Evening Standard: Media - Interactive TV finally arrives

By David Rowan

PAXMAN'S sneer grating on you tonight? Tell him by text message. Want the 10 O'Clock News back at nine? Schedule bulletins to suit you. Confused by Panorama's Afghan special? Demand to see extra maps and interviews - all while watching the football on another part of your screen.

In the past week, technology has given you something that John Birt never quite achieved - control over the BBC's news output.

Admittedly, that control is rather limited at this stage: if you have digital satellite, you can now press the red handset button to watch bulletins when you want, choose extended coverage of stories, and question selected journalists by email or SMS. But to excited BBC executives, two-way interactivity offers "an entirely new way" of making television by putting the viewer in charge.

The same excitement is being felt at ITV Digital, which on Saturday launched an interactive version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? As well as 35p-a-call revenues from couch players who compete in a prize draw, the game claims to "deliver advertisers a fantastic new opportunity to reach a massmarket audience". Finally, through the "return path" that links set-top box with studio, the interactive TV revolution has hit middle England.

Richard Deverell, the BBC's head of new media for news, insists "evolution" is more appropriate than revolution - after all, the unfulfilled hype surrounding interactive TV makes dotcom hysteria seem restrained.

Forrester Research breathlessly told us that that iTV (as it's known) would generate $9 billion by 2005, which the Ovum consultancy ratcheted up to $70 billion; actual revenue has proved more elusive, as the Open shopping service, and other victims such as the Money Channel, found to their cost.

Commercial realities, however, are not the BBC's prime concern. "Our activities are driven by our public-service obligation to maximise the audience," Deverell says. "People will increasingly consume media not in a live stream, but on demand, and with a specificity of choice."

The BBC needs to be there to offer those choices - across every platform, from cable to tomorrow's video-watches. This means offering a range of live video feeds, and providing extra depth to stories that viewers can click into - say, a bonus 40- minute interview with King Abdullah of Jordan, or an audience chat with Rageh Omaar in Kabul.

"It's getting into evermore niche areas," Deverell admits, "but the marginal costs of producing it are tiny. The trick is to create content once and provide it across the various platforms." Frustratingly, the technology is not so advanced as to let him know how many viewers bother to interact. "Measurement systems are at 1938 levels, compared with Barb and Rajar (for TV and radio). The BBC is concerned about this - all investments have to be judged in terms of value for money."

Britain, with almost 40 per cent of homes able to interact with digital television, is considered a world leader in iTV. But though the BBC gained critical acclaim for its interactive Wimbledon and Open golf services, Sky was the pioneer in news - a service that Richard Deverell praises as "very good".

Alas, Steve Bennedik, editor of Sky News Interactive, is less complimentary in return. "We've seen it (BBC News Interactive) and we're not impressed," he says. "They are launching news 18 months after us, and they're barely coming up to what we were doing." The service's "clunky and cumbersome" interface looks like nothing more advanced than "a text service backed up by video", he says. "But they've got public funding, and you've got to take them seriously. Eventually they'll come up with a good product."

(The BBC has initially budgeted around £2 million for interactive news, compared with the £330 million overall news budget.)

Sky News Active, the establishment old-timer to Greg Dyke's brash upstart, launched way back in June 2000, 10 months after Sky Sports Active. In March this year, it gave viewers the chance to vote through the set: almost 90,000 did so in 24 hours when asked if the UK should join the US air strikes.

By July, Sky had integrated a personal video recorder into its set-top box; then came a deal with Cartoon Network to add Scooby Doo and pals to Sky Active's stable of 16 pay-to-play games and quizzes. An interactive betting service, involving Ladbrokes, was abandoned last month over competitionlaw issues, but five days later Sky Sports was back, announcing "the world's first play-along football competition" that lets viewers predict scores for cash.

"Interactivity is all about community - connecting broadcaster and audience in a shared experience," Bennedik says. "The dual path (returning via cable or phone line) frees you to send something out and achieve a reaction. It turns the digibox into a box of tricks where we can enhance communication: the last time we had bad weather, we asked people to email us images of snow."

Sky's focus groups suggest that programme editors are still needed: some viewers resist making their own choices, for fear of missing the big news story if they stay with Kylie. But despite sparse viewer data, Steve Bennedik's research suggests that 30 to 40 per cent of his viewers regularly press the red button, mostly for headlines and weather.

Yet it's entertainment, not news, that iTV hopes will earn its fortune. Game shows such as "Millionaire" are attracting huge responses from viewers: ITV2 thinks that "most" of the 215,000 viewers played along on Saturday. The key to profit is the premium- rate phone line: some five million Big Brother votes were cast by remote control at 25p a go.

