Copy Protection – Page 4 – Digital-Lifestyles

GNER Publishes Passwords In Customer Magazine

GNER Publishes Passwords In Customer Magazine Hot on the heels of yesterday’s story about the ‘world’s greatest military hacker’ comes this tale of advanced doltery from train operator Great North Eastern Railway (GNER), who managed to publish their system passwords in a magazine available to thousands of passengers.

The April/May edition of their freebie passenger magazine, Livewire, positively invited hackers to come and do their devilish work, with an article on their operator’s control centre in York being illustrated with photographs showing mainframe and computer passwords written on a whiteboard.

Red faced and flapping like Fred McFlapster wearing flares in a gale force wind, William Higgins, editor of Livewire, surprised us all by declaring that including the picture was a mistake, insisting that the highly competent GNER technology team had already rectified any problems.

Martin Grey, technical services manager in GNER’s information systems department, claimed that passwords were changed before the magazine was published, ‘We quickly changed the passwords and user accounts so no one outside could get into our corporate data.’

‘The procedure in terms of our internal security was not being followed and we took quick steps to remedy that,’ he added.

A GNER spokesman later confirmed passwords were no longer being written bold and large on whiteboards and – presumably – their photographers will no longer be invited to go around snapping confidential information for free magazines.

GNER Publishes Passwords In Customer Magazine GNER, owned by the Sea Containers Group, provide high-speed intercity train services along Britain’s East Coast main line, linking England and Scotland along a route of almost 1,000 miles.

Of their annual 15 million passengers every year, eight million are calculated to be business travellers, with the free magazine enjoying a circulation of more than 100,000.

A deeply unimpressed Phil Robinson, chief technology officer at security specialist Information Risk Management, commented that it was unusual to see passwords emblazoned on whiteboards, although it’s commonplace to see office monitors flapping with Post-it notes containing security information.

‘Mainframes are a sensitive part of any organisation and contain the crown jewels of data a business might want to protect,’ he warned.

Robinson suggested that companies need to work out a coherent security password policy and insist that employees use secure – but memorable – passwords, with a lock-out policy stopping repeated wrong password entries.

Microsoft’s ‘At Work’ site offers a series of tips for creating passwords, advising against using combinations of consecutive numbers or letters or adjacent letters on a keyboard such as “qwerty.”

The site also recommends avoiding any word that can be found in the dictionary, in any language, or replacing letters with numbers or symbols that look like the letters such as M1cr0$0ft or P@ssw0rd as hackers are wise to these tricks.

Instead, Microsoft advises coming up with a passphrase – a sentence you can remember, like “My son Aiden is three years older than my daughter Anna” – and then using the first letter of each word of the sentence to create ‘msaityotmda.’

It then advises mixing and matching a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters that look like letters to come up with a hacker-challenging password like M$8ni3y0tmd@.

(Your writer now hastily goes off to change his own passwords…)

GNER
Creating stronger passwords

Gary McKinnon, Wood Green’s Biggest Hacker Faces Extradition

An unemployed Scottish man alleged to have carried out “the biggest military computer hack of all time” will appear in a London court today.

Clearly not one to merely dabble, Gary McKinnon, 39, faces extradition after being accused of gaining illegal access and fiddling about with files on no less than 53 US military and NASA computers over a 12-month period from 2001 to 2002.

Using software downloaded off the Internet, McKinnon allegedly hacked his way into almost 100 networks operated by NASA, the US Army, US Navy, Department of Defence and the US Air Force, with the US government estimating that his antics have cost around one million dollars (£570,000, €790,000) to track down and fix.

Originally from Milton, Glasgow, the north London resident was indicted in 2002 by a Federal Grand Jury on eight counts of computer-related crimes in 14 different States.

The indictment claims he successfully hacked into an Army computer at Fort Myer, Virginia and then indulged in a veritable orgy of hacking merriment after obtaining administrator privileges.

McKinnon is alleged to have transmitted codes, information and commands, deleted critical system files, copied username and password files and installed tools to gain unauthorised access to other machines before finishing off with a flurry and deleting around 1,300 user accounts.

