[JackSpratts]

“I go on Kazaa every week just to see what's happening. And by the way, they were swapping 850 million files.”

Three Minutes With Jack Valenti

The MPAA's main man tells his tactics for fighting piracy (and sometimes the tech industry) and selling movies.
Tom Spring

If you think copying a DVD movie and downloading The Matrix from Kazaa is okay, Jack Valenti wants a word with you.

The 81-year-old president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America is on a mission. Heading the MPAA since 1966, his goal in recent years has been to change people's attitudes and stop piracy of Hollywood content.

Valenti is considered one of Washington's top lobbyists to Capitol Hill on behalf of Hollywood's seven major motion picture studios. During his tenure, Valenti has helped pioneer ratings systems for both film and television and has fought government censorship.

Valenti has also taken heat for his uncompromising positions and support for laws forcing consumer electronics vendors to implement antipiracy technology. Critics contend such provisions would hamper consumers who use the devices for legitimate purposes.

PC World invited Valenti to weigh in on a variety of hot topics, from Kazaa to DVD copy protection and buying movies online. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

PC World: What are the MPAA's biggest challenges?

Valenti: I'm looking at how to protect valuable creative works in a new world called the digital world that is totally different from the analog world.

Next, we want to offer consumers thousands of titles of movies through their computer or television and pipe it to them over a network, using Wi-Fi--or however. Consumers don't have that possibility now, but we are trying.

PCW: When did copyright protection first get on your radar screen?

Valenti: The copyright issues bubbled up first when the VCR came out. Now there have been a lot of canards about that. At the time we felt we ought to try to put a small levy on blank cassettes and then that would be put into an approved government agency and redistributed to copyright owners in this country.

We felt the best way to get a copyright royalty fee put on blank videocassette tapes was to have the courts declare that VCR machines were copyright infringing. Then you go to the Congress [to impose the levy]. Unhappily, by a five to four decision, the Supreme Court said no.

PCW: Why can't people who legally purchase DVDs make one backup copy? How come the same fair use rights that let you make a backup copy of other media do not extend to DVDs?

Valenti: That question has nothing to do with fair use because a DVD is encrypted and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act says to circumvent an encryption violates that law.

Keep in mind how the DVD came into effect. The DVD was a result of voluntary agreements by the hardware people and by the copyright people. And everybody decided they were going to make machines that only took encrypted DVDs and then they would be decrypted in the machine--all done. And guess what? It's proven to be a bonanza for the DVD machine manufacturers and for the copyright owners. That was done the right way.

Do you know anything else in the country that if something is abused for any reason they'll give you a backup? If I go down to the hardware store and buy an electric lawn mower and I take it home, and three weeks later my wife runs over it in the driveway, I can't take it back and get a new one. I can't get a backup.

PCW: Well, when you buy a software program, aren't you buying the license to use it? You are entitled to make a backup copy.

Valenti: I don't want to deal with software because that's not my field.

If you're allowed to make up one backup copy of a DVD, all of a sudden somebody makes two and gives one to a friend. And next thing you know file-swappers are trading that film online. When I went on Kazaa just last Monday, there were 4,280,000 people in Kazaa at the same time I was.

PCW: What is Jack Valenti doing on Kazaa?

Valenti: I go on Kazaa every week just to see what's happening. And by the way, they were swapping 850 million files. And a lot of it was pornography, some of it was music, but a lot of it was films.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110698,00.asp

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WinMX Speaks
Thomas Mennecke

WinMX has always been at the forefront of P2P development. When its OpenNap support base took a back seat to the WPNP (WinMX Peer Networking Protocol), its popularity and resourcefulness soared to new heights. While the networks' number 1 complaint remains the queuing situation, a grand process is in motion to resolve this and many other idiosyncrasies with the WinMX client. To settle many false rumors regarding the health and future of WinMX, we chatted with Frontcode President, Kevin Hearn. We thank him for taking the time to participate in this interview.

Slyck.com: What news can you give us regarding the latest developments of WinMX?

WinMX: Currently we are in the middle of a FULL re-write of the entire WinMX code base. This means the next version of WinMX we release (probably as v4.0) will be completely redesigned with several major improvements and several new features. While I can't speculate on a completion date yet, I can tell you that we are working as quickly as possible and progress thus far has been good.

Slyck.com: A posting to the WinMX newsgroup, supposedly from Frontcode, stated that development has stopped. This caused some concern because the headers checked out as coming from Frontcodes' IP. What insight can you give us?

WinMX: This is the first I have heard of this. We do not normally participate in _any_ newsgroup in any official capacity, nor do we regularly monitor the WinMX newsgroup. We only release official news on our web site.

Slyck.com: The delay has caused some concern. What can you tell us about this considerably delay?

WinMX:After v3.31 was released we did continue development of the v3 series. In fact, we got pretty far along in this development, almost to the point where we were ready to start beta testing a v3.4. However, during the late development stages it became more and more clear that we eventually needed to scrap the entire v3 core and start fresh, and that's what we did. We've been working on a fresh new WinMX for the past several months now, and it is coming along very well.

Slyck.com: Regarding the next release, what new features can we look forward to? Any radical departures from the current client? Perhaps some resolution to the "queue problem?"

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=165

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Free vs. Fee: P2P Underground Still Thrives
John Borland

Mark Ishikawa was eating dinner at the Los Angeles Hilton a few weeks ago when he overheard a couple discussing the virtues of downloading music using free services like Kazaa.

As CEO of BayTSP, a company that tracks copyright infringement on file-swapping networks for record labels and movie studios, Ishikawa had a professional interest in the subject. So when he walked around the corner, expecting to see two college students, he was stunned to find a pair of senior citizens--a sign, he says, of how far the practice has spread.

"File swapping has gotten away from high school and college kids who understand protocols," Ishikawa said. "These were completely mainstream people. The mind-set and availability has gone from someone who has a degree in computer science all the way to this couple."

This is the reality that Apple Computer's new online service and other digital music distributors face as they finally move into the mainstream. Although file sharing is less common on Macintosh computers, iTunes stores still must compete with the millions of people using ubiquitous Windows software who pay nothing for music files that have no restrictions.

Rather than fear their demise, free music services say the large music companies and e-tailers will have no choice but to work with file-swapping technology instead of against it. They say a rise in consumer awareness from paid services, a series of favorable court rulings and a shift in law-enforcement tactics all seem to signal the beginning of a new, third age of file swapping that will postdate the death of Napster and the troubles of its offspring.

