Burning movies onto DVDs may be getting easier

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 12, 2006

A film industry group is set to remove some of the procedural hurdles that prevented the legal recording of movies onto blank DVDs in a further sign that Hollywood studios are preparing to expand what consumers can do with downloadable movies.

Under rule changes expected to be finalized soon by the DVD Copy Control Association, retailers could create movie jukebox kiosks with which customers can select, say, an obscure title and burn it to a DVD on the spot.

Online merchants, like Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store, could start to allow video downloads to be transferred onto DVDs.

The impending technical and policy changes involve the copy group’s proprietary technology known as the Content Scramble System, or CSS. The association, an arm of Hollywood studios, licenses the encryption technology to makers of DVD players and other electronics companies and applies it widely to movies on DVDs to restrict illegal copying.

The association said it will soon expand licensing to movies that are digitally distributed on demand or a la carte – and not just for movies that are mass produced on DVDs.

The group also is working with disc makers to produce CSS-compatible blank DVDs.

Hollywood studios have been experimenting more with digital distribution. But until recently, they have been reluctant to allow consumers to transfer online purchases onto DVDs, limiting playback largely to computers or entertainment systems that are linked to a computer network.

Google has high hopes for spyware buster: Google is issuing this warning to people who try to click on links to sites with spyware and other malicious code: “The site you are about to visit may harm your computer!”

Users can search again, learn more about malicious code at the site StopBadware.org or proceed to the suspect site anyhow – at their own risk, of course.

Google Inc. said its initiative is just starting and is by no means comprehensive.

Google is one of the main sponsors of StopBadware.org, a project that researchers from Harvard and Oxford universities are hoping to turn into a clearinghouse for information on spyware and other malicious software. So far, StopBadware has identified only one site as malicious, and efforts to reach that site from Google worked normally Wednesday.

Report IDs adware originators: Marketers appeared to be directly responsible for more than half of the pop-up and other online advertisements run through so-called adware networks, reducing the companies’ ability to plausibly deny knowledge of that connection, a report has found.

Critics say adware has become one of the top scourges of Internet use because it can degrade computer performance, track a user’s browsing habits and mysteriously appear on computers without a user’s full knowledge. Major companies often blame an intermediary when they are found to advertise through such programs.

But the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group that has conducted research on such programs, said Wednesday that 55 percent of the ads, particularly those coming from smaller companies, used no intermediaries at all.

“There are a lot of companies that are clearly working directly with adware companies,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director for the center.

The report did not name the advertisers.

Researchers studied the patterns by loading two computers with adware and installing a packet logger to track the Web addresses accessed.

AT&T tweaks West Bank, Gaza phone billing: AT&T Inc. is putting its official stamp on the West Bank and Gaza by changing its phone bills, a move driven more by economics than politics.

Long-distance charges for dialing the Palestinian-run lands will carry their own designation rather than appearing as calls to Israel.

The company also is raising the rates sharply for calling the West Bank and Gaza, citing the rising fees AT&T needs to pay other carriers in that region to connect calls.

The rates for AT&T’s assorted long-distance plans will increase by roughly 20 cents per minute to about 32 cents starting in September. That’s more than double the current rate of about 12 cents a minute for calls that will now be designated as “Palestinian Authority” on AT&T bills.

Users of AT&T CallVantage, an Internet-based service, will pay 31 cents a minute, up from 6 cents a minute for calls to landline numbers and 14 cents for dialing mobile phones in the West Bank or Gaza.

Look if you want to, but just don’t undermine: Looking at Internet filtering practices in Vietnam, one could conclude that the government is more worried about politics than porn.

University researchers said in a report Wednesday that the practices run counter to the government’s own statements.

“Vietnam purports to prevent access to Internet sites primarily to safeguard against obscene or sexually explicit content,” the report said. “However, the state’s actual motives are far more pragmatic.”

Vietnam’s Internet service providers did not block any of the pornography sites tested but filtered most of the sites “with politically or religiously sensitive material that could undermine Vietnam’s one-party system.”

China and other regimes worried about political sites also turn their attention to blocking porn, said Derek Bambauer, a research fellow with OpenNet Initiative, a collaboration of Harvard University, the University of Toronto and the University of Cambridge.