In New Jersey, it’s claimed he hacked into the Earle Naval Weapons Station network and plundered 950 passwords a few days after 9/11, which resulted in the entire base being effectively shut down for a week.

With a sense of the dramatic, Paul McNulty, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced that “Mr McKinnon is charged with the biggest military computer hack of all time” at the time of his indictment in 2002.

Investigators found that many of the computers he allegedly hacked were ‘protected’ by easily guessed passwords, and although sensitive information was downloaded, no classified material was released.

Investigators found no evidence of data being offered to foreign governments or evil terrorist organisations, prompting his solicitor, Karen Todner, to suggest that the motivation for the extradition is political with the intent to make an example of McKinnon.

“The Crown Prosecution Service has the power and opportunity to charge Mr McKinnon, a British citizen, with offences for which he could stand trial in this country,” she said.

“However, they have chosen not to pursue this course of action and are allowing the American authorities to apply for the extradition of a British citizen,” Todner added.

If extradited and found guilty, McKinnon could face a maximum penalty of five years in the slammer and a £157,000 (~US $288,249.48 ~ €233,953.42) fine.

The Future of Sony Network Music and Players: Interview

Sony StreamMan We sit down with two of Sony’s senior people; one from network music services, the other personal audio; and explore where Sony are with their digital music – content & players – and what their moves will be to recapture their previous crown.

StreamMan services is that people are listening on the mobile phone and in the morning and in the afternoon and then you see this very strong usage pattern during the working hours in the morning and people are clearly listening to StreamMan over the PC in the office. And Gregory was talking about people streaming music within the home environment so I think what we will see is some of the personalisation aspects of StreamMan brought into the home environment.

We are definitely working on how we blend the technologies that power them. Since we started out with two services at the same time, what I’d said was “Let’s let them develop independently first and then we will take the technologies that underlie each and make the best combined service offering at the appropriate moment.”

I think that there is an obvious opportunity within Connect to offer some kind of streaming, some sort of Connect radio service. The user interface of the mobile phone is very simple, it is so small that the like/dislike functionality of the Stream Man. Intriguingly the other environment that would really benefit from that is if you are doing it on your home theatre. Because the television is a sit back device and not a lean forward device; in the middle ground where you are sitting at your PC making your play list, researching the artists, doing this, doing that. I am not sure that the sheer simplicity of the like/dislike is the right way to go. It is a much more passive environment and lo and behold we see people listening to Stream Man in the office. So we are still in the early days of experimenting but in terms of digital lifestyles what we have got to find is what do people want to do, in which circumstance and then make either a combined service offering or separate service offerings depending on what they want. The most important thing for us at the beginning was to develop the services, get them out into the market then we would be able to learn about how people want to use them and then we will be able to package the different solutions according to different market segments.

It is still early days. It is very exciting to have both projects under the same roof.

DL: And with the Stream Man where you say people are streaming the content as they are travelling are they? On the mobiles?

RA: Let’s imagine on the way to work – the journey to work listening to your favourite channel, getting to the office, listening to your channel in the office and later on in the afternoon you are back out and about and have your mobile with you, maybe create a new channel or re-edit an old one or something. It is very clear that there is this office listening pattern.

DL: When they are portable they have got some bundle deal where they are not paying for the GPRS? or how does that work to make it economically viable for the user?

RA: Actually that is one of the challenges in the Finnish market because in Finland by law you are not allowed to subsidise the handset; you have to price the data separately from the service so it is a little bit clumsy from the user point of view. We haven’t been able to do much bundle offering a little promotional stuff.

When we rollout in other environments and we are not subject to those legal constraints then the obvious thing to do is offer different packages that offer you so many hours of mobile, unlimited web, included data charges, just a simple pricing structure. So you can imagine a five, ten, fifty Euro package that gives you different amounts of each. Our market research clearly indicates that that is what people want and we would have done that in the pilot market if we were allowed to, but, they legislate against that.

