Interview: Chris Tarrant (Evening Standard)

To the dismay of his rivals, Chris Tarrant is staying with the Breakfast Show. So what prompted the great U-turn? By David Rowan

CHRIS Tarrant is currently enjoying the most expensive lie-in in broadcasting history. Seven AM may not seem unduly indulgent - he has the school run to fit in, for a start, then the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? shows to record - but as his eight-week break is costing Capital Radio around £200,000 in holiday pay, you can imagine how hard the station fought to keep him.

Tarrant had, after all, announced his intention to quit the Breakfast Show by Christmas, exhausted and anxious, at 56, to see more of his wife, Ingrid, and their children. He didn't need the money: his reported £1.3 million salary is barely half what he gets for Millionaire. Still, there he was, signing up at the end of September for at least another year.

Now, for the first time, he is ready to explain what made him change his mind. Breaking into his first extended holiday since 1984 - "it's rather nice, actually" - he is sitting at a table in Shepherd's restaurant in Westminster, just back from his French property. He is initially cautious, warning that "there are whole areas that are off limits - corporate espionage, that kind of thing". But he soon relaxes with a beer and explains what was going through his mind.

"Mentally and physically, I just wanted out," he begins. "It was doing me in, I'd just had enough." He also worried about the effect his schedule was having on his daughter Sammy, 14, and son Toby, 11 (Chris and Ingrid each have two other children from previous marriages). "They've never known a day when they'd get up and not find that daddy's already gone and is on the radio. I had to redress this and give them some time. I needed to find a way in which I could be more of a dad, a husband."

Capital's executives realised that they were about to lose their greatest asset - a man credited with attracting 15 per cent of the company's ad revenue. "I wanted a breather and to change the face of the show, to make it much more fresh," says Tarrant. The turning point was a conversation he had with Ric Blaxill, Capital FM's programme controller, who had a major hand in the decision. "The bottom line is Ric reminded me how much I love radio. Maybe I'd forgotten, doing too much TV. He's a very energetic guy, just what we needed. So I suppose Blaxill is the number one reason I'm staying." The promised extra half-hour in bed also helped.

What about the goading by rival DJs such as Heart FM's Jono Coleman - who vowed to become London's top act? "There's a certain competitive element, I suppose," Tarrant admits. "I thought, why have I worked so hard to hold this thing at number one, and then give it up? I knew my decision to stay would stuff them in other radio stations' boardrooms - and that did give me a twisted pleasure."

His rolling contract means he is staying until at least early 2004. "And of course I'm not taking six months' holiday, as I've read. That would be ridiculous. We've just blocked it out into two or three long chunks."

He insists that his decision to stay was not about money. Yet, in doing so, he rocked the stock market. "I find the whole reaction scary," he says. "The company was valued at £18 million more the day after I signed. What's that all about? "

He recalls lunch in 1988 with Capital's then boss, Nigel Walmsley, when his first contract was up. "I thought, I've had a good laugh. I'm not sure about getting up at bloody 5am, but it had been fun while it lasted. Nigel said, 'We'd like to renew, going down the American route of signing you for 10 years'. I just laughed and said, 'If you think I'll still be getting out of bed at 5am to do some bloody radio show in 1998, you must be mad'. But here I am. There's one thing, though," he grins. "If I had signed, Capital would have saved a fortune."

Does he think uncertainty caused his show to lose 300,000 listeners, with Radio 4 suddenly overtaking Capital FM? He moves into full attack mode. "People like to write, 'Capital aren't doing too well', or 'Arsenal have lost three out of four games'. I bet you now, this time next year Capital will be back as the leader in London. We always go down in the summer. The true test of what we can achieve will be next spring. You'll get me back well rested and up for it."

THE show, relaunching on 6 January, features a new team including David Briggs from Who Wants to be A Millionaire? as "creative consultant" and Newsround's Becky Jago as co-presenter. In response to Caroline Feraday, the ex-Five Live presenter who told this page she turned down £500,000 to be Tarrant's number two, he says she was lying. "That's erroneous, she was never offered a job," he says. "She was auditioned by Ric and me and was on a short list but we weren't convinced she was good enough. Maybe she believed she wasn't going to get it so she took another offer. Of course she wasn't offered £500,000. Anyone who walks away from that would be an idiot. I think she's scored an own goal, actually."

