Two weeks after the Recording Industry Association of America announced it had struck deals with top internet service providers to cut off unrepentant music sharers, not a single major ISP will cop to agreeing to the ambitious scheme, and one top broadband company says it's not on board.
The RIAA's announcement came as it revealed it was closing down its massive litigation campaign, which has targeted more than
for allegedly sharing copyrighted music on the internet. Instead of federal
, the RIAA
it would now rely on a series of accords it had reached with "leading" internet service providers, in which the ISPs have agreed to terminate customers the RIAA catches uploading three times, the association said.
But when contacted by Threat Level, none of the leading ISPs acknowledged any such deal. "We are not working with them on this," Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu said in a telephone interview. Verizon, based in New York, has 8.5 million broadband subscribers, making it the fourth largest ISP by customer base.
Comcast, the nation's second largest ISP, declined to comment, and referred inquiries to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. The group's vice president, Brian Dietz, said he could not confirm any deals between the RIAA and his association's members, but "we look forward to working constructively with the recording industry and other content providers."
The NCTA represents dozens of cable internet providers. Neither AT&T nor Verizon are represented by the group.
AT&T, the nation's No. 1 internet service provider with about 14.8 million customers, declined comment through a spokesman. Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Charter Communications did not return repeated phone calls for comment.
But the RIAA says it really has negotiated an enforcement deal with large ISPs. It just can't identify members of its coalition of the willing.
"All I can tell you right now is that we have an agreement on principle with several leading ISPs but not all, and the agreement on principle is confidential," RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said in an e-mail.
The recording industry began targeting individual file sharers five years ago, suing about 30,000 alleged copyright scofflaws. Most of the cases settled out of court for a few thousand dollars.
Only one case went to trial, which was ultimately declared a mistrial after a federal judge said he erred when he instructed the jury that "making available" copyrighted music on the internet amounted to unauthorized distribution — or copyright infringement — regardless of whether actual downloading by others was shown.
nullified a $222,000 jury verdict against Jammie Thomas of Minnesota for sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa file sharing network.
The RIAA's latest plan of enforcement with the ISPs, if it comes to fruition, is also
(.pdf).
A Thomas retrial is set for March, as the RIAA said it was continuing with cases that were already in the legal pipeline.

,
, and
put two key pieces of their plan in place to connect TVs to Internet-equipped widgets this year.
Samsung agreed to support the technology inside of selected 2009 TVs, and Adobe said that it would port a version of its Flash Lite technology to the Intel Media Processor CE 3100, a key component in Yahoo Widget Channel-compatible set-top boxes.
In August 2008, Intel and Yahoo made a
to co-develop the Yahoo Widget Channel, a technology that would allow TVs to connect to the Internet to access "widgets," bits of software that would add value to the TV software experience,
. Motorola, Samsung, and Toshiba were among the hardware partners that endorsed the technology at its launch.
Samsung said Monday that "select" models of its HDTVs will be powered by the Yahoo Widget engine, which Samsung will brand as the "Internet@TV - Content Service". The new televisions will be on display at CES this week, connected either via a direct Ethernet cable or a USB Wi-Fi dongle.
The TVs will be available in the U.S, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
The widgets themselves will be supplied by Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance, USA Today, YouTube, eBay and Showtime Networks, among others, Samsung and Yahoo said.
"Samsung has been a proven innovator in Internet-enabled TV technology for some time now, offering the ground-breaking InfoLink service last year in 2008," said Boo-Keun Yoon, executive vice president of the visual display division at Samsung Electronics, in a statement. "There's no denying that the easy-to-use, one-touch of the remote control service successfully provides information simply and effectively. The collaboration with Yahoo! lets viewers go one step further. This new interface allows them to interact and connect with many of their favorite Web services on a personal level. It's frankly way beyond just passively watching broadcasts and is no doubt the future of TV."
If the Yahoo Widget Channel isn't directly built into a TV, then a set-top box must be used. At least at the Intel Developer Forum, the set-top box platforms were designed around the CE3100 or "Canmore" chip, part of the system-on-a-chip program
. Adobe's decision to port its Adobe Flash and Flash Lite technology to the Canmore processor means that Intel's Canmore chip, as well as set-top boxes that include them, now have hardware support for Flash, a key Internet technology as well as one that drives the majority of the Web's video sites. A Flash-optimized version of the Canmore is due in mid-2009, Intel said.
It wasn't clear at press time whether the partnership does mean that Flash-powered video sites will be accelerated through the Canmore platform. An Adobe spokesman referred calls to Intel; representatives for the chip company weren't immediately available for comment.
, although its integrated ARM processor is designed for netbooks.