Shopping, betting and game-playing are forecast to generate huge profits in future years; meanwhile, advertisers are excited at the prospect of targeting individual viewers, based on the vast data the set-top box can accumulate about their viewing and clicking habits.

Privacy campaigners are not happy, but City analysts are still talking up the sector's future - although nowadays interactivity is seen as something " contextual" that's part of the broadcast, rather than a magic new medium.

"There's a lot of lowhanging fruit out there," says Neil Blackley, head of Merrill Lynch's media research team in London. "Quizzes, contests, voting - bringing a share of premium-rate phone calls. These are revenues you can get right now, before the eventual nirvana of video-ondemand."

The windfall has yet to arrive. "It's been tough," says Andrew Howells, head of BMPtvi, a London agency that specialises in interactive advertising for clients including Sony and Hasbro. Today, his agency has just five clients, but forecasts 400 per cent growth next year.

"Even though the TV industry is down the toilet now, it hasn't affected interactive TV - that has always been bad," he says. "The sector has been a victim of hype - with too many doom-andgloom merchants lately."

The BBC's arrival could, Howells believes, showcase the potential of iTV. "Its use has been fairly pedestrian and Heath Robinson so far - you click out from an emotive television advert into a (static) PowerPoint presentation. Anything that's got quality and good creativity behind it is good for the business. iTV has a very good future - it's just caught a bit of a cold."

(Evening Standard, November 28 2001)

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The Times: Tech column - Domain speculation/Nanotech/Video-enabled phones

By David Rowan

HERE, finally, is the secret to making easy money on the Internet: set up as a domain-name registrar. Even as dot.com values tumble, domain names are proving ever more popular - with 36,278,755 .com, .net and .org names now registered. At a typical cost of £45 for two years, there is an endless stream of speculators keen to invest.

Take Steve Rumney, a graphic designer from South London, who has spent "a five-figure sum" on around 400 names, from shoppingtelevision.com to TVandBroadband.com. He waits, like thousands of others, for the e-mail that heralds a purchase inquiry and a decent windfall.

Lately, though, a new form of inflation has swept through the domain-trading world. With the .com market nearing saturation, companies began hard-selling alternative must-haves, from .tv to .cc - forcing businesses to move quickly to protect trademarks, and enticing speculators to spend ever more aggressively. Earlier this month a new .biz suffix launched with 160,000 preregistered domains; and within the next few months we can expect .name (for personal names), .aero, .museum, .coop (as in co-operative) and .pro (the latter for professionals, not the vice trade).

But the most controversial of the new domain suffixes has been .info, marketed by a company called Afilias as an alternative to .com, and overloaded with applications when orders opened in July. Steve Rumney spent £100 on each of around 60 .info names - and he certainly appears to have acquired some gems: business.info, finance.info, loans.info, health.info, even gems.info. "I was just lucky," he says. "They must potentially be worth £1 million - someone who wanted them badly would pay a lot."

Except that Rumney looks unlikely to reap those financial rewards - and to lose his initial stake. Afilias accepted his registrations during a period when only trademark owners could stake their claims. To register his generic terms, Rumney - like many other speculators - simply supplied a fictional trademark number, and Afilias accepted it without checking. Now - amid claims that 25 per cent of the first 11,000 registrations were fraudulent - the World Intellectual Property Organisation is being called in to determine whether each one should be forfeited.

Meanwhile, Afilias - which has now sold some 600,000 addresses - stands accused of a "shambles". "We don't actually hold the trademarks," says Rumney, "but I didn't think every single generic name would be challenged. The registrars were actively encouraging people to register generic names."

Now Rumney's other domains are starting to expire, and he lacks funds to renew them. So far he has managed to sell only one of his 400 names, onnet.tv, which went for £2,000 to a man in San Francisco.

Yet he remains on the lookout for opportunities. Twelve days ago he noticed that the American owner of intelligentfinance.com was about to let it lapse, and "watched it round the clock" to snap it up, on behalf of a Canadian bank. The Halifax should have known better than to let him. For in the domain-name jungle, predators lie everywhere.

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Get used to nanotechnology - the "billionth-part" branch of research that is causing an extraordinary buzz in the learned journals. Last week Israeli scientists announced details of a "nanoscale" computer made of DNA molecules that could process billions of calculations at once. A few days earlier American cancer researchers published details of a "molecular nanogenerator" - a tiny weapon that traps a single radioactive atom in a molecular cage to target individual cancer cells. In recent days we have also had transistors so small that 10 million will fit on a pin-head, silicon "nanowire" chips based on single-molecule switches, and predictions that future military uniforms will be built from molecules that react to their surroundings. Suddenly, small is looking very beautiful, not least to investors - and, thankfully, British universities are waking up to the big opportunities of the very little.

