The Times: Tech column - 911 scams/Filesharing wars

By David Rowan

A Hampshire businessman was £100,000 poorer last week, the latest victim of the e-mail scam that promises riches in exchange for help in transferring cash. You probably know the format: typically the money is tucked away in Nigeria, and the e-mailer needs a gullible British partner to arrange a bank transfer which invariably ends in the victim's account being emptied.

But have you ever wondered who writes these things? Now, thanks to a Nigerian whistleblower named Taiwo, we have a clearer idea. This is a sophisticated family business, Taiwo tells Wired News, that has provided a living for dozens of relatives since 1986. "We have the letter writers and the people who create the official documentation, the people who talk to our clients on the phone, the people who arrange travel and meetings and tours of government offices in Africa, Canada, Japan and the US," he explains from New York, where he is a student. Taiwo's role is to write the e-mails, using language that evokes someone "educated, upper-class, out of touch with the common people".

It is when people e-mail back, normally sceptically, that the game begins. "Once they realise there is a real person on the other end of the e-mail, they sometimes get interested," Taiwo says. And if they can be lured to Nigeria, about one in three will pay upfront to have the "money" laundered - which, of course, never materialises. Taiwo has found religion, but he says it is not his fault that foreigners are greedy. Be warned.

++++

Some day there may be a great movie in Hollywood's war against file-swapping technology - just don't try to watch it on your PC. Frustrated that litigation against individual companies has so far failed to stem the spread of peer-to peer software, the studios have had another idea. If their lawyers cannot kill innovation itself, they have decided, then they want something better - the power to hack into your computer.

Last week, Howard Berman, a US Congressman from California, introduced a Bill in Washington that would give the film and music studios just such a power. If Berman has his way - and he is backed by powerful lobbyists, from Disney to the Recording Industry Association of America - then any copyright holder with a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place can tamper with your PC without fear of liability.

It is unclear what this tampering might involve - Berman talks of "technological tools" that can attack file-sharing networks - but the proposal has huge potential implications, even in Britain.

The Bill, which even allows copyright holders to cause your hardware $50 of damage for each copyright breach, represents a dangerous extension to the industry's demands. Already Washington is debating a law to ban music or film players that play unencrypted content, and another proposal would force recording devices to block certain digital broadcasts, but Representative Berman's Bill takes intrusion to a worrying new level. The law will probably not be passed, but its very introduction will lower our resistance to such a strategy - something that we must resist.

(The Times, July 31 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Home media centres/Patent wars

By David Rowan

Last week, Microsoft slipped out an announcement that might just change the face of home entertainment. Next winter, computers will go on sale loaded with a new version of Windows XP software that will transform them into nothing less than digital entertainment centres.
For years we have heard breathless predictions of the all-in-one "media hub" dominating the living room, but if Microsoft gets it right, the new XP Media Centre will make it a reality: a single box that lets you surf the web, listen to music, watch DVDs, organise photos and watch and record television programmes. And, unlike a conventional PC, this one comes with a remotecontrol unit that lets you flick from your sofa between a Windows interface and a standard TV picture. If his Xbox games console let Bill Gates slip into our leisure time, the Media Centre marks his attempt to own it outright.

Microsoft is not the only company betting on our appetite for "converged" home entertainment. Last January, the big hit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a sleek black box known as the Moxi Media Centre. Billed as "the future of home entertainment", the unit combines a digital satellite TV receiver, a tapeless video recorder, a DVD player, a stereo and a fast cable modem. "It takes all your digital media, no matter where it comes from, and brings it not only to your PC but also your TV and audio system," the blurb explained. "You don't need a CD player any more, or a DVD player."

But the big question is whether we actually want all our home entertainment supplied through a central box. These companies, remember, need to keep inventing new consumer needs in a stagnating tech market. And not all analysts are convinced that a single home-media centre is the answer.

At the Henley Centre, Andrew Curry, a media specialist, recalls a decade of predictions about tomorrow's "networked home", based on a central machine. "Yet the fastest-selling consumer box today is the DVD player, which performs one function and is cheap and comprehensible," he says.

Last year, the Henley Centre asked 4,000 people about how they consume media. "Our research suggests that they make their decisions separately and are not interested in these integrated consumer boxes," Curry says. "They might decide to listen to music, and go to one part of the house to fulfil that need. The TV gravitates to the 'warm' rooms - the front room, living room and master bedroom - while the internet tends to go in the spare bedroom and other 'cold' areas. Products that have tried to bring the net together with the TV have failed dismally, from Microsoft's WebTV to OnDigital's On-Net box. For each task, people have a different space in their heads."

Roger Silverstone, professor of media and communications at the LSE, is equally dubious. "The history of consumer electronics is littered with 'convergent' ideas that have simply fallen over," he says.

Once we have learnt to use a device in a certain way - a television, say - we resist innovations that alter that relationship. "You are locked into certain habits - we call it your 'technological concrete'. Besides, households are conservative. The politics of the family, relationships between gender, control of the space - all of these things affect powerfully how individual pieces of media will be used. The household's first desire is to ensure that anything new that comes in does not alter the structure."