(Feraday, in response, denies having "auditioned" for Tarrant but was "definitely offered the job. If Chris can show me the tape, I'll give him £500,000," she said).

He is equally forthright on Feraday's doubts that a man in his mid-fifties can relate to young listeners. "I'd say, talk to my kids," Tarrant replies. "It's the obligatory criticism - 'he's too old to rock and roll'. First, it's my job to keep up with things. Second, my house is just full of music - Eminem, Linkin Park, the new Darius."

His preferred listening would be Wogan - "he still makes me laugh, silly old fool" - but he worries that a growing dependence on market research and playlists will kill British radio.

So what if, as is rumoured, US radio giant Clear Channel - king of the automated playlist - tries to buy Capital? For a rare moment, Tarrant pauses. "It depends what they're like ... In any event, it won't affect my decision for 12 or 18 months. But it depends on whether they let me do my thing. If not ... I might be on my little bike, mightn't I?" In the meantime, he reminds me: "I'm still here. Don't bury me."

He grins as he leaves. "I'll see you again in a year," he says. "And you'll say, Tarrant, you bastard, you're still number one."

(Evening Standard, December 18 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Yes Men hoax/Top web searches

By David Rowan

A few days ago an e-mail press release went out ostensibly from dow chemical.com containing a startling insight into the company's limited response to the 1984 Bhopal disaster. "We are being portrayed as a heartless giant which doesn't care about the 20,000 lives lost due to Bhopal over the years," it quoted Dow's departing president, Michael D. Parker, as saying about its Union Carbide subsidiary's most enduring legacy.


"This just isn't true," it said. "Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible. And being clear about this has been a very big step."

The statement's cold complacency soon provoked hundreds of furious e-mail responses, particularly from those who had visited the dow-chemical.com website. As word spread, the slick website - boasting that Dow was "Aiming for zero responsibility" - received a reported 250,000 hits in three days. There was one problem: Dow Chemical had nothing to do with it. Both the press release and the related website were the latest anti-corporate project of The Yes Men, a group of online activists who specialise in creating web parodies of those that they resent. The real Dow, naturally, was furious: but its lawyers soon found a useful tool with which to fight back.

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in 1998 to give Hollywood and the recording studios greater control over their digital content. But increasingly the DMCA's wide provisions are being used as a tool of corporate censorship -whether to prevent price-comparison websites indexing a retailer's offers or to silence critics of the Church of Scientology. So Dow's lawyers put in a DMCA claim that the spoof site breached its copyright in web design, images and text, and forced The Yes Men's internet service provider to take the parody offline.

Whether you appreciate such anti-corporate mischief-making, the Act's ever wider use continues a worrying trend for copyright law to be used to silence dissent. Effectively, the DCMA is being used to suppress free speech.

In the event, Dow found a rather more obvious way to wrest control of the site: as a joke, the pranksters had registered it in the name of Parker's son James, who then proceeded to claim it. It now redirects to Dow's official site -although the company has still not caught up with dozens more mirror sites. And why, you may wonder, did Dow's Bhopal PR advisers, Burson-Marsteller, not warn the firm to register all Dow-related web domains? Don't look to bursonmarsteller.com for an answer. That's been nabbed by yet another parody site.

++++

The west may be bracing for war, but the single most important thought on web users' minds in 2002 has been...a cult Japanese cartoon called Dragonball. According to Lycos, Dragonball has been the year's most searched-for term for the second year running, followed by the KaZaA file-swapping software at number two and then, more worryingly, by tattoos. Both Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson make the Lycos top 10, but Osama bin Laden is down from number 5 last year to 60.

Over at Google, an analysis of 55 billion searches this year suggests that Eminem is the most inquired-after man, Jennifer Lopez the most searched-for woman, and Ferrari the year's top brand. In a remarkable coup for British sportsmanship, David Beckham has beaten Anna Kournikova to be the world's top requested athlete. And as for British surfers' own top 10 Google queries for 2002, in descending order they are: BBC; Big Brother; easyJet; Britney Spears; Ryanair; Gareth Gates; weather; Kylie Minogue; World Cup; and Holly Valance. I'll leave it to the nation's media studies departments to tell us what it all means.

(The Times, December 17 2002)

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Evening Standard: Busker Idol

IT'S being called "Busker Idol" - the Evening Standard's search for the most talented musician on the Underground. With the help of Neil Fox, the Pop Idol judge and presenter of Capital FM's Breakfast Show, we have scoured subterranean tunnels and grimy escalator shafts to bring you the most gifted competitors for your spare change. And all we need now is your vote for the winner.

