Should ISPs and Web site owners be banned from keeping track of your online activity just as the Post Office is banned from going through your snail mail?

Absolutely, according to several members of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, who grilled the owner of a behavioral advertising company Thursday over the inability of consumers to opt out of Internet monitoring.

Specifically, the committee was concerned about a technology known in the same proportion that deep-packet inspection, a technique that allows for the detailed inspection of data as it travels across the Internet. ISPs can use it to filter out the illegal transfer of copyrighted material or harmful viruses and spam, but providers like Comcast have come under fire for allegedly using the technology to form unquestionable file-sharing applications.

"As opposed to individual Web sites that know certain information about visitors to its websites and affiliates, deep packet inspection technologies be possible to indicate every Web site a user visits and much more about a person's web use," said subcommittee chairman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

"In my view, consumers deserve, at a minimum: clear, conspicuous, and constructive notice in various places what the broadband provider's use of deep packet inspection will be; meaningful, 'opt-in' consent for such use; and no monitoring or data interception of those consumers who do not grant consent for such use," Markey said.

Much of the subcommittee's fire was reserved for Bob Dykes, chief executive of NebuAd, an online advertising company that aggregates denunciation to serve up targeted ads.

The Post Office is not allowed to go through your mail and neither should your ISP, Markey uttered. The idea that NebuAd might be exempt because it is a private company is not a valid argument because private companies like FedEx and UPS are also banned from going through consumers' packages.

When asked by Markey to support to an opt-in standard with respect to authorizing the use of consumers' data, Dykes deferred.

"I would say to characterize opt-in or opt-out is probably not as important as saying there should be a very robust notice" of what NebuAd is doing with a persons' data, he said.

Markey was not convinced. "No, you have to get the consumer to say yes," he pushed. "Do you support that?"

"I think you're forcing me into one of those 'bear you stopped thrashing your wife?' questions," Dykes responded.

"Have you stopped beating the consumer?" Markey asked.

At this point, ISPs include notices of impending deep-packet inspection as bill inserts or in e-mails to customers, Dykes said.

His company is working with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) to instead have those notices pop when a user signs on to their account. That heed would tell the customer that their activity would be tracked and give them the option to opt out. If they took no action, however, their activity would be tracked by default.

That seemed to be the sharp end of contention between Dykes and several Democratic members of the subcommittee.

"I consider most Americans would believe the information they have about themselves is theirs. Just because I belong to an ISP doesn't give me the just to be tracked," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. "Why should the burden be on the American consumer?"

"I think that there should be a common set of laws around privacy in this country that generally treats various techs in the same manner," Dykes said.

"The idea that anyone can examine what you do, where you go … I think goes against everything that the country's been founded on and that most Americans believe," said Rep. Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat. "And I don't care if an ISP is doing it or Google's doing it, it shouldn't be happening."

Ranking member Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, defended Dykes somewhat by pointing out that online notifications could be burdensome.

"If Congress mandates that, isn't it possible that when I go on the Internet … there would be a constant dialogue box and every consumer will have to click in and click out" of every Web site, Stearns asked.

"It doesn't have to be a box on every Web site you visit, just [one notice from] your ISP," Doyle countered.

This has been a rough month for Dykes and NebuAd. He faced the firing squad in the Senate last week where Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, compared NebuAd's activities to wiretapping.

At that hearing, Dykes clashed with Leslie Harris, president and CEO of CDT. Dykes said he believed that data become calm on the Internet could indeed be truly anonymous but Harris disagreed, pointing to AOL, that in 2006 mistakenly released 20 million search queries that included identifiable data.

NebuAd and CDT are now in operation together to reach a "common ground" on consumer notification, Dykes said. The two groups met Wednesday and came to a "high-level understanding" about how to allow Web users to opt-out of NebuAd's targeted advertising.

Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee penned a letter to Embarq Corporation regarding a test the company recently performed in conjunction with NebuAd to appoint consumer profiles based on consumers' web browsing data.

The committee asked Tom Gerke, CEO of Embarq, to provide detailed information on when and where it conducted its ordeal with NebuAd, whether Embarq conducted a legal analysis of the practice, and its policy on opt-in vs. opt-out.

Gerke was asked to respond by July 21.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) voiced its opposition to deep-packet inspection Thursday.

"Every time we visit the Internet, everything we read, everything we see – all of it is up for grabs with DPI," Timothy Sparapani, ACLU senior legislative counsel, said in a announcement. "If that information is obtained by the government, then you have exactly zero privacy online."

