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Sony to swap 100% ownership of Syco for half of new venture – as Simon Fuller guaranteed 10% of American Idol profits for life

Simon Cowell is set to announce his much-anticipated deal with Sony Music that will see the launch of a joint venture, while Simon Fuller has reached a deal to secure 10% of future profits of American Idol for life.

Under the deal, Sony will swap 100% ownership of Syco, the company that controls rights to acts such Susan Boyle and Leona Lewis, for a 50% stake in the new joint venture, the Financial Times reported this morning.

A tie-up between Sony and Cowell was thrown into doubt last year by the involvement of Cowell’s adviser Sir Philip Green, also an investor in Greenwell Entertainment which pools Cowell’s rights. Green was not thought to be part of the final negotiations with Sony.

Sony owns the global rights to The X Factor following a five-year deal struck in 2005. It is not yet clear how much of a stake in the programme Cowell will gain from the new joint venture.

Cowell is thought to be days away from an agreement with ITV to continue to appear on The X Factor in the UK for the next two years. Earlier this month Cowell announced that he will leave his position as a judge on American Idol at the end of the season to take The X Factor to Fox TV in the US.

Meanwhile, American Idol creator Simon Fuller has revealed more details about his new venture. Fuller sold the rights to the show when he offloaded his 19 Entertainment to CKX in 2005.

The new company will be called XIX, and have a value of £100m. Fuller, who owns 100% of the company, has given CKX has the right to buy up to 33% of XIX.

Under the deal Fuller will get payments of about $10m now and receive 10% of the profits earned by American Idol for the life of the programmes. He will remain executive producer on shows including American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.

The first project of his new company will be the executive production of Bel Ami, the new movie from Twilight star Robert Pattinson. Fuller will continue to be a consultant at CKX, which means a continued relationship with David and Victoria Beckham.

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January 19th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

Students banned from using music streaming service in their rooms

Students at Oxford University have been banned from using Spotify, the Daily Telegraph reports. It seems the number of students using the music streaming service in their rooms was slowing down the web for everyone else doing the rather more important task of academic research. Despite suggestions that the move was “discrimination against music lovers”, the university insisted that “they are getting a free service so they must accept some restrictions”.

January 19th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

The name and the price - oh, and precise details of the interface - are all we don’t know about the next product from the iPhone maker

Here we go. Perhaps piqued by BBC Tech correspondent Rory Cellan Jones saying that Apple was leaving it late to issue invitations to its event on Wednesday week at the Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco to launch its tablet, Apple has issued invitations to an event at Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco on Wednesday week to see… “its latest creation”.

Seeing the invite, the snark is already quite high (a new version of MacPaint! suggested some) but we can see certain things here.

The New York Times - which is due to introduce a paywall - is widely expected to be one of the partner organisations that will be represented on stage next week:

“sources speculate that [NYT chairman Arthur J] Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy”.

First, you can be sure that it is going to be a tablet. After all this time, it looks like Apple has finally figured out how you can do something with a tablet/slate (more the latter - as in a device without a keyboard, not even a slide-out one).

It’s interesting that this is fully eight-and-some-change years after Microsoft reckoned it had cracked it: who can forget Bill Gates announcing at Comdex in November 2001 that “I’m already using a Tablet as my everyday computer. It’s a PC that is virtually without limits — and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” (Look, it’s the computing equivalent of Andrew Neil in Private Eye, OK?)

But what’s happened in those intervening eight years is that all sorts of new computing ideas have come along - particularly multi-touch, which you’re familiar with from the iPhone. But actually Apple was trying it on a “safari pad” - a sort of web tablet - before the iPhone, according to a New York Times piece from 2007: “Mr. Jobs seized on the multitouch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a ’safari pad,’ a portable Web surfing appliance. Instead, he saw the technology as something that could be used for a similar purpose in a cellphone.”

The only questions outstanding now are:
(1) how much will it cost in the UK if it’s $1,000 or so in the US? Best guess: £1,000.
(2) what’s it going to be called? Some of my money is on iPad - have a look at iPad.com, which changed hands in April last year but is peculiarly quiet and belongs to the mysterious “Enero 6 Corporation” (who? although as a point against iPad, it seems to be written in Microsoft’s ASP scripting language), but the rest is on iSlate - given that islate.com presently shows up as being parked with Markmonitor.com, which all Apple-owned domains turn out to be once they’re made live. Then again, the iBook name is available again

So: what’s your prediction for how - if at all - the iSlate/iPad is going to rock the world? And what will it get right that the since-2001 tablets and slates haven’t?

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

The internet giant’s clash with China shows how the global power struggle has switched from tanks to computer systems

The conflict between Google and China is no run-of-the-mill business dispute. The corporate leviathan and national behemoth have come to blows in a serious skirmish whose outcome remains unpredictable. While mere mortals should be concerned if not afraid when rivals like these clash, the conflict does shine a light on what is going on in the hidden world of cybersecurity.

