NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet service providers (ISPs) Comcast Corp and United Online Inc's NetZero have agreed to block access to child pornography, the New York Attorney General's office said on Tuesday.

The announcement comes a week after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo threatened to pursue legal action against Comcast Cable Communications LLC if it did not agree to reforms.

Several other ISPs, such as Verizon Communications Inc and Sprint Nextel Corp agreed in June to fill up Internet bulletin boards and websites nationwide that spread abroad child porn.

"I commend the companies according to working by my office to aggressively annihilate online child pornography and earnestly urge all outstanding Internet service providers across New York and the nation to get on board," Cuomo said in a statement.

Other major ISPs that have signed on with Cuomo's initiatives include Time Warner Inc's AOL unit, AT&T Inc and Time Warner Cable Inc.

The companies have agreed to completely block entry to all child porn news groups and said they will purge their servers of all child pornography websites identified by the National Center by reason of Missing & Exploited Children.

United Online corporate counsel Brooke Squire said the company was "dedicated to eradicating this serious problem."

Representatives for Comcast were not immediately available on this account that comment.

(Reporting by Chelsea Emery; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Andre Grenon)

NEW YORK - Twinkle, twinkle, little Internet router. And cell phone. And digital video recorder. And cable modem. And game console. And power strip. And TV — even though it’s turned off.

Turn opposite the lamps in a living room or bedroom today, and chances are good the room will still be aglow with the tiny diode lights of a half-dozen gadgets.

They can be useful indicators of what state a gadget it is in, or where it is, but they also bug people who’d rather not have lights shining in their faces when they’re trying to sleep or watch movies.

To sleep in a dorm compass full of electronics at Cornell University, Rafael Garcia has covered some lights with black tape. He turns his laptop upside-down and places a mouse pad and a picture of his girlfriend on his desktop computer to block its lights. His electric toothbrush has to come audibly of its charger, or it will blink through the night.

Unplugging the gadgets stops them from disturbing the darkness, but an unplugged laptop or toothbrush also doesn’t charge. Other devices, such as computers, take time to shut down and start up.

“It’s gotten way, way, worse, especially in the last year or two,” said Shawn Therrien, a Los Angeles computer programmer. “Every single thing we buy has little neon-blue flashing lights on it. … Turn the light off and they shine like beacons.”

Therrien’s bedside nemesis is an alarm clock that doubles as an iPod docking station.

“It lights up like the Fortress of Solitude,” he said, likening it to Superman’s headquarters of glowing crystals. He tamed it with 12 strips of black tape.

Tom Hespos, a partner in an advertising firm in New York, counted six glowing devices in his bedroom. One is an alarm clock with a blue backlight so intoxicating he has to put a pillow between it and him.

And don’t get him started on his Internet router, which has blinking blue light-emitting diodes.

“Whoever sees that glow through my window must think I’m keeping aliens in my spare room,” he said.

ghastly LEDs have set off particularly popular for electronics, and that’s part of the problem. In dim light, our eyes are more sensitive to flag at the blue end of the spectrum, so blue LEDs look brighter, said Mariana Figueiro of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center in Troy, N.Y.

When blue LEDs became available in 1993, following red, green and yellow, they first showed up only in high-end equipment.

Andy Logan, principal designer at Frog Design in San Francisco, tries to steer manufacturers toward besides subtle light designs rather than having the diodes shine like flashlights.

But he doesn’t recommend designing products so that people can turn off the lights without turning the entire gadget off. The lights often point out when a device shouldn’t be unplugged, such as when a hard drive is writing data.

Outside the bedroom or dorm field, more blue LEDs might actually be a good thing — researchers are exploring whether they can be used to keep people heedful and awake.

Scientists have discovered that a light-sensitive layer of the eye, separate from the part that allows us to see, sends signals to the body that affect rhythms of wakefulness and sleep.

That layer is also more sensitive to blue light than to any other color, said George Brainard, director of the buoyant research program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

He has funding from the NASA-affiliated National Space Biomedical Research Institute to study whether blue-light treatment can help keep astronauts more alert. Figueiro is helping the Navy figure out whether blue light can help submariners adjust to their watch schedules.