"Apple and others are competing with extremely large numbers of people who are using P2P (peer to peer) and other forms of technology to get free content," said Kevin Bermeister, chief executive of Altnet, a company that distributes paid content through the Kazaa file-sharing service. "Unless this is addressed directly, which entails reaching those users, I don't see how content companies are going to get to the masses on the Internet."

http://news.com.com/2009-1027_3-1009541.html

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CBS Backs Down on Threat to Pull Digital TV Lineup
Jeremy Pelofsky

Viacom Inc.'s CBS television network on Thursday backed down from a threat to pull its digital 2003- 2004 lineup unless federal regulators adopted a mechanism to protect shows from being pirated by this summer.

The Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) has been pushing the television industry, content providers and consumer electronics makers to speed up the transition to higher-quality digital signals and recently asked if the agency should adopt a so-called broadcast flag to protect programs from piracy.

Viacom warned the FCC in December that the network would pull its digital offerings, which include the popular college basketball tournament and favorite shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (news - Y! TV), unless the broadcast flag was adopted and enforced.

"CBS will reconsider its deadline and continue to provide a full schedule of high definition entertainment and sports programming to our viewers this upcoming television season," the network said in a statement.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton who chairs the panels communications and Internet subcommittee, had earlier on Thursday written to urge the network to reconsider the threat.

We are "hopeful that the FCC will work to complete the broadcast flag proceeding by this fall, and certainly no later than the end of this calendar year," they said in a letter.

The flag would allow consumers to record broadcasts for personal use but prevent sharing perfect digital copies of the shows over the Internet.

Tauzin plans to introduce a bill in the next two months to address issues complicating the transition to digital, including requiring broadcasters to transmit digital signals by 2006 and end their analog broadcasts by the end of that year.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell (news) also on Wednesday sent letters to the networks, television stations, cable operators, satellite television service providers and consumer electronics makers seeking an update on their efforts to move the digital transition forward.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...evision_cbs_dc

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Dear Starbucks, say it ain’t true?
Lessig Blog

So I have this from an extremely reliable source, who vouches totally for the facts that follow.

Story one: Last month while visiting Charleston, three women went into a Starbucks. They were spending the weekend together and one of them had a disposable camera with her. To commemorate their time with one and other they decided to take round robin pictures while sitting around communing. The manager evidently careened out of control, screaming at them, “Didn’t they know it was illegal to take photographs in a Starbucks. She insisted that she had to have the disposable camera because this was an absolute violation of Starbuck’s copyright of their entire ‘environment’--that everything in the place is protected and cannot be used with Starbuck’s express permission.

Story two: At our local [North Carolina] Starbucks, a friend’s daughter, who often has her camera with her, was notified that she was not allowed to take pictures in any Starbucks. No explanation was given, but pressed I would think that the manager there would give a similar rationale.

I wonder what would happen if hundreds of people from around the country experimented this holiday weekend by taking pictures at their local Starbucks …
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/...5.shtml#001223

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True fakes
Producing copies of art masterpieces is a lucrative - and legal - trade for Hollywood's scenic artists.
Andrew Marton

Tucked in the old Long Island, N.Y., artist enclave of The Springs lies Jackson Pollock's well-preserved home and studio - along with a study center - glorifying the tempestuous painter's work. Not long ago, this modest repository added two new Pollocks to its collection.

Each one of the canvases is a superb, accomplished example of the artist's work. Each is also fake.

Which was fine with Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock- Krasner House and Study Center. The mimicked works were created for the film "Pollock," the 2000 biopic about the abstract expressionist many dubbed "Jack the Dripper." Harrison was so impressed with "Pollock's" "amazing" replicas of the painter's work that she built an entire exhibit around them. And she wasn't the only art aficionado impressed by the works' quality.

"Within the context of 'Pollock,' the paintings were remarkably good, as I definitely knew which real works they were referring to," says Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times. "That the artists had the ability to imitate something like that was very impressive."

So who do Hollywood producers turn to when they need to realistically fabricate some of the most famous art in the world? A legion of people you've never heard of.

Most of Hollywood's scenic artists, supremely gifted brush and chisel copycats, freely admit they were unable to eke out even a Spartan living creating their own art. But though the pay is better in Hollywood, the recognition isn't - even, sometimes, for the art itself.

"As scenic artists, you do your work figuring the camera will linger on every precious stroke of the brush," says Jon Ringbom, charge scenic artist on "Pollock." "Then, of course, you think again and realize that at the last moment, the camera might just decide to shoot the other way."

Nevertheless, over the past decade, art mimics have been in serious demand in Hollywood. More than 110 of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's works were copied for "Frida," last year's cinematic homage to a famous, tortured artist. A handful of Edward Hoppers, along with some luminous John Singer Sargents, adorned Mel Gibson's swank Manhattan apartment in the 1996 thriller "Ransom." Ignoring art history in his Oscar- winning epic "Titanic," director James Cameron shows Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" going down with the famously doomed ocean liner - leading to a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Picasso estate, which was settled out of court. (Because most great artworks from the 20th century are not in the public domain, studios must seek permission for their reproduction from the estates or legal guardians of the work.)

The trend continues with current and coming movies such as "The Last Samurai," "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde," "Down With Love" and "The Boss's Daughter."

For a select few talented, if anonymous, artists and faux-art providers, this can make for a nice living. Born in New York, raised in France and speaking with a trace of a French accent, Christopher Moore has been at the helm of Manhattan-based Troubetzkoy Paintings since 1989. His debut in the movie art duplication business was 1993's "The Age of Innocence."
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/oc...month=5&day=26

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Acclaimed Honda ad in copycat dispute
Claire Cozens

Two artists whose work has been shown at Tate Modern are threatening legal action against Honda UK, claiming the company's hit "Cog" commercial is a rip-off of their award-winning short film.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss say Honda's 60-second commercial, which is already being described as one of the most impressive television adverts ever made, copies key elements of their 30-minute film, Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go), which was made in 1987.

They claim the creatives behind the Honda advert must have seen their film, in which everyday objects such as string, soap, balloons and mattresses - fuelled by fire, gas, and gravity - move in a domino-like chain reaction.

Well known in film circles, Der Lauf Der Dinge won awards at the Berlin and Sydney film festivals and was described by the New York Times as a "masterpiece".

Lawyers representing Mr Fischli and Mr Weiss have written to Honda UK complaining about the alleged similarities and claiming copyright infringement.

In an interview with Creative Review, Mr Fischli said he believed they should have been consulted by Honda's advertising agency, Wieden & Kennedy.

"Of course we didn't invent the chain reaction and Cog is obviously a different thing. But we did make a film the creatives of the Honda ad have obviously seen. We feel we should have been consulted about the making of this ad," he said.