Adobe and Intel are also working together to bring an optimized implementation of Adobe AIR technology to Intel's digital home platform in the future, the two companies said.
"Our effort with Adobe is poised to accelerate a rich, yet relevant Internet experience on the TV that will provide consumers with access to a growing number of Flash based applications that will ultimately be enjoyed across a number of screens seamlessly, from the laptop to a MID and now the TV," said William O. Leszinske Jr., general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group, in a statement.

The good news, according to a second study from the same research group, is that a simple intervention -- in this case, an-e-mail from a physician -- made some of the teens change their risky behaviors.
"I was surprised, at least to some extent, at how clearly teens were discussing behaviors that we struggle to get out of them," said Dr. Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?" Moreno said. "Do they not get it? And, if they don't understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?" Moreno was working at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute at the time the studies were done.
"We need to devise ways to teach teens and their parents to use the Internet responsibly," study senior author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute, said in a statement.
.
More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. MySpace boasts more than 200 million profiles, according to the studies, and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.
Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles from people who reported their age as 18. They collected the information during the summer of 2007.
They found that 54 percent of the profiles contained information on risky behaviors, with 24 percent referencing sexual behaviors, 41 percent referring to substance abuse and 14 percent posting violent information.
Factors associated with a decreased risk of posting risky behaviors included displaying religious involvement or involvement with sports or hobbies.
For the second study, the researchers randomly selected 190 profiles of people between 18 and 20 who displayed risky behaviors, such as sexual information. Half were sent an e-mail from a physician that pointed out that the physician had noticed risky behavior on their profile and suggested changing the displayed information. The e-mail message also provided information on where to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
Almost 14 percent of those who got the e-mail deleted references to sexual behavior, compared with 5 percent of the others.
"This was a creative and unique way to reach kids," said Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
Mitchell advised parents not to try to forbid their children from using these sites altogether. "It's important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids," she said. "They're here to stay, and they're not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren't necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions."
Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. "Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews," she said. "Some parents feel it's a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it's out there, it's public."
Parents should use this information as a conversation starter, Moreno suggested.
.
SOURCES: Megan A. Moreno, M.D., M.S.Ed., M.P.H., assistant professor, pediatrics, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kimberly Mitchell, Ph.D., research professor, Crimes Against Children Research Center, Family Research Lab, University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.; January 2009,
; Jan. 5, 2009, news release, Seattle Children's Research Institute

Commerzbank, Infineon, United Internet: German Equity Preview
Jan. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The following is a list of companies
whose shares may have unusual price changes in Germany. Stock
symbols are in parentheses, and share prices are from the
previous close.
DAX Index futures expiring in March rose 46.5, or 0.9
percent, to 5,024 at 8:18 a.m. in Frankfurt. The benchmark DAX
Index climbed 3.4 percent to 4,973.07 on Jan. 2.
to Dresdner’s management board,
the news magazine Der Spiegel said in a story that did not cite
its sources. Commerzbank spokesman
declined to comment
when contacted by Bloomberg News. Commerzbank shares added 0.125
euros, or 1.9 percent, to 6.765.
(DAI GY): The automaker has no plans to buy Volvo
AB, the Swedish carmaker put up for sale by Ford Motor Co., the
magazine Der Spiegel reported, without citing anyone. Daimler
Chief Executive Officer
considered buying the
company before rejecting the opportunity on cost grounds, the
news magazine reported.
, a spokesman for Stuttgart-based Daimler,
said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg that Der Spiegel’s
report is “completely false.” He didn’t elaborate. Daimler
rallied 1.05 euros, or 3.9 percent, to 27.75.
(LHA GY): The German carrier will
probably make a formal offer for a stake in Alitalia SpA today,
Corriere della Sera reported, without saying where it got the
information. The shares increased 45 cents, or 4 percent, to
11.64 euros.
, head of the DHL Express
delivery unit, the Financial Times Deutschland reported, without
citing anyone.
, who Deutsche
Post has said will leave June 30, the newspaper said in excerpt.
, a confidant of Appel and head of Deutsche Post’s
freight unit, is expected to succeed Mullen. The stock dropped 25
cents, or 2.1 percent, to 11.66 euros.
(GLJ GY): The company that buys and leases
computer equipment said its volume of new business jumped 18
percent to 601 million euros ($837 million) last year. The shares
climbed 98 cents, or 5.5 percent, to 18.80 euros.
(IFX GY): Europe’s second-largest
maker of semiconductors will ask shareholders for approval to
raise as much as 450 million euros in extra capital, the
Financial Times Deutschland reported today, citing the invitation
to the company’s annual general meeting. The stock increased 4.5
cents, or 4.7 percent, to 1.005 euros.
’s high-speed Internet
business after the latter company’s chief executive officer,
, leaves on Jan. 23, Euro am Sonntag reported,
citing an unidentified spokesman. United Internet shares rose 1
cent to 6.30 euros. Freenet jumped 41 cents, or 9.9 percent, to
4.56 euros.
.
Last Updated: January 5, 2009 02:39 EST

