The Times: Tech column - Sexy video games/AOL's CDs

By David Rowan

It has taken a while but sex has finally reached the video game. Not the vaguely titillating Lara Croft style of teasing, but live-action strip shows, topless female bike riders, and bikini-stretching volleyball games which make Baywatch resemble a church fete. Moralising commentators have traditionally focused on the violence endemic to so many bestselling games. This season they will be fuming about sex.

A couple of new releases show how taboos can crumble under ever-increasing commercial pressures. Next month Acclaim Entertainment will launch BMX XXX, a bike-riding game enlivened by video clips taken from a New York strip joint, and where players get to control a topless BMX rider as she bounces her way through the mud. If the game's slogan, "Keep it Dirty", fails to convince the twentysomething men who comprise a high-spending segment of the gaming market, a game from Tecmo may appeal. Set on a tropical paradise populated by bikini clad beauties, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball encourages players to cultivate relationships as they watch the buxom babes at play. Just don't think of these games as toys.

Until recently, mass-market games have steered clear of overt sexual activity. The 1995 hit Phantasmagoria broke new ground in suggesting sexual congress, but developers have generally avoided excessive realism. After all, while they relied mainly on children for their business, they did not want to alienate the family stores. But as the market has matured, so, gradually, has the content. With Grand Theft Auto III, players could even invite a prostitute into their car although voyeuristic enjoyment was limited to the sight of the vehicle gently bouncing.

But the new raunchiness is not without risk. Acclaim is accustomed to facing public condemnation. A recent PR stunt, to promote a car-chase game, involved an offer to repay genuine speeding fines. But this time it may have misjudged the retailers' mood. Last week, three big American chains, including Wal-Mart, said they would not stock BMX XXX because of its "vulgarity". Another chain said it would sell only a censored version suitable for the PlayStation 2. Acclaim's shares finished the week sharply down - suggesting that perhaps the gaming world is still not ready for sex.

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If the internet economy has invented anything more annoying than junk e-mail, it can only be the unsolicited AOL CD. No matter how quickly you bin them, there always seems to be another "free 1,000-hour trial" falling through the letterbox - an endless marketing blitz presumably made viable only by the failure to warn when the paid-for hours have begun. So let us welcome a campaign by Jim McKenna and John Lieberman, "just a couple of normal people", in California who are collecting these unwanted disks through a website, NoMoreAOLCDs.com. Once they have collected a million, they plan to deliver them to AOL's headquarters in Virginia with the priceless message: "You've got mail".

Unlike spam e-mails, which can be deleted, these dumped CDs cannot easily be recycled. Half a dozen might make a novelty set of drinks coasters, but a million amounts to about 17 tons of landfill. So far, McKenna and Lieberman are 65,000 CDs towards their target - including 7,000 sent from Britain; but that is proving too slow for some junk-mail militants. More mischievously, they are instead urging every recipient of a CD to sign up for the full 1,000 hours. If a million did so, they point out, that would amount to a billion hours at AOL Time Warner's expense. If this did not make the company rethink, it would at least give customers enough time to delete all the spam and pop-up adverts hurled at them by other online marketers.

(The Times, October 22 2002)

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The Times: Investigation - marketing to the under-fives

Should TV ads aimed at young children be banned? 130 MPs think so, but advertisers say under-fives can think for themselves. David Rowan investigates

IT IS AN annual tradition as fixed in the autumn calendar as are leaves on the line and last-minute tax-return panics. During the past few days, parents across Britain have been feeling the first pinpricks of the long pre-Christmas pester campaign - that relentless lobbying by children determined to own, this year, the Barbie Rapunzel DVD, a full set of Tomy's MicroPets, the Ready Steady Cook Popcorn Maker, or Baby Annabell doll.

To understand where the exhortations begin, you need watch only a few minutes of children's commercial television at this time of year - just long enough to experience the advertising blitz bombarding them with tips on how to indulge their "passion for fashion". Commercials aimed at children are a vital seasonal sales tool in a toy market worth around £1.7 billion in the UK.

But should the ads be there at all? Amid intense debate about children's vulnerability to these aggressive sales pitches, it is a question being asked with increasing vigour by campaigners ranging from concerned parents to professors of nutrition. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury-designate, Dr Rowan Williams, has blamed the "marketing culture" promoted by companies such as Disney for robbing childhood of its special innocence.

The Labour MP for Stourbridge, Debra Shipley, for one, believes that only a total ban on advertising aimed at young children can protect them from what she calls the industry's "cynical manipulation". She cites parents' worries that under-fives, in particular, fail to understand the purpose of adverts, and do not differentiate between commercials and programmes. "Three or four-year-olds watching a TV programme probably don't know what's happening," she says. "One minute they're watching a bear, then suddenly they're seeing a food product."