++++

Remember BT's claim to own the patent to hypertext linking? Now an obscure Texan company has launched an equally unfathomable claim to royalties on the transmission of compressed digital images. Forgent Networks is claiming fees whenever a JPEG image is sent electronically, based on a 1986 US patent claim filed by a company that it acquired five years ago. It has even, apparently, persuaded Sony to pay $15 million, and now claims to be in discussions with makers of "digital still cameras, printers, scanners and other products".

Before it "discovered" the value of its patent, nobody had heard of Forgent Networks - it makes videoconferencing software - but now a global movement is growing to challenge its assault on what is a dominant standard.

(The Times, July 24 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Little Brother's fingerprints all over the library

By David Rowan

It promised to be the high-tech saviour of the embattled primary-school librarian, an ingenious device that guaranteed no more lost library cards and fewer missing books. All a child had to do to borrow Topsy and Tim for the week was flick a thumb through a fingerprint scanner, so sensitive it could even recognise a pattern from under layers of sticky chocolate.

There was only one snag: in many cases, parents were not told that schools were storing their children's fingerprints.

Parental outrage followed and, by last night, the school thumb-scanner being used by 1,000 British primary schools was being internationally condemned as a blatant breach of children's human rights.

The trouble began when the mother of an 11-year-old attending the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic School in Ruislip, West London, discovered that her son had been fingerprinted without her consent. Furious, the woman, who refused to be named, contacted civil liberties groups such as Privacy International and a child's advocacy group, Action on Rights for Children in Education.

Privacy International called for the banning of the library-management software, sold by a Stockport company called Micro Librarian Systems. "This is unethical and disproportionate," Simon Davies, Privacy International's director, said.

The Government's Information Commissioner's Office said there had been no breaches of the Data Protection Act, as the thumbprints were reduced to a numerical code.

(The Times, page one, July 23 2002)

Read more!

The Times: How eBay invented its creation myth

When truth is too trite: How did eBay make a boring tech firm look sexy? By inventing its own 'creation myth'. David Rowan reports

It was the warm, smalltown story of a corporate giant's humble beginnings that enticed Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, even the fact-obsessed New Yorker. When Pam Wesley wanted to boost her collection of Pez sweet dispensers, her fiance, Pierre Omidyar, built a website for her to trade them. That website grew to be the huge online auction house eBay, one of the internet gold rush's few success stories - even though, in the words of the company's PR chief, Mary Lou Song, it began simply "as kind of a love token".

It was a touching tale, recounted in endless profiles on both sides of the Atlantic, with only one flaw: it was a lie. As Song admits in a new book by Adam Cohen, The Perfect Store: Inside eBay, she invented the story five years ago to generate publicity for an otherwise dull tech company. "No one wants to hear about a 30-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market," Song confesses. So she constructed what corporate PRs call a "creation myth", and hoodwinked some of the world's most respected reporters. Some of her victims are furious.

"If they lied to me, and then to the New Yorker's diligent fact-checkers, then I'm angry," fumes James Gleick, who profiled eBay in the magazine three years ago and then in his book What Just Happened. "I am embarrassed. My readers are meant to be able to rely on me."

Equally indignant is Susan Moran, who covered the company for the online magazine Salon. "I feel misled, duped, embarrassed, stupid and angry," she says. "As a journalist I'm usually on guard against lies or smoother mistruths. But somehow I felt differently about Pierre. Now he's just another US CEO to doubt."

The issue raises questions about how far corporate publicists mislead journalists to generate favourable press. There is nothing new in a company's PRs exaggerating its humble origins, according to David Brain, the joint CEO of the communications agency Weber Shandwick, but an outright lie carries huge risks. "These myths of inception are a powerful way of communicating some truth about a company's DNA, and are usually told once the company has grown big," he explains. "You'll hear that Richard Branson started the Virgin record empire from a phone box at university, or Hewlett-Packard began in a garage. There's probably an element of truth there, but we'd never advise a client to fib. Once you know you've been lied to, the whole reason for trusting that brand has been negated."

Jon Aarons, the president of the Institute of Public Relations, insists that for this reason, such lies are rare. But he believes that journalists often conspire with PRs in "an unholy alliance" to enliven their stories: "The media are just as guilty for not checking out these myths."

That is certainly eBay's defence this week. "I honestly believe we did not intend to mislead anyone," claims an eBay spokesman, Kevin Pursglove, rather unconvincingly. He admits that "Pez's role in eBay's creation may have taken on a life of its own", but blames journalists for ignoring more mundane angles.

"Reporters didn't show much interest in marketplaces, or battered keyboards or Star Wars artefacts for sale," he says - until they heard the Pez story. "Inevitably, the finished story would mention the Pez angle but leave out virtually all the other factors."

Tech companies, often those hardest to sell to journalists as "sexy", are those most commonly linked with creation myths. Apple Computers and Hewlett-Packard even ran commercials celebrating their garage origins. When three management consultants launched an online betting site, Flutter.com, three years ago, it was widely reported that it stemmed from their own betting competitions during a Super Bowl party. "That wasn't the case," says a source close to the team, "but it didn't stop them winning the column inches."

(The Times, July 19, 2002)

Read more!

The Times: eBay's creation myth exposed

How did eBay make a boring tech firm look sexy? By inventing its own 'creation myth'. David Rowan reports

It was the warm, smalltown story of a corporate giant's humble beginnings that enticed Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, even the fact-obsessed New Yorker. When Pam Wesley wanted to boost her collection of Pez sweet dispensers, her fiance, Pierre Omidyar, built a website for her to trade them. That website grew to be the huge online auction house eBay, one of the internet gold rush's few success stories - even though, in the words of the company's PR chief, Mary Lou Song, it began simply "as kind of a love token".