As London Underground prepares to audition its first officially licensed buskers next month - giving 150 carefully vetted musicians the chance to perform in a dozen stations we wanted to see just how good they could be. So the Standard spent three airless days listening anonymously to dozens of them - from classically trained violinists to a man "playing" a traffic cone - to seek out five of the best. We then invited them to compete for the ultimate busking honour.

First, we simply wanted Foxy's verdict on which busker was most likely to raise travellers' spirits. But so taken was he with the array of talent on offer that he arranged to involve Capital FM's audience together with Evening Standard readers in delivering their own verdicts. "I found it hard to decide between them, as they are all very talented and very pleasant people," Fox said, after auditioning the final five in Capital's Leicester Square studios last week. "So I want the final choice to be left to the audience, to see what the listeners themselves like."

Each morning this week, he is playing one of the buskers' songs on his 95.8 Capital FM Breakfast Show between 7.30am and 8.30am, having started today with 19-year-old guitarist Jonny Roden. You can also listen to the tracks and vote for your favourite at www.capitalfm.com/foxy.

Jonny Roden

About him: Aged 19, he recently arrived in London from Kenilworth, Warwickshire, "hoping to make it in the music industry" as a singer-songwriter. Roden has been busking for just six weeks, and is staying in Northolt with fellow busker Bob Ashcroft (see below).
Hear him at: Westminster, Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road.
On busking: "The hard thing is to get on to the best pitches some of the older fellows are quite protective of their turf. There's a hierarchy, and I seem to be at the bottom."
On the licensing scheme: "I'm sure I'd benefit from the scheme, and I'd probably qualify for it. But I worry that there might be a bias in the auditions against certain types of music. It wouldn't be right if someone missed out on a licence because they don't play something commercial. I'd rather they just legalised it and kept it as survival of the fittest."
Earning power: "I can make £30-£40 in three or four hours, which compares well to £20 that I'd earn in the bar where I work part-time. I can manage about 12 hours a week - any more would hurt my voice. Still, with the bar job at least I know how much I'll be taking home at the end of the week."
Audition piece: Yellow, by Coldplay
Foxy's verdict: "Jonny clearly understands the music and loves what he's doing. It's just the right kind of song for him. A real performance piece."

David Gilbert
About him: A 42-year-old rock and blues guitarist from Harringay, David is a veteran campaigner for legalised street music, who once formed a buskers' union and staged a "buskin" at Leicester Square. He has busked for 15 years, including five years on the Underground, and is director of the Jazz on the Streets summer festival.
Hear him at: Nowadays he is most likely to play in restaurants and wine bars, as well as on the South Bank, but he used to play at Leicester Square, King's Cross and Tottenham Court Road stations.
On busking: "A lot of the newcomers start off playing original material, but you find they're the ones who always leave the scene first. The hardcore career buskers know how to appeal to people."
On the licensing scheme: "London Underground has proposed this sort of scheme at least half a dozen times over the past 10 years, usually trotting out some celebrity to promote it. I don't think they have any intention whatsoever of legalising it. They've been trying to get rid of busking on the Underground for many years."
Earning power: His earnings on the Underground have varied from nothing to £50 an hour. "But £50 is very rare - nothing is far more common," he says. He has also had to account for the fines - 30 in one summer alone, he claims.
Audition piece: My Funny Valentine and Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire (no vocals).
Foxy's verdict: "He's not a singer, so this is more of a musical challenge than any of the other acts. David is obviously a very competent musician, but as we saw with Fame Academy, in the modern day it helps to have more than one string to your bow."

Joe Evans
About him: Joe, 39, has been liaising with Underground managers as they develop their licensing scheme, and this week performed legally at Westminster station as part of the Underground's official research. A busker for around 10 years, he plays keyboards and guitar on the network for up to 16 hours a week. He is also musical director of the Rags and Feathers Theatre Company and lives in Wood Green.
Hear him at: Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus and, this week, Westminster.
On busking: "It's always there when there's nothing else to do, and you're your own boss. But it's just not worth playing at rush hour when everyone's in a hurry to get home."
On the licensing scheme: "So far it's looking fairly positive - my only reservation is that they want to impose control on something that we ourselves have controlled successfully for years." But he has not been happy with the "terrible" pitches that London Underground allocated him this week at Westminster. "It was dead - there was just too much open space between the buskers and the passengers. I've been earning a quarter of what I normally earn, so I'm giving up and returning to my normal pitch."
Earning power: Takings have fallen as the economy has suffered, but the details of Evans's income are "between me and the taxman". His busking also leads to party bookings, although the last two weddings he was due to play at were called off. "I've become a bit of a jinx. I'd better warn the next person who books me."
Audition piece: One of his own songs, Unmistakable Shoulder.
Foxy's verdict: "You're at a disadvantage if you sing your own song - if people don't recognise it, they just might decide they don't like it. I've nothing against Joe as a musician, but the difference between auditioning and busking is that you're trying to get the widest possible response."