"Companies and ad agencies have asked us for permission to use the film on several occasions but for this reason we have always said no."

Honda confirmed it had received the letter and said it was "looking into the allegations".

"As far as I know there's no such thing as copyright of an idea," said a spokesman.

The case echoes that of film director Mehdi Norowzian, who took Guinness to court claiming a high-profile commercial for the brand copied one of his short films.

The case went to the high court but the judge ruled against Norowzian and ordered him to pay costs of up to £200,000 to Guinness.

Four years ago artist Gillian Wearing considered suing Volkswagen over alleged similarities between its flashcard adverts and a series of her photographs in which she was pictured holding up signs.

Click here to see the Honda ad in Creative Lounge.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertis...962499,00.html

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Electronic Freedom Foundation on Veto of Colorado Super-DMCA
EFF staff

"Governor Owens, in vetoing the Colorado super-DMCA bill, recognized that these bills are bad for innovation, bad for competition, and bad for consumers," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. "These MPAA-sponsored bills represent the worst kind of special interest legislation, sacrificing the public interest in favor of the self-serving interests of one industry."

Governor Owens today vetoed the Colorado version of the "super- DMCA," a piece of state legislation being pressed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in state legislatures around the country. A wide variety of groups, including grassroots activists, civil liberties organizations and electronics manufacturers and retailers have rallied to oppose these measures around the country. For more on the status of these bills around the country, visit EFF's super-DMCA resources page.

[bb]TIA Report Shines No New Light[/b]

The Bush Administration released its long-awaited report to Congress
on the "Total Information Awareness" program today. (Now renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness")

"The report is disappointing -- after more than a hundred pages, you don't know anything more about whether TIA will work or whether your civil liberties will be safe against it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "It's also disingenuous for a report about new technologies for monitoring people to keep saying, 'don't worry, we'll follow existing privacy law.' Privacy law is already behind the technology curve, and the Bush Administration fully understands that TIA will only make the problem worse."
http://www.eff.org/news/breaking/arc..._05.php#000283

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Legislature won't vote on cable theft this year
Kathy Carlson

A bill pitting telecommunications and entertainment companies against some of their customers won't come up for a vote in the General Assembly this year, its sponsors said yesterday.

Backers said the bill was needed to update state law on the theft of cable and other telecommunications services.

Opponents — many of them computer professionals and enthusiasts who mobilized via the Internet — said no new law was needed and the measure as originally written threatened privacy and civil liberties.

A hearing on an amended version of the bill had been scheduled for Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead, Sen. Curtis Person, R- Memphis, said yesterday that he will introduce a joint House-Senate resolution to send the measure to a study committee charged with reporting back to legislators by Feb. 1, 2004.

The study-committee option will allow more time for discussion, Person said, adding that his aim as the bill's Senate sponsor was to draft a measure that would punish lawbreakers, not infringe on freedoms.

''I'm hoping the study will give us a chance to show the bill does what we say it does, and it's a fair way to deal with an important problem,'' said Bo Johnson, a lobbyist for the cable industry.

Earlier this year, cable companies estimated piracy costs them $6 billion a year nationwide, $100 million-$130 million of that in Tennessee.

Tony Campbell, a Web developer and opponent of the bill, said he welcomed a chance to work with lawmakers to craft a bill that would protect intellectual property rights while allowing consumers ''to use technology the way we want to.''

Opponents also feared that the bill would stifle innovative technologies. Lawmakers and backers of the bill said many concerns had been amended out of the bill.

Late yesterday, the bill's House sponsor, Rep. Rob Briley, D-Nashville, said he ''needed more time to inform others about what the bill actually did,'' and that wouldn't be possible with the session winding down.
http://tennessean.com/business/archi...t_ID=33062618.

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DVD piracy case targets free speech
Howard Mintz

In October 1999, San Francisco computer programmer Andrew Bunner, a fan of a newfangled alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system, posted a clever way to play and copy DVDs on his Web site. Bunner had nothing to do with developing the trick -- indeed, it was devised thousands of miles away in the home of a 15-year-old Norwegian tech whiz.

But that didn't matter to Hollywood. The movie industry came down on Bunner and others who'd exchanged the program, calling them computer pirates for unleashing throughout cyberspace the secrets to copying DVDs for free.

Four years later, DVD makers, while still fighting numerous legal battles to prevent copying, have been forced to concede their secrets are out the Internet's barn door. However, their case against Bunner lives on and has been transformed into a precedent-setting conflict between the First Amendment and California's tough trade-secret protections.

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case, which has attracted widespread attention, from leading law professors and civil liberties groups who are defending free speech on the Internet to major corporations such as Microsoft and Coca-Cola that are trying to ensure their business secrets can be protected from being mouseclicked around the globe.

And caught in the cross-hairs of this legal clash -- which many experts predict could wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court -- is Bunner, a 26- year-old software programmer who still isn't quite sure what hit him.

``It feels a little surreal,'' Bunner said last week. ``All I did was post some code that seemed freely available and it landed me in court. I think they just want a ruling saying that you can't do this, you can't talk about our special sauce.''

The DVD Copy Control Association, a powerful arm of the movie industry, takes a far more sinister view of the case. Like the music industry's successful legal fight to shut down Napster, Hollywood considers the Bunner case critical to the control of its product and bottom line.

To the industry, the stakes in the state Supreme Court are no less than the ability to keep the Web from becoming a license for digital pirates to distribute free, copied movies with impunity.

``You can't just deliberately stick this on the Web and say, `OK, never mind, we're on the Web,' '' said Jeffrey Kessler, a New York-based lawyer for the DVD industry. ``They have to come up with a standard.''

Hollywood has heavyweight backing in the case, including companies like Ford Motor, AOL-Time Warner and Boeing that warn free speech protections, in this instance, should be trumped by trade secret protections or companies will lose the ability to police their business models, ``even the secret formula for Coca-Cola.''
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercuryne...al/5950819.htm

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Mobile phones to get Palladium-style chips
Matthew Broersma

ARM, the UK firm whose technology is a de facto standard for mobile phones and handheld computers, has introduced a hardware-level security technology for protecting copyrighted content, secure passwords and other sensitive data on mobile devices.

TrustZone, which has some parallels to Microsoft's controversial Next-Generation Secure Computing Base for PCs (formerly known as Palladium), will be built into ARM cores early next year and could begin appearing in products in 2005, the company said. It could help spread the adoption of applications such as m-commerce and corporate mobile computing, by ensuring that important data will not fall into the wrong hands.