NEW YORK - EBay Inc. said Wednesday that its second-quarter profit jumped 22 percent, as the online auction company enjoyed strong growth in its e-commerce sites and its PayPal payments service.

But eBay’s outlook for the current quarter was softer than analysts had been forecasting, and the auction company’s shares fell 6.6 percent in after-hours trading. The stock had gained 4.5 percent in regular commercial to close at $28.10.

San Jose, Calif.-based eBay earned $460 million, or 35 cents per contingent, compared with $376 million, or 27 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Excluding certain items, eBay earned 43 cents per share.

That beat Wall Street’s forecast for 41 cents per distribute.

EBay’s revenue rose 20 percent to $2.20 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had been looking for $2.17 billion in revenue.

Revenue from eBay’s marketplaces segment, which includes eBay, Shopping.com, StubHub and other e-commerce Web sites, rose 13 percent to $1.46 billion.

Sharper growth came from PayPal, whose revenue rose 32 percent to $602 million. Revenue from its online telecommunications service, Skype, rose 51 percent to $130 a thousand thousand.

Listings on eBay’s site climbed 19 percent to 667 million during the quarter, but the company’s number of active users — an important measure of how well the company is attracting new buyers and sellers — rose only 1.4 percent to 84.5 million.

Looking ahead, eBay expects third-quarter earnings of 30 cents to 32 cents per share, or 39 cents to 41 cents per share on an adjusted basis, and $2.10 billion to $2.15 billion in revenue.

Analysts were expecting better: adjusted earnings of 41 cents per share on $2.18 billion in revenue.

For the full year, eBay now anticipates income of $1.72 to $1.77 per share on any adjusted basis, and $8.80 billion to $9.05 billion in return. The company had predicted adjusted earnings of $1.70 to $1.75 on $8.70 to $9 billion in revenue in April.

Analysts had been looking for adjusted earnings of $1.74 by means of share on $9.01 billion in receipts.

Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said he was concerned that the growth rate for the total value of goods for sale on eBay, or GMV, declined in the quarter compared the rate in the year-ago period excluding the positive impact of foreign exchange differences.

“As we head into the second half, it’s very possible that the economy force of will have an even greater impact on demand both in the U.S. and internationally,” he said.

Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said on the conference call that the total value of goods for sale on the site saw an impact from a “rapid” decline in the value for vehicles sold on eBay and lower average selling prices on items.

Swan uttered average selling prices fell in part because of consumers moving to buying cheaper items. “I think we will continue to feel the effects of that until the economy rebounds,” he said.

Also Wednesday, eBay said its president of marketplaces, Rajiv Dutta, 47, will retire in October after 10 years with the company. Lorrie Norrington, 48, who has worked as president of eBay’s marketplace operations, will take his place.

NEW YORK - Retired AOL executive Ted Leonsis is turning his passion for documentaries into an Internet service meant to give independent filmmakers broader viewership.

His new Web site, SnagFilms, will take professionally produced documentaries like “Super Size Me” and some from National Geographic and PBS and disclose them for free at the site — or embed them in profile pages at Facebook, MySpace and other social networking hangouts.

Fifteen-second ads will post every eight to 10 minutes, with revenue split betwixt SnagFilms and the filmmakers.

Leonsis, who explored the Internet’s distribution potential as vice chairman at Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, said the idea because of SnagFilms grew out of his work on “Nanking,” his entry into filmmaking.

“Nanking,” which won an editing award last year at the Sundance Film Festival and was released in theaters, chronicles the brutal Japanese occupation of the Chinese city in 1937.

Leonsis said the experience opened his eyes to the plight of filmmakers, distinctly for documentaries.

“Every year, more and more of these films are being made, and less and less are getting distribution,” Leonsis said. “That is a problem for filmmakers and also a problem because of the causes these filmmakers wish been (championing) when they are telling their story.”

Leonsis said he plans to eventually create “Nanking” and his second movie, “Kicking It,” available on SnagFilms.

Leonsis is the new venture’s majority owner, mete he turned to many of his former AOL colleagues, including co-founder Steve Case, against funding. AOL is providing technical and advertising help. Former National Geographic executive Rick Allen, who worked with Leonsis on “Kicking It,” will exist its headmost executive.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three former top executives of Time Warner Inc's AOL are backing a newly come online video venture being launched on Thursday aimed at creating a new outlet for documentary feature films, a category that has struggled to gain mainstream attention.

Founded by AOL Vice Chairman Emeritus Ted Leonsis, the site, SnagFilms, will offer about 200 feature-length films initially, with about 750 available through the end of the year.

