Month: June 2004

Man Charged For Google Adwords Extortion

Michael Bradley, a California resident who claims to have developed a program to generate fraudulent clicks on Google’s Adword service, was arrested at the company’s offices and charged with extortion.

Bradley had threatened to sell the software to spammers if Google did not give him US$150,000 (€123,400).

The fact that the software is designed to trick Adwords into registering more clicks, and therefore more revenue for the customer from Google, coupled with trying to extort money out of Google by then threatening to sell the software earned him a speedy arrest and freedom on a US$50,000 (€41,100) bond.

He’s pleading not guilty.

More about adwords

Mixing on Mobiles with Orange Fireplayer

Orange are launching a new service – Fireplayer, which allows users to download tracks and remix them by adding effects. Attendees at Glastonbury were the first to get their hands on the new service, and it launches to the rest of us on July 1st. Fireplay currently offers 20 tracks for remixing, but the company is hoping to expand the range to offer more choice.

Fireplayer is available as a free download from the Orange World portal. Your finished masterpiece than then be saved to your mobile as a TrueTone ringtone to impress/offend your friends/travelling companions.

Also launching on 1st July will be Orange’s new music service, the imaginatively titled Music Player, where subscribers will be able to download and listen to music directly to their mobile phones. Given that the service will launch with only 200 tracks will no doubt be somewhat of a hindrance to uptake. However, Orange see mobile music as critical to their future and have a history of successful innovation and so to expand the range of available music, they are conducting talks with all major labels. Tracks for Music Player are a proprietary format, but perhaps this is the beginning of music labels seeing mobile phones as a secure platform for content distribution?

Tracks for Fireplayer cost UK£3.50 (€5.25), music downloads for Music Player cost UK£1.50 (€2.25)

Orange

US Senate Passes Pirate Act Without Hearing

The US Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) act has been passed by the voice vote in in the Senate on Friday. The act still has to be passed by the House and signed by George Bush, but already carries a US$2 million (€1.64 million) budget for civil lawsuits against violators in 2005.

The act allows the Department of Justice to sue alleged copyright infringers, in addition to those cases brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA are naturally very pleased that they have some backup in the hundreds of cases they have bring launching.

“I commend the passage of these common sense proposals that offer flexibility in the enforcement against serious crimes that damage thousands of hard-working artists, songwriters and all those who help bring music to the public,” Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “These acts will provide federal prosecutors with the flexibility and discretion to bring copyright infringement cases that best correspond to the nature of the crime, and will assure that valuable works that are pirated before their public release date are protected.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation rightly points out on their website that no money from any of these cases goes to the artists whose work is being infringed.

Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator who is one of the sponsors of the act, has a related project up next, the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act. This act sets out to penalise companies for producing technologies that can potentially be used to pirate content – such technologies include CD writers and iPods. Aside from the obvious loss of personal freedom and backwards technological step, the EFF is concerned that the act could be misused – if your competitor manufactures something that you don’t like, say the iPod for example, then you can claim that it has the potential to infringe copyright.

The Department of Justice

The Electonic Frontier Foundation

AOL Buys Advertising.com

America Online Inc, the world’s largest distributor of disposable CDs and apparently also an interactive services company, has announced that it has signed an agreement to hand over US$435 million (€359 million) in cash for Advertising.com, the internet’s third largest advertising network.

Advertising.com plans and optimises online campaigns for more than 800 advertisers, and also works with some 1500 online publishers to bring them 110 million unique visitors every month. About 70% of all US internet users encounter Advertising.com’s work in the course of a month’s surfing.

This is AOL’s biggest deal since it merged with Time Warner, and shows that there may be some life in online advertising after the bubble burst after all. AOL, having ditched its broadband product and now staring at declining dial-up business, is understandably keen to drive growth in other areas, and believes that content and services are what it’s best at.

Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO, America Online, Inc., said, “Online advertising is showing very strong growth across the industry, and the acquisition of Advertising.com underscores AOL’s determination to strengthen its competitive position. Advertising.com has built a profitable, scalable and highly attractive business. This acquisition is a strategic move that will bolster AOL’s advertising business, building on the strides made in the past year.”

Advertising.com

Company Websites Spreading Spyware

Symantec are warning web surfers of a new trend in spyware and adware infections – visitors to a number of corporate websites are getting a bit more than they bargained for.

It’s claimed that organised crime groups in Eastern Europe are hacking corporate sites and installing code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer to install spyware and other unwanted applications on visitors’ PCs without their knowledge. Spyware can be used to harvest personal details about a computer owner such as bank details, whilst adware can be used to hijack browsers and display unwanted advertising to users.

Microsoft has not yet released a patch for the flaws, leaving millions of PCs open to infection. Although the browser flaw is well publicised, there is still some confusion surrounding how hackers are installing the script on web servers running Microsoft’s IIS service in the first place.

The ISC incidents site reports: “We still do not know how the IIS servers are originally infected with the JavaScript or the modification to the configuration files… The visitor’s browser is re-directed to the Russian URL listed below [Ed: Clearly we’re not showing this] where a known Trojan program (msits.exe) is downloaded, along with some additional malware. Again, if the user’s machine is updated with current AV software, this malware is detected and blocked.”