ARM said the technology is intended to be far less draconian than Secure Computing Base, which many have criticised as a thinly-veiled attempt to prevent PC users from carrying out activities deemed unacceptable by copyright holders.

"I don't see the same interest from the (mobile phone network) operators in being quite so prescriptive as in the PC world," said Richard York, ARM's secure technologies programme manager. "There is a strong interest in making sure the user experience is positive. If they begin selling services that strongly restrict what you can do with content, I am sceptical they will take off."

TrustZone is a low-level technology that builds security into the processor core itself, and allows operating systems makers, handset vendors and silicon manufacturers to come up with their own security systems based on the hardware platform. York said that a Palladium-style system could be built upon the ARM technology, if a software maker wished to do so. It aims to replace existing proprietary systems that add a security component outside the core, which ARM says can cause problems for mobile device software.

"There are solutions out there already, but they are not very standardised," York said. "The vendors have to rewrite bits of their firmware for different chipsets, and that is a pain for them. This is as much about standardisation as anything else."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2135264,00.html

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ARM adding hardware-based security to its processor cores
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service

Chip designer ARM Ltd. will add extensions to its processor core next year that incorporate hardware-based security technologies, the company announced today.

Future versions of the company's ARM core for chips for mobile devices and wireless handsets will contain protected areas for storage of user authentication keys, as well as areas of the processor that are off-limits to unauthorized users, said Mary Inglis, director of operating systems and alliances at ARM.

TrustZone, as the technology enabling the extensions is called, creates a parallel domain where secure applications can run alongside nonsecure applications. The operating system or application vendors set the policies designating what data is secure and what data isn't, Inglis said.

As the computing power of smart phones and other mobile devices grows, users will need to feel secure while making financial transactions, sending e-mail or accessing corporate data for adoption of those devices to become widespread, Inglis said. Crucial software applications often have to be downloaded to a handheld device, which creates a number of openings for hackers or viruses to exploit.

ARM is adding what it calls an S-bit, for security, to the sixth version of its architecture. The S-bit is applied to code that needs to be secure, and a separate portion of an ARM processor monitors and identifies data tagged with an S-bit. That data is run through the processor separately from nonsecure data.

Security extensions were also added to the Level-1 memory system. Most processors have a small amount of memory stored in a cache close to the CPU that is used to store frequently accessed instructions. These memory-level extensions can recognize the S-bit and control the flow of secure and nonsecure data from the memory cache to the CPU.

The operating system on a TrustZone device will also boot from the secure portion of the processor, checking to make sure everything is safe within the operating system and applications before booting the entire device.
http://www.computerworld.com/printth...,81549,00.html

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State of the art: A medium reborn
John Borland, Evan Hansen and Mike Yamamoto

David Goldberg took out a magazine ad this month with a bold promise to make a star out of a little-known singer from Virginia named Jason Mraz.

But Goldberg isn't a record label executive or a Hollywood agent--he's the head of Yahoo's music division. Using online ads, exclusive live videos, and continuous play on the Web portal's radio stations, the campaign is a shot across the bow of the music industry to show that Yahoo can become a hit-making machine to even rival radio giants such as Clear Channel.

"In two years, no, we're not going to match Clear Channel--five years possibly, though that's still a stretch. But we'll be up there," Goldberg said. "At the rate we're growing, we will start to surpass most radio chains in a year."

Yahoo's confidence is just one sign of digital music's long-awaited surge into the mainstream. Years of paralyzing litigation, industry intransigence and failed strategies are finally giving way to promising efforts backed by major labels and artists--most notably Apple Computer's new iTunes Music Store.

Other services have quietly established themselves with mass audiences, too. AOL subscribers tap close to 3 million songs or music video streams a day, as well as listen to hundreds of millions of Net radio streams. On a smaller but growing scale, digital music is being distributed in hundreds of places on the Web, from artists' own sites to retail outlets like BestBuy.com.

If this trajectory stays true, the result could be the redefinition of music that Net visionaries have promised for years. Just as vinyl albums dictated song counts and radio gave rise to one-hit wonders, digital distribution may ultimately help revolutionize the way music is produced, packaged and even created.

Such changes carry broad ramifications for major industries from software to entertainment. Some believe that technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft or Yahoo will challenge broadcast media and the record labels in influence--a prospect that haunts music executives and one of the reasons for their early opposition to digital distribution.

"In the history of consolidation of the record industry, maybe it will be the technology companies that go after the media companies," said Jeff Cavins, chief executive of music encoding service Loudeye. "We saw that with AOL Time Warner. Sony purchased Columbia in 1987. Perhaps it will play out the same way here."
http://news.com.com/2009-1027_3-1009535.html?tag=cd_mh

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Real pushes lower-cost Rhapsody
Stefanie Olsen

RealNetworks on Wednesday will cease selling the music-subscription service MusicNet in favor of one from Listen.com's Rhapsody, which also plans to charge a new low of 79 cents per track to rip CDs.

The Seattle-based digital media company is introducing a co-branded subscription service called RealOne Rhapsody, a version of the popular digital- download music product from Listen to run only on Microsoft Windows-compatible machines. In addition, Listen is lowering the cost of CD-burning from 99 cents to 79 cents per track in a move to better compete against Apple Computer's new music-download service, iTunes, among others.

The RealNetworks' product is the first major development that postdates the company's proposed $36 million acquisition of privately held Listen in April; the buyout is expected to be complete by the end of the third quarter. It is also a visible sign that RealNetworks has opted to back Rhapsody as its music service of choice at the expense of MusicNet, the rival subscription service it helped create in 2001, and in which it is still part owner.

MusicNet is a joint venture between RealNetworks, Bertelsmann, AOL Time Warner and EMI Group; the service, despite a relatively recent update, has failed to catch on as swimmingly as Rhapsody. Listen licenses Rhapsody to a number of major Internet providers, including Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications and Verizon Online.

With MusicNet, "we were a technology vendor and partner and investor and retailer. After this, we won't be a retailer," said Dan Sheeran, vice president of marketing at RealNetworks. "We felt (we wanted to make) this as easy as possible, with one offering."

With RealOne Rhapsody, RealNetworks aims to round out and bolster its set of subscription services, which has more than 1 million subscribers.

For $9.95 a month, people will be able to access more than 330,000 digital music tracks on demand, with about 200,000 songs available for CD burning at 79 cents per song. The service also combines custom radio and custom-CD mixing features.

Rhapsody is promoting CD-copying by lowering the cost per track because music fans are keen on the capability. The company said it promoted CD- copying earlier this year with 49 cent tracks and found that CD-burning activity increased by more than 300 percent. At the same time, subscribers continued to listen to about 250 songs a month.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-1010558.html

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Apple limits iTunes file sharing
Ian Fried

Apple Computer has limited a music-sharing feature from the latest version of iTunes after some Mac owners used it to swap songs over the Internet.