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THINGS to do with a 3G mobile phone, continued. Here is a creative, if worrying, innovation being pioneered by a London-based tech firm, Remote-i (www.remote-i.com). Want to see who's hanging around Soho right now, or examine a holiday location before committing? Subscribers connect to a network of others with video-enabled phones and ask them to supply the required images at an agreed fee. They can therefore "see anywhere via the remote 'eyes'," just as Napster lets them hear any piece of music. That's fine if you want to check how busy the M25 is - but what if someone in St Andrews offers to tail Prince William for whoever will pay £10 a minute? Professional media (even Earls of Wessex) face some restrictions - but what will happen to personal privacy when all of us are potentially paparazzi-for-hire?

(The Times, November 26 2001)

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Evening Standard: George Bush, my new email pal

Saddam answers his e-mail, but does George Bush? David Rowan - writing as an ordinary father worried about the war - contacted 60 world leaders online to see if they could explain the ills of the world

IT is the height of bad manners to ignore a friendly email. So well done Saddam Hussein, cyber-correspondent extraordinaire: he might not yet subscribe to Friends Reunited, but when he replied to an American computer engineer's email last month, Saddam showed just how far Iraq beats Britain when it comes to open government.

Admittedly he has still to master the punchy style of a quick electronic response: his answer to a question about the 11 September attacks went on for 10 pages, beginning with the chatty, 'Dear brother in the family of mankind ...' and wittering on about American ' genocide'. Still, he bothered logging on and chatting back. How many other world leaders would play pen-pal after such a casual inquiry?

We decided to find out. To test how accountable our international statesmen are in this electronic age, the Standard looked up their email addresses and home pages on the internet. Wherever a contact address was given, we despatched a simple question - sent from David Rowan, an ordinary father of two from London. 'I have become very confused in recent weeks about the rights and wrongs of the military actions America and Britain are leading against Afghanistan, and am not sure how to explain them to my family,' the email began. 'I realise that you, as a prominent world statesman, must have a great insight into what is happening. I would, therefore, be very grateful if you would help me by sharing your own thoughts on the matter.'

The email went off to more than 60 presidents and prime ministers, from Belarus to Bangladesh, Malaysia to Micronesia. We waited two weeks for replies - hey, these guys have got countries to run - and can now reveal our heroes of the Outlook in-tray. To all those leaders humble enough to reply, we honour you for taking the trouble.

Now get back to work.

Most thoughtful reply Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa: 'It is difficult for anyone to explain what is happening at the moment,' admitted the email from Mr Mbeki's office in Pretoria, the first reply we received.

'While everyone condemns the 11 September disaster and taking of human life, one cannot condone the loss of innocent civilians in the attacks in Afghanistan. South African foreign policy insists on negotiated settlements, hence our role in Burundi and elsewhere. It is this approach to conflict that we believe will lead us to peaceful settlements.'

Beyond the policy statements, there was also some welcome liberal advice for the family man, sent via Mr Mbeki's spokesman, Xoliswa Sibeko: 'As a parent, Mr Rowan, your kids expect you to keep a moral high ground; therefore, explain your confusion and I am sure they will appreciate the fact that we do not always have answers. What I believe will enrich their experience is to give a balanced view of the situation.'

Most thorough reply Jean Chrtien, Prime Minister of Canada: Chrtien wasted no time in explaining why Canada had joined the unprecedented coalition against terrorism, and was especially keen to explain the participation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (although he skirted over exactly how the Mounties would flush out al Qaeda - perhaps by galloping over the Hindu Kush?). He had his executive correspondence officer, LA Lavell, go into great detail about Canada's ' military, humanitarian, diplomatic, financial, legislative, and domestic security initiatives', stressing that 'every effort has been made in planning military action to limit civilian casualties, and the nations of our coalition will provide all necessary humanitarian assistance to those who are displaced'. But while stressing that 'our victory will be complete', M. Chrtien failed to answer the specific question.

Greatest chutzpah George Bush, President of the USA: The President's office responded quickly that my 'ideas and comments are very important to him', which was kind, and directed me to his website, www.whitehouse.gov, to learn more about the US response. But Mr Bush wasted no time in asking for money. Explaining that 'one in three Afghan children is an orphan and almost half suffer chronic malnutrition', the President's email solicited a dollar for his Afghan Children's fund.