Dominique
About her: A 32-year-old Canadian, Dominique - she does not use her last name - came to London six years ago and has been busking for three years. A singer-songwriter who describes her sound as "a cross between the early Pretenders and Garbage", she has made a CD and is looking for a record deal. She lives in Muswell Hill.
Hear her at: Green Park, Leicester Square, Bank and Oxford Circus, and with her band at various London pub venues.
On busking: "It's fantastic - I've waitressed and worked in a healthfood store, but I prefer to be singing. We're giving you something that really enhances your journey home, whether or not you choose to give money."
On the licensing scheme: "Licensing would be good if it meant we weren't fined or moved on, but the idea of sponsorship is so silly. Busking has been around for centuries, ever since the wandering minstrels. London Underground just wants to control it, when it should just let it be."
Earning power: "You can make anything from £15-£30 an hour. Once a man gave me a £50 and just walked off. I called after him, 'You angel ...'" But this Christmas, the weak economy seems to be taking its toll. "The money has been crap this year," Dominique says. "We're suffering, like Marks & Spencer."
Audition piece: Big Yellow Taxi, by Joni Mitchell.
Foxy's verdict: "She's got a great voice and has chosen a well-covered classic. Dominique writes her own songs and talked about doing her own material, but that can often put people off. Big Yellow Taxi was a great cover."

Bob Ashcroft
About him: A 23-year-old guitarist and vocalist living in Northolt, who has a band called Colonel Mustard and wants to be a professional singer. "I figured busking was the best way to achieve that, while earning a bit of cash and getting some practice in," he says. He has been busking for three months and works part-time in a Soho bar.
Hear him at: Oxford Circus and Bond Street.
On busking: "I find the police and Underground staff very pleasant generally, but I have had a nasty run-in with another busker at Bond Street who warned me off a pitch. He was quite threatening -'You come back, mate, and see what happens to you ... ' But that didn't stop me going back."
On the licensing scheme: "Auditions would take away the mystique, and making things corporate has got to be bad. You'd be surprised how well self-regulated the system is already - the buskers control the booking system for pitches, and the people passing by regulate the quality of the musicians. It's simple: if you're no good, you don't survive for long."
Earning power: He averages around £8 an hour over a 20-hour week, with £10 his biggest tip so far. The worst day for tips is Monday, the best Friday, and rush-hour crowds do not pay nearly as well as the afternoon tourists. "I've had two people say, 'Get a job!'" Ashcroft says. "My response is: 'I've got one.'"
Audition piece: Babylon, by David Gray.
Foxy's verdict: "For a guy with a strong voice like his, it's the perfect kind of song to audition with. You can hear how he's actually feeling the song - very much like David Gray himself. It's not the sort of song you'd hear at a Pop Idol audition - they go for the big ones that everybody knows - but the fact that he plays guitar and sings means it works."

(Evening Standard, December 16 2002)

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The Times: Are celebrities' children's books worth reading?

Stars such as Jerry Seinfeld are writing children's books. But are they any good, asks David Rowan

Forget the Academy Award nominations, the million-dollar yacht moored in Monaco, and the amusement park dedicated to your pop career: the only measure of showbiz success that counts nowadays is the critical acclaim of three-year olds at bedtime.

The children's publishing market may lack the glamour of gala film openings or the profits of a star recording contract, but suddenly a kids' picture-book is the ultimate celebrity accessory. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld has just published one, as has the film director Spike Lee and the rap star LL Cool J, while Julie Andrews and Jamie Lee Curtis have several to their name. Even Madonna has a book coming out soon.

The star names are proving irresistible to publishers, especially in the US, where they can guarantee sales of at least 50,000 -a tiny percentage of a Seinfeld television audience, but a blockbuster in the pre-school world.