It was a touching tale, recounted in endless profiles on both sides of the Atlantic, with only one flaw: it was a lie. As Song admits in a new book by Adam Cohen, The Perfect Store: Inside eBay, she invented the story five years ago to generate publicity for an otherwise dull tech company. "No one wants to hear about a 30-year-old genius who wanted to create a perfect market," Song confesses. So she constructed what corporate PRs call a "creation myth", and hoodwinked some of the world's most respected reporters. Some of her victims are furious.

"If they lied to me, and then to the New Yorker's diligent fact-checkers, then I'm angry," fumes James Gleick, who profiled eBay in the magazine three years ago and then in his book What Just Happened. "I am embarrassed. My readers are meant to be able to rely on me."

Equally indignant is Susan Moran, who covered the company for the online magazine Salon. "I feel misled, duped, embarrassed, stupid and angry," she says. "As a journalist I'm usually on guard against lies or smoother mistruths. But somehow I felt differently about Pierre. Now he's just another US CEO to doubt."

The issue raises questions about how far corporate publicists mislead journalists to generate favourable press. There is nothing new in a company's PRs exaggerating its humble origins, according to David Brain, the joint CEO of the communications agency Weber Shandwick, but an outright lie carries huge risks. "These myths of inception are a powerful way of communicating some truth about a company's DNA, and are usually told once the company has grown big," he explains. "You'll hear that Richard Branson started the Virgin record empire from a phone box at university, or Hewlett-Packard began in a garage. There's probably an element of truth there, but we'd never advise a client to fib. Once you know you've been lied to, the whole reason for trusting that brand has been negated."

Jon Aarons, the president of the Institute of Public Relations, insists that for this reason, such lies are rare. But he believes that journalists often conspire with PRs in "an unholy alliance" to enliven their stories: "The media are just as guilty for not checking out these myths."

That is certainly eBay's defence this week. "I honestly believe we did not intend to mislead anyone," claims an eBay spokesman, Kevin Pursglove, rather unconvincingly. He admits that "Pez's role in eBay's creation may have taken on a life of its own", but blames journalists for ignoring more mundane angles.

"Reporters didn't show much interest in marketplaces, or battered keyboards or Star Wars artefacts for sale," he says - until they heard the Pez story. "Inevitably, the finished story would mention the Pez angle but leave out virtually all the other factors."

Tech companies, often those hardest to sell to journalists as "sexy", are those most commonly linked with creation myths. Apple Computers and Hewlett-Packard even ran commercials celebrating their garage origins. When three management consultants launched an online betting site, Flutter.com, three years ago, it was widely reported that it stemmed from their own betting competitions during a Super Bowl party. "That wasn't the case," says a source close to the team, "but it didn't stop them winning the column inches."

(The Times, July 19 2002)

Read more!

Evening Standard: Media - Questions we'd like Greg Dyke to answer

Today Greg Dyke launches the BBC's annual report - but the press is banned. Here are some questions we'd like answered. By David Rowan

TODAY should have been that unique moment in the broadcasting calendar when BBC executives stand accountable - taking questions from the media, on your behalf, as they present their annual report. This year, however, the control freaks within this ever more Stalinist regime have had a better idea: simply ban the press from the launch and hope that does away with much of the scrutiny.

At a time when the corporation's huge expansion is raising serious questions about its remit, this extraordinarily clumsy decision has bewildered commentators as well as competitors. "Maybe they think they no longer need to explain themselves," says a rival broadcaster. "They're so busy censoring their staff perhaps it's become second nature."

The BBC, naturally, has an answer - namely, that it wanted to do things "differently" this year, and that it has agreed to face the scrutiny this morning of the "tough" Commons Culture Select Committee. But Tim Yeo, shadow culture secretary, is among those raising their eyes: "I'm surprised that the press is excluded," he says. "They're an important audience and most papers have specialist correspondents who are well informed about the BBC and in a position to ask some pertinent questions.

"There is a greater obligation than ever on the BBC to be transparent in its finances and accountability, to ensure it is not taking unfair advantage of what is effectively taxpayers' money."

So here are a few questions that we would have liked to ask Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies at today's launch.

How much of our licence fee are you spending on the new digital channels, and what evidence is there that they provide value for money? Why are you heavily promoting a new BBC internet search engine when dozens of commercial players are already there? If you are so committed to education as to spend £170 million competing with educational publishers, why did you close BBC Knowledge, your "lifelong learning channel", to make way for BBC4? What, in fact, is the ever-expanding, increasingly commercial BBC actually for?

As the corporation expands unstoppably into digital broadcasting, online publishing and "digital learning", its less well-funded commercial rivals are shouting ever more despairingly about unfair competition. The Artsworld channel, due to close in two weeks, blames BBC4 for its demise, and nerves are fraying at E4, Paramount and Sky One in anticipation of the imminent approval of the youth channel BBC3. In both cases, rivals point out, the licence fee will fund channels more than half of us cannot receive, and on turf already catered for by existing channels. So much for the corporation's original justification that it could take risks unfettered by commercial pressures to attract new audiences.