In an update to iTunes released Tuesday, the Mac maker removed a feature that had been exploited to allow Mac users to swap songs over the Internet. Version 4.0.1 of iTunes removes the ability to share iTunes play lists over the Internet, limiting the feature to streaming songs over a local network.

"The new iTunes 4.0.1 update limits Rendezvous music sharing to work only between computers on a local network (its intended use) and disables music sharing over the Internet," Apple said in a statement provided to CNET News.com.

Apple said in the statement that it was "disappointed" that people had used the new feature in iTunes to copy music with strangers.

"Rendezvous music sharing...has been used by some in ways that have surprised and disappointed us," Apple said. "We designed it to allow friends and family to easily stream (not copy) their music between computers at home or in a small group setting, and it does this well. But some people are taking advantage of it to stream music over the Internet to people they do not even know."

The company began distributing the more restrictive version of iTunes on Tuesday to those Mac users who have elected to receive updates automatically, but it is not yet available for download on Apple's Web site. An Apple representative was not immediately able to say what, if any, features have been added to the program in the latest version.

Nonetheless, Apple says "All iTunes 4 users should upgrade to iTunes 4.0.1."

Apple introduced iTunes 4 last month when it debuted the iTunes Music Store.

Although people were swapping their existing music collections using iTunes, Apple said that no one has broken the encryption used with songs purchased from its online store. "The iTunes Music Store has been very successful to date, and the mechanisms we put in place to secure that music against theft are working well," Apple said. "Music purchased from the iTunes Music Store can only be played on up to three authorized Macintosh computers, and there has been no breach of this security."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-1010541.html

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'Hacking the XBox' - Cult Classic or Crime?
James Maguire

"Only technology that allows you to hack copyright is covered by the DMCA, not information. If [Huang] were providing a box, then that would be actionable, but information on how to do it is not."
Andrew "Bunnie" Huang's new book may not become a mainstream bestseller, but it quite likely will be a cult classic among hackers -- and that is enough to incur the wrath of the world's largest software maker.

Huang is the author of "Hacking the XBox: Inside the Big Green X." Having recently earned his Ph.D in electrical engineering from M.I.T., he describes himself as "part engineer, part hacker." But "more of a hacker in the traditional sense -- when hacker meant a geek who played with computers a lot, rather than a script-kiddie hacker," he told NewsFactor.

The step-by-step guide explores the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft's XBox. It provides information about mod chips and teaches readers how to replace the XBox's firmware, an upper level hacker's trick. Equipped with the book and a soldering iron, the reader can completely reverse-engineer Microsoft's game console.

"My original motivation was, like, 'Hacking is cool -- I want to explore how to go through secure systems,'" Huang said. "I wrote the book very much as an educational book about reverse engineering. It's like, 'Oh, here's the XBox, here's a common example,' but once you're done with the book, you ought to be able to take your PC apart and do the same sort of thing."

It is safe to assume that not everyone is eager for Huang's guide to home modification of the XBox to gain a wide audience when it becomes available on May 27th.

XBox manufacturer Microsoft, along with Nintendo and Sony, has filed a lawsuit against Lik-Sang, a Hong Kong-based gaming-equipment company that sold mod chips, a device used to play copied games. The company was temporarily shut down and no longer sells the devices.

Faring even worse was David Rocci, who was sentenced to five months in prison and levied a stiff fine for running a Web site that sold mod chips and helped gamers find unauthorized copies of Xbox games to run on their modified boxes.

The book originally was to be published by Wiley & Sons. "Wiley approached me, and said, 'We want to do a hacking line,'" Huang recalled.

But as the project progressed, Wiley got cold feet. "After our review of the initial manuscript of 'Hacking the XBox,'" said Susan Spilka, Wiley's corporate communications director, "we were not comfortable with possible circumvention violations in the text.

"The law in this area is not yet settled, but because Wiley has been a major proponent of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we took a cautious stance," she told NewsFactor. "Nonetheless, we wish Mr. Huang well."

As Huang explained it, "When Wiley dropped the book it became more of a political thing. After investing so much time in doing the book, I wanted to get it out there."

He paid a printer for the initial print run, and is self-publishing the book through his Web site. He also is talking to representatives at Borders and Barnes & Noble to get the book into stores.

"In the United States, you can publish just about anything that teaches people how to break the law," said Parry Aftab, a lawyer who has represented Yahoo, Disney and other major firms in Internet-related issues. "That's the beauty and the problem with the First Amendment."

She does not expect Huang to encounter legal problems from the book's publication, she told NewsFactor.

However, "The difference between free speech and the liability of a publisher is that a publisher is liable for any defamation, any violation of copyrights and everything else," Aftab said.

She would not have expected legal difficulties for Wiley had they published the book, though, she said. "Only technology that allows you to hack copyright is covered by the DMCA, not information. If [Huang] were providing a box, then that would be actionable, but information on how to do it is not.”
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21608.html

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Microsoft wins in digital media
Evan Hansen

AOL Time Warner's settlement with Microsoft on Thursday brings the software giant a powerful ally in extending its digital media technology--part of Microsoft's plan to keep Windows the world's dominant computer operating system.

The deal allows--but does not require--AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series software and future versions of the multimedia technology, including its digital rights management (DRM) tool for securing music and video files from piracy.

Despite the open-endedness of the terms, the deal represents an important victory for Microsoft, which has tried for years to overcome reluctance from AOL Time Warner and other media companies to embrace its digital media technology over that of rivals, notably RealNetworks and Apple Computer.

"This is a huge win for Microsoft," Gartner analyst David Smith said.

The deal comes just weeks after Apple opened its iTunes Music Store, selling millions of downloads and putting Microsoft on the defensive.

While AOL Time Warner has announced no specific use for the Microsoft technology in the deal, analysts said it is likely just a matter of time before the company begins announcing products and services that rely on Windows Media--for example, in a digital music download store or in an Internet video-on- demand service. AOL Time Warner owns the Warner Bros. label, one of the five largest record companies in the world.

Broadly, the deal suggests that Microsoft and AOL Time Warner are untangling their competitive interests over technology. In the past, the two have clashed on a number of fronts in this regard, offering competing Web browsers, streaming media technology and instant messaging services, for example. Thursday's settlement lays the groundwork for cooperation in all of these once-contentious areas.

"This signals detente," said Matt Rosoff, analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "The companies are diverging. AOL no longer sees itself as a technology company. It will use whatever products make sense."