DL: That bundle idea is quite interesting we are looking at Napster To Go which I have got a moral objection to the idea of not owning the content. But maybe that is a generational thing, I don’t know. I am not looking for an answer as to whether it is right or wrong, but when I was sent a review (version of Napster To Go) a few months ago and the courier arrived at 4.00 in the afternoon, I had plans for the evening. As it turned out, I completely wiped out the plans I had for the evening and spent five/six hours on Napster To Go downloading stuff, because it was like being on the original Napster again. In those days of you know the passion of discovering new music and being able to play around with it. Is that the way you see Connect service going as well? Having it all in price for access to content?

RA: I don’t want to speculate about what we might and might not launch, but, it is very obvious that once you have got the delivery engine and if you have got people interested in discovering music in that way then we have got to look at it.

DL: And ATRAC3 is able to limit the amount of the time that the content can be on a device.

RA: No that comes through the digital rights management system.

DL: So ATRAC3 doesn’t . . . . .

RA: ATRAC3 is just a compression CoDec. The open MagicGate the digital rights management system – the new digital rights management system we are calling MARLIN, it is part of the Coral consortium and will . . .

DL: I see an ocean theme coming here . . .

RA: Yes it is, and every member of the Coral consortium will launch its own DRM system but it will be compatible and work with common standards. And that is what consumers want. They want to know that if they buy something here, they can use it there and we are working towards. Now one of the things that obviously we need to do is to be able to do timed out content and at the moment Open MagicGate can’t do timed out content.

There was a time and you mentioned it that you had moral objections to not owning the music and people do still look at it like that and timed out was an unpopular concept. But when you begin to look at the other way and say “Hey, look what I can do!” and then it becomes quite convenient. So there is this big debate going on “Do people really want to own ones and zeros or do they want access to ones and zeros?”

DL: What is the answer?

RA: I don’t know. Actually the answer is both. The answer is that some people want to buy and some people will want to have access. We shall see.

I think that the key thing is to offer ease of use, high quality, security and Connect certainly does that.

DL: Good. The EPG I think is a fascinating area. Talking to the Project Manager of the Digital TV trial down in Wales; I am sure you have been keeping an eye on that where they switched off a small area of Wales and converted everyone over to digital receivers. He was saying that one of the interesting things that has come out there is the variations of EPGs and how when you start to have lots of products as we have spoken about already in a digital era, one way to differentiate is through the strength of the interface. What are you doing on that front?

RA: I am not really in a position to talk about our plans there. Let me just say that I couldn’t not agree with you more. I think that it is vital dimension when we start getting into digital television because we go, not only does digital television add a dimension to the quality and picture, it also adds . . . . . .

DL: Hopefuly, not always.

RA: It can, if by Sony.

DL: (laughs) It depends on the broadcaster as well.

RA: I understand, but it has the potential and certainly my experience of it was a much more stable and brighter picture. But you really begin to get into the question of “What information can I get and what can I do with my programming?” Particularly when you add DVD recorders or personal video recorders and then you can bring this utility of time-shifting programming; creating your own personalised channels; getting alerts; programming remotely, learning about something and saying “Oh I forgot to programme that” and going to your mobile phone .. . . that there is a whole new world that is beginning to open up and I think that it is going to be a very important consumer expectation in the future.

Now exactly how we do that and all the rest of it I am not quite yet in a position to discuss to your listeners, but really, very, very important in the future.

DL: One of the things that has become clear to me here is Sony’s focus on the “cross media bar” across devices. We say it on the PSP on the train; we have seen it on the Qualia devices as well. That seems like something that is EPG but a source-based EPG if you like – you have got have some way of navigating – we are talking about Digital TV and channels now but obviously, we are looking a few years ahead, we are not talking about channels we are talking about many, many sources of content. In an infinite sea of content how the heck do you know what to watch?

RA: We should reverse roles here.

I wish you would reverse roles here because that is one of the things that motivates us in all of this because, it is not just your broadcast content, it is going to be your own personal media; it is going to be your stored files; it is going to be your package media and it is also going to be the media that you will access through IP TV because people will begin to see a blend of programme content and search-based content. And I don’t think that people necessarily want on the TV interface to do the kind of lean forward keyword search basis thing that you do on the PC. We have to think on new protocols of search and that is where we get back to some of the things that we are doing with StreamMan.