"Of course, if you have a celebrity author, he will get publicity opportunities," admits Tracy van Straaten, the publicity director at Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing in New York, whose recent releases include Spike Lee's Please, Baby, Please (with his wife Tonya). "But the writing still has to be good."

The British literary establishment remains cautious about many celebrities' writing ability. A London children's editor recalls Sarah Ferguson's Budgie the Helicopter series as a "quite dire" example of fame substituting for literary gifts. Editors also remember with amusement Anthea Turner's efforts six years ago to stimulate children's imaginations with her Underneath the Underground series. "It was about a group of mice who live on the Tube, and it sank without trace," says Sue Buswell, the head of picture books at HarperCollins. "As a parent, would you trust a book just because it was written by a celebrity? If Anne Diamond decided to write something on the back of her Big Brother exposure, I don't think people would believe she could suddenly turn in to a hildren's book writer."

There is also British resistance to the moralising of many US celebrity authors. Many of the current crop of books contain thinly veiled moral homilies: from Andrews's message that teamwork is all, to Curtis's plea for children to accept themselves as they are.

HarperCollins has tested Curtis's books in the UK, but with little success. "They were just too American," Buswell says. But the trend will inevitably cross the Atlantic, says the agent Celia Catchpole, who represents a range of British children's writers and illustrators. "Publishers want to make money, and we can't argue against the cult of celebrity," she says. "But I worry that it pushes real books off the shelves."

A successful children's author needs qualities that do not necessarily come with fame, Catchpole says. "You need to understand the age of the child you're addressing, and have great skill with words. The best writers also know what to leave to the illustrator, and they don't need to thump the message home."

Van Straaten sees a motivation among some of her star authors as "giving something back". "Often public figures will offer their support to a charity, and ask how they can put their celebrity to good use," she says. "Spike Lee and his wife Tonya were concerned that they were not able to find books featuring African-Americans for their own children."

Whether or not such books last is another matter. "Celebrities come and go very quickly, especially in the children's world," says Venetia Gosling, editorial director at Hodder Children's Books, who is none too keen on the trend.

The ultimate goal for children's publishers is to produce another The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the 1968 Judith Kerr book that remains HarperCollins's bestselling picture book. But children know that the real stars are not necessarily the names on the front. "We tend to create characters who become celebrities, rather than the other way round," Gosling explains. "When we have a book signing, it's the character Kipper that people want to see, not the author Mick Inkpen. But he doesn't mind."

[PANEL}
Jamie Lee Curtis
I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem
Illustrations, Laura Cornell (Joanna Cotler Books)

In a nutshell: I might be the gawky gap-toothed kid who's not cool like everyone else at school, but as long as I like myself I'll be fine.

Typical passage: "I'm gonna like me wearing flowers and plaid. I have my own style. I don't follow some fad."

Moral message: The key to feeling good is liking yourself because you are you.

Literary merits: Plot development hampered by excessively egocentric lead character whose sole purpose is to deliver schmaltzy homilies in weak rhyming couplets (task/asked, mom/Tom).

Juvenile verdict: "She's silly. I wouldn't like to play with her. And she's got a messy bedroom." Claudia, four

Jerry Seinfeld
Halloween
Illustrations, James Bennett (Little, Brown)

In a nutshell: What did you say? Everyone just gives away sweets on Halloween? The fools. I gotta be a part of this!

Typical passage: "They come to the door. They always ask you the same stupid question: 'What are you supposed to be?' 'I got 18 houses on this block, sweetheart. You hit the bag, we hit the road.' "

Moral message: Life is about accumulating as many sweets as possible.

Literary merits: A laugh-out-loud Seinfeld routine, based on his own childhood recollections, that works beautifully alongside Bennett's comic illustrations. And if you just want the Seinfeld stand-up version, you get that on an accompanying live CD.

Juvenile verdict: "I want to go trick-or-treating. It's a yummy story." Jack, eight

Spike Lee & Tonya Lee
Please, Baby, Please
Illustrations, Kadir Nelson (Simon & Schuster)

In a nutshell: A naughty but cute toddler is forgiven a day full of mischief and trouble-making by her ever-loving mama.

Typical passage: "Don't eat the sand, baby baby baby, please. Now hold my hand, baby baby, please, baby. Please eat your peas, baby baby baby baby..."