Without doubt the Chinese are up to no good. But it is hard to feel much ­sympathy for Google. As Faust, it entered into a pact with China by readily acceding to Beijing’s demand that the company censor its search results on Google.cn in exchange for a 30% share of the Chinese market. Do No Evil As Long As It Doesn’t Interfere With Your Business Plan. Well, Mephistopheles has now claimed his first payment, and Faust wants to pull out of the deal.

This is not the first time the Chinese have tried to steal a march on their commercial competitors. Hundreds of American and other foreign firms fear that companies or government agencies from China have penetrated their computer systems in search of design blueprints and other intelligence.

But in the wake of the Google revelations the Obama administration has accused the Chinese of violating freedom of speech and human rights. It has further charged Beijing with perpetrating industrial espionage, because the attacks appear to have probed for the secrets of the search engine and gmail.

The presidency has never gone so public with criticism of China’s human rights policy and its disregard for intellectual copyright law. But that’s not the reason why it has become so involved in the controversy. Google is the most powerful presence on the internet, with the largest repository of data in the world. And for all its global reach, it’s an American company. The Chinese hack goes well beyond a plot to nick ideas on improving the manufacture of widgets. Attack Google and you attack America’s critical infrastructure. Washington regards this as a major security issue.

In the past decade, several powers have started to integrate the cyberworld into their defence strategies. Cyber­security broadly comprises two elements. The first is not new: exploiting advanced technology to improve conventional weapons. The drones that now make most of the battlefield sorties in Afghanistan are steered from Nevada by a computer operator.

The more interesting sphere concerns critical infrastructure: water, energy, banking, communications, air traffic control and almost all military systems are dependent on the smooth running of complex computer systems. If a virus or hacker can provoke a collapse, then water won’t come out of the taps, petrol won’t flow from the pumps, ATMs won’t dispense cash, the phones won’t work – and your missiles won’t launch.

In conventional and even nuclear warfare, your assets are relatively easy to measure against those of your opponent. You have 75 tanks and your opponent has 125, but yours are fitted with better weapons systems – roughly even.

Cyberwarfare is not like that. Your assets consist of your opponents’ vulnerabilities and your ability to exploit them. This means that to defend yourself, you have to breach your opponent’s defences: implicit in any cyberdefence strategy is the development of a comprehensive offensive capability.

This was the thinking behind the Bush administration’s Total Information Office, created under the Patriot Act, which in effect mandated security agencies and the Pentagon to gather up all information possible about actual or potential enemies, using any means – including probing weaknesses in cyberdefences. The TIO was disbanded, though most core programmes have been spread around departments.

For the most part, however, the Bush administration’s cybersecurity policy was characterised by incompetence and organisational chaos. But Obama has made clear that this is now a strategic priority for the US. The recent appointment of Howard A Schmidt – a hardnosed former cop who is extremely tech savvy – to the post of cybercop suggests that Washington means business.

The United States and Nato have invested considerable resources in monitoring the defences of their major rivals, as well as non-state actors suspected of hostile intent. And Russia, China, India and Israel have been replying in kind. The Russian FSB’s Department M maintains a close watch on all internet activity in collusion with the Russian military. China regularly mobilises its “netizen” army to probe the systems of perceived enemies beyond its borders. And Israel, in comparative terms, has by far the most sophisticated cyberintelligence on the planet. In the military sphere, far from bringing the world closer together, the internet is underscoring national interests.

There are few rules in this brand new sector of security and warfare. Anybody launching attacks has the ability to disguise their origin,so the potential for double and triple bluff is endless. One security analyst described this chaotic scramble to me as “like playing a seven-dimensional game of chess in which you’re never sure who the opponent is at any one time”. Let the games begin.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

The arrest of a man for making a joke about terrorism on Twitter is the inevitable consequence of a paranoid, risk-averse society

It seems one can no longer make jokes about terrorist bombs without risking arrest. At a juncture in history where terrorists have taken to sporting exploding underpants, this is unfortunate to say the least.

It’s hard to muster much sympathy for the unnamed German airline passenger who was arrested recently for making a joke to security about the bomb in his underwear. He deserves his fine for wasting the time of security personnel, plus another for aggravated stupidity and perhaps a third for bringing the German sense of humour into disrepute.

The case of Paul Chambers, however, should cause us all rather more concern. He was due to fly from Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport to Ireland in the New Year, but heavy snow intervened. In frustration, he sent off a tweet to his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Not the funniest comment ever to grace Twitter for sure, but utterly banal – the kind of throwaway remark that any one of us might say out loud to our friends, or thoughtlessly bash into the box on a social networking site or a newspaper comment forum. South Yorkshire police didn’t see it that way. Last week Chambers was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and questioned for seven hours before being released on police bail. He has been suspended from work and his computer, iPhone and laptop have been confiscated and he has been banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, which may be the only saving grace.