BOSTON (AP) -- A bill sitting on Governor Deval Patrick's desk could allow Massachusetts Police Departments to use the internet to auction off unclaimed items.
Under current law, State Police Departments can hold auctions to make money off unclaimed property in police custody.
The new bill would allow departments to hold auctions with the use of the internet, which would expand reach for the auction, and bring in more bidders.
Items for bid would be things in police possession for more than a month after attempting to contact the owner.

January 1, 2009 9:54 AM PST
My web site, which caters to individuals (rather than businesses), received 28% of its hits from Macintosh users in December. Also, 70% Windows, 2% Linux.
January 1, 2009 10:25 AM PST
Ahhh - so the worm is finally beginning to turn.
January 1, 2009 11:11 AM PST
0.85% for Linux? Please! These statistics only prove that Linux is dead in the water. An OS that been around for the past 17 years and its still trying make a pitch. The iPhone on debuted a year and half ago and its already creeping up behind Torvalds hobby.
January 1, 2009 11:55 AM PST
Nothing to do with Linux per se (the majority of the Web uses Linux for servers already )...
Just good to see that the monopoly's stranglehold on things is slipping.
January 1, 2009 11:19 AM PST
"0.85% for Linux? Please! These statistics only prove that Linux is dead in the water. An OS that been around for the past 17 years and its still trying make a pitch."
I am thinking that Linux is used more for servers than for computers used for web surfing.
"The iPhone on debuted a year and half ago and its already creeping up behind Torvalds hobby."
Yes, that is remarkable. I know that I use my iPhone a lot for website access when I am out and about. Even at home when I am in the living room or someplace else away from my desk, and when I do not have my MacBook with me, I will use my iPhone to check a website
January 1, 2009 1:02 PM PST
So, with all of the Win servers out there, and Windows in the workplace, and all of those losers with 6-8 PCs in their room (1 dude, 6-8 PCs) (smirk), and only about 22,318 Macs in the world (smirking again) - there must be a HUGE number of employees surfing the web at work (shopping on eBay and Craigslist at work counts for "residential use", right?).
Lighten up, already...
January 1, 2009 1:38 PM PST
Interesting! Although, it's a bit imprecise/misleading to say that the iPhone is "just ahead of" the Playstation. Yes, they're in 4th and 5th places, respectively - but the iPhone has TEN TIMES the amount of users (or whatever metric this is using). 0.4% vs 0.04%
January 1, 2009 2:00 PM PST
Just wondering why the Xbox 360 isn't on the list? Xbox Live always has 500,000+ users online. This should easily register.
Was this incorrportated into the Microsoft percentage? (shame, shame)
January 1, 2009 6:21 PM PST
500K is nothing.
Apple probably sold over 10 millions iPhone plus several millions iPod Touch by now, for 0.4% of the share. If XBox users browse the net as much as iPhone users (extremely unlikely), it still won't register.
January 1, 2009 8:39 PM PST
The answer is simple: you can't browse the internet on the Xbox 360. This isn't talking about web traffic, but web surfing trends. You can browse the internet on the PS3, but not the Xbox 360.
Happy to have helped.
January 2, 2009 7:45 PM PST
I believe the number is at 17m, johnqh
January 1, 2009 2:17 PM PST
the Iphone share is so more Impressive than the Mac share !
Wonder how much Windows Mobile+Blackberry+Symbian have ???
But this clearly shows that it's changing the mobile phone market !
Wonder if the Ipod touch share is included ?
January 1, 2009 2:36 PM PST
Linux 0.93%
iPhone 0.77%
Danger Hiptop 0.21% (WHATEVER THE hell THAT IS!)
January 2, 2009 7:31 AM PST
Danger Hiptop is the T Mobile Sidekick...
here's what I got for my site...
Stats for my site...
Windows: 12656 - 94.5 %
Macintosh: 399 - 2.9 %
Linux: 240 - 1.7 %
Unknown: 86 - 0.6 %
Firefox: 8284 - 61.9 %
MS Internet Explorer: 2972 - 22.2 %
Opera: 1649 - 12.3 %
Safari: 395 - 2.9 %
Netscape: 65 - 0.4 %
Samsung (PDA/Phone browser): 19 - 0.1 %
January 1, 2009 6:13 PM PST
Could this story be refined to tell us how many different versions of Windows are in use on the Internet from the data available? I would like to know how big a dent Vista is making on the Windows 95 crowd.
January 2, 2009 7:47 PM PST
95 doesn't even register on [one of] my sites. Here's the Windows breakdown:
Windows 864402 89.6 %
Windows XP 561706 58.2 %
Windows NT 1116 0.1 %
Windows Vista 288834 29.9 %
Windows CE 2108 0.2 %
Windows 2003 4468 0.4 %
Windows 2000 5305 0.5 %
Windows 3.xx 1 0 %
January 1, 2009 8:41 PM PST
I like those percentages. Strong enough for there to be competition, yet not so huge that secondary OSes become big targets.
January 2, 2009 6:40 AM PST
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10
And you'll find more interesting than the stated numbers above are the trends overall. It is no longer good enough that you only knoe .NET coding. You webmasters better bone up on W3C standards instead January 2, 2009 4:50 PM PST
I see (IT) people at my office buying Macs for home use.
They often say it's "for the kids". But they seem to have learned a lot about them;-)
(IT) People are coming out of the closet. That's what I am seeing.