As a result, she says, they are easy targets for brainwashing - which is why earlier this year she introduced an early day motion in Parliament demanding "that TV advertising should be banned during broadcasting hours scheduled for under-fives' viewing".

Remarkably, Shipley's campaign has attracted the support of 130 MPs - and a series of discussions with the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, who told her that the proposal would be considered as part of a "wholesale review" of advertising codes under the new broadcasting watchdog, Ofcom. "At this very moment there's a window, and I want the Secretary of State to tell that watchdog to make sure that the television companies don't exploit three-year-olds," says Shipley.

"I'd be happy to engage Debra Shipley in a discussion about the value of advertising," says Malcolm Earnshaw, the director-general of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers. "We live in a world of brands, and brands are a mark of quality. We need to start to learn to choose from an early age, and advertising provides us with information."

Broadcasters argue that advertisements for children's products generate up to £650 million across Europe each year, and, in Disney's view, any ban would be "catastrophic" for the quality of children's programmes. And just to show how responsible it is, the industry will next month launch a media education campaign in Britain intended to help children to interpret what advertisements are seeking to do.

What is becoming harder for advertisers to defend is the high volume of food commercials aimed at these youngest consumers. Last month the International Obesity Task Force, a coalition of medical experts and nutritionists, demanded a Europe-wide ban on adverts for "inappropriate" food and drinks aimed at children, to stem an "epidemic" of childhood obesity.

"Children are targeted as consumers and are vulnerable to intense, repetitive advertising," the task force reported, leading to a "dramatic" shift in children's diets towards soft drinks and fast foods high in fats or sugars.

At the Food Commission, Kath Dalmeny, a research officer, is in no doubt that ads are partly to blame. "They tend to portray the sugary, salty foods as 'cool'." Healthy, unbranded foods such as fruit simply cannot compete.

Those who demand a ban point to countries such as Greece, where ads for toy are prohibited between 7am and 10pm (and those for toy guns and tanks at all times). In Belgium, too, the Dutch-speaking area bans any advertising within five minutes of a children's TV programme on a local channel.

But the greatest inspiration for prohibitionists is Sweden, where, since 1991, all advertisements aimed at the under-12s have been barred from terrestrial television. Broadcasters who breach the ban can be sued, and fined. Last year the TV4 channel ran into trouble over its Pokemon cartoon series, which ended with a jingle, "Gotta catch 'em all". This was ruled a surreptitious plug for Pokemon playing cards, and TV4 faces a large fine if the jingle is heard again.

The Swedish Government believes that children should be treated as "commercial-free zones", based on academic research suggesting that only by the age of eight to ten do they understand the purpose of advertising. The ad industry, needless to say, disagrees, and considers the ban "futile".

Glen Smith, whose Youth Research Group advises companies how best to target children (use images not words; use models three years their senior), considers the Swedish ban misguided. "It's is disadvantageous to children, as they don't know about new products," he says. "You can't put children in cases until they are 12. It goes against the tenets of allowing children to become acclimatised to adverts as part of their environment."

That argument, though, will be of little comfort to those facing their children's pre-Christmas strategies of persuasion. There is no doubt that advertising will help to decide which toys are bestsellers this season. But what is harder to show is how, specifically, the adverts affect younger children. Do commercials lead children as young as four to show distinct brand preferences? If so, how strong is their identification with brands that they may not even be able to name? Do they, in fact, understand what the adverts are there for?

This is where things become complicated. No clear picture emerges from the vast academic research on the issue - much of it backed by vested interests striving either to avoid further regulation or seeking to prove that children are being exploited.

So Channel 4 News decided to commission a leading psychologist in the field to devise an experiment that we could take into primary schools. Dr Karen Pine, of the University of Hertfordshire, had previously studied the differences between children's letters to Father Christmas in England and Sweden, and found the former demanding many more branded presents than the more generically inclined Swedes. She wanted to know how far four and five-year-olds were likely to be swayed towards the advertised branded goods that they saw on television, and whether they knew what the ad breaks were for.

We photographed eight advertised goods - from Sunny Delight and Walkers crisps to Barbie and Max Steel toys - as well as eight similar-looking, non-branded products. In two different primary schools in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Pine asked 75 children, one at a time, to help her to choose which products a child of their age would like. They had only to point to one of each pair of photos.

The results were not surprising: the children showed a strong preference for the advertised goods, particularly with food products. Among breakfast cereals, there was an 84 per cent preference for Coco Pops; for Sunny Delight the preference was 71 per cent. Among girls, the scores were even higher, up to 97 per cent. We also tested branded products such as Nike trainer that are not targeted specifically at children. Here there was no statistically significant preference. What we did find, though, was confusion among children about what the ad breaks were for, and an inability to articulate why they chose certain products, beyond comments that "nice girls like this one".

