems, how is this still happening?

The biggest culprit appears to be lack of knowledge of the threats. The survey found that 58 percent of the adults polled weren’t even aware of online threats and scams, and of those that were aware, many had little knowledge about online threats. Either they have excellent spam filters and firewalls, or we have a bit of a problem on our hands.

Last week Ars covered a Consumer Reports article which stated that spyware, spam, viruses, and other threats have cost US households $7 billion over the last two years. It also found that 38 percent of American households had virus infections during the past two years. Perhaps though, it isn’t the users themselves that are to blame. Perhaps those Lords across the pond were right in suggesting users hold hardware and software vendors, as well as ISPs, responsible for the lack of user security against scammers.

Microsoft attributes much of the problem to users’ inability to see the crimes happening around them. In a street, people can see a thief lifting a wallet out of someone’s pants, but online, we often aren’t aware of the threats around us, which is why Microsoft suggests users update their antivirus software, install firewalls, and “think first, click later”—what we call practicing skeptical computing.

Source

Poll: Would you use a forum if I added it to my site?

If I put up a forum to help people with any technical questions they may have and various other things (open to any suggestions) would you use it?

So basically comment with either a simple yes or no if I get enough answers I’ll have it up in a few days.

The forum would be free (obviously) I just want to know if people would actually make use of it…so before I waste my time doing this I want to know if it is worth it. I already get a few people asking me questions via the contact form and I think using a forum would be better.

if I get about 10 or 20 people who are all for it I may also include one of those forum RPGs and store to use your points to do things like make your name glow etc.

Also if this flies I may build a whole site off a free host with proper pages for tutorials and everything where I would allow you to submit your own tutorials etc.

Google selleth then taketh away, proving the need for DRM circumvention

It’s not often that Google kills off one of its services, especially one which was announced with much fanfare at a big mainstream event like CES 2006. Yet Google Video’s commercial aspirations have indeed been terminated: the company has announced that it will no longer be selling video content on the site. The news isn’t all that surprising, given that Google’s commercial video efforts were launched in rather poor shape and never managed to take off. The service seemed to only make the news when embarrassing things happened.

Yet now Google Video has given us a gift—a “proof of concept” in the form of yet another argument against DRM—and an argument for more reasonable laws governing copyright controls. How could Google’s failure be our gain? Simple. By picking up its marbles and going home, Google just demonstrated how completely bizarre and anti-consumer DRM technology can be. Most importantly, by pulling the plug on the service, Google proved why consumers have to be allowed to circumvent copy controls.

A consolation prize

Google contacted customers late last week to tell them that the video store was closing. The e-mail declared, “In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.”

The message also announced that Google Checkout would issue credits in an amount equal to what those customers had spent at the Google Video store. Why the quasi-refunds? The kicker: “After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.”

See, after Google takes its video store down, its Internet-based DRM system will no longer function. This means that customers who have built video collections with Google Video offerings will find that their purchases no longer work. This is one of the major flaws in any DRM system based on secrets and centralized authorities: when these DRM data warehouses shut down, the DRM stops working, and consumers are left with useless junk.

Furthermore, Google is not refunding the total cost of the videos. To take advantage of the credit Google is offering, you have to spend more money, and furthermore, you have to spend it with a merchant that supports Google Checkout. Meanwhile, the purchases you made are now worthless. To do it right, Google should either provide users with non-DRMed copies of the videos they bought, or they should refund the money entirely. The current option is hardly acceptable, however. Would you buy a TV, a car, a book, or anything if the guy who sold it to you could take it back at any moment so long as he offered you a coupon?

Did you buy Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game to commemorate that bit of NBA history? Enjoy staring at an unplayable file come Wednesday. But hey, at least you get $2 back to go buy underwear!

Copyright Office, here we come

Since the death of the commercial part of Google Video will render thousands and thousands of purchases useless, the Library of Congress will have no choice but to consider the matter when they return to their triennial review of the DMCA. To date, the Library of Congress has granted exceptions to the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA in instances where DRM has rendered something completely unusable, such as eBook DRM which can render eBooks useless for handicapped people. Recent exceptions from the last review are detailed here. Of note: the right to bypass DRM on products that no longer work properly was considered but rejected last time around.

Now, thanks to Google, we have a case study, a real-world example we can point to and say: “Hey, this isn’t right.” It features one of the world’s most innovative and financially powerful technology companies bagging out on users. It features thousands of consumers buying DRMed goods in earnest, and it ends with a bang; Google decides to exit the market, leaving consumers with a load of useless goods.

Needless to say, this could happen with any player. Google could float its store if it wanted to, but it is exiting the business. What happens when Amazon does the same? Or Apple, or the next guy?

If this isn’t further proof that parts of the DMCA should be gutted, at the very least it is a strong sign that the Library of Congress needs to address this issue. Congress should be thinking about this brave new world of “unproperty” where you’re charged good money to “buy” products that, in reality, you’re only renting until AverageCorp gets bored of the business.

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