Police say they were alerted to the comment on his closed Twitter feed by a tip-off, although it’s a reasonable assumption that the phrase “blowing the airport sky high” might have tripped a few alarms on electronic signals intelligence systems at GCHQ. I know how these things work. I’ve never missed an episode of Spooks. Nonetheless, one would hope that somewhere down the line a real human being might intervene, decode the hidden messages contained within those 140 characters and detect the presence of an arcane cipher known as a “joke”. If that proves beyond the capabilities of our intelligence services, then in this age of body scanners and electronic imaging, perhaps a gadget could be invented that could detect the presence of humour in a sentence from 25 feet away. They could test it on ITV sitcoms to eliminate the risk of false positives.

On the one hand, it is easy to dismiss this as an isolated case of police over-reaction. File it alongside the Muslim schoolboy questioned after uploading a photo to Facebook of himself posing with a gun (he was playing paintball at the time); or the unfortunate man recently cleared of an extreme pornography charge after prosecutors accepted that the animal involved in the bestial scene was actually a cartoon tiger, not a real one. Or the arrest of photographers taking pictures in public; or any of the hundreds more seemingly isolated recent instances of people being detained or arrested for activities that barely tickle the toes of criminality.

Perhaps the most telling and frightening detail of the Chambers case is the explanation given by the arresting officer: “It is the world we live in.” The world we live in is a surreal, incomprehensible collage of inflated authority and over-bearing bureaucracy which cannot differentiate between schoolboy humour and a death threat. Arrests like this one are an inevitable consequence of a society where paranoid risk aversion has run spectacularly out of control. In our desperate urge to prevent atrocities such as terrorist attacks, child abuse or violent crime, we find ourselves chasing shadows, just in case danger lurks beneath.

One price we pay for safe passage at the airport is that we need to avoid making tasteless jokes in questionable humour. Like most sensible people, I accept this and abide by it. But I refuse to accept that one price worth paying to protect our way of life should be that we refrain from making tasteless jokes on the internet from the comfort of our own homes and offices. For some of us, making tasteless jokes on the internet pretty much is our way of life.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

Government and armed forces to continue using version of browser attacked by Chinese hackers in Google security breach

The British government and armed forces are to continue their widespread use of the version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that was attacked by Chinese hackers who broke into Google’s corporate network – even though both the French and German governments have advised people to stop using it.

The Cabinet Office, which oversees the deployment of computers in government, said today that “it doesn’t think the issue [of being open to hacking] would be resolved any better by going elsewhere”.

But over the weekend the German government advised citizens to stop using any version of Internet Explorer because of the possibility of attacks against it which could compromise the user’s computer without their knowledge – and lead to the theft of data or incursions into corporate networks.

Today, the French government followed suit, issuing an advisory suggesting that all versions of Internet Explorer, which is included with Windows, are vulnerable to the attack that was used against Google, Adobe and an estimated 30 other western companies, by hackers originating in China.

Google said the attacks were used to steal intellectual property and compromise email accounts, and identified Internet Explorer as the weak point that was exploited.

The specific version of the browser known to be vulnerable to the attack mounted on Google is Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), which was first released in 2000 and is standard on Windows XP, which was released in 2001. Despite its age and known weakness to hacking, IE6 is still the most widely used browser in the world, ahead of newer, more secure versions and rivals’ alternatives such as the free Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers.

IE6 is extensively used by the British government, including UK armed forces: in response to parliamentary questions asked last year by Labour MP and former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, the Ministry of Defence, which has 300,000 desktops worldwide (including ships), said it was sticking with IE6, “and at the current time does not have a requirement to move to an updated version”.

Watson said today: “The government’s own advice to businesses and consumers, through its Get Safe Online site that it helps to fund, is to not use IE6. So other than the fact that they aren’t taking their own advice, it’s preposterous that they wouldn’t take this threat seriously. With the added security threat, all departments should certainly ditch IE6 and upgrade.”

Microsoft sought to play down the risks of the vulnerability in a blog posting on Sunday, saying that “we are only seeing very limited number of targeted attacks against a small subset of corporations. The attacks that we have seen to date, including public proof-of-concept exploit code, are only effective against Internet Explorer 6.”

However both the French and German government advisories say that there are weaknesses on newer versions of Internet Explorer on all versions of Windows, including the recently released Windows 7.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

Online fashion retailer Asos sees sales up 30%, but it’s not enough to please investors

Trends such as the Lady Gaga-inspired “underwear-as-outerwear” and lace party frocks contributed to a 30% rise in sales at Asos, the internet fashion retailer, over Christmas.