Pine is cautious about identifying television advertising as the only influence on these children's choices. "You could argue that these brands are already familiar," she says, "but we chose products aimed specifically at children, and made it as difficult as possible for them to spot the branded product, by pairing it with a very similar one. What did come out of this study was how little children are aware of how they're being sold to. We need to help them to understand that the people selling the product want to make money."

Why did girls show such a strong brand preference? "Probably because of their greater verbal or literary ability, or perhaps because of their emotional sensitivity," says Pine. "They are better at decoding the subtle messages."

So where does she think her findings leave the debate on whether to move towards an advertising ban? "Banning isn't the answer," she says. "Children are exposed to brands in many other ways: on buses, lorries, even clothing." The answer, she believes, lies in educating children about what the commercials are seeking to achieve - a conclusion the ad industry's Media Smart initiative is aiming to pre-empt.

As for stopping the pestering - that will prove a more daunting challenge.

(David Rowan's film on advertising and children is on Channel 4 News at 7pm)

(The Times, October 18 2002)

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Evening Standard: Harry Potter vs Lord of the Rings: Battle of the franchises

TAKE your seats for Battle of the Hollywood Titans, Part II - another blood-and-guts fight for world domination between a young wizard called Harry Potter and his deadly rival Frodo Baggins. David Rowan reports

Almost exactly a year after they first squared off at the box office, the second Lord of the Rings film is about to go head-to-head with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - and although the Hogwarts hero emerged the billion-dollar winner first time around, experts suggest that this season's rematch will be a much tougher fight to call.

There could not be more at stake for the film industry. The Fellowship of the Ring might have won the critical acclaim in round one - four Oscars and five Baftas to Potter's empty slate - but it came a poor second in the numbers that impress the studio accountants.

So far, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has earned Warner Bros an astonishing $961 million (£619 million) - making it the second-highest earning film ever made behind only Titanic. By contrast, the first Lord of the Rings film had to settle for a mere $861 million (£554 million) - again, a huge bonanza for its producers, but still some $60 million behind Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace.

With this much money at stake, the studios are pulling out all the stops to lure ticket-buyers to the sequels. Even as filming began on the new Potter film last November, the studio marketing execs were plotting how best to exploit their "franchise", as they call films they can repeatedly milk for value.

Although Chamber of Secrets does not open in Britain and the US until 15 November, they decided that one way to generate early demand was to start selling tickets in September. "Advance booking has been a phenomenal success," explains Richard Storton, brand manager for the Odeon chain. He expects advance tickets to go on sale next month for the Tolkien sequel, which opens in Britain on 18 December.

That delay of more than a month could give Chamber of Secrets a vital edge, according to Robert Mitchell, box-office analyst at Screen International magazine. "The Potter film does have the advantage of being out first," he says, "but that's because Warner Bros controls which screens it gets, and can demand the film stays there for a certain number of weeks."

IN fact, the five-week gap between the two openings is a deliberate ploy to help both films maximise their box- office impact. Although they will be competing, the studios behind them are not really rivals at all: Warner Bros, which makes the Potter films, and New Line Cinema, behind Rings, are both part of AOL Time Warner.

"The company wants both films to do well and not kill each other," Mitchell explains, "but they'll quite happily kill everything else." The main victim is expected to be the 20th James Bond film, Die Another Day, released a week after the Potter movie.
But then Potter and Baggins will themselves face tough competition as Hollywood targets some of its hottest releases at the Christmas market. Paramount, for instance, will be releasing the Star Trek follow-up Nemesis in the States on 13 December, followed a week later by its animated feature The Wild Thornberrys and Oscar hopeful, The Hours.

So how will the Potter sequel perform against such competition? "I don't think it will be the biggest film of the year, and I'd be shocked if it surpassed the first one," says Steven Gaydos, executive editor of the film bible Variety. "The novelty of the first Harry Potter movie was a huge onetime bonanza, and this time the gap with Lord of the Rings will be smaller."

Yet Warner Bros will emerge a winner, whatever happens. "Just look at what it has to do to be profitable," Gaydos explains. "The film cost around $130 million, with a further $30 million or so for promotion. Because of other expenses, the studio will need to earn more than twice this amount to make a profit - and this is where the Potter franchise cannot fail. Let's say - conservatively - that the film takes $500 million. Now, video and DVD sales will add at least another $250 million and then there's the incredible merchandising."

LAST year, licensing experts estimated that Harry Potter tie-ins were worth up to $1 billion. Even if year two brings in just a quarter of that, it will add a further $250 million to Warner Bros' coffers. "So now you've got a portfolio that's generating another billion dollars, even if the movie is only half as successful as last year's," says Gaydos.