Moral message: Look, publishing world, it is possible to produce a conventional children's picture-book that stars a black middle-class family. Even if it takes an Oscar-nominated film director to do it.

Literary merits: The book's skill lies in its simplicity. It is pitched perfectly for two to four-year-olds, who will be particularly drawn in by Nelson's terrifically perceptive caricatures of naughtiness.

Juvenile verdict: "She's going to be in big trouble. She shouldn't draw on the walls." Claudia

Dolly Parton
Coat of Many Colours
Illustrations, Judith Sutton (HarperCollins)

In a nutshell: The young Dolly was so poor that her mama had to make her a coat from rags. But she shrugged off the schoolyard taunts by knowing that her mama's love made her rich.

Typical passage: "Mama sewed the rags together. She sewed every stitch with love, and made my coat of many colours that I was so proud of."

Moral message: Fill your life with love, wholesome Christian values and family sing-songs round the kitchen fire. Shed a tear too at the book's dedication: "To anyone who has suffered the pain of being made fun of, may this book be healing."

Literary merits: The text is based on Parton's gushing 1969 song of the same name, featuring such edifying couplets as: "Through life I've remained happy, and good luck is on my side. I have everything that anyone could ever want from life." Someone ought to be very embarrassed about letting this get into print. It has a higher cringe factor than all the other books combined.

Juvenile verdict: "I liked the Joseph story better." Claudia

Julie Andrews Edwards
Dumpy and the Big Storm
With Emma Walton Hamilton; Illustrations, Tony Walton (Hyperion)

In a nutshell: When a storm hits Apple Harbour, Dumpy the Dump Truck works with Stinky the Garbage Truck and Big Red the Fire Engine to rescue the farmer's pigs.

Typical passage: "Dumpy and his sleepy passengers beeped farewell to their friends. As they drove off, they passed Trusty the Mail Truck, on his way to the headland with replacement parts for the lighthouse. 'Wottle-wottle- wottle-wot!' Trusty wheezed."

Moral message: Teamwork is all.

Literary merits: A conventional picture-book which may sell more because of parents' memories of Mary Poppins than because of any particular originality.

Juvenile verdict: "Nice. A bit long." Claudia

LL Cool J
And the Winner Is ...
Illustrations, JibJab Media (Scholastic)

In a nutshell: A young basketball player, looking remarkably like the rap-star author, discovers that it's better to both win and lose gracefully.

Typical passage: "When you're a winner, as you've been before, remember to walk with humility, and never be a loser who's sore. Believe in yourself, have fun and be true. Give it your all. Be proud! Be you!"

Moral message: Er, that's as deep as it goes.

Literary merits: Mr Cool J may have certain skills as a hip-hop artist -as you can hear in the accompanying "rap-a-long" CD -but J. K. Rowling he ain't. A half-formed thought dressed up in bad rhyming couplets.

Juvenile verdict: "It's boring. And the pictures aren't very nice. It might be more for older children." Jack

(The Times, December 16 2002)

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The Times: The perils of internet libel

Publish online and be damned: David Rowan on internet libel


IT SOUNDS absurd that an Australian legal judgment could imperil the greatest publishing revolution of recent years. But as internet lawyers and free-speech advocates pored over the Australian court's ruling last night, a consensus was emerging that the case of Joseph Gutnick vs Dow Jones could make the web a far tamer and less outspoken place.

For any comments you post online could in future be challenged in the world's most restrictive courts, whether you are an international media mogul or a teenager updating a personal weblog.

The global significance of the case was underlined by the procession of international media companies keen to give evidence to support Dow Jones, including CNN and Yahoo. They knew that if Mr Gutnick were allowed to sue the American publisher in his home state of Victoria, no web publisher anywhere in the world would be safe. In the relatively young field of internet law, the judgment - the first by a nation's highest court on where an internet libel claim may be brought - is likely to be an influential precedent.

"If an English court was faced with the same situation, then the Australian decision would be read and considered in great detail," Graham Smith, a partner in the London office of the law firm Bird & Bird, and author of Internet Law and Regulation, told The Times. "It doesn't mean that an English court would go the same way but this ruling does apply the argument that litigation can occur where publication takes place."

Mr Smith said that the decision was "disappointing but no real surprise". He believes that a consequence will be the "chilling effect" of the most restrictive jurisdictions coming to dominate what is published online. "What is most disappointing is that the judges seemed to be saying that, if you choose to publish on the web, then you do so knowing it's a global medium and you take the consequences even though you may have no practical means of restricting access," he said.