Microsoft has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into developing digital media security technology in a bid to convince media companies to adopt its formats for emerging entertainment products and services. The software giant has wooed customers using tried-and-true methods honed during the browser wars with Netscape, including bundling its technology with other products at no extra cost.

Still, it has taken years for the company to chip away at the lead established by RealNetworks in technology for distributing real-time audio and video, known as streaming media. Its Windows Media formats are still only a footnote in the world of music downloads, where the MP3 format rules supreme. And Microsoft has suddenly found itself playing catch-up to Apple in the race to develop commercially viable digital music services.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1011383.html

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Jewel Pleasing Fans Online, On Tour
Troy Carpenter

Atlantic Records is offering something extra to Jewel fans who buy her forthcoming album "0304," due June 3, during its first week of release. Each copy in the first run of "0304" will include a download card with a unique PIN number allowing access to a secure site from which users can download solo live MP3 versions of "The New Wild West" and "Life Uncommon." The promotion runs through June 9.

The bonus site will also allow access to streaming in-studio footage of the artist, tour clips, and live performance videos culled from her last tour, all of which will be available past June 9.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1896490

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All we need to digitize
Paul Gilster

I'm a fast reader, but I've just found a machine that can read faster than me. It simplifies book scanning and could transform how we build digital libraries. Assuming, of course, that we can solve the serious copyright issues that keep digital libraries from happening.

A Swiss company called 4DigitalBooks is behind the device, which is essentially a high-quality, high-speed scanning system with a cradle that handles page turning and protects the book being scanned. The pages are displayed on a nearby screen, where they can be processed in all sorts of elegant ways, from enhancing their images or photographs to smoothing out the curvature caused by the book's shape.
Did I say fast? This machine can process as many as 1,200 pages per hour, turning the pages and sensing when it has accidentally turned more than one, a situation it fixes with a carefully applied puff of air. And it's supposedly gentle enough to handle even rare books.

If a book-scanning robot can do all this, the world of book digitization will be turned upside down. Current projects, such as Carnegie Mellon University's Million Book Project, use manual digitization. Scanning books by hand is often accomplished by cheap labor in places such as India, where the cost of scanning volumes is under $5 a volume, but such scanning can be full of errors, which is why academic projects such as Documenting the American South, by UNC-Chapel Hill, do the work in-house with help from student volunteers.

But special collections are one thing. Documenting the American South, for example, includes about 1,230 books and manuscripts. What about scanning entire libraries? Digitizing out-of-print books would rescue thousands from oblivion, books that are not available in stores but remain under copyright.

Copyright restrictions are severe in part because of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Passed in 1998 and recently upheld by the Supreme Court, this act extended the term of copyright from the life of the author plus 50 years to the life of the author plus 70 years (with corporate work protected for 95 years).

As a result, tens of thousands of books now languish in a kind of limbo. They are unavailable except through used book outlets. Few of them are likely to see new editions -- in fact, only 2 percent of copyrighted work between 1923 and 1942 is commercially viable. But because of copyright, these books cannot be made available online.

Lawrence Lessig and others have been trying to right this situation with a new bill. Fifty years after publication, the copyright owner would pay a $1 maintenance fee to continue the copyright. Upon nonpayment, the book would automatically pass into the public domain. Lessig, a law professor at Stanford and author of The "Future of Ideas" (Random House, 2001), believes 98 percent of such books would lose their copyright, after which they could be digitized and made available free online.

And why not? The mechanics of publishing via paper and ink make it difficult to issue new editions in tiny numbers, but digital books can be made and reproduced with ease, one at a time. And although authors or their estates could choose to hold onto copyright, the vast bulk of titles don't earn any royalties after that amount of time.

The Public Domain Enhancement Act would help us take advantage of technologies like the robot scanner from 4DigitalBooks. And it would unlock a vast store of learning and raw information that would otherwise languish. No one has yet been found to introduce the bill in Congress, so writing to our lawmakers would be in order. For more information, see the Web site eldred.cc.
http://newsobserver.com/business/sto...-2386660c.html

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Napster's Rise And Fall--And Its Future

What follows is the transcript of a May 27 online chat hosted by Los Angeles Times reporter Joseph Menn for members of the Forbes.com CEO Network. Menn is the author of the recently published All The Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster (Crown Business, $25).

FDCEDITORS: Welcome everyone. Joseph Menn is here and ready to begin answering your questions, so let's begin.

Frank_Giles: What was so revolutionary about Shawn Fanning's original computer program?

JOSEPH_MENN: Shawn's great insight was that there was no reason that he could not combine the power of a search engine like Google with what is known as "presence-awareness" of instant messaging and other systems. In this way, only people whose MP3 files were available at any one moment would have those files listed for others to find. The other brilliant aspect was that since each music file would be stored on individual personal computers, it didn't take massive numbers of servers--some thousands--to store all of the content.

audenkim: Is Fanning at all involved in their re-launch as a legit service?

JOSEPH_MENN: Yes he is. Roxio had hired Shawn previously as a consultant to advise it on the user interface. Now that Roxio has bought Pressplay and will re-launch it, Shawn will continue to advise them.

SamathaP: Can Napster not rebound by offering a service like Apple Computer, where they charge 99 cents per song download?

JOSEPH_MENN: The new service when it launches will certainly charge for most songs. My personal guess is that by then the 99 cent figure will be lower, both for the new Napster and for other legitimate services. Apple's success shows that there is a broad market for paid music online and underscores how foolish the record industry was for not offering something similar three years ago, a lapse that allowed Napster to become the fastest-growing business in history.

Jasper: What's Shawn Fanning doing now?

JOSEPH_MENN: While Shawn is helping Roxio as it attempts to revamp Pressplay, he's spending most of his time on a new startup. That startup is designed to send music through the Internet on behalf of artists who want their music distributed.

jupiter334: How long did it take Fanning to realize he had come up with something that would turn the music industry upside down? Did he have a clue what he was getting into?

JOSEPH_MENN: Shawn realized very early--within months at most--that his invention would change everything, according to his emails from that period. What he didn't know was that the system would provoke such a backlash and that the record industry would rather fight to the death than buy him off, which is what he and the others expected to happen.
http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/28/0528mennchat.html

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tipping point
js

soulseek, for readers who aren't regular users, is the closest thing that exists right now to napster. for the regular user it's getting where it's hard not to find what you're looking for. it’s hitting that tipping point where a network stops being a cult service and breaks out wide.

a few weeks ago its days were numbered – i believe the riaa was on the verge of shutting it down - now i'm not so sure. they may not be able to or they may hold back until the grokster appeals are exhausted – but that’s only a guess. meanwhile each day it stays up means its base increases exponentially. if you haven't been on in a while you owe it to yourself to experience this unique application.

full albums, high bit rates, ogg support, great IM and relevant, working chat rooms plus auto resume. it has everything napster did and then some.

this is one hot app. the hottest i think. pass it on.

http://www.slsk.org/

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Forum Talk

Is this the legal music service we are all waiting for?
Kewbase

Do you remember the Chris Myden Guide to creating amazing mp3’s that was posted some months ago?