The whole idea of that is that you choose according to mood and context. We are just at the very, very beginning of developing a new way of thinking about how you entertain yourself. You can see this if you look through some of the channels on StreamMan, Music for Drivers, you know, party music, relaxing music and then you get a chance to personalise. We are beginning to research “How do you bring that thought process to video and does that provide a new protocol how people get their entertainment?” Because you are certainly going to look at your EPG and see what is on and what are people showing me, maybe I am not interested in that, let’s watch something funny. We are doing a lot of work in that area right now but how do you develop that kind of access to entertainment content and give it the sheer simplicity of the StreamMan interface on the mobile phone. And it is this curious paradox of the very large screen, which is a lean back experience. and the tiny screen of the mobile experience have a lot in common in that people don’t want to have that intensive, you know, you said you spent the evening with your Napster ToGo because you are discovering, your are clicking and you are making playlists and you are looking at the artists, you are remembering “Oh gosh I haven’t heard that for ages, haven’t heard that for ages”, and you make it all up. That is a very intensive interactive experience. It is not how people relate to television, nor to their mobile phone. So we are doing a lot of work in that area and in terms of digital lifestyle, that is exactly where we are going.

DL: Interesting on the Napster To Go having spent those five hours, I haven’t subsequently used the service. There is that completely intense experience and then “Right OK, well I have got the rest of my life to live now”. So you do have to have – for an ongoing basis of tuning on content, it has to be a much more relaxed attitude.

RA: Try this like/dislike – it works but the whole idea and the very foundation of the networks services business that I run across the board, is that you have got the great products; you have got what the network can do for you and now how do you imagine new things you can do with the products; new dimensions for competing and it is all about ease of use and entertainment functionality. This is where Sony as an entertainment brand really begins to come to the fore. This is how we think and this is what we do.

We are really, really confident – we have only just begun to see the beginnings of change in this. We are going to look back in a few years and say “How clunky; how mechanical; how linear”, because now it is so much easier, so much non-linear, so much more mood and entertainment based and so much easier.

DL: That is interesting that mood based stuff. I was talking to somebody else, I can’t remember who it was, and it was exactly that idea that music is to do with moods. It is quite interesting because they had launched in a certain way and that had been successful for them but then they realised that the mood is really what people listen to. It was MTV and Hell you would think they would understand that from the word go and it is only now that they are starting to change their programming.

RA: In fact I am going to a lecture this evening in London at the Royal Institution called “Swan Songs” and it is about the relationship between music and Alzheimer. People have been using music to try to unlock . . . .

DL: Right, because it is so central to the way that people are . . . . .

RA: Exactly and they start out – there is a project there called “Song Trees” where it is a cross-generational questionnaire with grandchildren being asked to go to their grandparents and say “What was the first song that you remember? What was the first song on the radio that you listened to? Can you remember how you felt about it at the time? What was the context?” And lo and behold it is mood and situation. I came across this with a Professor of Music there of the University of Sussex actually and I showed him the StreamMan interface and he nearly fell off his chair and he said “You have no idea how powerful what you are doing is”. And we started discussing and that is why he invites me to this thing at the Royal Institution this evening and what I unlocked is twenty years of medical research into this; understanding how the brain actually processes auditory signals and the impact that music can have. So we’ve taken the lid of this subject and it’s absolutely fascinating, absolutely.

DL: Good. On the final question, because you have been very generous and given me a lot of time, I will be quick.

With the music players, one thing that – I went through a stage of being a little too obsessed with recording stuff, audio, I mean, I am recording now but you can understand why I am doing that. But this idea of recording conversations with people and I won’t get into the privacy discussion because I think that is quite another question and it’s nothing to do with manufacturers – a change in moral code maybe. But I notice that the new player doesn’t have the record ability on there.

GK: Our products, both hard disc and Flash memory-based devices don’t include an encoder, so you can’t record digitally with it.