has yet to restore most of its telecommunications network.
Qwest disconnected SkyWi on Dec. 30 because of a billing dispute, leaving thousands of Internet and phone customers without service in the six states where SkyWi operates: New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and Texas.
The cutoff created a crisis situation in some New Mexico communities because public safety — including fire, police and medical services — were affected.
The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission held an emergency meeting on Dec. 31 to resolve the situation. It ordered Qwest to re-connect SkyWi’s network by 8 a.m. Jan. 1.
However, SkyWi President Jack Leach said that, as of late morning Jan. 2, almost no phone service had been restored in New Mexico, and much of its Internet service was still down.
“Ninety percent of our voice customers are still without service,” Leach said. “Qwest has turned on a number of circuits in New Mexico, but the largest circuit that we need to restore voice service — which is located in Idaho — has still not been turned back on.”
Apart from residences and businesses, Leach said some public safety institutions are still without service.
“The Sheriff’s Department in Artesia County, the
and the New Mexico telehealth network in Las Vegas are all still incommunicado,” Leach said. “Most of the T-1 lines in Santa Fe are also still down, and that creates a cascade of problems for communities on the network that are dependent on Santa Fe.”
SkyWi, a Texas-based wireless Internet company, serves customers in New Mexico through its two subsidiaries —
in Las Cruces.
SkyWi has 13,000 Internet and 5,400 phone customers in the six states where it operates. About 70 percent of SkyWi’s customers are in New Mexico, making it the state’s largest independently owned and operated Internet Service Provider.
Qwest spokesman Mark Molzen could not say how soon all service will be restored.
“We’re deploying all available resources to get the network back up as soon as possible, but I have no estimate on how long that could take,” Molzen said.
Molzen said the reconnection process is complicated and time consuming.
“It’s not an overnight thing,” he said. “It took more than a week for us to make the preparations to cut off service.”
In addition, Molzen said a list of customers affected by the cutoff, which SkyWi provided to Qwest to help prioritize reestablishment of essential public services, is outdated and inaccurate, complicating the reconnection process.
Leach, however, said Qwest appears to be dragging its feet.
“They shut down everything on our network in a period of 36 hours, so we could understand it taking perhaps another 36 hours to get it back up,” Leach said.
But Molzen said SkyWi has itself to blame for the current problems.
“This all stems from SkyWi neglecting its responsibility to its customers to pay its bills to avoid interruption of services,” Molzen said. “At very least, SkyWi should have warned its customers in advance that services could be impacted.”
PRC Chairman Jason Marks said Qwest had told the Commission on Jan. 2 that about 50 percent of SkyWi service had been restored.
“I can’t judge at this time how accurate those reports are,” Marks said. “When the dust clears, I think we do need to analyze the situation more and evaluate whether Qwest has done everything possible to rapidly reconnect services.”