By deeming the web to be fundamentally no different from newspapers or television, the judges held that publication occurs at the point where material is read, rather than simply where it is uploaded or stored in computer servers.

Media companies were given a warning last night to maintain constant vigilance. Alex Daley, head of the Association of Online Publishers, said: "Interactive publishers must be aware of the risk they take in putting material on the web, as repercussions can occur throughout the world."

Publishers are bound to be less forthcoming online, knowing that a libellous article would have a potentially far wider readership than in print.

Dr Yaman Akdeniz, the UK director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties, which promotes free speech online, said: "Multinational companies like Dow Jones will be much more careful about what they publish on the internet, and that will result in self-censorship. This decision will encourage forum shopping for defamation claims around the globe."

Forum shopping is the practice by which a claim is brought in the country considered likely to produce the most favourable verdict.

A New York court recently refused Banamex, the National Bank of Mexico, permission to sue a Mexican journalist in New York for an allegedly defamatory article that appeared online. But this week the Australian judges have taken a far tougher view, suggesting that publication has taken place wherever an article is read or downloaded.

(The Times, December 11, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Alan Ralsky/E-bombs

By David Rowan

YOU WILL NOT know his name, but there is a very good chance that you have been receiving e-mails from Alan Ralsky. With his database of 250 million addresses, Ralsky, a 57-year-old based in Michigan, is one of the world's most prolific "spammers", whose 190 e-mail servers can send out 650,000 unsolicited sales pitches every hour. If you are one of his victims, it will not ease your frustration to know that his business - on behalf of diet-pill hucksters, online casinos and the like - has made the one-time insurance fraudster a millionaire. "I'll never quit," he boasted to the Detroit Free Press last week. "This is the greatest business in the world."

Ralsky makes his money from clients who find that his "e-mail marketing messages", as he euphemistically calls them, actually work - with a claimed response rate of a quarter of one per cent. Nor is it a difficult business to get into: on a newsgroup search last weekend, I was offered 50 million e-mail addresses for just £32. So it comes as little surprise that junk e-mail is growing at unprecedented levels. A filtering company, MessageLabs, estimated last year that spam constituted one in every 199 e-mails received in the UK; today the rate is one in 12. Another firm, BrightMail, puts the global figure now at 41 per cent. At this rate, e-mail will soon cease to be a viable communication medium.

I have written before of products such as SpamKiller and MailWasher that, to varying degrees, can halt junk mail. But text-based filters have their own limitations, and may block as "pornographic" any e-mails referring to breast cancer or the county of Essex. Dan Gillmor, the Silicon Valley tech journalist, finds that the only solution is to select every new message in his inbox each morning, and then manually de-select the "genuine" ones before deleting the rest.

Still, the search for more effective filters is being stepped up, as researchers pore over a vast new archive of unsolicited e-mails at spamarchive.org. In the meantime, the best solution is to keep your e-mail address out of any public forum. Oh, and don't buy an anti-spam product called SpamCatchers, which has been marketing itself through...junk e-mails.

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WESTERN MILITARY planners can barely conceal their excitement at the technology standing by for action against Iraq. From new long-range precision missiles to high-power microwave "e-bombs", the hi-tech kit is further proof that war is a great stimulus to innovation. For a start, huge advances in night-vision technology and thermal sensing mean that much of the action will take place at night. On the ground, soldiers will examine enemy targets from miles away, day or night, using infrared laser-powered binoculars, while miles overhead unmanned Predator aircraft will detect the warmth of enemy tanks.

The bombs themselves will include a new "radio frequency weapon", or "e-bomb", that sends huge bursts of microwave energy to damage electrical equipment and power grids. Then there is the "blackout bomb", which short-circuits power and telephone lines using superconductive carbon-fibre filaments. Should the fighting spread to Iraq's cities, expect "thermobaric" bombs, which recently saw service in Afghan caves. They create huge pressure waves in otherwise inaccessible spaces, killing anyone in their path.

The reason I can tell you about these hi-tech innovations is, of course, because the US propaganda machine believes that early publicity strengthens its position. It is an impressive catalogue of military technology that will doubtless lead to new consumer applications. But let's not get carried away. The real test will be whether it makes any difference against low-tech weapons such as smallpox.

(The Times, December 10 2002)

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