DL: And what is the reason behind that?

RA: There are two reasons. We cover two other segments of the market which are extremely key for us, and a pure digital recording function which is Minidisc and what we call IC devices using also a chip but purely for dictation function and we have got other plans for the future.

DL: So sit and wait. Interestingly I have had one of these (Sony k750i) on loan while I am here, what is this, the 750 or I am not sure what it is called but it has audio recording in it as well. So whether it is actually going to mould into the mobile phone as an audio recorder; the quality you get from this isn’t quite what you are getting from 128 (kbps) . . .

RA: You get it on all the phones today, mostly. What you need to look at also I think is – there are lots of brands like Samsung, for example, or iRiver, Creative, etc who have the encoding function as granted, it is not necessarily coming from a real consumer demand. Because if you look at the young target for example which present today more than 60% of the volumes . They buy a Flash memory player or they buy a Hard disc or they buy an iPod or whatever, because they want to listen to music, so encoding function can be good for certain population At the same time we believe that encoding function needs also to deliver a very high level of sound quality and for this we believe that Minidisc is today the best digital recording device that is on the market.

It’s the only one to have, for example, to have linear PCM function . . . .

DL: My view is that people are enjoying receiving media at the moment – where it becomes really exciting is where they are generating it themselves. User generated content, I think, is an area you can’t ignore.

RA: I am not saying that we won’t do it, but just not yet.

DL: Great. Thank you both for your time.

Recording of the interview (38Mb) (41 min)

Google Web Accelerator Gets Flak, Website Goes Down

It was a bad weekend for Google as the entire site was rendered unavailable on Saturday night and their new Web Accelerator application drew criticism on privacy and security concerns.

The free Web Accelerator app was designed for broadband users to speed up access to Web pages by serving up cached or compressed copies of sites from Google’s servers.

Within hours of release, critics were pointing to a flaw that meant that users could be served cached copies of private discussion groups or password-protected pages.

The issue was first discovered when users of Backpack, a wiki-like service for individuals and small businesses, complained that their Web pages were suddenly disappearing.

Jason Fried of 37signals, the company behind Backpack, discovered that Google’s Web Accelerator was behind the problem, explaining in his company’s blog, “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page – including links like ‘delete this’ or ‘cancel that.’ And to make matters worse, Google ignores the JavaScript confirmations.”

A clearly miffed Fried continued, “So, if you have a ‘Are you sure you want to delete this?’ JavaScript confirmation behind that ‘delete’ link, Google ignores it and performs the action anyway.”

Deeply unchuffed, Fried complained that “Google’s Web accelerator can wreak havoc on Web-apps and other things with admin-links built into the UI.”

Other users of Google’s tool also found themselves loading pages previously cached by other users on Internet forums – letting them view that user’s account information and private messages (Web Accelerator doesn’t cache secure Web sites written in “HTTPS”, so online transaction sites were unaffected).

Web publisher have raised concerns that, if Google is caching the publishers content and readers are using the Google cached version to access the information, the number of people that the server logs are reporting as accessing their content may not truly reflect the number of people reading their site. If this is the case, there would be a direct hit on the publishers advertising revenue.

Conversely, there are others claiming that there were other problems associated with the application’s ability to prefetch Web sites that are never viewed by a user – this could inflate page view numbers and exaggerate views of advertising banners.

Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of Web products, acknowledged the problems while downplaying the threat, saying that it had only affected a small number of sites.

“It looks worse than it is. We’ve cached the page with that username on it. But you are not actually signed in; you couldn’t operate as that person,” she added, before cranking up the PR spin machine, “We’re committed to provide users the utmost of integrity in security and privacy, and we’re working with urgency to solve this problem,” she added.

The program is currently no longer available from Google, with a notice on the Web Accelerator homepage saying, “We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.”

Sadly, things went from bad to worse on Saturday night when the world’s leading Internet search engine shut down from 6:45 to 7 p.m. eastern time, with some users experiencing longer outages.

It wasn’t just the search engine that had gone down – Gmail, Google News, Froogle and the entire caboodle of Google’s services had all vanished off the face off the earth.

