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Friday, January 25, 2013

A Right to Unlock Cellphones Fades Away

Your right to unlock your cellphone is about to expire. Cellphone carriers say this is for your own good â€" and theirs.

Unlocking a cellphone enables it to work on a wireless carrier other than the one you bought it from. If an AT&T iPhone were unlocked, for example, it could be used on T-Mobile USA’s network. In October, the Library of Congress decided to invalidate a copyright exemption for unlocking cellphones. This exemption expires Saturday, making the act ofunlocking a cellphone potentially illegal, unless it is authorized by a carrier.

What does that mean, exactly It’s not like police officers will come knocking on your door if you decide to unlock your cellphone. More realistically, consumers might receive warnings from carriers if they are discovered to have unlocked a device. Businesses that resell used cellphones might be threatened, too.

“As with any of these copyright things, it’s a club for threatening people,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit company that focuses on information policy. “The law is very broad, and if you want to go after somebody, it’s one of these where there are a lot of ways in which this could play out.”

For years, technology companies have fought to add terms and regulations to products to protect their businesses. For example, Apple in 2008 fought a small company named Psystar that was selling generic PCs that ran the Mac operating system. In its lawsuit, Apple said Psystar had violated trademark agreements by selling non-Apple hardware that ran modified versions of Mac OS X. Apple had cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an anti-hacking provision.

The copyright act is also at the center of the provision about unlocking cellphones. In 2006 and again in 2010, the Library of Congress approved an exemption to the act that allowed the circumvention of technology that confined wireless handsets to different networks. Carriers fought to remove this exemption, and the Library of Congress chose not to renew it in October.

CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, had also pushed for the exemption to be removed. Michael Altschul, senior vice president of CTIA, said in an iterview that prohibiting people from unlocking their cellphones helped protect carriers’ investments in the subsidies that they provide for handsets. If a customer bought an iPhone on contract for a carrier-discounted price of $200, for example, he could use third-party software to unlock the device and sell it at a higher price. Disallowing that helps to prevent this kind of abuse, which makes carrier subsidies a sustainable practice, Mr. Altschul said.

“It’s allowing that business practice to go forward at a time when the price of devices continues to grow,” Mr. Altschul said.

He added that by not allowing people to unlock phones, carriers will also be making it harder for “gray market” businesses to launder and sell stolen cellphones. This protects consumers, he said, because the software used to unlock phones might contain malicious code that steals personal information.

Some consumer advocacy groups have a different point of view. Mitch Stoltz, a lawyer at the Elect! ronic Fro! ntier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit company, said the copyright act, which was designed to make it illegal to circumvent protections for copyrighted works, had repeatedly been misused by technology companies to protect their businesses. He said the removal of the exemption for unlocking cellphones might discourage people from wanting to sell their own phone to another person after they have bought a new one.

“This probably is going to cause a lot more phones to end up in landfills,” Mr. Stoltz said. “If it’s locked, it’s pretty difficult to even resell a handset.”

Consumers can buy phones unlocked at full price. Or they can get their phones unlocked if their carriers permit it. AT&T, for example, will unlock an iPhone at a customer’s request if his contract is up and his account is in good standing.

Mr. Feld of Public Knowledge compared this to paying someone to unlock a closet.

“It’s like if I took your stuff and locked it in a closet and said you are not llowed to break the lock,” Mr. Feld said. “And breaking the lock â€" I’ve put your stuff in this closet, but you can’t get it unless you pay me for access to it â€" that’s what this is the equivalent of.”



A \'Black Bloc\' Emerges in Egypt

While using Twitter to narrate events in Tahrir Square on Friday, people in Egypt described tires burning in the street, protesters blocking traffic and hurling rocks, and police officers launching tear gas in an effort to break up crowds that had gathered to protest against the Muslim Brotherhood and the country’s new Islamist president.

Many of the actions described on Friday appeared to hew to a script that has become familiar over the past two years, but some in the crowds of protesters appeared to be using new tactics, dressing from head to toe in black, covering their faces with bandannas or kerchiefs and brandishing black flags as they skirmished with security forces.

“Asked one of them who they are they said we don’t talk to media but we are black bloc,” wrote ‏the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr, adding that a member of the group had “mentioned anarchism.”

An article filed on Thursday by The Associat! ed Press reported the presence of a “previously unknown group calling itself the black block.” The article continued, “Wearing black masks and waving black banners, it warned the Muslim Brotherhood of using its ‘military wing’ to put down protests.”