Strictest replyJohannes Rau, President of Germany: 'You were asking the President for sharing his thoughts 'About the rights and wrongs of the military actions America and Britain are leading against Afghanistan',' wrote Stefan Biedermann from the President's office. 'The President has expressed his thoughts on that matter several times in public. The speech he held at the Brandenburg Gate on 14 September as well as the one he gave in Leipzig on 9 October were dealing extensively with your question. You can find the texts easily on the President's homepage (www.bundespraesident.de). May I kindly ask you to have a look there?' In other words, why hadn't I bothered to do my homework?

Most worrying counter-questionsVladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation: Before I could email the question from the President's website (www.gov.ru), it demanded some detailed personal information, including 'Your post' and 'Your social status' - clearly hangovers from communism. Still, my answers seemed acceptable ('social status: bourgeoisie'), and the President said 'Thanks!' - but nothing else.

Least responsive Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister: So far I have received replies of various kinds from 12 world leaders, but there appears no way to contact Tony Blair by email. His Number 10 website does not include a contact address, and even the standard formula for MPs' addresses (blaira@parliament.uk) draws a blank. Prime Minister, even the Queen is planning to include an email address on her redesigned website. You don't want to look unaccountable, surely?

Honourable mentions Thanks to Crown Prince Hamzah of Jordan, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia and Prime Minister Vajpayee of India for acknowledging the question; but we're still waiting for the answer.

President Chirac of France is still considering his response, but his office did clarify our rights in typical Gallic style under article 27 of the law of 6 January 1978. And a brief note to His Excellency Dr Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini of Swaziland: Dr Dlamini, your in-tray is apparently full.

You really ought to check your emails occasionally.

(Evening Standard, November 20 2001)

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The Times: Tech column - Console wars/Neat mobile services

By David Rowan

WAR broke out last week, fought with powerful new weapons, backed by a $500 million campaign. When Bill Gates launched his company's first games console in Times Square on Thursday, he was not just unveiling the much-hyped Xbox but the future of video gaming. By taking Microsoft into this $20 billion (£14 billion) industry, he was launching a revolution in home entertainment which, if he succeeds, will replace the hi-fi with a multifunctional, ever-expanding leisure console. Controlled, naturally, through Microsoft licences.

But first a console war must be won. Three days after the $299 Xbox hit the US, Nintendo fought back with its high-powered GameCube, cheaper by $100 and with Star Wars games to attract the aficionado.

Sony, meanwhile, promised a raft of new games for its PlayStation 2 (PS2), whose UK price has been cut from £260 to £199, and which has come to dominate the industry. As consumers are faced with three mutually exclusive formats, Gates, in the rare role of underdog, knows he is fighting a high-risk battle. If he wins, content providers from games developers to Hollywood studios will need to strike deals with Microsoft to gain access to people's homes.

That is why this war is about far more than games. Still, the games are impressive pointers to the extraordinary future that the leisure box holds. The Xbox, a heavy black unit, is effectively a powerful PC without the monitor. With a 733-megahertz Pentium III processor, 64 megabytes of memory and an 8-gigabyte hard disk, it is a monster that brings unprecedented detail to alien landscapes. As Microsoft knows, it is the quality of the games that will determine the winner. This is why it has worked to attract the best games developers.

It has also bought up talented firms or persuaded them to defect. Its showcase game Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee was destined for the PS2. To play Oddworld, a tale about a fish-like creature in search of company, is to navigate through a special-effects landscape populated with a vast array of characters. In Halo, a game originally developed for the PC, you are a cyborg commander battling against an alien faction for control of a man-made planet. You choose who rides with you, the weapons and mode of destruction. It might not be PC in the other sense, but the creativity and graphic detail exceed a dozen Rambo movies. Nintendo, meanwhile, looks likely to attract the younger market with its GameCube and characters such as Mario's brother, Luigi.

Justin Calvert, deputy editor of GameSpot UK, admits that it has "not been easy" to put down his Xbox after two weeks' constant use. "This battle goes back to the days of Sega v Nintendo. It is that exciting, and the software for all three consoles is excellent," he says.

For consumers, the lack of compatibility between systems is frustrating. If you spend £35 on a game, you had better hope your format does not become obsolete. And British consumers yet again get a raw deal. The Xbox is not out here until March about the same time as the GameCube, and it is forecast to cost £299 as opposed to US$299. Why?

How the contenders compare

Microsoft's Xbox: Cost: $299.

