ALBANY — Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography.
The move is part of a groundbreaking agreement with the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, that will be formally announced on Tuesday as a significant step by leading companies to curtail access to child pornography. Many in the industry have previously resisted similar efforts, saying they could not be responsible for content online, given the decentralized and largely unmonitored nature of the Internet.
The agreements will affect customers not just in New York but throughout the country. Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the nation’s five largest service providers, with roughly 16 million customers between them.
Negotiations are continuing with other service providers, Mr. Cuomo said.
The companies have agreed to shut down access to newsgroups that traffic in pornographic images of children on one of the oldest outposts of the Internet, known as Usenet. Usenet began nearly 30 years ago and was one of the earliest ways to swap information online, but as the World Wide Web blossomed, Usenet was largely supplanted by it, becoming a favored back alley for those who traffic in illicit material.
The providers will also cut off access to Web sites that traffic in child pornography.
While officials from the attorney general’s office said they hoped to make it extremely difficult to find or disseminate the material online, they acknowledged that they could not eliminate access entirely. Among the potential obstacles: some third-party companies sell paid subscriptions, allowing customers to access newsgroups privately, preventing even their Internet service providers from tracking their activity.
The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo’s office, posing as subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. Verizon, for example, warns its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators’ complaints, the attorney general’s office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks of negotiations.
By pursuing Internet service providers, Mr. Cuomo is trying to move beyond the traditional law enforcement strategy of targeting those who produce child pornography and their customers. That approach has had limited effectiveness, according to Mr. Cuomo’s office, in part because much of the demand in the United States has been fed by child pornography from abroad, especially Eastern Europe.
“You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed,” said Mr. Cuomo, who promised to take up the issue during his 2006 campaign. “These are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, assault victims, there are animals in the pictures,” he added. “To say ‘graphic’ and ‘egregious’ doesn’t capture it.”
“The I.S.P.s’ point had been, ‘We’re not responsible, these are individuals communicating with individuals, we’re not responsible,’ ” he said, referring to Internet service providers. “Our point was that at some point, you do bear responsibility.”
Representatives for the three companies either did not return calls or declined to comment before the official announcement of the agreements on Tuesday.
Internet service providers represent a relatively new front in the battle against child pornography, one spearheaded in large part by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Federal law requires service providers to report child pornography to the National Center, but it often takes customer complaints to trigger a report, and few visitors to illicit newsgroups could be expected to complain because many are pedophiles themselves.
Last year, a bill sponsored by Congressman Nick Lampson, a Texas Democrat, promised to take “the battle of child pornography to Internet service providers” by ratcheting up penalties for failing to report complaints of child pornography. The bill passed in the House, but has languished in the Senate.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
A Network to Make an Environmental Poin
On Wednesday, Discovery will introduce Planet Green, a new cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living. It is the highest-profile cable channel introduction of the year, and an equally risky one. By wrapping itself in the planet, Discovery is betting that “eco-tainment” will appeal to viewers.
Planet Green will replace the Discovery Home Channel in more than 50 million homes. Eyeing the public’s increased interest in environmental issues, Discovery is confident that it can attract more viewers with green-themed programming.
“This is an eco-tainment channel,” said Eileen O’Neill, the general manager of Planet Green. “It’s a lifestyle and entertainment channel that’s designed to activate people in the green space.”
It is also intended to engage advertisers, many of whom have green-themed marketing messages to share with viewers.
“Green is a category companies want to be in,” said Gary Lico, the chief executive of CableU, an online service that analyzes cable networks. “Whether you’re an automaker or a bank or a petroleum company, somewhere in your marketing plan is something referring to the environment.”
But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel, Discovery announced last month. G.M.’s Chevrolet brand is a “premier sponsor” of “Greensburg,” a documentary series about a tornado-damaged town that is rebuilding with an eye to the environment. As part of the deal, G.M. vehicles will be integrated into some programs, and Discovery will produce short-form videos about the company.
Ms. O’Neill said the company has “very thoughtful conversations” with any advertiser who shows an interest in the channel.
“We’re thinking about everyone being better — not necessarily perfect,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that G.M. sells a number of vehicles that address fuel efficiency or feature hybrid technology.
David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, added: “If the standard is perfection, we’ll all fail. The journey is to do a little bit better.”
That attitude is in line with the channel’s mission, which is to “take green to the mainstream,” said Tom Carr, the senior vice president for marketing of the channel.