Without listing the companies responsible for spreading the infection, they state surprise that the unwitting culprits “include businesses that we presume would normally be keeping their sites fully patched.”

Free anti-spyware and anti-virus software:

Ad-aware

AVG anti-virus software

A browser with less security holes in it:

Mozilla 1.7

Hotmail Enters the Storage Wars

Hotmail is the latest contender to offer large amounts of storage to its subscribers – up to 2 gigabytes if you pay a US$19.95 (€16.46) subscription. Users of the free Hotmail service will get 250mb, as a response to GMail’s 1 gig, advertising-funded, service.

By GMail’s standards, 250mb seems almost mean, but then Hotmail aren’t going after the “never delete anything” crowd. The new 2 gig incarnation of Hotmail will be called Hotmail Plus, and will allow users to send attachments of up to 20mb – and will have no graphical adverts on the web frontend.

As a bonus, all 170 million subscribers will get email anti-virus checking and MSN Calendar. It’s about time that the anti-virus product was integrated as that’ll cut down on much of the infected spam that is flooding mailboxes worldwide. A frightening release from BT yesterday stated “46% of all email traffic in Europe will be spam in 2004 and by 2008 this will rise to 71%.”

Interestingly, a Neilsen report in May had the number of Hotmail subscribers down at around 34 million.

Hotmail Plus

Microsoft Asks for Hearing Delay

Microsoft have asked the European Union, by way of a 100 page appeal, to delay a Commission ruling regarding its distribution of Windows Media Player.

If the stay request is granted, it may well delay the the EU court’s final verdict by several years – during which time Microsoft will be able to continue distributing Windows Media Player in its usual manner. Obviously this renders the EU ruling against Microsoft completely useless.

The ruling was intended to force MS to share interface information with competitors so that they could integrate their own media players with Windows, and to provide a version of Windows which does not have Media Player pre-installed.

Brussels also fined the company €497 million (US$602 million), but this will make little impact on a company with at least €50 billion (US$60 billion) in cash reserves.

Since the appeal may take up to five years, which is effectively forever in digital media terms, Microsoft will be able to expand the installed base still further without sharing information with competing software manufacturers, or providing a choice of media player to those who don’t want WM9 – or WM11 as it may well be by the time the ruling comes into effect. Microsoft originally had (from March 24 this year) 90 days to offer Windows without Media Player, and 120 days to begin sharing information.

Europa

Five May Buy Flextech

Jane Lightning, speaking at a Royal Television Society event last night, dropped an unsubtle hint that Five are considering buying Flextech, the content arm of Telewest.

While the rest of the industry is still speculating about the proposed merger with Channel 4, Lightning, Five’s chief executive said “Flextech could be one of the options we are looking at.”

Well, it either is one of the options they’re looking at or it isn’t. I’ll fetch my deerstalker, pipe and magnifying glass for a second and say that they most definitely are looking at it, otherwise she wouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place. Oh, and it’s rumoured that Five execs paid a visit to Bill Huff, the fund manager who holds 20% of Telewest, in March.

Flextech would bring Bravo, Challenge, Living, Trouble and the half of UKTV that isn’t owned by BBC Worldwide.

With C4, Sony US and Disney also sniffing after Flextech, they’d better get a move on.

Telewest are keen to sell the company to get out of debt and concentrate on its upcoming marriage to NTL, and are looking for about UK£750 million (€1.1 billion) for it.

Flextech

Qwest to Launch VoIP Service to Boost Internet Telephony

Qwest Communications are to launch OneFlex, a new voice over IP (VoIP) service, in July. The product is aimed at both business and home consumers, and will require VoIP phones to use. OneFlex has conference calling, voice mail and other added features, all controlled from a web interface.

Qwest are looking to roll the service out to 20 US metropolitan areas by the end of the year, but is launching in Boise, Denver and Phoenix. It uses the Qwest iQ Network and is intended to appeal to customers who want to get their broadband and telephone service from a single source, and is of course cheaper than standard long distance.

VoIP is facing a slow start in the US – a recent survey from Ipsos-Insight revealed that 50% of public did not know what VoIP was, and some 60% of the people who did know were confused about how it actually worked.

About Qwest

SCEA President: Cheaper Broadband is Critical for Future Consoles

Sony Computer Entertainment America’s (SCEA) president, Kaz Hirai has said that broadband, and cheap broadband too, is going to be essential for future of games consoles – and you can bet he’s talking about the PS3.

His presentation to the Congressional Internet Caucus focussed on Sony’s content strategy for their next iteration of the absurdly popular PlayStation console brand. Sony, and indeed most console and games manufacturers, are placing a lot of emphasis on online gaming as it carries a lot of potential for microtransactions – a constant stream of small charges for extra content, access to games and services. The notable exception here is Nintendo, who have done their best to hide the fact that there is a broadband adaptor for the GameCube and will even happily prosecute UK games stores if they dare try to sell one.

To encourage the growth of online gaming, and therefore the microtransaction business model, Hirai argues that broadband subscription fees need to be cheaper.

Hirai emphasised Sony’s commitment to online gaming by saying “For the next generation console, online is going to be like air conditioning in a car. You’re going to need it.”

Kaz Hirai’s presentation