Appearance: A chunky matt-black VCR. Processor: Intel 733MHz

Memory: 64Mb. DVD friendly?: With a separate remote control.

Hot games: Oddworld; Munch's Oddysee; Halo; Shrek.

More info: www.xbox.com

Nintendo's GameCube: Cost: $199. Appearance: A little purple and black toy box. Processor: IBM Gekko 485MHz. Memory: 40MB.

DVD friendly?: No. Hot games: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II, Luigi's Mansion, Pikmin. More info: www.nintendogamecube.com

PlayStation 2: Cost: £199 Appearance: Stylish black convection heater. Processor: 128-bit PlayStation 2 CPU.

Memory: 32Mb. DVD friendly? Yes

Hot games: Kinetica, SpyHunter, Metal Gear Solid 2.

More info: www.playstation.com

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IN MALAYSIA, Maxis Communications has launched a new service just in time for Ramadan. Not only will your signal fix to the direction of Mecca that you will get reminders of prayer times and be able to download religious songs as ringtones. Brilliant for sheer imagination, this beats NTT DoCoMo's vital work with Coca-Cola to let phones buy cans from vending machines. Surely Times readers can be even more creative. What original applications would you suggest to mobile firms struggling to recoup their third-generation licences? We will print the most inventive suggestions, and alert the telcos to help to save the odd billion. And no, we do not need reminding about Hutchison's plans to send erotic videos to its handsets.

(The Times, November 19 2001)

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Evening Standard: How tech changes war reporting

By David Rowan

MEET an unlikely war hero: it's 16cm high, weighs 4kg and is tough enough to survive the harshest Afghan winter. The Talking Head, the satellite videophone that has brought real-time war reporting to the world's TV sets, is the hottest media accessory since the Tandy laptop. News organisations across the world have been queuing up to acquire this all-British technological wonder - and at the small 12-person company which makes it, just off the A316 in Feltham, global fame has come as something of a shock.

'It's been an utter nightmare,' confesses Peter Beardow, managing director of 7E Communications, facing a backlog of 30 orders, plus almost 400 videophones in action. 'We never thought the Talking Head would change how people report news - we just set out to go further than a clanky phone call and a still picture.'

After 15 years quietly developing satellite communications gear, Beardow knew something was up on 12 September, when 7E's website logs took 90 minutes to download. Normally, the website receives 15 to 20 hits a day from oil companies or expedition organisers; that day brought 30,000, as newsgathering chiefs wondered how they would report from the world's least wired terrain.

Word spread that the Talking Head could effectively compress ISDN-quality signals into a narrow bandwidth, which, combined with two Inmarsat satellite phones, could broadcast tolerable TV images from anywhere as long as the reporter had a battery.

News teams pay £s 7,500 for the box, plus around £5,500 for each of two satellite phones and £18,000 for the receiver unit. CNN, which owns around 30 videophones, used to send reporting teams out with up to 20 boxes of satellite equipment, which were conspicuous, heavy and often had to remain away from the action.

When Nic Robertson, then a producer, was in the first team to arrive in Mostar in 1993, he had to carry his camera over the hills on horseback, and then return to base on horseback to send the film back via satellite. Last month, reporting from a mountain north of Kabul, he went straight to air when the US jets began bombing.

The BBC claims to have been first to use the videophone during a website interview with the Dalai Lama in March 2000. But CNN showed its potential last January, reporting from the Indian earthquake at Bhuj, when a standard satellite van w o u l d have had to have been kept in a safe zone. Three m o n t h s later, videophones covered the US spy plane crew leaving Hainan Island in China. A bulky satellite dish would have alerted the authorities.

It is nothing new for an emerging technology to shape how a war is reported. When The Times sent William Howard Russell to cover the Crimean War, his dispatches - sent over the newly invented telegraph - told of such military suffering in 1854 that Prince Albert complained that 'the pen and ink of one miserable scribbler is despoiling the country'. Some dispatches took weeks to get home. But however the story is told - through cable, laptop or mobile phone - the pressures on the reporter remain constant: getting there first.

'All the times I've ever reported a war, the problem has been competition: get your copy in no later than the other man, whether using telephone, cable or laptop,' says veteran correspondent Bill (now Lord) Deedes. 'I remember that in 1935, during the Abyssinian war, I was stuck in Addis Ababa, having to file from a cable station. It cost about £4 a word, and at one stage, the Abyssinians limited us to 100 words a day. So I was asked to send skeleton pieces to London, where a skilful man in the office wrote them up.'