But with its licence fee apparently safe for another 15 years, according to recent remarks by the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, it clearly feels less bothered about explaining itself. As one rival says: "The BBC was given extra licence-fee money by the Government to fulfil a specific purpose - so that viewers would go digital and it could switch off analogue broadcasts. But instead of targeting consumers proving resistant to digital TV, they are going for those already very well served - there were, for instance, already 14 children's digital channels before the BBC arrived.

"This is really about protecting the BBC well into the future by securing viewers among children and young people who are still prepared to pay a licence tax of £110 a year." We shall never know the truth, of course - negotiations between the BBC and the Government about launching the channels were shrouded in secrecy.

Tony Ball, chief executive of BSkyB, calls the corporation "a monster genetically programmed to get bigger and bigger", and the breadth of its current ambitions suggest it has no finite goal. The Murdoch empire naturally has good reason to bait broadcasting's dominant player, but now the list of critics is widening, from MPs criticising the "dumbing down" of its politics coverage to former director-general Sir Michael Checkland berating its "imperial march" into commercial areas beyond its public-service remit.

In May, an alliance of 18 educational publishers, including Pearson and Reed Elsevier, promised court action to halt the corporation's hugely ambitious expansion into the school software market, which they claim will cost them £400 million. They charge that the BBC has failed to consult before earmarking £170 million for the project, and that by driving smaller firms out of business, it will narrow the choice of materials available to schools.

"The BBC is a fantastic ambassador for this country when it does what the commercial marketplace cannot deliver, but that traditional yardstick has been completely forgotten in the Dyke/Davies world," says Hugo Drayton, MD of Hollinger Telegraph New Media. "In the internet business, the BBC has led to huge market distortions, launching services willy-nilly without any approval process and without proper regulation. It's a monster with the arrogance to do what it pleases."

As it competes ever more aggressively with its commercial rivals - taking over ITV Digital's broadcasting platform, or undercutting ITN in ensuring BBC World is seen on the Heathrow Express - the BBC needs to be as accountable to licence-fee holders as its competitors are to their shareholders.

The board of governors, acting in place of external regulators, has proved inadequate to the task of holding BBC management to account in this fast-changing digital world: as Tim Yeo points out, the corporation has no obligation to explain exactly how it spends our cash, even the detail of its blockbuster film budget or its digital channels' launch costs.

At the very least, the governors need to hold their meetings in public, the process by which new services are approved should be made more transparent, and the press should be seen as a guarantor of accountability rather than as a threat. For if the BBC is going to play by commercial rules, we, its shareholders, have a right to know that we are getting a fair deal.

(Evening Standard, July 17 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - E-democracy fears/Segway/Stegdetect

By David Rowan

A TERRIFYING buzzword is doing the rounds in Whitehall: e-democracy. Meaning anything from online voting to electronic public consultations, the term has that magical ability to turn normally cautious politicians into wide-eyed techno-visionaries. So when the Government launched its consultation document on making e-democracy a reality, it opened the door to yet more huge IT projects that you just know will fail to work as planned. Democracy is too important to leave to a Government that cannot get IT right.

Just look at its track record with computer projects that arrive late, over budget and, in some cases, not at all. The 1901 Census website will not be searchable until next month at the earliest, and the Child Support Agency's new system, due to be ready last April, is still some way off. Then we had flaws with the new air-traffic control system, the Inland Revenue self-assessment website that had to be taken offline and delays to the Criminal Records Bureau's system for vetting staff. From the Lord Chancellor's Department to the Home Office, the lessons of the 1999 Passport Agency fiasco appear not to have been learnt.

"It is not all doom and gloom," says the e-Envoy's office protesting that government IT success stories "never get reported" - although a spokeswoman was hard-pressed, without further research, to give examples beyond NHS Direct Online. The e-Envoy, Andrew Pinder, is working hard to push government departments towards providing a better service online, but he faces the obstacle of a Whitehall culture that is apparently designed to make IT projects fail. "The bigger projects are run by ministers and permanent secretaries, so when things go horribly wrong, the bad news is filtered out and doesn't end up with the people who can solve problems," says Tony Collins, Computer Weekly's executive editor. "At least the private sector learns from its mistakes and understands that you need to welcome constructive criticism on a daily basis - computer projects are about problem-solving, after all." Such an attitude is the antithesis of how government works: the possibility of failure cannot even be considered.

Technobabble's response to the "e-democracy" consultation, which runs until October, is simple. Forget about it, Mr Pinder. The voters are not ready for it, and your colleagues in Whitehall certainly do not have the track record to deliver it. And do not listen to those private IT firms lobbying for the prospective contracts. They know that, whatever goes wrong, they will get paid.

++++

REMEMBER the Segway Human Transporter, the much-hyped scooter launched last December that was going to "change civilisation" as it solved the world's transport problems? Despite all the hype - and yes, we fell for it too - it seems that the £6,000 lawnmower-lookalike is just not moving. Federal Express was apparently going to buy a fleet, but changed its mind. Other forward-thinking clients such as Amazon.com and Michelin are still claiming to be "testing" them and have yet to sign any cheques. Some American postal workers are about to try them, but early police users have abandoned them for bicycles. In other words, "brand footprint", as PR coverage was called in the dot-com boom days, has nothing to do with success.