Although largely new in Cairo, the term “black bloc” has been used for years in the United States and Europe to describe a tactic commonly used by anarchists and anticapitalists during large-scale political demonstrations that occasionally devolve into street fights with the authorities.

Participants in the bloc typically dress in lack to foster a sense of unity and to make it difficult for witnesses to differentiate between individuals. Members of the bloc often blend in with larger groups of protesters, then break away, linking arms as they rush down streets.

In the United States, at least, black bloc members usually eschew violence against people but have few compunctions about damaging property.

The tactic received attention during the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, when youths dressed in black broke windows and spray-painted graffiti on buildings.

In St. Paul, during the 2008 Republican National Convention, black bloc members roamed through the city smashing bank windows and using hammers to batter a police car.

It is unclear whether there are any connections between American and Egyptian black bloc participants, but the site anarchistnews.org posted! a messag! e about occurrences in Cairo, quoting the blog Even If Your Voice Shakes.

Last night, anarchism left the graffitied walls, small conversations, and online forums of Egypt, and came to life in Cairo, declaring itself a new force in the ongoing social revolution sparked two years ago with multiple firebombings against Muslim Brotherhood offices. Later, the government shutdown the “Black Blocairo” and “Egyptian Black Bloc” Facebook pages, but they were soon re-launched.

The site went on to say that Egyptian anarchists had firebombed the Shura Council.

As my colleague Robert Mackey reports, an Egyptian journalist, Sarah El Sirgany, wrote on Twitter, “Vendors tell me it was the Black Block groupthat attempted to storm the Ikhwan Online building sparking the fight.”

Later, she added, “Now those who had continued the fight are heading to Tahrir, flag of Black Block flying high.”

Opinion on the black bloc in Egypt was not united. In a place where sexual assaults and gropings have become common, one Twitter user, Ghazala Irshad ‏@ghazalairshad, seemed to sound an admiring note: “Egypt’s new Black Bloc (self-proclaimed anti-MB militia) has female members too â€" just saw one running wearing niqab & angle-length skirt.”

But the activist bloggers Gigi Ibrahim ‏! and Adel ! Abdel Ghafar were more skeptical.

This week a man named Ahmed Ibrahim, who has previously posted YouTube videos that appear to be from Egypt, posted a video titled “Black Blc Egypt.”

Accompanied by driving music the video shows masked people marching while holding aloft black banners, a black flag with an anarchy symbol and an Egyptian flag.



Street-Level Views of Protests in Cairo to Mark Two Years of Revolution

Thousands of protesters remained in Cairo’s Tahrir Square late Friday despite thick clouds of tear gas, after a day of nationwide demonstrations on the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Late Friday, Bel Trew, a correspondent for the English-language news site Ahram Online, reported on Twitter that the police fired yet another volley of tear gas at the protesters in Tahrir Square.

Gas was also fired at demonstrators near the presidential palace after dark, according to a video report from El Watan, an Egyptian news site.

Video from an Egyptian news site showed tear gas being fired at demonstrators near the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday night.

Earlier in the day, as marches from around the city converged on Tahrir Square, activists, bloggers and journalists shared street-level views of the protests as they unfolded, posting text updates, photographs and video on social networks.

As one march made its way to Tahrir, a skirmish broke out after some members of the crowd reportedly attacked the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Web site, Ikhwan Online, and then tried to block firefighters from coming to extinguish a blaze.

According to the journalist and blogger Sarah El Sirgany, witnesses said that masked anarchists, calling themselves the Black Block, initiated the fighting with an attack on the Islamist Web site’s office. During the attack, a vendor’s stand was set on fire, which led to a confused round of fighting between a group of vendors and some protesters, who were under the mistaken impression that they were battling members of the Brotherhood.

When activists from that march finally reached Tahrir, they came across a running street battle between protesters and the police across a concrete barrier blocking one entrance to the square.

That battle, on Qasr al-Aini Street, had begun Thursday evening, when protesters pulled down the barrier, only to see it rebuilt by soldiers. Some of Friday’s fighting was caught on video by Simon Hanna for Ahram Online. Mr. Hanna’s report features a remarkable interview with one of the protesters, a young man who held an empty tear-gas canister in his hand as he explained that his family intended to stay in Tahrir Square until they get justice for his brother, who was killed there while demonstrating on Jan. 25, 2011.