If he reached the cable station before it closed at 6pm, Deedes could expect the story to be in the office by morning. 'Nowadays I travel with a whole raft of equipment , but I'm basically facing the same problem: in a quicker world, how do I have a competitive advantage? If anything, modern technology has made newspaper deadlines slightly earlier. The satellite phone is probably the most valuable thing that a reporter has been gifted with - I used one during the Kosovo war, and could dictate straight to copy. The problem is, your colleagues have satellite phones too.'

But the most instant communications technology will fail to deliver if the military can delay dispatches. 'I've never met a military press officer, whether in uniform or in a suit, who understood anything about media deadlines,' says Robert Fox, the distinguished war reporter now writing for the Evening Standard. 'In the Gulf, you could set up a satellite dish more or less anywhere. But in the Falklands, though we had the first maritime satellites, they were only operating from commercial ships; the Navy said we could not travel with one. In 1982, I sent my BBC dispatch from Goose Green on the death of Colonel Herbert Jones on a Friday, and it was not broadcast until Sunday. In the meantime, the Sunday papers were full of absurd nonsense on how he had died.' Some reports took weeks to arrive.

So what does Fox make of the videophone? He is not impressed. 'It's staggering how little sense many of these real-time reports are making of the battlefield. It's a sideeffect of the new technology that reporters have to comment as much as they report. They have to deliver on air more often and spend less time finding out. Most are terrible.'

Tony Maddox, editorial chief of CNN International, rejects the criticism. 'The technology is now liberating journalists, not putting them under pressure to file too soon,' he says.

(Evening Standard, November 14 2001)

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The Times: Tech column - DeCSS/Palms at war/Net homes

By David Rowan

AND now for a dangerous and controversial statement. It may look like a random collection of keystrokes, but to the copyright lawyers in Hollywood, (i+1))=k(i+1))(CS Stab1(i+1)))key(i)) is a call to arms. That inelegant jumble, which was e-mailed to us by a friendly hacker, is part of a longer line of computer code that can crack the secret algorithms protecting digital video-disks (DVDs).

Hollywood studios, eager to safeguard copyright, encrypt DVDs so that films cannot be copied. The software also determines where a disk may be viewed so that a British DVD player might reject a disk bought in the US, and a Linux-based machine will not play films at all.

So when websites began posting a code that could bypass the encryption, known as DeCSS, the lawyers went in hard. The Motion Picture Association of America fought hardest against the code's implicit "theft", citing US copyright law to win a court ruling that bans www.2600.org from publishing the code and from linking to other sites that contain it. Meanwhile, the film studios' DVD licensing agency, the DVD Copy Control Association, launched a separate court battle against websites which, it claimed, were "divulging trade secrets" by linking to the code. One defendant, Andrew Bunner, claimed that he wanted to make legally purchased DVDs viewable on a Linux-based computer. All he had done was link to something already in the public domain.

A few days ago, an appeals court in California sided with Mr Bunner. DeCSS, it said, was itself a creative work that expressed "pure speech", and free speech could not be restrained by the studios. They are appealing, of course, and the legal fights will go on. But the pause gives us this opportunity to quote part of the code to show how difficult it is to suppress such widely available information. A quick Google search reveals the full algorithm which, of course, we would not encourage you to use.

Clearly it makes sense for film studios and record companies to wield copyright law against piracy. But relentless litigation designed to suppress any new challenge to copy-protection technologies will not silence dissent. Digital-rights activists warn that the more the lawyers seek to control how a DVD or CD is enjoyed, the more consumers will feel aggrieved. The fight is bound to be played out in our own courts once the new European Copyright Directive is enacted. Content owners risk a public relations nightmare if they insist on controlling how their digital works are enjoyed.

So here is a warning for Natalie Imbruglia, whose new album, White Lilies Island, has been found to incorporate copy-protection software. Known as Cactus, it prevents recording it to MiniDisk, or playing it on certain PCs. Sure, other record labels are also encrypting CDs to control where they can be played. But it is only a matter of time, Natalie, before code that breaks the restrictions spreads across the Web.

Do you really want to take on the whole Internet?

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Forget Daisycutters: the technology seeing the most action in Afghanistan is the Palm handheld computer. The most popular military applications include Platoon Warrior ("to help you with your daily administrative tasks as a military leader"), the Pilot Logbook ("store up to 60 different planes") and the English-Pashto survival lexicon (dangerous "khatarnaak"; get caught = "ksseewezem").

Soldiers can also download an "evasion map for Afghanistan" from sites such as military.com, which along with palmgear.com claim to offer all the "handheld military knowledge" that today's soldier needs. The good news is that these applications are available even to non-military types, which might solve a couple of Christmas gift dilemmas. We particularly like the camouflage faceplate, and the games downloads for "when the action is slow".