I kind of fell in love with the Lame –alt preset standard encoded mp3’s and have found it hard to accept music files that were encoded with an inferior method. But it was some job to join a place where you can download these files. Anyone that ever studied the rules of the Ubernethubs will recognize this. And with the RIAA hunting down DChubs they are not the safest places to hang out.

With all the news about iTunes and Puretunes I decided to evaluate the legal download services. I was happy to see that Emusic is offering mp3’s encoded with Lame and the alt-preset-standard switch. I tried their 14 days trail subscription, but their catalogue is far too limited. Not worth paying 10 dollars a month for in my honest opinion.

I stumbled across a website called AllofMP3.com This website offers downloads of more than 15000 albums. A fair number of those albums can be encoded on request. This service is called Online encoding, You want MP3, AAC. OGG , WMA? Take your pick. That’s an amazing feature already, but what is even more astonishing. You can also choose alt-preset –standard/extreme/insane. Wow!! Looks like a dream come true.

And what does this cost? Just one dollar cent for every Mb you download. For 10 dollars you have the right to download one gigabyte of music. No strings attached, no copy protections!

I have signed up. paid a few bucks and I have to say it’s running smoothly. Great download speeds. Great music. Great sound quality! One easy way to get your albums in high quality audio. I haven’t seen anything like this anywhere else. This is the way I will gladly pay for downloading music.

Okay, allofmp3.com is a Russian company but don’t let this scare you off. Just be glad that Russian copyright law makes this possible. Our former ‘enemies’ have become our friends. Itunes, Pressplay and Musicnet eat your heart out.


Begoodbebad responds:

Yes the Chris Myden guide is excellent, the combination of EAC and Lame is possibly unsurpassable for MP3 encoding and his guide is thorough and accessible but to actually join one the Uberfascist filesharing hubs...as far as i can tell it isn't possible. you can meet and/ or exceed all the prerequisites in terms of quantity and quality and format and have a great variety of music to share and on trying to join what happens....nothing...no return e mail nothing...you have to remember you're dealing with the MP3 Pseudo Master Race...excuse me the MP3 Ubermenschen.... So the alternative is to keep ripping and keep sharing your LAME EAC MP3s and *GET THEM OUT THERE*. As for paying $10 a GB.....*no thanks* ..here in UK I can go to the public library, rent a CD for the equivalent of $1 a week and rip it, copy it, share it on Emule or Kazaa...thats $1 to obtain the genuine CD and have 7 days to use it as I please....no fakes no corrupt files no hassle...I get the booklet, artwork everything...and if my local library hasn't got what I want they can obtain it from any other library in UK! So for all the technology of the net and the benefits of Russian copyright law(!) nobody yet has come up with anyhting as brilliant, cheap, accessible and well stocked as the British Public Lending Library! This is file sharing at its beautiful best, subsidised and supported by the taxpayer and approved of by all...and the artists get paid for every one of their CDs that is borrowed. Beat This!
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/article.../05272003g.php

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More PC Music Deals Seen Breaking New Legal Ground
Sue Zeidler and Caroline Humer

A legal dispute that threatened to derail Gateway Inc.'s groundbreaking plan to load music on its computers has been quietly resolved amid growing interest in such offerings by rival PC makers, executives and analysts said on Thursday.

Months after announcing a first-of-its-kind deal in December to preload 2,000 tracks from music subscription service Pressplay onto its PCs, Gateway withdrew the offering for several weeks due to a dispute between Pressplay and music publishers, representatives of both sides said.

The publishers, who own copyrights on songs, had sent a cease-and-desist order saying Gateway's deal did not fall under an October 2001 deal covering publishers' digital royalties.

The crux of the issue was that the earlier agreement between music publishers and labels had been limited to online delivery, on-demand streaming and limited downloads. Gateway's deal to load songs onto a computer was a new form of delivery that required different licensing, the publishers argued.

"We were caught in the middle of it as someone who was distributing the product," Gateway spokesman Brad Williams said of the dispute that was finally resolved earlier this spring.

The tentative deal between publishers and Pressplay -- which this month was purchased by Roxio Inc. ROXI.O and will soon be combined with the assets of defunct music file swap service Napster in a new service -- is expected to serve as a template for other tie-ups expected this year between PC makers and music services.

"We've reached an agreement in principle to solve this (Gateway) matter and are now finalizing a written agreement," said Carey Ramos, a lawyer for the Harry Fox Agency, which represents thousands of songwriters.

Gateway, the No. 3 U.S. maker of personal computers, also promotes the rival Rhapsody service, owned by RealNetworks Inc. No music comes preloaded in that arrangement.

The computer sector is buzzing with talk of such distribution agreements, particularly on the heels of Apple Computer Inc.'s launch of its own music service, which has sold more than 3 million tracks at 99 cents each to Macintosh users.

"I would be surprised if a major PC company was not offering a music service toward the critical Christmas buying season in the fourth quarter," said Peter Kastner, chief research officer at the Aberdeen Group.

"I really think that with Apple shooting off the starting gun ... the rest of the year will be a catch-up scramble to get product to market and grab Windows PC market share at all costs," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2848773

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Start your own network.

P2P Without an ISP

Green Packet Solution Allows for Peer-to-Peer, Self-organizing Connections In Legend Laptops Without the Need for a Fixed Network
Press Release

Green Packet, a leading developer of intelligent roaming infrastructure and wireless network solutions, announced today that Legend, the leading IT nterprise in China, will bundle Green Packet's software platform SONbuddy(TM) in all its Wi-Fi notebook computers -- the Lenovo A820 and the Lenovo E360.

SONbuddy, an intelligent software platform enabling Wi-Fi-equipped devices to form spontaneous, self-organizing networks (SON), automatically seeks, organizes and maintains a peer-to-peer and peer-to-multi-peer ad hoc community based on user-defined preferred search parameters. These self-healing and self-optimizing properties allow Legend notebook users to communicate even in the absence of any fixed wireless infrastructure such as network hotspots.