The more interesting battle will take place next year. Although the third Lord of the Rings film is expected to open in December, Warner Bros has other plans for November 2003 when its "Harry Potter slot" will be taken by The Matrix Revolutions - another second sequel. The next Potter film is not expected until mid-2004.

Still, shareholders can relax in the certainty that JK Rowling will continue to turn out Potter stories for the foreseeable future, whereas JRR Tolkien made a fundamental strategic error: even before he sold the film rights 33 years ago for a sum reported to be as little as £10,000, he decided to make the Lord of the Rings a mere trilogy.

Now where on earth does the franchise factory go after that?

(Evening Standard, October 17 2002)

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Channel 4 News: Advertising to children (script)

As sure as the leaves fall off the trees, the pre-Christmas advertising blitz aimed at children is getting underway on television. Parents are already being pestered to buy everything from a fashion doll to that must-have DVD. But should children be subjected to these powerful messages? A group of MPs thinks not, and wants this year's campaign to be the last. As the advertisers fight back, Channel 4 News decided to find out exactly how brand-aware a four-year-old really is. David Rowan reports on the battle to reach the youngest consumers

Imagine the world from a four-year-old's point of view. It's a busy, often confusing place - where social acceptance can depend on owning the right brands of toys and sweets. They fight for your attention on children's TV, especially between now and Christmas - the crucial weeks for a toy industry worth almost £2 billion a year. But this year it faces a damaging threat: a call by 130 MPs to ban all TV commercials aimed at the under-fives.

It's a sophisticated business, with its own trade secrets - as an insider told us. The advertising industry is lobbying hard against a ban - fighting back to show they're responsible. Next month they'll launch an education campaign called 'Media Smart,' using teaching packs and a TV commercial like this one to urge children to 'think' about what they're watching. Toy firms hope the campaign will help them avoid tighter regulation.

We wanted to know how likely children were to choose advertised products over similar non-branded goods. So we asked a psychologist to devise a scientifically valid test, which we took to two schools. It involved eight heavily advertised goods and their non-branded equivalents. Which would these four and five year olds select?

Out of 75 children, some were evidently more brand aware than others. But those who chose advertised goods could rarely explain why. They didn't seem to understand what the adverts were for - although they did know how to play off one parent against the other.

We found that in every category, the advertised brands won out - sometimes by 84 per cent. Other advertised foods also score highly. More than two-thirds chose the branded orange drink. But with trainers, targeted at older consumers, there was no marked preference. For girls, the trend was even more noticeable. Almost all chose the branded breakfast cereal. High figures were also registered for the advertised toy and the branded chocolate bar.

With childhood obesity at record levels, doctors are also calling for action. Last month, a powerful medical committee demanded a Europe-wide ban on advertising junk food. But those who help companies target children say a ban would be pointless.

But in Sweden, children are considered so vulnerable to these messages that broadcasters have to treat them as a 'commercial free zone'. Swedish parents seem to welcome the ban as a weapon against pester power - even if advertisers can still reach children in other ways.

But looked at more closely, Sweden's ban is problematic. It's hard to prove when children are being targeted - you can advertise a 49-piece jigsaw, for instance but anything smaller is classed as a toy. And in the global media village, the internet and digital TV can still get through.

As our research shows, advertising clearly does influence a child's world. But other forces are also at play, from character merchandise to older brothers and sisters.

The government sees no need for a ban, but faced with growing pressure over unhealthy food adverts it's asking the new media watchdog to look again at the rules. Parents, meanwhile, are bracing for the battle ahead.

(Channel 4 News, written and reported by David Rowan, October 17 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Geographic profiles/Broadband boom

By David Rowan

FOR INVESTIGATORS hunting the Washington DC sniper last week, one of the toughest challenges was to sift the mountain of raw data they were receiving about potential suspects to work out where he or she was likely to strike next. There was no time simply to rely on a hunch - so instead they turned to a fascinating piece of software to build a "geographic profile" of the killer.

The program was developed by Kim Rosso, a former Canadian police detective who realised that a serial killer balances a desire to remain in familiar territory with a need to travel just far enough to avoid being recognised.

By building a mathematical pattern of his probable future movements, Rosso claimed, the software could succeed where thousands of police man-hours had failed.

The Java-based software, marketed as Rigel by a Vancouver company, had worked before. In Britain it helped to solve a sexual assault in Leeds four years ago, and later a series of bank robberies in the Midlands; it has also been used by police forces in Canada and the US. Behind it lies a technique known as "geo-profiling" which, Rosso says, builds on the link between the physical place in which a crime occurred and the known propensities of serial criminals for choosing their victims and locations.