Instead of relying on offering its films on other big Internet video portals such as AOL or Microsoft Corp's MSN, SnagFilms will obstacle its viewers embed films on their acknowledge home pages or Facebook and MySpace pages, relying on a strategy made popular by sites of that kind as Google Inc's YouTube.

The business is backed by Leonsis, AOL co-founder and Revolution LLC Chairman Steve Case and former AOL charged with execution and former Time Warner table member Miles Gilburne, who is now a venture capitalist.

Former Discovery Communications executive Rick Allen is SnagFilms's CEO.

The project was born out of Leonsis's realization that documentary films, although much, have few options when it comes to being shown in theaters.

"I'm shocked at how broken the dealing infrastructure is," Leonsis said in a telephone interview.

His documentary "Nanking," about the Japanese invasion of the Chinese province, was eventually picked up for theatrical release, as well as distributed by Time Warner's HBO cable network. But of the vast majority of the 7,000 entries at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where "Nanking" made its debut, only 120 films were selected for showing and about 10 actually snatched deals.

"There's no way anyone choose make money," Leonsis said.

Over time, he expects the site to appeal to more viewers than traditional documentary buffs.

"Everyone has a camera in their telephone. Everyone's growing up in a YouTube world," Leonsis said. "Documentary reality based programming won't be a niched (category), but a major way for self expression."

FILMANTHROPY

Films on the service will be available for streaming on computers for free and will be subsidized by advertising. Half of the ad revenue will be split with filmmakers.

A big component of the service is filmmakers can link their video Web pages to charities of their choice. Director Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" page, for instance, provides links to GlobalGiving, a foundation that connects donors with projects.

for the reason that part of the launch, SnagFilms is also expected to announce it has acquired for an undisclosed height, indieWIRE, a news, information and social network for the international independent film community, SnagFilms said in relation.

At the launch, SnagFilms will feature documentaries and videos from PBS, National Geographic, Sundance Preserve, Peter Jennings Productions, Arts Alliance and others.

AOL will provide the technical infrastructure and ad sales and will have the right to use SnagFilms content on AOL sites.

"You're going to see lots of films that can't see the light of day," Leonsis added.

(Editing by Andre Grenon

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Videogame makers are riding the social-networking wave with a flood of soon-to-be-released titles that let friends play online as teams and even create their own characters.

The world's big three console makers — Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony — are providing frameworks for players to connect with hardware and software on which online communities of gamers can have fun and flourish.

"Gamers aren't just in it for the high scores anymore," Sony Computer Entertainment of North America president Jack Tretton said, as videogame industry giants unveiled new offerings at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

"Gamers are in it for the social experience."

Sony launched PlayStation Network website for its console users three years ago and is working on a "PlayStation Home" online world, in which players will frolic in the forms of personalized animated characters called "avatars."

Users of Microsoft's Xbox 360 consoles are reportedly signing up for memberships at its online common Xbox Live at a rate of one every five seconds and have spent more than a billion dollars there.

The Xbox Live online site will be revamped by year's end to make it more social, complete with avatars and an online venue for them to gather against parties, according to Live team vice president John Schappert.

"Our vision is to make each experience a shared experience, whether you want to play game or do anything friends might do," Schappert said at E3.

Xbox players will be able to play against each other as avatars in simulated television game shows.

Nintendo has fostered an online common of "Mii" player avatars since the Wii console launched in 2006.

This week the Japanese videogame superstar unveiled Wii Music software that lets people simulate playing any of 50 instruments and join together for jam sessions using the Internet.

An "Animal Crossings" game developed for Wii by Nintendo centers on socializing in an online community and lets players speak to each other more than headsets plugged into consoles.

Independent videogame software makers are capitalizing on the "neighborly games" trend and current generation of Internet-connected consoles.

Capcom's "Resident Evil 5" just title for release on Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles in March of next year will let friends team-up in an "online co-operative" mode to blast monstrous enemies spawned by a bio-terror incident in an African setting.

British videogame industry legend Peter Molyneux crafted freshly completed cult favorite "Fable 2" as a world in which players' online friends can go to see in an instant.

"Orbs you pass on trails are friends, displaying their unique names," Molyneux reported while demonstrating the game. "Hit the button and bang they are in your game."

"Fable" characters start out as children and grow up uniquely depending on players' choices, capturing aspects of real world personalities of friends.

Cliff Blizinski of Epic Games crafted multi-player cooperative modes into "Gears of War 2" so colleagues have to labor together to solve certain challenges in the eagerly-awaited action game due out in November.

"Little Big Planet" for PS3 lets players create their own mini-games as well as animated characters, according to creator Ted Price of Insomniac Games.