Planet Green will replace the Discovery Home Channel in more than 50 million homes. Eyeing the public’s increased interest in environmental issues, Discovery is confident that it can attract more viewers with green-themed programming.
“This is an eco-tainment channel,” said Eileen O’Neill, the general manager of Planet Green. “It’s a lifestyle and entertainment channel that’s designed to activate people in the green space.”
It is also intended to engage advertisers, many of whom have green-themed marketing messages to share with viewers.
“Green is a category companies want to be in,” said Gary Lico, the chief executive of CableU, an online service that analyzes cable networks. “Whether you’re an automaker or a bank or a petroleum company, somewhere in your marketing plan is something referring to the environment.”
But some of Planet Green’s advertisers could raise eyebrows. General Motors, maker of the Hummer, is the “exclusive automobile sponsor” of the channel, Discovery announced last month. G.M.’s Chevrolet brand is a “premier sponsor” of “Greensburg,” a documentary series about a tornado-damaged town that is rebuilding with an eye to the environment. As part of the deal, G.M. vehicles will be integrated into some programs, and Discovery will produce short-form videos about the company.
Ms. O’Neill said the company has “very thoughtful conversations” with any advertiser who shows an interest in the channel.
“We’re thinking about everyone being better — not necessarily perfect,” Ms. O’Neill said, noting that G.M. sells a number of vehicles that address fuel efficiency or feature hybrid technology.
David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery Communications, added: “If the standard is perfection, we’ll all fail. The journey is to do a little bit better.”
That attitude is in line with the channel’s mission, which is to “take green to the mainstream,” said Tom Carr, the senior vice president for marketing of the channel.
Underdog Taps YouTube to Make Election Close
Was Steve Novick the first major YouTube political candidate? O.K., he didn’t quite win the Democratic Senate nomination in Oregon, and there was more to his unusual campaign than YouTube — in fact, most things about it were unusual, starting with the candidate.
Mr. Novick lost the May 20 primary by three percentage points, but political pros say that for the first time in a statewide race, YouTube had the crucial multiplier effect, turning an under-financed campaign into a serious contender. His ads received far more attention on the Internet than through his few television spots, offering a new template for insurgent candidates.
“YouTube plus netroots equals Steve Novick,” said Jennifer E. Duffy, managing editor of the Cook Political Report. (Netroots fuses the words Internet and grassroots to describe a style of political activism.) “YouTube is the only way he got any traction.”
Not that this will be easy to duplicate. It worked because of a candidate, a strategy and a set of ads that were all clever, oddball and appealing.
Mr. Novick, 45, a wisecracking former government lawyer, stands 4-foot-9, his looks are something short of matinee-idol and he has a hook for a left hand. The Democratic establishment preferred a better-known candidate, Jeff Merkley, speaker of the Oregon House, who won the primary and will face the Republican incumbent, Gordon Smith.
Mr. Novick, who had never run for office, had little name recognition or money. “I said, ‘I’m a short guy with a metal hand, I don’t look like other candidates — let’s use that,’ ” he said.
His campaign put out a press release in pirate-speak, and his campaign buttons showed a hook and a Web address, votehook.com. His slogans included “the candidate with the tough left hook” and “politics as unusual.”
His media consultant, Steve Eichenbaum, made a set of quirky ads drawing attention to the candidate’s height and his hook, and they were broadcast in January, long before the campaign heated up.
That ad purchase cost just $60,000, said Jake Weigler, a Novick strategist, but the campaign posted the ads on its site and on YouTube. “We wanted to get a viral movement behind it,” he said.
The most popular ad shows Mr. Novick chatting in a bar with a man who is trying to open a beer. Mr. Novick, talking all the while, grabs the bottle, casually pops the cap with his hook and returns it to his startled companion.
Bloggers and talk show hosts praised the ads and linked to them. The beer ad alone collected more than 150,000 hits on YouTube. The most popular Merkley ad was seen on YouTube about 3,600 times.
The mainstream media started covering Mr. Novick. He rose steadily in the polls and ultimately raised more than $1 million — a respectable sum, though far short of Mr. Merkley’s.