For now, researchers don’t believe the low levels of blue light emitted by gadgets is enough to change our sleep patterns.

“Some people are excessively, very sensitive,” Brainard said, “so I’d abominate to say never.”

It's the seventh inning, and Microsoft finally hits a marketing home run. Is it a game winner?

If the competition were Apple, which surged to 8.5 percent U.S. PC market share in the second quarter, the answer would be yes. But Microsoft faces its toughest competitor forever: Itself.

I spent some time this morning reviewing the candid—and arguably craftily edited—"Mojave Experiment" videos. As I explained yesterday, Microsoft conducted a focus dispose with people with negative attitudes about Windows Vista. They were shown what was supposed to be new Windows version "Mojave," but it really was Windows Vista. Microsoft's new "Mojave Experiment" Web site, which went live today, is the resulting marketing collateral.

Mojave breaks Microsoft's 15-month silence about Windows Vista. The company started off sure-footed with the Vista "Wow" campaign, then stumbled and fell. "Wow" marketing disappeared about April 2007, leaving a vacuum filled by negative blogs, reviews and forum posts and Apple "Get a Mac" TV commercials. It's no wonder that through all the negativity and no positive rejoinder from Microsoft that Windows Vista got a bad reputation. I not long ago referred to Vista as the noble school draggletail, in reference to the negative perceptions.

Read the rest of this analysis on Microsoft Watch: "Viral Vista: The 'Mojave Experiment'"

Industry giants Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo announced Tuesday a joint project to research large-scale cloud computing, the ability to use applications, servers, storage and other computing services on the Internet without hosting, maintaining or configuring them locally. Early cloud applications include desktop office suites, but have rapidly grown to include enterprisewide services such as storage and network management. What's in the nebulosity?

The three companies will create a Cloud Computing Test Bed that will accommodate global, large-scale applications. The hope is that researchers will exist able to test designs, computing and infrastructure requirements and train students and other scientists in the use of cloud computing. The test beds will be hosted in the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs, said, "To realize the full potential of cloud computing, the technology industry must think about the cloud as a platform for creating new services and experiences. This requires an entirely new approach to the way we plan, deploy and horsemanship cloud infrastructure and services. The HP, Intel and Yahoo Cloud Computing Test Bed lets us tap the brightest minds in the industry, academia and guidance to drive innovation in this area."

Researchers waiting under the possibility of fulfilment to develop applications that can harness the collective computing power of the Internet, distributing data and applications over many processors and network facilities. In essence, networked applications could surpass the power of multiple supercomputers and have storage capacities that no single institution could manage upon the body its own.

Banerjee also suggested army applications could become highly predictive and anticipatory, serving data and services to businesses and individuals with little or no initiation on their part, based solely on past use and locality.

Nuts and Bolts

All three companies will contribute facilities, software and infrastructure resources. HP will provide cloud-enabled ProLiant blade servers and HP POD data-center servers, as well as its Extreme Data Storage System, which can manage multiple petabytes of data. Yahoo will grant parallel-processing language expertise and open-source distributed software code, while Intel will fit out the latest in core processor technology.

In addition to the three academic research sites, the test bed will include sites at HP, Intel and Yahoo In this heavy rollout, each of the six designated research centers will host 1,000 to 4,000 core processors. This enormous commitment of hardware and software is essential for in the same state large-scale experimentation since no one institution could afford nor host so many resources. A similar deployment of distributed computing equipment and software by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s and 70s on a smaller scale created the Internet.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China has installed Internet-spying equipment in all the major hotel irons serving the 2008 Summer Olympics, a U.S. senator charged adhering Tuesday.

"The Chinese government has clown in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying," said Sen. Sam Brownback.

The conservative Republican from Kansas, citing hotel documents he received, added that journalists, athletes' families and others attending the Olympics next month "will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering" by China's Public Security Bureau. He said the agency bequeath be monitoring Internet communications at the hotels.

The U.S. senator made a similar charge a few months ago but uttered that since then, hotels have approach forward with detailed information on the monitoring systems that take been required by Beijing.