++++

I WAS hoping to bring you an exclusive message from al-Qaeda this week, now that intelligence agents have discovered the websites it is using to exchange encrypted orders. The process involves hiding its messages in text files, and its images on pro-jihad websites such as azzam.com and, bizarrely, that haven of Islamic extremism, eBay. According to US Intelligence, supporters in Pakistan have been uploading message-filled images from internet cafes and, thanks to a program called Stegdetect, I have been directed to a few likely picture files. Maybe I'm just slow, but I've been searching for those hidden messages without success. And the number of eBay pictures of baseball cards one can stare at before wishing the terrorists would stick to e-mail is finite.

(The Times, July 17 2002)

Read more!

Evening Standard: What has gone wrong at Channel 4?

IT promises to be this summer's reality-TV sensation: 1,100 Channel 4 staff locked in a modernist building on Horseferry Road, knowing that any day now up to 200 of them will be voted out. Faced with mounting losses and falling ratings, the channel's new boss admitted this week that only radical surgery - from huge job cuts to abandoned film ventures - offers the channel any longterm hope of survival. What has gone wrong at Channel 4?

Under its last chief executive, Michael Jackson, Channel 4 jumped recklessly on the digital bandwagon, investing heavily in websites and digital TV channels that soaked up millions at the expense of programme budgets. Meanwhile, as the company's headcount rose from 650 to 1,100, the channel's advertising and sponsorship income fell away - dropping by £33 million last year alone. And while expensive star signings such as Richard and Judy have won lacklustre ratings, the channel's film arm has produced a string of critical and commercial bombs.

As the new chief executive, Mark Thompson, admitted this week: "If we don't change the schedules, the way we work, the structure and scale of the organisation very radically indeed, we are not going to succeed."

On Monday, Thompson called staff together to warn of "radical change" that would cost a significant number their jobs - between 100 and 200, according to insiders. "We need an organisation which is as lean as it possibly can be, but which is also based around clear tasks, teamwork and a spirit of co-operation," he said, a speech many present interpreted as an attack on his predecessor's regime. "Creating a leaner, less hierarchical Channel 4 will mean employing fewer people," he warned. "It's going to be a bumpy time."

The bumps began last night, when the 59 staff at FilmFour learned that all but 10 would lose their jobs as its commissioning budget was slashed from £31 million to £10 million. Famous for such British hits as Four Weddings and a Funeral, the filmmaking unit will now become a small in-house department (the FilmFour digital channel will continue as before).

The decision shocked the film world, which accuses Thompson of shortterm thinking. "It's a real blow," one film executive said. "FilmFour hasn't failed, but is simply going through the lean period in the seven-year cycle that affects all studios outside the Hollywood system. Channel 4 is only thinking about short-term profits."

All round, profits have been in short supply of late. Last year, the channel made an operating loss of £28 million, as opposed to a £34 million profit the previous year. The film company lost more than £5 million, while the FilmFour digital channel lost a further £11 million, and the E4 entertainment channel lost £37 million. Last week, further pressure was placed on its digital pay channels when a BBC/Sky consortium beat a rival bid from Channel 4 and ITV to secure the former ITV Digital platform. There is no space on the platform for either of its subscription channels.

Liz Forgan, former director of programmes at Channel 4, believes the cutbacks are overdue. "I'm very sorry for all those people now worried about their jobs, but my immeindiate thought on hearing this was, 'Hooray!'" she said. "Channel 4 has grown far too big and too hands-on - it's ridiculous that it has more than 1,000 staff. It was inevitable that these cutbacks would happen, and Mark's done the right thing. What's really important is to bring it back to a tiny commissioning centre."

THE main terrestrial channel continues to face its own problems, not least a falling audience share: as Channel 5 has risen from a 2.3 per cent share to 5.8 per cent over the past five years, Channel 4 has dropped from 10.6 per cent to 10. More recently, audiences have fallen away from RI:SE, the Big Breakfast's replacement, and critics have questioned whether excessive spending - such as £700,000 for each Simpsons episode - is enough to restore the channel's reputation for popular innovation. They argue that, by becoming a top-heavy organisation, Channel 4 has allowed its commissioning process to become unfocused.

Thompson responded this week by slashing the number of commissioning departments from 13 to eight.

The channel insists this week's changes do not result from panic. "Mark Thompson made it clear when he joined in March that he'd take a few months to look at what needed to go," a spokesman said. "It's not panic, but a manifesto for radical change to ensure our longterm growth continues."

Perhaps, but the industry is in no doubt that the channel overexpanded under Michael Jackson. Chris Hayward, head of TV at the Zenith media-buying agency, blames the "dotcom madness" which led the channel to "make investments at the wrong time, when dotcoms were spending millions on TV. Now there's a balance coming back. I don't see this week's changes as a sign of ill-health, just C4 getting its house back in order." Michael Jackson was unavailable to respond.

"All credit to Mark for doing this right at the beginning," Liz Forgan said. "Everyone except Rupert Murdoch has got digital wrong. It was a brave and completely understandable thing to get into, and the channel has obviously lost a lot of money.
But it's unavoidable, utterly inescapable that broadcasters will need to get into multi-channel digital operations. What's happened is no great disgrace."