Curiously, when some surfers typed in ‘google’ they found themselves being redirected to a SoGoSearch page, sparking rumours that the site had been hacked.

Google spokesman David Krane pooh-poohed such talk, declaring, “It was not a hacking or a security issue,” while insisting that that the problem was related to a DNS (Domain Name System) problem.

Google Web Accelerator
Google speed bump draws scorn

Broadcast Flag Knocked Back By US Court

Today, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) does not have authority to prohibit companies from making computer and video hardware that doesn’t comply with the Broadcast Flag. This was to come into effect on 1 July, this year.

As far back as 2002, representations were made to the FCC by the content industry to restrict the use video content on US Digital TV sets, as the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, as it was named then, crossed the line“.

Despite having had some notice on this, today’s ruling will be a shock for content owners.

We spoke to John Enser, Partner in Media and Communications at Olswang, “It isn’t the first time that the FCC have had one of their decisions overturned. There are usually two type of ruling; a firm no, or a softer ‘you haven’t done it right this time, but there may be ways it can be done.’ This at first glance, this looks like a firm no.”

We equated it to either a door being slammed, or it being politely pushed closed, but left ajar. It appear as if it’s the big slam.

Is this the end of the road for the Broadcast Flag? Probably not thinks John Enser, “They can either appeal, or they could go back to Congress to give them the powers.” We’d imagine it’s probably more likely Congressmen will be getting phone calls today as content owners are fierce lobbyists in Washington. When we put this to Cory Doctorow, European outreach officer of the EFF he felt it was less likely, “The only option open to Hollywood is to find a senator so suicidal that they are prepared to force a law that will break their delegates television sets.”

Ren Bucholz, EFF Policy Co-ordinator, America told us that the EFF were “shocked and delighted” by the ruling. In particularly “by the pro-public interest language used” and “unanimity of all three judges voting the same way.” He went on to wonder what it meant to the future of the FCC, “possibly leading to a trimming of their wings.”

A number of calls to the MPAA were not returned before publication.

As to what will happen to all of the TV and computer equipment that has been manufactured in readiness for 1 July is unclear, as is whether the FCC will be compelled to rebate the manufacturers of the effected equipment.

We’ll leave the closing words to Cory Doctorow, “Now the Broadcast Flag is dead, it is essential that the content industry doesn’t introduce the same restrictions into Europe, via the back door of the DVB specification.”

Court ruling FCC

(photo credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Sony PSP Review: PlayStation Portable – Not Just Games

We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.

Sony have produced a portable games console which on its own merit is going to sell a lot of units. However it has the possibility of becoming a portable media hub that will give even Microsoft a jolt by driving into their Portable Media Center market.

The unit isn’t small, but small enough so it could just about fit inside a large coat pocket. It’s got a fantastic wide screen that is extremely crisp and sharp, 4.3 inches across, supporting 480 x 272 pixels and 16.77 million colours.

The system uses Sony’s 1.8″ UMD optical disk which comes in a protective sheath (like a minidisc). They’re small enough so you could easily carry a few around with you (though don’t eject them unless there’s something solid and accessible beneath you as they have a tendency to fly out and disappear somewhere awkward). There’s also a Memory Stick due (32MB supplied) to allow game saves and other features.

It’s also got WiFi (or to be pedantic IEEE 802.11b which is the 11Mb/s older version) built-in that can be set-up in AdHoc mode allowing game play with other PSPs, or in Infrastructure mode which goes through an access point. Though there doesn’t seem to be any Internet utilities on the device yet (apart from a network update section, which allows the unit to update its system software from Sony i.e. your WiFi connection must connect to the Internet). However it is rumoured that the Opera browser is being ported and there’ll be a firmware update for that, email and calendaring.

The system looks like a USB memory device when attached to a PC (which basically gives access to the Memory Stick) and you can store audio and video on it. Sensibly, Sony support MP3 directly on the PSP, though it will also support ATRACplus encoded music. Interestingly, if someone decides to produce UMD music disks, they only support ATRACplus and linear PCM). Video is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC on the UMD and MPEG-4 SP, AAC on the memory stick.