However the increase in sales was not enough to please some investors who are fear a loss of momentum at the website, which targets fashion-conscious women with high street versions of designer clothes worn by celebrities such as Cheryl Cole and Alexa Chung. The shares fell 28p to 440p in late afternoon trading.

Its chief executive Nick Robertson scotched analysts’ concerns, stating: “I’m the happiest retailer in the UK, nobody else has produced figures of 30%. We couldn’t continue growing at the rate we were.”

Sales at Asos were up 38% in the 42 weeks to 17 January. That compared with 46% when it last updated the market in November and 104% for the year to March 2009 as a whole. “It is a slowdown but this is what we’re planning to do,” continued Robertson. “This is going to be a more normalised rate of growth, 30% is a phenomenal achievement in the current climate.”

In 2008, Asos brought forward the January sales to clear excess stocks so, to avoid being caught out again, it bought more cautiously for Christmas 2009. As a result margins climbed 0.8% in the five weeks to 3 January. It is on track to make profits of £20m this year, up from £14.1m a year ago.

While the majority of retailers have been hit by the recession Asos has marched on thanks to the young bias of its shopper base – it is sponsoring the new series of America’s Next Top Model, which starts tonight.

Robertson conceded some of its 1.5 million customers had begun to feel the pinch but equally, helped by low interest rates, others were spending more. “Party dresses was our biggest category by a country mile, within that the whole lace trend was phenomenal,” said Robertson, who added that Ugg boots were the “bonus ball” in sales terms.

International sales – the group delivers to more than 100 countries – were up 102% in the period. This year it will launch a dedicated American website. Seymour Pierce analyst Freddie George said the figures looked “a little light” given it had been offering free returns since September.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

Search giant probes whether its employees may have helped hackers in ’sophisticated’ breach

Google is investigating whether one or more of its employees in China helped launch the cyber attack against it last month, according to reports.

It is thought the line of inquiry is a routine part of its investigation into the attack, which Google says was sophisticated, originated in China and targeted intellectual property and the email accounts of human rights activists.

According to Reuters news agency, citing two unidentified sources, the attack, which targeted people with access to specific parts of Google networks, might have been helped by employees in the company’s offices in China. It has several hundred staff on the mainland.

“We’re not commenting on rumour and speculation. This is an ongoing investigation and we simply cannot comment on the details,” a Google spokeswoman said.

Security analysts told Reuters the malicious software or malware used in the attack was a modification of a trojan called Hydraq. A trojan is a hidden program allowing unauthorised access to a computer. The analysts said the sophistication in the attack was in knowing whom to attack, not the malware itself.

Chinese media have said that some Google China employees were denied access to internal networks following the statement, with others put on leave or transferred to different offices. Google said it would not comment on its business operations.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said in a statement today that Gmail accounts used by journalists in at least two bureaux in Beijing had been hijacked and their emails forwarded to unknown email addresses. Last week several well-known Chinese advocates of human rights complained of the same problem.

A spokeswoman for Google said at the weekend that it was “business as usual” after rumours that the US firm had decided to shut down Google.cn.

The row over internet censorship intensified at the weekend when Yahoo’s Chinese partner, Alibaba, called Yahoo “reckless” for supporting Google in its standoff with Beijing.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, a Yahoo spokeswoman said the firm stood “aligned” against the “deeply disturbing” attacks and violation of user privacy.

“Alibaba Group has communicated to Yahoo that Yahoo’s statement that it is ‘aligned’ with the position Google took last week was reckless given the lack of facts in evidence,” said John Spelich, an Alibaba spokesman. “Alibaba doesn’t share this view.”

Yahoo owns about 40% of the Alibaba Group, which runs China’s biggest online retailer, Taobao, and its largest e-commerce site, alibaba.com. Yahoo sold its stake in the Alibaba site late last year, but its stake in the group as a whole, acquired when it closed its own offices in China some years ago, remains a valuable asset.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said: “Yahoo condemns all cyber attacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.”

Google announced last Tuesday that it was no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service, citing the cyber attack as well as growing controls on the internet. But spokesmen say it has not yet stopped doing so and will continue talking to the Chinese government about whether it is possible to operate an uncensored service.

Chinese authorities have tried to play down the disagreement, with the ministry of commerce saying there are many ways to resolve the dispute. But officials have stressed that all foreign companies must abide by Chinese laws. It is hard to see how the two sides could reach agreement.

Figures released this week showed the number of China’s internet users leapt almost 30% in 2009, to 384 million.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment

Laptop playing up? Accidentally deleted some much-needed files from your computer? Dropped your iPhone in the bath? Here’s how to fix them

January 18th, 2010 | Category: guardian | Leave a comment