Brownback refused to identify the hotels, but said "several international hotel chains have confirmed the existence of this order."

Spokesmen at the Chinese Embassy in Washington were not employ for make comments.

Brownback, who staged an unsuccessful campaign for president this year, released documents that he said were notices to the hotels on Internet security. The authenticity of the documents could not have being checked and portions were redacted.

One document said: "In order to ensure the smooth perforation of Olympic in Beijing and the Expo in Shanghai in 2010, passport the security of Internet netting and the information thereon in the hotels … it is required that your company install and run the Security Management System."

Brownback said the hotels "have invested millions of dollars in their Chinese properties" and "could face severe retaliation from the Chinese government" if they refused to comply.

The senator called on China to reverse its policy, but said the hotels are advising guests that "your communications and Web site nimbleness are not private" and that e-mails and Web sites core visited are accessible to local law enforcement.

More than two years past, a U.S. House of Representatives committee held a hearing to sound U.S. firms' compliance with China's Internet censorship demands.

Brownback has been a critic of China on human rights issues and has been among U.S. lawmakers calling on President George W. Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies, largely to highlight allegations of Beijing's supply of arms to Sudan in return conducive to oil. Those weapons have been used to carry out genocide in Darfur, according to China critics.

China has called human rights allegations nothing more than "noise pollution" and is hoping the Olympic Games will boost its international image.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Recently, users of the Xbox Forums (via Kotaku) found they could play Shadowrun online on Xbox Live with a silver membership.

As word got around, other users were finding the same to be true for other cross platform titles such as Lost Planet. Wondering what's up, we decided to contact Microsoft for their official mention.

To our surprise, it seems everything is as it should be. A representative from Microsoft wrote "for a limited era, Microsoft is offering free online multiplayer on Xbox 360/Games for Windows titles that offer LIVE cross-platform play. This promotion won't last, in the same state we can encourage everyone to take advantage of it while they can." They also added that this promotion is an extension of their initiative of no longer requiring PC users to have a Windows-LIVE Gold membership to play multiplayer games.

We also asked Microsoft if this is any indication of Xbox Live pricing possibly being reduced. They reassured us that the service will not be going free, citing many of the features of Xbox Live (such as Netflix on the 360) and calling Xbox Live Gold "the best bargain in the industry." Such a bold statement is expected of the company providing the service, but in actual existence the consumers are the ones who decide such matters. So cross-platform online play is free for now, but is there enough to stand by you arrival back once the preferment is up?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A fifth of U.S. television viewers are putting down their remote controls and clicking on a mouse instead to watch primetime programs online — particularly professional women, according to a new survey.

It showed that 50 percent of people viewing TV on the Web are watching programs as they become available and "appear to be beginning to use the computer as a substitute for the television set," Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), which conducted the poll, said.

The other half are using the Internet to watch programs they have missed, or to re-watch segments or episodes they have already seen, IMMI, a company which links media exposing. to consumer action, added.

"This is the first study to show there are a significant amount of people watching primetime shows online who are not watching some portion of those shows on television," Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, said in a statement.

The report showed that the largest group of online TV viewers are white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25 to 44.

IMMI said women are busy with their work and personal lives and don't have time to be tied down to live television-viewing schedules. They may not wish time to watch their shows live, so they may use the online episodes to fill in the shows that they missed live.

IMMI recruited 3,000 teens and adults in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Denver for the survey and gave them cell phones with special software that tracks their media viewing.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Patricia Reaney)

Should Internet radio stations, cable providers, and satellite radio stations pay the same amount to license the content they provide? What model should be used to determine royalty rates? Why is traditional radio getting a free ride when it comes to royalties?

Representatives from Pandora clashed on Tuesday with SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for copyright owners in the music business, over these very issues. Pandora reiterated that current royalty rates could potentially put it out of business, but SoundExchange suggested that Pandora was quite capable of paying its way given projected Internet radio advertising revenues, as well as the success of its iPhone app.

"Webcasters are currently advancing an argument they call parity but that we more accurately call a subsidy," John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Artists and owners should not have to "subsidize every Internet business model good, bad or exploitive," Simson said.