Detectives feed into the software the geographical co-ordinates of the known crime areas, adding details of the crimes and their list of suspects. Using mathematical algorithms, Rigel then weighs up the chances of the crimes being linked, and prioritises suspects according to the data. Detectives can then see the results on screen as a contoured two or three-dimensional map which can help them to work out where the offender may be based.

By itself, the software cannot solve a crime. But detectives who use it say that it helps to narrow their suspect list as effectively as psychological profiling - even if its use might make a less exciting movie out of a case such as the one dominating Washington.

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AND NOW some news I really ought to have brought you back in the last century: the number of British homes and businesses with broadband internet connections has, in the past week, finally hit a million.

It has been an excruciatingly slow journey towards broadband Britain, not helped in the least by the repeated reluctance of Oftel, the telecoms regulator, to challenge BT's self- interested delays in opening up its infrastructure. Rather cheekily, Oftel is claiming the credit for creating "the most competitive broadband market in Europe" - in particular, by "encouraging" BT to cut the wholesale price of its digital subscriber line (DSL) connections last spring to £14.75 a month. Almost instantly, this led to a doubling of demand to 8,000 new installations a week, which makes one wonder why Oftel had not thought of it earlier. Since then, the figure has risen to 20,000 a week.

There are now more than 100 broadband internet service providers competing for your business - and as a result prices are falling sharply. AOL recently cut its monthly fee from £35 to £28, and Tiscali has just launched a medium-speed service for less than £20. One ISP, Gio Internet, has gone as low as £18, including VAT, a suspiciously cheap sum for a viable long term business. Before making your decision, study the findings posted on an independent website such as adslguide.org.uk, as well as the customer complaints charted on other sites with names such as a "BTopenwoe" and "NTHellWorld". A reliable service is more important than price. And for those of you living in the four homes in ten still not served by DSL connections, I can only suggest that you ask Oftel why it's taking BT so long to hook you up.

(The Times, October 15 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Oystercards/Paid-for searches

David Rowan on a travel card with a dark secret

IMAGINE the outcry if the Government declared it was introducing an electronic identity card in a few months, containing a microchip that would let thousands of public officials scrutinise everything from citizens' school truancy records to the library books they borrowed. Furthermore, these personal smartcards would be launched with almost no public consultation and with the backing only of obscure governmental committees. There would rightly be a stream of concerned editorials warning of the threat to personal privacy, with commentators bemoaning the back-door introduction of an apparent identity card.

But what if the smartcard was sold as nothing more emotive than a travel card - a high-tech, credit card-sized device designed to speed our way through our troubled public transport system? That would be a far more politically acceptable means of introducing a multi-function personal data card. And that, it seems, is what is happening in London with scarcely any debate.

If you have used the Tube recently, you will have noticed that the station ticket gates have been adapted to take electronic smartcards. The cards, to be tested this autumn for introduction in 2003, are designed to let passengers wave themselves quickly through the gates, without any direct contact. But the cards are intended to store far more information about you than mere travel fares.

The capital's "e-government agency", London Connects, is developing ambitious plans to use the cards to store personal data ranging from welfare entitlements to school attendance records. Working alongside local councils and the transport authority, London Connects intends that the smartcard will eventually be used to deliver a range of government services. "Once you have the card, then other organisations will be able to add services to it, and people can use it at the level they are comfortable with," says Mick Davies, a consultant to the agency. Over the next few years, these applications should expand to include what London Connects sees as "a wide range of services, from electronic cash payment to the provision of personal data without the need for form-filling".

Other bodies, from the police to private sponsors, are getting excited about the huge potential here. Yet there has been barely a whisper about the privacy implications of such a technology. Who will have access to your personal data under such a system? What if your card falls into the wrong hands? I am all for catching my train more quickly, but I do wonder why the bureaucrats are evading a public debate.

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IF AN INTERNET search engine was being paid to favour certain websites, you would expect that relationship to be disclosed. But a recent sales pitch raises worrying questions about how far we can can trust such sites as they battle to survive. Andrew Goodman, who runs a Toronto-based web marketing agency, was recently cold-called by a salesman from AltaVista and told that his clients could pay to have their sites indexed "much higher than through standard submission". So a website selling toothpicks, for instance, could rise above most other global toothpick emporia in the results pages.

This shocked Goodman: the company's official line is that "paid inclusion", as the practice is known, merely guarantees that a site is indexed and monitored. After he publicised his concerns last week, AltaVista responded by saying that the salesman's claims were "erroneous" and he "apparently misunderstood the weighting process used to rank data sources". There, for the moment, the matter rests. But with paid-for inclusion a growing trend among search sites, consumers deserve a tough new trading standards law ensuring that they are warned prominently of any commercial bias.