As Priyanka Motaparthy, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, pointed out, an edit of video shot from the other side of the barrier uploaded to the interior ministry’s own YouTube channel portrayed the clash in a very different way, suggesting that the police officers there were victims of aggression from thuggish young men.

An Iraqi activists group, Herak, posted video from Falluja.

As my colleague in Baghdad, Duraid Adnan, reported on Friday, at least seven civilian protesters and two soldiers were killed in clashes that started after Iraqi Army forces opened fire on demonstrators who had pelted them with rocks on the outskirts of Falluja, west of Baghdad.

It was the first time that one of the antigovernment protests that have roiled Iraq for more than a month has led to deadly confrontation between the protesters, who are mostly Sunni opponets of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and government forces.

While the shooting deaths occurred in Falluja in Anbar Province, demonstrations spread to towns and cities throughout other provinces, as photographs and video reported by the Iraqi Spring Media Center and an activists group called Herak showed.

In Falluja protesters had tried to cross an army checkpoint on the outskirts of the town, and threw rocks at soldiers, who opened fire. Seven protesters were killed and 44 people were wounded, medical sources said. Later, two soldiers were shot dead in apparent retaliation at another of the town’s checkpoints. The media center posted video showing demonstrators trying t! o cross a checkpoint.

Iraqi media center says this video shows a man wounded in Falluja clash

Other videos showed people, identified as demonstrators, trudging across open ground in Falluja with little cover or gathered near barricades amid the crack of intense volleys of gunfire.

There were also demonstrations inNineveh, Salahuddin, Diyala and Kirkuk Provinces calling for government reforms, as well as in the Anbar Province town of Ramadi.

Video identified as footage of protest in Mosul

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



In Iraq, \'No Retreat\' Protests Turn Deadly

An Iraqi activists group, Herak, posted video from Falluja.

As my colleague in Baghdad, Duraid Adnan, reported on Friday, at least seven civilian protesters and two soldiers were killed in clashes that started after Iraqi Army forces opened fire on demonstrators who had pelted them with rocks on the outskirts of Falluja, west of Baghdad.

It was the first time that one of the antigovernment protests that have roiled Iraq for more than a month has led to deadly confrontation between the protesters, who are mostly Sunni opponets of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and government forces.

While the shooting deaths occurred in Falluja in Anbar Province, demonstrations spread to towns and cities throughout other provinces, as photographs and video reported by the Iraqi Spring Media Center and an activists group called Herak showed.

In Falluja protesters had tried to cross an army checkpoint on the outskirts of the town, and threw rocks at soldiers, who opened fire. Seven protesters were killed and 44 people were wounded, medical sources said. Later, two soldiers were shot dead in apparent retaliation at another of the town’s checkpoints. The media center posted video showing demonstrators trying t! o cross a checkpoint.

Iraqi media center says this video shows a man wounded in Falluja clash

Other videos showed people, identified as demonstrators, trudging across open ground in Falluja with little cover or gathered near barricades amid the crack of intense volleys of gunfire.

There were also demonstrations inNineveh, Salahuddin, Diyala and Kirkuk Provinces calling for government reforms, as well as in the Anbar Province town of Ramadi.

Video identified as footage of protest in Mosul

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Test Run: Vine, Twitter\'s New Video Sharing App

Applications designed to let you record and post short videos to the Web almost always disappoint. The final products tend to be too grainy, too noisy and too shaky to be worth watching.

But Vine, a new video application for the iPhone introduced by Twitter on Thursday, lets users create and share miniature videos that are six seconds long and set to loop automatically, similar to an animated GIF. The app is brilliantly simple: users just aim their cameras at what they want to capture, tap the screen once to start filming and tap it once more to stop. They can film a single shot for the maximum time allotted or quickly cut together a series of scenes using the tap-to-edit feature.

That super-easy editing feature, likely to appeal to amateur and professional auteurs alike, is what makes Vine intriguing and fun. And plenty of people are already having fun with the medium. On popular clip (below) features a time-lapse video of a banana rapidly disappearing as it is consumed, while another clip creates a short comedy about a staring contest gone horribly awry. The app is great for quirky, herky-jerky minimovies, reminiscent of stop-motion animation. It’s easy to imagine creative Twitter users coming up with clever and entertaining clips capturing moments in their lives and events in real time, like concerts or big events.