(Evening Standard, July 10 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Apple's PR backlash/Microsoft insecurity/Klausler keyboards

By David Rowan

IF you are one of the 97 per cent who choose PCs over Macs, you may have wondered why so many smug Mac owners continue to worship the cult of Apple Computers. Like many cults, members pay over the odds to join, and even though software producers treat them as an afterthought, they fill magazine columns and fan websites with paeans of celebration to a company invariably described as "cool". But in the past week, Apple has managed to attract levels of hostile press normally hurled at tech-world Goliaths such as Microsoft and BT. Suddenly the company has single-handedly repositioned itself as damagingly uncool - through clumsy PR efforts designed to control its fans@discussions.

The backlash began over the rather trivial issue of press access to next week's Macworld Expo, a New York trade show during which Apple traditionally launches new products. Each new announcement will be pored over by hundreds of Mac news sites, from professional ones to those run by amateurs unhealthily obsessed with their G4's curves. Over the years the free publicity generated by these grassroots sites has transformed Apple into something approaching a cult. Unlike clumsier corporate rivals, the company that implored us to "think different" would never seek to silence its fans.

That all changed last week, when Apple decided to blacklist any news site that "features coverage on rumours and speculation" about its future plans. The only reporters to be given press credentials at Macworld Expo, it said, were those who agreed to co-operate with its PR department and publish only when directed. This meant that none of those unhelpful leaks about Apple's new operating system, codenamed Jaguar, or its plan to redesign the iPod music player for Windows. Its executives in Cupertino, California, would henceforth shape the message.

Enthusiasts such as Scott McCarty, who edits the GraphicPower news site "out of love for Apple, the Mac, the Mac community, and graphics technology", were told that media registration was cancelled if stories had challenged the company's line. McCarty's response was to close down his site: "I will not roll over and play dog to Apple's manipulation of the Mac press," he said. Another fan site, ThinkSecret, denounced the ban as "blackmail, pure and simple. While Apple might see it as a way to control information, reporters (and any normal human being) see it as Apple's way of controlling the news."

As condemnation spread like a virus this week, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has suddenly found himself accused of imperilling the cult's core principle. For if Apple starts acting like any other corporate monolith, using PR arm-twisting and legal threats to silence debate then why, its members are asking, should they pay premium prices to remain members?

++++

MICROSOFT, meanwhile, faces PR battles of its own, most recently over its new Palladium security system for managing digital rights. Concern is growing over a security patch that it has just released to fix bugs in its Windows Media Player. According to the small print, by installing the patch you agree that Microsoft may provide further security-related updates "that will be automatically downloaded on to your computer. These security-related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play secure content and use other software on your computer". In other words, by clicking "I agree", you are letting Microsoft decide how you use your PC. This is a truly worrying development.

++++

If only I had discovered Peter Klausler earlier, I could have written this column far more quickly. Klausler is an American programmer who, wondering whether the "qwerty" keyboard is efficient for today's typist, devised a program to check. Based on an algorithm, it determines the minimum distance that one's fingers need to travel while touch-typing a typical English text. The result? If you really want to speed-type, replace your keyboard with one whose top line reads "k , u y p w l m f c", followed by "o a e i d r n t h s" on the middle row, then "q .'; z x v g b j". Though you might first want to switch on your spellchecker.

(The Times, July 10 2002)

Read more!

The Times: Tech column - Hacktivists/Warchalking/Airport scanners

By David Rowan

You may have missed it, but Pakistan was quietly captured by India this week. The attack, which silenced Islamabad in a matter of minutes, involved that powerful new weapon of war: the unsolicited e-mail. Sent by Indian hackers known only as "sNAkeeYes" and "cOBra", the e-mail used an attached virus called Yaha-E to bring down Pakistan's main government website in the latest politically motivated cyber-attack. They might not know their upper-case letters from their lower, but today's online activists certainly know how to disrupt the enemy.

From Beijing to Bethlehem, politically inspired hackers - known as "hacktivists" - are wreaking ever greater destruction using a few simple keystrokes. In the Middle East, Palestinians have been spreading anti-Israel messages with the "Injustice" worm, and in Sri Lanka, the "Mawanella" virus has been bringing down enemy e mail servers. But today the main cyber-battle is being waged between the world's pro- and anti-Islamic hacker groups. As they launch ever more destructive viruses and denial-of-service attacks, they are causing their enemies real problems - as the unobtainable Pakistan government website (at www.pak.gov.pk) has shown this week.

The threats are growing, and governments can no longer afford to be naive about their potential impact. As tensions rose last month over Kashmir, two pro-Pakistani hacktivist groups - calling themselves the Unix Security Guards and the World Fantabulous Defacers - attacked some 111 business websites in India. A third group based in Pakistan, the Anti-India Crew, has claimed responsibility for 422 attacks in less than a year.

A few clever and motivated programmers can inflict real economic damage on a rival state, apart from the psychological damage caused by "capturing" an official government web page. As we become more reliant on the net to communicate, our civil defence strategy needs to invest far more in technology to counter such potential disruption.

The FBI, which has lately been talking up the possibility of a serious al Qaeda cyber-attack, claims that a malicious hacker could even use the web to disrupt the US power grid or to reprogramme computers that control dams, thus endangering civilian lives. Perhaps, although such predictions seem designed to generate the sort of headlines that lead to bigger departmental budgets - just as the anti-virus industry, rather cynically, is delighting in using cyber-terrorism to promote its software. But even if current risk levels are being exaggerated, Western governments need to take urgent steps to plan for the worst.