The CPU runs up to 333MHz and seems to have the grunt when needed.

Multiple languages are supported (including system, video, subtitles, etc) but it seems that game menus are hardcoded by the manufacturer, so if it’s say, a Japanese game, it will have Japanese menus even though the system settings are in English.

Media Center
Once the PSP has real Internet capability it will be a media powerhouse, the screen size is about right for watching movies on the go. You could do this now by converting a current MPEG-2 (DVD) to MPEG-4 and storing it on the memory stick (ignoring all legal ramifications), but in future it’s more than likely you’ll be able to stream movies (or audio) directly to the unit. Sony as a music publisher and movie house, is likely to want to sell its content to a market of portable viewers – it owns both ends of the stick.

Of course, Internet is the key, as stated previously the only utility Sony provide, is to update the firmware of the PSP itself, it’s completely automatic (once WiFi has been configured). The unit goes to Sony’s site, pulls down the new firmware to the memory stick and then loads it into the unit from there.

We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.

Look out for a further piece that we’ll be running over the next few weeks on the pros and cons of importing a PSP.

Toshiba Quantum Key Server To Secure Video

The clever-clogs at Toshiba Research Europe have announced that they have been successful in applying quantum cryptography to the transmission of video and voice over IP.

This means that it will be next to impossible for hackers to “tap” into voice and video files streamed over the net.

White coated boffins at Toshiba’s Cambridge UK labs demonstrated their Quantum Key Server system, which involves encoding bits of encryption data onto particles of light (photons).

This ultra secure technology looks set to revolutionise digital security by replacing the current distribution methods for keys, which are needed to decrypt secure messages.

Toshiba’s quantum video link increases the security of communication systems by encrypting every single video frame with a unique digital key – so cracking one frame of a video would be useless unless all the other frames were cracked too.

The secrecy of each of these keys is ensured by quantum cryptography, an ultra-secure key distribution method.

Dr Andrew Shields, head honcho of the Toshiba group developing the system, said, “Corporate networks are increasingly vulnerable to the theft of keys from the desktop, either by hacking, Trojans or fraudulent employees. The Toshiba Quantum Key Server mitigates this risk by allowing frequent key refresh.”

“The Toshiba Quantum Key Server can be used to enhance the security of not just video and speech, but also a wide range of other high bandwidth data communications, ranging from sensitive legal documents to medical and tax records.” he added.

Quantum cryptography also allows the key distribution link to be monitored for tapping and other skulduggery, and although we can’t pretend to understand half of what the good Doctor is on about, we liked this bit:

“Imagine if you received a letter, you opened that letter and read it, there is no way of telling if someone has read that letter en route. When you encode the information on single particles, the letter self destructs whenever someone else reads it.”

“I sometimes say it is like the messages in Mission Impossible,” he added, “If anyone tries to read the messages, they self destruct.”

Toshiba has so far received “good feedback” from government and financial institutions shown the demonstrations, although commercial implementation looks to be some years away.

Toshiba Europe Research

Legal Action for UK P2P File-Sharers

In a never-ending quest to stem the flow of illegal file sharing, the UK record companies’ trade association, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), has announced that is taking legal action against another 33 illegal filesharers in the UK.

The legal action coincides with the IFPI’s (BPI’s international counterpart) announcement of action against 963 illegal filesharers in 11 countries.

This latest action brings the total up to 90 who have faced legal action since its campaign against Internet piracy began last year.

The UK recording industry started its campaign to spank pesky filesharers in October 2004 when it announced legal action against 26 illegal music swappers.

Those cases have all now been settled, with defendants shelling out more than £50,000 (US$94,600, €73,200) total in compensation.

The BPI ramped up the pressure on March 4 this year, declaring that it intended to pursue proceedings against 31 more illegal filesharers. The offenders were sent details of the BPI’s legal claims against them yesterday after their identities were revealed by their Internet service providers.