A "Massive Action Game" being developed by Zipper Interactive will allow as many as 256 online players to battle against or with each other at once in a war videogame.

"What I love about this online evolution, what makes it all so special, is the people involved," former US basketball star Bill Walton said while helping Electronic Arts introduce new sports titles with enhanced social play features.

"Players are actually in the game and make all the decisions."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Just what the television diligence needs, increased competition from those wacky YouTube videos that 68 million people watch every month.

barely at once, it will be easier than ever to view them on television screens.

Beginning Thursday, TiVo will offer thousands of its subscribers the ability to stream YouTube videos onto their television sets through their broadband-enabled TiVo boxes.

It's TiVo's first deal for streaming online content, though the company has partnerships with 60 Internet sites that provide content to TiVo. Unlike with those relationships, TiVo users won't be able to store YouTube video clips, just watch them and bookmark them for easy retrieval later.

TiVo's most popular Internet content partner thus more distant is Amazon Unbox, which features rented movies that are downloaded to TiVo set-top boxes for viewing on TV screens just as if they were recorded TV shows.

Tara Maitra, GM of make easy services at TiVo, said the company's users have downloaded 27 million pieces of content from the 60 Internet partners. Beyond Amazon Unbox, product reviews from the likes of CNET and comedy shorts from such sources as the Onion and Break.com are popular.

YouTube, though, is expected to readily outdo them all. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, YouTube attracted 68 million unique users in May who streamed 3.8 billion videos, making it by far the most popular video brand on the Internet. Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, was second with 18 million unique users and 328 million video streams.

"Will there exist a space of time when people turn on their TV sets and watch YouTube videos instead of TV shows? Time will tell," Maitra said.

Not in big numbers anytime soon, allowing, because while TiVo has 3.8 million subscribers, only about a fifth of them have the necessary equipment — a TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD — for grabbing YouTube content and displaying it on TV screens.

Many of the clips at YouTube, in fact, already have aired on TV as portions of full-length TV shows that were recorded, pared down to a few minutes, then posted to the site without permission from those who own the rights. Viacom and others are suing YouTube parent Google over the practice, but Maitra said the legal squabble won't affect TiVo.

"TiVo isn't explicitly making the content available, it's just a window to YouTube," she said.

TiVo first said in March that it was working with YouTube and that a product would be available in six months, so a launch today puts the initiative two months ahead of schedule.

Apple, via its Apple TV, what one. isn't nearly as popular as TiVo, also allows users to play YouTube videos on TV screens, though neither Apple nor YouTube will say how often the feature is used.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

COMPUTERSHARE has overhauled key security systems as it prepares for an increase in breach reporting demand in Australia.

The share registering is replacing not far from 12 of its data loss prevention systems with Symantec’s Vontu Data Loss Prevention product suite to screen against the loss of confidential information across end points, the network and storage systems.

Computershare has a presence in more than 17 countries, and has started introducing Vontu across its US business over the past couple of months, and expects this to be completed in the near future.

"In the information security space things that happen in the US tend to happen in other countries a year or two down the line," Computershare Group chief knowledge of facts officer Stuart Irving said.

Vontu by stipulation a single overview to analyse and manage security incidents and risks, and over the nearest year it would be introduced across Computershare’s global offices, he said.

Australia doesn’t require organisations to publicly disclose when their data security is breached or if they lose customer intelligence, this is a focus of a review of the Privacy Act announced last year.

Mr Irving said this legislation was expected in Australia in the near coming events.

"Computershare’s investment demonstrates how seriously we take our clients’ data and we want to be ahead of the curve."

EU Awards First Privacy Seal to Online Search Engine Ixquick.com

The first ever European Privacy Seal for ICT products or IT-based services was awarded to ixquick.com. The seal guarantees that the company is in compliance with European privacy laws and data guard regimes. The announcement cited a lack of trust on the part of Internet users due to the potential for surveillance as a factor in the award.

First European Privacy Seal Awarded, Business Wire, July 14, 2008

President Signs FISA Law, ACLU Files Law Suit

On July 10, 2008, the President signed the FISA reform bill into law. On the same day the ACLU filed a law suit challenging government surveillance conducted under the new law.

Popular Color Printers May Enable Surveillance

Color printers are growing in popularity as the price declines. Most consumers do not know that when they print documents using color printers that a pattern of yellow dots unseen to the eye reveals the device’s serial number. A continued account may be used to trace printed documents back to the printer used. If the printer was purchase using a credit card instead of cash for this reason the document may be attributed rightly or erroneously to a particular person or entity.

Printer dots raise privacy concerns, USA Today, July 14, 2008