++++

YOU may soon start noticing strange chalk circles and squiggles appearing on city walls or pavements. No, it's not the latest unexplained variation on crop circles, but a new grassroots initiative that is taking the internet community by storm. The symbols are an attempt to alert passers-by to the presence of a wireless (or WiFi) network that lets them log on to the net free of charge, using their laptop and a small aerial. The practice of labelling WiFi-compliant streets is known as "warchalking" - and, although internet service providers are not too happy about subscribers sharing their bandwidth, this "hobo language" is spreading as fast as a viral e-mail in places such as London and New York. As with all "hot" tech fads, warchalking even has its own weblog, at www.warchalking.org, where you can watch a new sign language evolve - and, doubtless, the fightback by ISPs against something they would rather we paid for.

++++

When packing for your summer holiday this year, be sure to keep the camera in your hand luggage. The post-September 11 security drive has led many airports to install high-power X-ray scanners for checked-in bags - and, as frustrated photographers have found, the old reassurances about scanners not affecting films no longer apply. "Never again put anything photosensitive in checked bags," Kodak has been warning travellers, especially those using North American airports, where luggage is now bombarded with huge radiation doses. So, if you don't want your snaps to be ruined, make sure your films are examined by hand - or use a digital camera. Not even X-rays can fade your pixels.

(The Times, July 3 2002)

Read more!

The Observer: Teenage internet camgirls at risk

A growing number of British teenagers are posting pictures of themselves on the web in return for gifts from strangers. David Rowan reports on the 'camgirls'.

Kerry was sent £70 worth of underwear last week, bought at Playboy's online store by a man she had never met. The same day, she received a £45 cheque at her Lancashire home to pose at her webcam 'and do absolutely nothing'.

In the 10 months since her personal website went live, its sultry photo galleries and provocative 'livecam' shots have brought Kerry so much attention - and gifts ranging from lingerie to CDs - that she now plans to build a premium 'members' area' that she hopes will earn her a full-time living.

First, though, she has her GCSEs to worry about - for Kerry, one of Britain's growing number of internet 'camgirls', is a schoolgirl aged just 14. As technology becomes ever cheaper and internet companies vie to offer free web space, thousands of children are chronicling their lives on intimate personal websites.

But some young girls are taking these most public of diaries a stage further, and posing in their bedrooms for prurient webcam photographs that they use to persuade strangers to buy them gifts. Although many children simply point visitors to their 'wish lists' on shopping sites such as Amazon, The Observer has discovered that a number are actively soliciting gifts with the promise of more revealing photographs in return.

It is a disturbing trend that has become established among Britain's teenagers only in recent months. Senior police officers expressed dismay after an Observer investigation uncovered some of the wish list 'trades'.

Most worryingly, the majority of young British camgirls we contacted said their parents were unaware of their online activities, and few seemed to understand the risks inherent in these dubious transactions.

Although the girls do not give their addresses - and Amazon wish lists state only the area the gift is being sent to - databases of website owners and their addresses are in the public domain.

Len Hynds, head of Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, said the force was unaware that such sites were now operating in the UK until The Observer detailed six which appear to be run by 14- to-18-year-old girls from counties including Durham, Essex and Dorset. 'It's a very worrying trend, and clearly something we should be getting a more accurate picture of,' Detective Chief Superintendent Hynds said. 'Paedophiles are very good at grooming children in chatrooms, and I'd be very surprised if paedophiles weren't aware of these sites.' By providing photographs and encouraging strangers to provide gifts, the girls were placing themselves at severe risk, he said.

ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE

Read more!

The Observer: Teenage internet camgirls at risk (page 2)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

In the United States, where child murders and rapes have been linked to relationships struck online, the camgirl phenomenon has prompted renewed concern among law-enforcement agencies. Last week, a month after a 13-year-old Connecticut girl was strangled by a man she allegedly met online, the popular Felicite.com gift registry - based nearby - shut down 100 wish lists that it found were linked to teenage camgirls' websites.

Some of those sites, The Observer has discovered, belong to schoolgirls in Britain, including one - apparently owned by an A-level student from Surrey - that promises 'special pictures' in return for gifts. Hynds fears that some salacious sites may be fronts for organised crime, although our research offered no reason to make such a link with the Surrey schoolgirl's site, which carries adverts for hardcore adult sites.

Fourteen-year-old Kerry, one of a number of British camgirls who agreed to discuss their experiences via email interviews, sees her site as a 'bit of fun' that happens to attract gifts in the mail. 'It's shocking what people buy you for nothing, it really is,' she reflects. Her website includes 56 photographs of her striking model poses in various skimpy tops, revealing nothing more than a pierced navel or a flirtatious kiss.

But what sets Kerry's site apart from the typical schoolgirl's are the links she trails from her front page to adult sites that pay her for referring new subscribers. And not only does she trail other sites but last week, she says, she received a cheque for $80 from Cam Girls Gone Wild, where paying visitors can see her 'bikini photographs'.