“We don’t know how many people who saw the ads were Oregon voters, as opposed to people in Norway,” Mr. Weigler said. “But the impact on YouTube was substantially larger than people seeing them on their TV screens, and that was something new.” RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Mr. Novick lost the May 20 primary by three percentage points, but political pros say that for the first time in a statewide race, YouTube had the crucial multiplier effect, turning an under-financed campaign into a serious contender. His ads received far more attention on the Internet than through his few television spots, offering a new template for insurgent candidates.
“YouTube plus netroots equals Steve Novick,” said Jennifer E. Duffy, managing editor of the Cook Political Report. (Netroots fuses the words Internet and grassroots to describe a style of political activism.) “YouTube is the only way he got any traction.”
Not that this will be easy to duplicate. It worked because of a candidate, a strategy and a set of ads that were all clever, oddball and appealing.
Mr. Novick, 45, a wisecracking former government lawyer, stands 4-foot-9, his looks are something short of matinee-idol and he has a hook for a left hand. The Democratic establishment preferred a better-known candidate, Jeff Merkley, speaker of the Oregon House, who won the primary and will face the Republican incumbent, Gordon Smith.
Mr. Novick, who had never run for office, had little name recognition or money. “I said, ‘I’m a short guy with a metal hand, I don’t look like other candidates — let’s use that,’ ” he said.
His campaign put out a press release in pirate-speak, and his campaign buttons showed a hook and a Web address, votehook.com. His slogans included “the candidate with the tough left hook” and “politics as unusual.”
His media consultant, Steve Eichenbaum, made a set of quirky ads drawing attention to the candidate’s height and his hook, and they were broadcast in January, long before the campaign heated up.
That ad purchase cost just $60,000, said Jake Weigler, a Novick strategist, but the campaign posted the ads on its site and on YouTube. “We wanted to get a viral movement behind it,” he said.
The most popular ad shows Mr. Novick chatting in a bar with a man who is trying to open a beer. Mr. Novick, talking all the while, grabs the bottle, casually pops the cap with his hook and returns it to his startled companion.
Bloggers and talk show hosts praised the ads and linked to them. The beer ad alone collected more than 150,000 hits on YouTube. The most popular Merkley ad was seen on YouTube about 3,600 times.
The mainstream media started covering Mr. Novick. He rose steadily in the polls and ultimately raised more than $1 million — a respectable sum, though far short of Mr. Merkley’s.
“We don’t know how many people who saw the ads were Oregon voters, as opposed to people in Norway,” Mr. Weigler said. “But the impact on YouTube was substantially larger than people seeing them on their TV screens, and that was something new.” RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Sunday, May 25, 2008
German Parents Offer Baby on eBay
BERLIN (Reuters) — German police are investigating a couple after their 8-month-old son appeared for sale on the auction Web site eBay.
Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, west of Munich, said Saturday that the boy’s mother, 23, said the auction listing had only been a joke. But he said the baby had been put in state custody while the police were investigating.
A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”
The opening bid was one euro, $1.58. There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, the police said.
The mother was quoted in the Bild newspaper as saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They’ve taken my son to a hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”
Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, west of Munich, said Saturday that the boy’s mother, 23, said the auction listing had only been a joke. But he said the baby had been put in state custody while the police were investigating.
A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”
The opening bid was one euro, $1.58. There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, the police said.
The mother was quoted in the Bild newspaper as saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They’ve taken my son to a hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”
Global Dreams for a Wireless Web
SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Yahoo Gets Ready for Proxy Fight
Yahoo nominated 9 of its 10 existing directors for re-election to the company’s board on Thursday, setting the stage for a showdown with dissident shareholders at its annual shareholder meeting.
Yahoo also postponed its annual meeting from July 3 and said it now expected to hold it at the end of July.
The Internet media company also disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders other than the investor Carl C. Icahn planned to nominate candidates to its board. Yahoo said it did not believe these shareholders had complied with its company bylaws.
Mr. Icahn, who recently amassed 10 million Yahoo shares and options to buy an additional 49 million, started a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board with directors who would reopen merger talks with Microsoft.
Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo this month.
Yahoo also postponed its annual meeting from July 3 and said it now expected to hold it at the end of July.
The Internet media company also disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders other than the investor Carl C. Icahn planned to nominate candidates to its board. Yahoo said it did not believe these shareholders had complied with its company bylaws.
Mr. Icahn, who recently amassed 10 million Yahoo shares and options to buy an additional 49 million, started a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board with directors who would reopen merger talks with Microsoft.
Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo this month.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
MORE INFORMATION
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