(The Times, October 8 2002)

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Evening Standard: The Kabbalah Centre exposed: Investigation

The worrying truth about the mystical sect that Jagger and Madonna so admire. Inside the Kabbalah Centre - an investigation by David Rowan

HE is the spiritual guru whose claims to supernatural powers have enticed Madonna, Jeff Goldblum and Naomi Campbell to discover their "inner light". For Elizabeth Taylor, his teachings offer "a light to lead me through the darkness"; to Roseanne Barr they are the basis of "everything I believe".

When Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger organised a fundraising dinner in his honour, at the Harrington Club in South Kensington, the warmth of the occasion prompted speeches about love and fulfilment before Dave Stewart joined Jagger, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood for an impromptu jam session.

There are not many rabbis in their seventies who can draw a celebrity crowd like Philip Berg.

Rabbi Berg - "the Rav" to his devoted followers - runs the Los Angeles-based Kabbalah Centre, whose unorthodox interpretation of Jewish law gained prominence four years ago when Madonna credited it with "creative guidance" on her Ray Of Light album. Since then, as she and husband Guy Ritchie have boosted attendance at the centre's thriving London branch, Berg's form of mystical Judaism has attracted fashionable supporters including Normandie Keith and Sabrina Guinness.

But there is another, more worrying side to the Kabbalah Centre that its celebrity followers seem unaware of. For despite its claim to be "motivated by no other desire than the spiritual growth of humankind", an Evening Standard investigation can reveal growing international concern about its fundraising methods, extraordinary mystical claims and what former members say is its cult-like ability to split up families and undermine marriages.

Both Jews and non-Jews are welcomed at the centre's Mayfair office, one of around 50 throughout the world. In a suite of rooms above a Vidal Sassoon hairdressing school, the curious are invited to buy Kabbalah merchandise or sign up for life-improving courses. So far, 2,500 have done so. Typically the first lecture is free; you are then invited to spend £151 to learn how the centre's teachings can help make you rich, cure serious illness and find your "perfect mate".

Rabbi Eliyahu Yardeni, 40, the charismatic Israeli who runs the London office, is certainly a persuasive speaker, interpreting ancient Jewish teachings to explain everything from reincarnation to youthful skin. Much in demand for his lectures and private classes, Yardeni tells believers how the Kabbalah - an oral tradition handed down over generations - can satisfy all their worldly needs, if only they will "see the light".

More established London rabbis believe that Berg's teachings oversimplify the Kabbalah and use it to make unwarranted spiritual claims. But what concerns them more is the centre's impact on the lives of ordinary families.

In a series of interviews with former insiders and relatives of those still involved, the Standard heard claims that: the centre sold " specially blessed" mineral water as a means of treating cancer; supporters were warned their children might fall ill unless they donated money; and volunteer workers were warned that the "dark forces" would bring them personal tragedy if they ever left. They also told of Rabbi Berg's supposed powers to forecast the future and turn back hurricanes.

In his flowing robes and unkempt beard, Berg resembles a typical suburban rabbi. Yet the vast international empire he runs with his wife Karen takes millions of pounds each year in donations, lecture fees and merchandise sales, from £50 "energising" necklaces to £1,200 prayer accessories.

When Berg blesses ordinary spring water, it apparently becomes "infused with kabbalistic meditation . . . for healing, wellbeing and rejuvenation" - qualities that are neatly marketed in his exclusive makeup range, which includes a "restoring night cream" at £80 and a £91 eye-cream. Rabbi Berg will also sell you £350 copies of the Zohar, the 13th-century mystical texts on which he bases his teachings.

Rabbi Berg was not always " the world's foremost authority on the Kabbalah". Born Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn, he was in fact an insurance salesman before leaving his first wife and children to reinvent himself as a modern spiritual guru. It remains unclear where 'Dr' Berg, as he is credited in his books, obtained his doctorate. What is equally uncertain is the origin of the Kabbalah Centre itself. Its own literature claims that it was founded in Jerusalem in 1922, and that Berg "assumed the directorship" in 1969 on the death of his teacher, the eminent kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Brandwein.

BERG certainly studied under Brandwein at the Kol Yehuda seminary, founded in Jerusalem in 1922. But Brandwein's son Avraham, who took over as Kol Yehuda's dean, disputes Berg's claim of succession. Indeed, the seminary insists that it "has no connection, in any way, shape or form" with Berg's Kabbalah Centre. Yet it was in the United States that Berg - with his new wife Karen - set about popularising Kabbalah's mystical teachings. They have attracted millions of followers by promising that Kabbalah can offer " fulfilment in every aspect of your life: relationships, business, health, and more".