Sensing blood, the BPI also intends to proceed against another 33 illegal filesharers and will be going to the High Court next week to seek disclosure of their identities.

The 33 new cases include users of the popular KaZaA, DirectConnect, BearShare, SoulSeek, Grokster and Imesh peer-to-peer applications.

All of the accused are alleged to have been indulging in an orgy of uploading involving hundreds or thousands of music files illegally and face civil action for an injunction and damages.

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor wagged his finger in a threatening manner and intoned, “We have warned people time and again that unauthorised filesharing is against the law. Anyone who is engaged in this activity faces having to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. It’s now easy to get music online legally. We will maintain our campaign until the message gets across.”

Try as we might, we still can’t get the words, “Stable door”, “horse” and “bolted ” out of our heads here.

BPI
IFPI

Broadcast Flag “Crossed The Line”, FCC told by US Appeals Court

A US appeals panel has challenged new federal rules which require certain video devices to incorporate technology designed to prevent copying digital television programs and distributing them over the Internet.

US Appeals Judge Harry T Edwards delivered a slap across the wrists of the Federal Communications Commission by saying that that it had “crossed the line” with its requirements for anti-piracy technology in next-generation television devices.

The anti-piracy technology, known as the broadcast flag, will be required after July 1st for televisions equipped to receive new digital signals. Many personal computers and VCR-type recording devices will also be affected.

The broadcast flag would permit entertainment companies to designate, or flag, programs to prevent viewers from copying shows or distributing them over the Internet.

Two of the three judges on the District of Columbia Circuit panel said the FCC had not received permission from Congress to undertake such a sweeping regulation, and questioned the FCC’s authority to impose regulations affecting television broadcasts after such programs are delivered into households.

“You’re out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?” fumed Judge Harry Edwards. Judge David Sentelle was equally unimpressed: “You can’t regulate washing machines. You can’t rule the world.”

The groups challenging the FCC’s broadcast flag regulation include the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

They argue that the FCC has over-stepped its authority, that Congress should be responsible for making copyright law, and that librarians’ ability to make “fair use” of digital broadcasts will be unreasonably curtailed.

Although the judges’ comments are encouraging for opponents of the Broadcast Flag, doubts have been cast whether their opponents have the legal standing to challenge the rule in court.

Either way, we can expect to wait a few months before the court issues a ruling. In the meantime, activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation continue to offer consumers the means to get around the restrictions with their “HD PVR Cookbook,”.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Federal Communications Commission

Napster To Go Launches – Will It Go with the Public?

Napster UK has launched what they’re claiming to be the “world’s first portable subscription music service”.

Backed up by an aggressive multi-million pound marketing campaign, Napster is talking big with bold claims of “changing the music industry forever” after their service rolls out after its UK launch, with Europe following close behind.

Priced at £14.95 a month, the Napster To Go service allows users to download as much music as they like from Napster’s one million-strong catalogue and save it to a compatible portable media player.

Unlike the pay-per-track/album services offered by rivals such as iTunes, Napster users can download an unlimited number of tracks and listen to them on and/or offline so long as their membership is active.

Unlimited music? Over a million tracks? Sounds like the original Napster. Well, there’s the catch. Once you stop shelling out the monthly fee, you’ll be listening to a hard drive full of silence, courtesy of Microsoft’s new Janus digital rights management (DRM) system turning off your access to the tracks.

There’s currently only five compatible music players – Creative Zen Micro MP3 player; iriver H10 MP3 player; iriver Portable Media Centre; Creative Zen Portable Media Centre; and Samsung YH999 Portable Media Centre – with a further 18 devices are expected to hit the market in the next three months.

Napster is predicting a veritable onslaught of compatible devices to follow on within the year.

With the hugely popular iPod notably absent from that list (strangely they don’t support Microsoft’s DRM) and users still able to download DRM-free content from music-sharing sites like Soulseek, we’ll have to wait and see if users are prepared to go along with a monthly subscription where they don’t get to keep the music.

For non-subscription members, Napster also offers the Napster Light a la carte download store that sells individual tracks for 79 pence and albums for £7.95.

Napster