Vine has one glaring and frustrating drawback: videos can be shared only upon completion  and only through the app itself or on Twitter. This makes it difficult to experiment with the medium, since each creation must be shared publicly for it to be viewed.

Just as Twitter compressed speech into 140 characters, condensing interactions and forcing people to rethink the way they communicate online, Vine seems capable of nudging those same people to concoct and tell visual stories about their daily lives. It takes the status update to a new level. Why tweet about what you made for lunch when you can churn out an entertaining little movie about how you made it â€" and show your face after you ate it

It’s also a signal that Twitter views itself increasingly as a media company, one that will “create, curate, and co-create media experiences on top of its platform,” as John Battelle, one of the founders of Wired magazine, wrote in a recent blog post.

While that may be true,  less clear is what it will be like when Vine is used for documenting and sharing breaking news. I’s one thing to watch a cleverly edited montage of a birthday party or celebration, and another entirely when it comes to a tragedy or natural disaster.



AT&T Will Buy Some Verizon Spectrum for $1.9 Billion

AT&T said on Friday that it had agreed to buy some spectrum â€" the radio waves that carry wireless calls and data â€" from its main competitor, Verizon Wireless.

AT&T said it would pay $1.9 billion for spectrum licenses that would cover 42 million people across 18 states, including California, Colorado, Florida, New York and Virginia. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.

In the wireless industry, this sale was widely expected. In late 2011, Verizon said it had agreed to buy licenses for spectrum from a consortium of cable companies. The Federal Communications Commission demanded clarity from Verizon on what it was doing with some of its leftover spectrum. Verizon later agreed that it would sell some spectrum in order to get approval for the deal with the cable companies.

The spectrum in question is in the 700 megahertz frequency. AT&T’s network already has a high concentration of 700 megahertz spectrum, so naturally the carrier was interested in the purchase. In past investor calls, AT&T had said it was interested in buying Verizon’s spectrum.

Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said the transaction had few implications for consumers.

“What we’re witnessing is the horse trading of spectrum bands so all the carriers can rationalize their holdings,” Mr. Moffett said in an interview. But he noted that “more spectrum always tilts the scales in favor of better service.”

AT&T has said it will use the additional spectrum to expand its fourth-generation LTE network, which is faster than its predecessor, 3G. Currently it has LTE deployed in about 135 cities, far behind Verizon, which has LTE in 476 cities.



For Michael Jackson Bio, Trying to Even the Score

When Randall Sullivan published his biography of Michael Jackson in November, he said he thought the singer was innocent of child molesting but he could not be absolutely positive. He said that after surgeries and more surgeries, little was left of Mr. Jackson’s nose besides his nostrils. He argued that despite two marriages, Mr. Jackson was probably a virgin when he died.

None of this went over well with Mr. Jackson’s fans, who voiced their displeasure with attacks on “Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson” and its author, a longtime contributor to Rolling Stone. Their primary weapon: one-star reviews on Amazon.

Since my article about their campaign appeared in The New York Times on Monday, dozens of people who were apparently outraged by what they saw the fans doing went to Amazon and wrote five-star reviews a a sort of riposte. There are now 142 five-star reviews, up from two dozen a few weeks ago, and 132 one-star reviews, up from about 100.

But the battle is merely joined. After the article appeared, Michael Jackson’s Rapid Response Team to Media Attacks asked via Twitter that people continue to post comments on Amazon. Many of the newly posted positive reviews have critical comments.

The positive reviews are no more believable in their praise than the negative reviews were in their criticism. By this point, the truth about the value of “Untouchable” â€" not to mention the truth about Mr. Jackson’s virginity and nose â€" is buried underneath all these competing claims, which must count as a victory for the book’s opponents. As a result, don’t be surprised if “star bombing,” as it’s been called, keeps on happening.

Amazon has tried to make reviewers more accountable by adding several tools where people can evaluate reviews. But this incident proved that those tools ar! e open to their own manipulation. Take, for instance, an excerpt from this review: “Randall Sullivan is fake, my uncle best friend use to work for the Rolling Stones company and known Randy and the jacksons for years, He use people and lie to them to get ahead and he is not born again.”

That is not a review, that is semi-coherent slander. But Amazon, which said it reviewed all the reviews of “Untouchable,” did not see anything wrong with it, and 53 Jackson fans voted it a “helpful” review, which in theory pushed it to a more prominent position on the page. Apply those votes to dozens of critical reviews and it’s relatively simple for a handful of people to create an apparently massive surge of disapproval.



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