But their methods have won them the scorn of more traditional kabbalists, particularly their claim that anyone can read these ancient Aramaic texts simply by scanning their fingers across the pages. The centre has also caused outrage by claiming that Jews died in the Holocaust because they had failed to read the Zohar. Rabbis unconnected with Berg denounce his teachings as "a mockery of Jewish law", and the centre's methods as "deeply worrying". But they dare not speak out too loudly: they cite the worrying experience of Abraham Union, a Los Angeles rabbi who planned to distribute criticisms of the centre until a severed sheep's head was left at his doorstep.

No evidence was found of the centre's involvement, and Rav Berg's son Michael confirms it had no connection with the incident. "That's totally against who we are and what we teach, which is compassion and caring," he told a reporter. Still, Rabbi Union tempered his criticisms.

More worrying are stories that past followers have told the Standard alleging relentless pressure to donate money, threats that "bad things" would happen if they left, and an expectation that they would change their names and abandon partners or families at the centre's behest.

One London woman - who, like many we spoke to, was afraid of being identified - attended centre meetings regularly between 1998 and 2000, spending almost £4,000 on classes and merchandise before her scepticism got the better of her.

"If you say you can't afford something, they keep asking you for postdated cheques," she claims. "They promise that donating money will get you closer to your goal, or that you are guaranteed to find your soulmate. The people they know to be wealthy, and the celebrities, get very special treatment." In another case, a successful businessman who regularly visits the London office was recently urged to leave his long-term girlfriend and introduced to the group's choice of "soulmate", according to his former partner.

She says she is concerned for him. "I am trying to get him out but he sees them as his friends," she says. "They break up relationships to get what they want."

Yael Yardeni, who teaches at the London office run by her husband Eliyahu, insists there is "no foundation" to such "rumours". "We are about bringing people together, not splitting families," she insists. "I've been here since 1987 - Rabbi Berg was personally my teacher - and I've never seen such a thing."

Mrs Yardeni stresses that the "scanning" of text is entirely justified by kabbalistic tradition. "It is written in the Talmud [Jewish books of the law] that it's very important to hold in your hand the holy books, even if you don't read them. There is power in the letters." She denies that undue pressure is used to solicit money, saying: "Pressure? I don't believe this. People are definitely encouraged to get the basic books, that's all. As for donations, we're a charity. Isn't it normal for a charity to ask for donations? But we leave it up to the person."

For those without money, Berg's organisation has other uses. Karen, now 26, spent three years with the Kabbalah Centre, abandoning her medical studies on what she says was its advice and leaving her family home in Florida to live in the Los Angeles office as a "chevra", one of around 40 fulltime volunteer workers. "I'd regularly be working from 9am until 1am, and sometimes I'd work all night, with just an hour for dinner," Karen claims.

SHE says she was told that her work would bring more "light" into her life, and that she was privileged to serve "the Rav". "I was paid $35 (£22) a month and was given space in a filthy one-bedroom apartment, sharing with four other young women. It was as if I was a slave."

Karen's involvement grew gradually: after taking courses and buying a £170 astrological chart, she was selected for the " honour" of working for the Bergs. "They were very lovable towards me at first," she recalls. "I was having a bad relationship with my parents, and they comforted me. They said these weren't my spiritual parents, and that I needed to correct a lot of things in my life." It was also made clear to her that a "spiritually compatible" soulmate would be found.

Karen's mother travelled from Florida to Los Angeles to urge her to leave. "They told me my mother was a destructive environment and was standing in my way," Karen says. It was only months later, when her father suffered a heart attack, that she questioned the rabbis' wisdom. They suggested he could be cured by drinking Kabbalah water, she says. In fact, he needed major heart surgery.

The centre says its water is a "spiritual tool" but would never be offered as an alternative to medical treatment. "The Kabbalah water is undergoing scientific research at the moment, so I can't yet talk about the results," Yael Yardeni says. "It can help, definitely, but under no circumstances would we ever say it would cure something."

Depressed and exhausted, Karen told the rabbis she was leaving. "They got really angry," she recalls. "I was told that, if I left, my father could get worse. I had a lot of fear. Then they simply stopped talking to me." Today, a year after counselling, Karen has resumed her studies. "They change your behaviour, control your emotions and thoughts, cut you off from friends and family," she says. "It's been a terrible experience."

Other families are still hoping that their children will follow Karen's example. Madeleine's son, an American in his early twenties, has been a "chevra" for two years in the Los Angeles office, sharing meditation classes with Madonna when she is in town. "I thought, 'If Jeff Goldblum and Liz Taylor are involved, then it can't be so bad'," Madeleine tells the Standard. " But these celebrities are just the lamplight. They're treated completely differently. They should inquire about what's going on."