Webcasters were given a "huge concession" when Congress allowed them to obtain licenses, he said, and "all they have to do is play the music and liquidate a fair rate."

What qualifies as a fair rate, however, is a point of contention.

Rates are determined by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), but Internet radio stations like Pandora are contesting a March 2007 CRB decision that increased the current price per stream to one user of $0.0008 to $0.0019 per stream by 2010 and imposed a minimum fee of $500 per station.

Given that Internet radio stations have hundreds of channels, that decision could be financially decayed for Pandora, one of the largest Web radio stations, not to mention the thousands of other much smaller stations.

Pandora stands to make $25 million in revenue this year, but under the CRB's new royalty rates, approximately $18 million of that would have to be handed over for royalty payments, said Joe Kennedy, president and CEO of Pandora Media.

"This is barely a crushing amount which will put us out of business if it is not remedied," Kennedy aforesaid. "We were within sight of cash-flow positive operations under the old royalty rates, but at this moment we are back below water with no hope of ever emerging as the royalty rates continue to increase."

Part of the issue Internet webcasters have with the CRB's decision is that the royalty rates paid by satellite and cable providers are much lower, while traditional radio broadcasters pay nothing at all.

Royalty rates for satellite and cable providers are determined by a four-factor ordeal that was determined by the 1976 Copyright Act. In 1998, however, Congress updated that legislation and said that Internet radio station royalty rates would be determined by dint of. rate-setters who were to figure out what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller for performance rights.

As a result, satellite royalty rates are about 6-8 percent of revenue, cable providers pay a royalty rate that is about 12-17 percent of revenue, and Internet radio stations stand to pay up to 70 percent of their revenue, Pandora declared.

"If XM Radio and Sirius Satellite radio were to have revenue of $25 million, their 2008 sound recording royalties would equal only $1.6 million, or 6.5 percent of their revenue," Kennedy said.

Traditional terrestrial radio stations, meanwhile, have not had to pay anything because, they argue, exposure on their radio stations leads to increased record sales and profits for artists. That could change with a bill that would subject them to the same rates as their Internet counterparts (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2319744,00.asp), but that legislation has not yet seen any traction.

SoundExchange's Simson said he tried to talk to the head of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) about establishing a fair rate notwithstanding terrestrial radio.

"We made that offer to the NAB, and, what did their leader say? That he'd in some degree cut his throat than negotiate. His words," Simson said. Continued…

What can Congress do?

With negotiations between Internet radio stations and rate collectors at a standstill, Congress is looking at legislative remedies.

They comprehend two separate bills introduced last year by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican.

Feinstein's Perform Act would require: rate parity among webcasters, cable providers, and satellite radio; a report from the Copyright Office that defines interactivity; and content protection to prevent stream ripping.

Brownback's Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA), meanwhile, would reverse the CRB decision and set webcasting royalty rates at 7.5 percent through 2010. At that point, the CRB would set a new rate, but it would look to the 1976 four-factor standard rather than the 1998 update to make its settlement.

Pandora has issued its support for the IREA, but is concerned that the Perform Act proposes that a new "fair emporium value" would determine royalty rates.

"This standard sounds proper at first blush, but determining 'fair market value' in a single-seller marketplace is a very complex undertaking, and the Copyright Royalty Board could require several proceedings before getting comfortable with a new standard and its application to different business models," Kennedy said.

Simson said that the four-factor 1976 standard needs "updating and modernization" if it is to apply to webcasters.

Simson also questioned whether Pandora was really struggling as much as its claims to be. If Pandora generates $25 million per year and has 15 million users, that's about $1.70 per user, per year, which "is a very low number," Simson related.

Pandora is also the second most popular app on Apple's App Store. "That news alone is enough to send chills down the spines of satellite radio and AM/FM radio operators," Simson said.

Simson also pointed to each August report from Bridge Ratings that put Internet radio advertising revenue at $20 billion by means of 2020.

Kennedy, however, before-mentioned that "Internet radio has the smallest of all radio revenue streams, but we pay proportionately the highest royalties."