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TAKE your pick. The number of UK Internet homes has dropped by 1 per cent since May, says Oftel, reporting a first-time fall. No, there were a million new home Internet users between June and September, says NetValue, and they stayed online for longer. While they argue, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have just published a "serious" study proving that heavy Net users "exhibit significant addictive behaviour patterns".

Apparently "pathological Internet use" is emerging as a "new clinical disorder". Warning signs include "thinking about the Net while offline" and staying online "longer than originally intended".

Phew. For the sake of the nation's health, let's hope that Oftel is right.

(The Times, November 12 2001)

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Evening Standard: The power of the celebrity publicist

By David Rowan

PIERS Morgan has tired of the 'tabloid celebrity circus'. Post 11 September, he has realised that Mirror readers want serious news, comment and analysis - which means that celebrities are no longer an editor's best friend.

As if to prove it, last week Morgan declared that stars' PRs will no longer decide what goes into his paper. In an email to staff, he spelled out a tough, new policy: 'I have decided to end the era of offering copy-approval to celebrities for interviews. In future we offer no 'Approval' for anything words, pix or headlines. If that means we lose the 'Approved' interview, c'est la vie.'

As Des Kelly, his deputy editor, explains: 'If a newspaper like The Mirror can discuss world events with political leaders or military chiefs without any hindrance, it's a bit preposterous to find some B-list soap actor demanding picture, copy and headline approval. Anyway, I shouldn't think it'll cause too many problems. Real stars tend to be confident enough to deal with the media in a professional manner without desperately demanding sickly puff pieces.'

The growing power of the celebrity publicist is not a new concern among editors. In a speech last May, Phil Hall of Hello! warned that their increasing Hollywoodstyle demands - both financial and editorial - amounted to 'an attack on press freedom'.

By common consent, Freud Communications (representing Geri Halliwell and Martine McCutcheon) and the Outside Organisation (David Beckham and David Bowie) are among the most demanding gatekeepers. 'People are sick and tired of colourless, limping celebrity interviews; the bubble is about to burst,' says Mark Borkowski, the London publicist whose clients include Graham Norton. Borkowski welcomes The Mirror's stance as 'a call to arms' to cull the minor celebrities. 'Piers got it right: it's time some of these egos were pricked,' he says.

Borkowski warns his industry that blatant attempts at manipulation are counterproductive, and that anodyne press will diminish a star's news value. 'PRs tend to forget who holds the power: it's the editors. Though it's interesting that Piers admits The Mirror has given copy approval in the past. That's the first bargaining ploy gone.'

Henry Porter, UK editor of Vanity Fair, believes Morgan has correctly identified a diminished appetite for celebrity 'fluff' since 11 September: 'There's a new seriousness. We're not going to return to the foaming-at-the-mouth attention The Mirror once paid to David Beckham.' Porter says that Vanity Fair will also not grant publicists copy approval. 'We would never concede such a big point,' he insists. 'It's amazing that Piers Morgan has done so in the past.'

Some editors are happy to have a publicist check the copy. At OK! magazine, deputy editor Jim Maloney says it can prove 'a big help' in weeding out errors. Phil Hall estimates that around 10 per cent of the contracts he signs at Hello! contain 'stipulations such as demands for accuracy and openness'.

INTERVIEW approval does not worry him. 'Frankly, I'm happy to let them read the copy,' he says. 'We want to get the story absolutely right, and unfortunately when you research from cuttings, it's easy to pick up something that's wrong.' Hall's real problem is publicists who try to control how pictures are used. They were happy enough to co-operate when their stars were small: but once they attain a certain fame, they want to pick and choose where they appear.'

Meanwhile, this week's spat concerns Gwyneth Paltrow, who has let known her concern that Harper's Bazaar printed a revealing nude shot by Patrick Demarchelier, even though 'he said he wasn't going to put my whole bottom in the picture'. 'If publicists want to block your piece, they'll do it by refusing pictures,' says Ian Freer, features editor of Empire magazine.

Certainly the biggest PRs care more about images than words. Pat Kingsley, queen of the Hollywood PRs, famously noted: 'Good reporting and good writing don't help my client. People don't read. The text doesn't matter.' Kingsley's firm, PMK (representing Tom Cruise and Matt Damon), epitomises the 'controlfreakery' that some fear is now being emulated by some British PRs. During promotions for Eyes Wide Shut, for instance, PMK made US television networks agree that Cruise interviews could not be edited, that he would not be presented 'in a negative or derogatory manner', and that unused footage must be destroyed and 'evidence of such destruction' given to PMK.