When her academically gifted son announced he was quitting college, Madeleine started to worry. Then he fell ill but refused to seek medical treatment, again relying on Kabbalah-blessed water.

"Before his illness I hadn't seen it as a cult," his mother says. "But when I saw his reaction it terrified me. He's now stopped answering my phone calls or emails. It breaks my heart." When she expressed her concerns forcefully to a Kabbalah Centre rabbi, Madeleine says, she was told that a mysterious illness might befall her younger child if she made trouble. The centre denies that such threats are made.

Past supporters also speak of alleged financial pressures. Some followers claim to have been urged to donate money to avoid Satanic influences such as a child's death.

Certainly, Rabbi Yardeni's London office has proved proficient at soliciting wealthy supporters: according to its last published accounts, it received £222,000 in gifts in 2000, plus a further £100,000 in course fees. One trustee, Lady Homa Alliance, gave almost £50,000 in 1999-2000; another trustee, Gladys Obadiah, and her husband gave £44,000. By August 2000, the business was healthy enough for the centre to rent expensive premises in Grosvenor Street.

THEN there are the 250 products sold by the centre "to support and enrich the study of Kabbalah", from £18 lengths of red cotton (to ward off the "Evil Eye") to expensive astrology readings. Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, minister of Mill Hill Synagogue, has twice been visited at home by Kabbalah Centre recruits selling the £350 Zohar books door-to-door. "These books are meaningless from a Jewish point of view, and vastly overpriced," Rabbi Schochet says.

As the Kabbalah Centre's presence in London grows, rabbis such as Yitzchak Schochet are hearing more frequently from local families concerned at a relative's involvement. For now, few dare to speak out openly - but Rabbi Berg has an answer prepared for when they do. The forces of Satan, he wrote in his book, Immortality, "are adopting the tactic of discrediting us, of spreading rumours that the people involved in the centre are brainwashed".

True believers, of course, will simply shut their ears.

(Evening Standard, October 3 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Googling Scientology/Skycars

By David Rowan

FORGET THAT APHORISM about history being written by the victors. When it comes to the internet's history, the real power-brokers are proving to be the lawyers - and especially those employed by the Church of Scientology. Last week the internet's biggest digital archive became that much smaller after Scientology lawyers insisted that it remove pages created by the organisation's critics. Those running the archive did so with barely a murmur, proving yet again how effective the church's legal threats can be in undermining free speech.

The archive, known as the Wayback Machine, keeps snapshots of millions of old web pages - a remarkable resource available to anyone free of charge at web.archive.org. But last week, researchers looking for pages taken from anti-Scientology sites such as Xenu.net were told that they were no longer available "per the request of the site owner". In fact, the demand had come from the church alone, on the ground that copyrighted material contained within these sites put them in breach of the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Under the Act, the church has "asserted ownership" of work contained within these sites. Yet the result has been to remove entire websites, including pages that appear to be within the law.

At Xenu.net, Andreas Heldal-Lund, a long-time opponent of the church, suggests that copyright law is merely a tool to censor critics. "I'm the author, and I never asked that (the site) be removed," he says. Another victim, the respected computer scientist Dave Touretzky, found all his research pages blocked from the archive thanks to some anti-Scientology articles. "I don't exist," he says. "I've been erased from internet history. All because I dared to have some Scientology material on my website."

Although the Wayback Machine receives funding from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, its day-to-day running depends on volunteers. Faced with the threat of litigation from the Scientologists, the archive appears to have removed entire domains before taking detailed counsel of its own.

After all, no non-profit body likes to risk offending such a determined litigator as the church. Even Google, the search engine, removed links to Xenu.net and similar sites last March, faced with similar wide-ranging copyright claims from the church's lawyers.

In the Google case, the decision caused an outcry, and the company soon unblocked the links (indeed, today, Xenu.net is the second site Google suggests if you search for "Scientology"). No lawsuit has followed. Yet the church continues to put legal pressure on smaller websites, internet service providers and even online booksellers to suppress dissent. And each time one of its targets succumbs, another blow is dealt to free debate.

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NOW THIS could just be the solution to congestion charging. Moller International, an aircraft-engineering firm based in California, is boasting about a product it expects to hit the market in 2006. The Skycar, a rocket-shaped car straight out of Thunderbirds, is apparently "the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing vehicle the world has ever seen".

Moller claims to have spent $100 million (£64 million) developing a four-passenger version, which, it says, can cruise comfortably at 350mph (563kph), taking off and landing vertically on a small area of road. You can have some fun with the video demonstration on its website (www.moller.com/skycar), but start saving now: if it goes into mass production, this "volantor" will set you back around £50,000. Plus, of course, anything that Ken Livingstone manages to levy on top.

(The Times, October 1 2002)

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