January 1, 2009 (Computerworld)
's market share plunged by a record-setting amount during December, Web metrics vendor
said today.
Microsoft Corp.'s browser lost 1.6 percentage points of its market share last month, ending December with a 68.2% share, down from November's 69.8%. Since the end of October, IE has lost 3.1 percentage points, nearly half of its total 2008 losses.
IE ended the year down 7.9 percentage points, a 10.4% decline in its share since December 2007.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of IE's December loss came from IE6's declining popularity; the older browser, which first appeared in August 2001, has long lost share to the newer IE7. However, IE7 also slipped significantly.
's newest production browser dropped 0.6 of a percentage point last month, the largest slip since its October 2006 launch.
Microsoft is currently working on IE8, and has said a "release candidate" build of the browser is
For the second month running, rival browsers from Mozilla Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc. all gained ground at IE's expense, according to Net Applications' data, which is culled from visitors to the thousands of Web sites the company monitors for clients.
, which
, increased its market share by another 0.6 of a percentage point to finish the year with a 21.3% share. During 2008, Firefox's market share climbed 4.5 percentage points, an increase of 27.3%.
Apple's Safari posted even more impressive gains during December. The browser, which is included with all Macs, increased its share by 0.8 of a percentage point, its largest one-month increase ever, to end the month at 7.9%. Safari's share has grown 41.9% since this time last year.
And Safari set a two-month record increase at the end of 2008. The 1.36 percentage point gain during November and December was nearly double the previous record, a 0.72 percentage point increase in September and October 2006.
, which debuted in September and
in early December, also boosted its market share, ending the month above 1% for the first time.
In the last two months, Firefox and Safari have grown nearly identical amounts, gaining 1.37 and 1.36 percentage points, respectively, during November and December 2008.
As it did last month, Net Applications again argued that at least some of the decline of IE -- and the corresponding increases by Firefox, Safari and Chrome -- was due to the calendar. "The December holiday season strongly favored residential over business usage," the company said on its Web site. "This in turn increases the relative usage share of Mac, Firefox, Safari and other products that have relatively high residential usage. All December usage statistics should be read in that context."

In January, Yahoo and Intel plan to show off their new Yahoo Widget Channel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which plans to bring online interaction and social networking capabilities to digital TV watching. The Yahoo Widget Channel will showcase the ability to view Flickr albums with friends while watching television, serve targeted ads to the end user and order videos on demand via Yahoo.
For Yahoo, it’s establishment of the Widget Channel, a software foundation that can house programs for browsing photos, using the Internet’s abundant socially connected services, watching YouTube videos, or digging deeper into TV shows–and through which Yahoo will be able to show advertisements. For Intel, it’s a foothold in an industry whose microprocessors have typically been cheaper, less powerful, and less power-hungry.
I really like the idea of being able to interact with the television to find statistics and updates on sports games, dig deeper into instant replays or do product research after watching a commercial. Along with Yahoo, Microsoft has been pushing Interative TV also, and part of this initiative has been positioning
as an entertainment center and universal household informational tool.

Guyana, Suriname to boost phone, Internet service
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana and Suriname plan to invest a combined $60 million in an undersea fiber optic cable to improve phone and Internet service.
The 746-mile (1,200-kilometer) cable will run north through Trinidad to Florida, backing up an existing cable that often experiences service disruptions.
Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo announced the plan late Monday, saying construction will begin in 2010.
Atlantic Tele-Network Inc. last year announced plans to build a separate $35 million cable linking Guyana and Trinidad.