Earlier this year, when PMK took over the rival Huvane Baum Halls (publicist for Gwyneth Paltrow and Russell Crowe), the New York Post complained that Kingsley would increasingly dictate who wrote what: 'A question about Tom Cruise's divorce could get a reporter blacklisted from other stars,' the paper warned.

Faced with such restrictions, British editors - even Morgan may have to play Hollywood's game if they want access to the A-list. Christopher Goodwin, a Los Angelesbased freelance, points out that access frequently depends on a journalist's cuttings.

Searingly honest profiles are thus unwise career moves. 'It is a delicate dance,' he admits. 'You often have to skirt the edge of truth. Everybody knows what the game is apart from the readers.'

(Evening Standard, November 7 2001)

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The Times: Tech column - Spammers

By David Rowan

IN THE past week, this columnist has been offered three fantastic breakthroughs for removing fat, five chances to help a Nigerian bank manager dispose of $31 million, two unbeatable new home-working opportunities, and the key to increasing sexual potency by 75 per cent... Which is nice. From Internet casinos to Britney and friendsnaked.com, the e-mail in-tray has filled with more than 70 unwanted solicitations. And the barrage is set to grow.

E-mail marketing, from unwelcome "spam" to "permission-based" sales pitches, is enjoying a boom, largely because it works. Compared with direct mail which, even before anthrax, would be lucky to generate a 2 per cent response, e-mail is cheap, quick, and, if correctly targeted, highly effective. DoubleClick, the American advertising firm, claims that 82 per cent of Internet users surveyed have spent money online after receiving an e-mail ad. And if the scatter-gun spam lists can generate profits with tiny response rates, think what the corporate sector can achieve.

The marketer Digital Impact, which last year sent out around two billion messages for the likes of Priceline and Dell, told us it can attract 15 per cent response rates in Britain "by focusing on messages that are relevant to customers". But what if you do not want to receive commercial e-mails? Although you have limited options against the determined spammers (see panel), governments are increasingly keen to regulate the legitimate sector. On Wednesday the European Parliament will announce how much protection consumers will receive from unsolicited e-mails. If the UK Government has its way, the answer will be far less than privacy activists are demanding.

The debate hinges on whether e-mail lists should in law be "opt-in" (to which you have actively asked to receive further mailings) or "opt-out", (you'll get mail unless you have specifically asked not to). Although a European Parliament committee recently found "an overwhelming case in favour of a ban on unsolicited e-mail and other personally addressed messages", the Direct Marketing Association is hopeful that Europe will leave the decision to individual states, and that Britain will continue to back opt-out.

"People always have the option when giving their details to say 'don't send me any more information', and that has to be respected," says Lara Shannon, the association's marketing manager. "Making them opt in won't solve the spam problem and will bring the industry to a standstill."

Small British marketing companies, she says, unable to compete with the unscrupulous US-based spammers, will be be forced out of business.

Consumer protection in Britain is currently limited. If a known UK company is misusing your personal details and refuses to remove you from its list, the DMA recommends contacting the Information Commissioner (formerly the Data Protection Registrar), who can impose fines of £5,000. The DMA is less confident about how to prevent "dodgy outfits in the States" from spamming, beyond reporting the abuse to their Internet service providers (ISPs).

More startling is the projected growth of SMS (Short Message Service) adverts to mobile phones, which are forecast to grow from a £4 million industry last year to £439 million in 2005. So far, Technobabble has been immune to the scourge of unwanted text messages. But when they start arriving, we're thinking of copying Bibliotech, a British company which last year sued an American spammer - and won $1,000. Maybe we can all make money out of junk mail.

HOW TO CAN THE SPAM

Set up a separate account for use in news groups and other public forums.

If spammed, never reply, even to request removal: you will simply confirm that your address is valid and thus increase its market value.

Before giving your e-mail address to a website, think why they need it and read the privacy policy.

Tell the sender's Internet service provider: they will often suspend an account. But a determined spammer will have others.

However frustrated you are, do not spam back: you could be breaking the law.

Try a filtering system such as SpamCop (spamcop.net): it will parse e-mail headers to block trouble-makers and alert administrators of originating websites.

Software such as SpamKiller, MailWasher and Mail Snoop can filter out junk-mail or make it harder to steal your e-mail address from your website. But filtering programs can slow your PC considerably.

Get a lawyer: start with trespass, theft of phone line, breach of privacy . ..

(The Times, November 5 2001)

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