Through her Amazon.com wish list, men she has never met send Kerry pop CDs and books, most recently Jon Benet: Inside the Murder Investigation, about the dead six-year-old American beauty queen. The list includes CDs, a television and a Hello Kitty lamp that 'would look so cute in my new pink room'. 'I can't really tell you much about the people who buy me things, because I don't know who any of them are,' Kerry says. 'I guess they're just people who enjoy the livecam, writing or whatever.'

She now hopes to capitalise on the attention her site has brought her. 'I actually plan on making a members' section with my livecam on there,' she says. 'I need some money and would really like to do this for a living. I'm always offered money to go on cam [she declines], so I might as well take advantage.' Kerry sees her site as her space, beyond parental interference.

'I've had lectures from my parents about what's written, but I've just simply told them not to read it if they don't like it.'

Other teenage camgirls contacted by The Observer chose not to let their parents even see their sites. Not surprisingly, none was prepared to put us in touch with her parents. 'I refuse to provide them with the [website] link, as it serves its purpose as a place for me to share my thoughts and feelings,' explains Alexa, a 15-year-old from Northamptonshire.

'Knowing they were reading them would only make me hold back. My parents don't often ask too many questions about my site.' But she pays the bills by linking prominently to adult sites. 'It does bother me that some sites I have to link to in order to fund my site are so upfront about making money from young girls, but I have no other way of paying for my domain.'

And her Amazon wish list? 'The main people who'd buy things from there would in my experience be middle-aged men with too much time on their hands. I'm not going to lie and say I wouldn't like people to buy me something - doesn't everyone want something for nothing?'

But what about the risks she is running by exposing her personal details through her site? 'The whole stalker thing does worry me,' she admits, 'especially one guy who took pleasure in relaying to me my home address, and saying the last time he was here it had snowed. But the one or two perverts or weirdos are by far outnumbered by the genuine, kind, caring visitors.'

Still, in a recent diary entry Alexa announced that she was taking down her webcam for being 'more trouble than it's worth'. Instantly her message-board sprang to its defence. 'If you did,' wrote one regular, 'I would not be able to get a glimpse of pure beauty every day.'

Kate, the A-level student in Surrey, offers 'personal rewards' in exchange for gifts. 'I do offer to send people "special pictures" if they buy me something,' she admits. 'They don't show anything more than you'd see me in at the beach, but I suppose they like the idea that they have their own personal pictures. I also chat to quite a lot of men online who have seen my pictures - I usually do steer them in the direction of my wish list, but only because within the first two minutes they always ask to see me naked. I'm 18 but I've told men that I'm as young as 15, and they still buy me stockings and garter belts and ask to see me in them. The guys are looking for a fantasy girl, I play up to it. They get their fantasy, I get profit.'

'Profit' for Kate has included £100 commission from porn sites she advertises, as well as a lace G-string and garter belt from her wish lists. 'I am going to see if it's possible to actually make a living from it,' she says. 'I've tried having just a normal teen site before, but the only way to make any profit is to cater to the people who are looking for porn. Showing more skin on your webcam gets more people to visit.'

She learnt this after adding her site to various 'portals', which allow visitors to vote for their favourite camgirls. 'When you go to the sites and there are so many other girls putting up naked shots, you become a bit immune to it. So then I started putting up more and more provocative shots. The more provocative, the more men would contact me, and one day somebody bought me something from my wish list.'

Kate has not told her family about her site. 'I don't count it as "me",' she explains. 'I'm a normal girl offline, nobody would ever guess that I do this. My boyfriend does know - I always run my pictures past him. He knows that I'm just trying to earn money. Of course I've thought about stalkers, but ultimately I'm in charge of what people know about me. I don't show full shots of my face, and I don't give out too many details about myself, like what school I go to.'

Last week, however, Kate's lingerie wish list was one of those shut down by Felicite.com. 'It's DIY pornography, basically,' explains Hans Xu, in charge of the company's marketing. 'For £50 they can set up their own porno site and publish to an instant global market. It's frightening.'

In May, Xu's point was proved when police in nearby Greenwich, Connecticut, discovered the body of 13-year-old Christina Long, who police allege was killed by a 25-year-old man she met online.

'What kind of parents let their daughters get involved with this?' Xu says. 'It starts out very innocently: the girl sets up a site, the guy emails in saying you're beautiful, and then he starts sending them gifts. It's really sick to see guys taking advantage of underaged girls like this.'

Xu passed to The Observer an email from a purportedly 16-year-old Canadian girl to a man who had bought her a gift. 'Here is one pic because that's all $10 and under buys,' she said. 'If you sign up for [an X-rated site], I'll be sure to send you more!'

'It was a real eye-opener for us, since it was the first hard evidence we saw that girls were exchanging pictures for gifts,' Xu says.

When contacted by The Observer, Amazon.co.uk also expressed concern that some of its wish lists were being used 'in an inappropriate manner'. 'We do not condone it,' company spokeswoman Christina Smedley said. 'If we are made aware of specific instances of inappropriate use we will take down those wish lists.'

'Inviting strangers to buy you gifts, and posting pictures of yourself, is very risky behaviour,' agrees John Carr, internet adviser at the children's charity NCH.

'Paedophiles and child molesters are always interested in finding new people they can make contact with, and that can start with a simple email. A good parent ought to make sure they know what their children get up to online.'

(The Observer, July 2, 2002)

Read more!