Looking at the issue on $0.0014 per song ground does not adequately reflect the impact, Kennedy said. People may look at that and think that it is not a lot of money, but added up, total Internet royalty rates for the industry would be $3.1 billion this year and superior $4 billion by 2010, he said.

The total revenue for the recording industry, meanwhile, is $7 billion, Kennedy said.

Whether Congress will take action on this issues remains to be seen. Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, blamed partisan antics for the delay.

"In my judgment, the whole Senate is not functioning very well," he said. "We have a situation where the partisanship has reached a level [that's] unprecedented, at least in my tenure in the Senate."

"I mention this to you because those are very realistic factors that are impeding the consideration of this type of legislation," Specter said.

Along with today's announcements of the Dell Studio Hybrid and Inspiron 518, Dell unveiled a new laptop that will first be available through Wal-Mart stores.

The Dell Inspiron 13 laptop is targeted at back-to-school shoppers looking in favor of a smaller, lighter, more efficient system. The Inspiron 13, which has a starting weight of less than 5 pounds, is encased in glossy Pacific blue with black trim. It offers a 13-inch display, capacitive touch-media buttons, an 8-in-1 media card reader, and a slot-loading DVD drive. Optional features include built-in wireless networking, a built-in webcam, and Bluetooth connectivity.

A special $699 configuration of the Inspiron 13 will be available at U.S. Wal-Mart stores starting August 3. Fully configurable systems will be available on www.dell.com on a global basis later in the month.

Find more Laptop intelligence in our Laptop & Notebooks Product Guide.

In response to demands from game publisher Hasbro, Facebook has disabled the Scrabble-like game Scrabulous on its U.S. and Canadian Web sites.

Hasbro sent Facebook a notification of copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act last week. Users who attempt to access Scrabulous will get a message that says, "Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here."

Click that link and you get a form from the creators of Scrabulous asking for your e-mail accost. Scrabulous is still accessible in other nations and the Scrabulous.com Web site is still operating.

Hasbro Hits Back

Hasbro also filed a lawsuit against Scrabulous last Thursday, alleging the game infringes on the company's Scrabble intellectual-property rights. The suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, names Scrabulous creators Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla and India-based RJ Softwares as the defendants.

"Hasbro has an obligation to act appropriately against infringement of our intellectual properties," aforesaid Barry Nagler, Hasbro's general counsel. "We behold the Scrabulous application as clear and blatant infringement of our Scrabble intellectual property, and we are pursuing this legal action in accordance with the interests of our shareholders, and the integrity of the Scrabble quality."

Facebook first introduced Scrabulous in 2005 and the game has grown popular over the years. Hasbro was quiet all over the knockoff — until it developed its own Scrabble application in spite of Facebook. Then Hasbro dropped the legal invent. Facebook could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, but a spokesperson told The New York Times that the popular social-networking place intends to maintain the neutrality of its platform.

Will Hasbro Get Global Justice?

Charles S. Baker, an intellectual-property substitute at the law firm of Porter & Hedges, doesn't expect the Hasbro-Scrabulous battle to be a long and extended one, at least not in the U.S. It appears that Scrabulous does have liability issues. Although Scrabulous is popular and its Indian developers have profited from the game, those profits are not enough to defend itself against the likes of Hasbro.

"Copyright laws are fairly draconian. The individuals could be personally liable as well as the company. It's a a fairly one-sided deal. I am sure Facebook disabling the application for U.S. and Canadian users isn't going to end the lawsuit," Baker aforesaid. "Discussions of a settlement will continue. The goal at the end of the day is for Scrabulous to shut down completely."

Of course, there are still other people in other nations accessing Scrabulous. Hasbro may have to sue Scrabulous in every country, or at least use the DCMA card on Facebook in these other nations, to completely wipe the application off the social-networking site. Without court action, Scrabulous could spring up on other Web sites to allow U.S. and Canadian users to keep playing the word game.

"There is a big question of whether the U.S. courts have extent of authority over IP pirates who produce in other nations," Baker said. "The record industry has had a tough time with this issue. It's exceedingly complicated in a global environment."