"We see Green Packet's SONbuddy as a key element in helping future generations of mobile users to bridge the networking gaps whenever they roam beyond the reach of fixed infrastructure. This is especially beneficial for China where many small enterprises do not have WLAN. With SONbuddy, they can communicate and share the IT resources in the office more easily without the need of investing in WLAN," said Xia Yang, General Manager of Legend Notebook Business. "Apart from mobile computing, we can now offer our customers the added value of creating their own private mobile community network that the user only shares with friends or colleagues, or with other SONbuddy users, upon invitation. This provides a new way for users to network and participate
in other communities discovered in the vicinity."

Green Packet's multi-hop technology allows wireless notebooks and other devices to become personal intelligent routers. When a transmission occurs from device A to device B, it multi-hops over other devices to create a connection. Together with its Internet sharing capability, SONbuddy's multi-hop and self-organizing attributes extend the traditional reach of a
typical wireless LAN network.

"We are thrilled to be teaming with Legend to empower Wi-Fi notebook users with the ability to create or participate in one or more spontaneous interest-based community networks," said C.C. Puan,founder and President/CEO of Green Packet. "As China's leading IT enterprise with a strategic focus on increased mobility, Legend is an ideal partner to help us reach a wide audience of next generation mobile users with attractive SONbuddy applications."

Some of the applications available through the bundled SONbuddy include full-duplex Voice over IP, personal firewall, data authentication and encryption, Internet sharing, file sharing, and instant messaging and chatting.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+12:29+PM

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RIAA sues over file-sharing site, but settles suit
Josh Brodie

This past semester, the nationwide debate over file-sharing and online music theft hit the University in a personal way as the Recording Industry Association of America – a trade group representing the interests of the major record labels – sued sophomore Daniel Peng for what could have been billions of dollars.

Peng had been operating a website known as "Wake" — accessible at wake.princeton.edu — which let campus network users search for shared files. The RIAA alleged that this search engine facilitated music theft on a grand scale and that Peng himself had made hundreds of copyrighted works available from his computer.

If he was found liable in court, Peng could have been fined $150,000 for each act of copyright infringement. The suit filed on April 3 alleged that he was responsible for thousands of such acts.

However, after a month of negotiation between lawyers and tense speculation on campus, the suit — along with three others filed against college students for operating similar services — was settled out of court. Under the terms of the settlement, Peng agreed to pay the RIAA $15,000 and take down his site while not admitting any wrongdoing.

According to the University's copyright compliance officer in OIT, Rita Saltz, the University ordinarily receives complaints from industry groups and then contacts the appropriate students — who most often cooperate immediately. In the last year, Saltz's office received about 130 complaints, but she said the suit came as a "terrible surprise."

"I had no idea this was coming," she said.

"The RIAA really wants to send a frightening message," wrote David Dobkin, chair of the computer science department and next year's dean of the faculty, in an email. "These students (Peng et. al.) are being set up to scare others away from doing this.""I'm definitely relieved now that it's all over," said Peng on May 1 after the settlement was announced. He said he was looking forward to getting back to his life as it used to be.

Howard Ende, Peng's lead counsel in the case and former general counsel to the University was satisfied with the settlement and said it "could have been a lot worse."

"In some ways Dan and the others were forced to settle, and [the RIAA] came up with numbers they felt would send a message," Ende said.

RIAA senior vice-president Matt Oppenheim disagreed with the idea that insurmountable legal costs prompted the settlement.

According to Oppenheim, the RIAA never expected to get the billions of dollars implied by the initial filing, but rather, it wanted to send a message to people operating similar file-sharing networks.

Since the settlement, Peng has begun to collect donations through the wake site. To date, he has received more than $1,500. However, that is still far short of his goal of paying of the $15,000 settlement and legal fees.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ews/8327.shtml

Students satirize University fire policy, file sharing
Kathy Li

Following in the footsteps of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, two University students have chosen to use music to protest power of the music industry.

About two weeks ago, after the news of the crackdown on the Wake file- sharing website within the University network, seniors Matt Gale and Sanjay Varma wrote a little ditty they call "Ode to Fire Safety."

"We wrote it so that people would have something to listen to now that copyrighted music is not the thing to do," Gale said.

Gale and Varma did not write the song specifically to challenge the Recording Industry Association of America — which brought a suit against Wake owner Dan Peng '05 and students at other universities for facilitating copyright infringement.

Gale and Varma were interviewed in a three-way telephone conversation. Their responses came so quickly on the heels of each other, it sounded like a modern day Abbott and Costello. Both students felt that the cases against individual students are somewhat unfair.

"I feel bad for Dan Peng who's getting charged," Gale said.

"Everybody's kind of guilty of it," Varma added.

"It was probably bound to happen eventually," Gale agreed.

In an email to their friends, they contested that "copyrighted music just isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"Check it out," they wrote, "and enjoy the guilt-free pleasure of legal music recorded on shareware."

Gale and Varma, both RCAs in Wilson College, have written and recorded several other songs, such as "The RCA Song," which they have put up on the University network.

Gale plays the trumpet, Varma the guitar, and both lend their voices to the cause.

Because they are RCAs, Gale and Varma did not send a link to their song to their advisees.

Neither said he believes they would have been disciplined for doing so, but they wanted to avoid directly contesting University policy.

News of the song "Ode to Fire Safety" spread quickly, however, even reaching the ears of fire inspectors.

"It's unique, and it's comical," said University Inspections Manager Ken Paulaski. "It's like any other item that students write about fire safety, it's always taken with a grain of salt."

But like any good comedy duo, Gale and Varma both perked up quickly.

"[The shutdown of Gank, Sleep and Wake] was good because more people listened to our song than would have otherwise," Varma said.

"MP3s take up a lot of students' time, so there's probably a lot of people with nothing to do now," he continued.

"Yeah, now that we made the only legally downloadable song," Gale added.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ews/8334.shtml


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


RealNetworks to sell songs
Agence France-Presse

REALNETWORKS announced plans for a new internet music download service modeled in part on the new service by Apple Computer, offering subscribers songs at US79c apiece.

The service, however, will require a monthly subscription costing $US9.95, unlike the popular service offered by Apple, which offers downloads for US99c.

RealNetworks, which makes software used for digital audio and video, said its new RealOne Rhapsody would allow users to access "the broadest library of major and independent label music with more than 330,000 tracks available for on-demand listening and more than 200,000 songs available for transferring to CD, aka 'burning'".

In addition, subscribers can "burn full albums or custom mix CDs, build their own custom internet radio stations, listen to professionally programmed stations, and browse extensive music information and editorial recommendations," the company said in a statement.

"We are thrilled to introduce RealOne Rhapsody, which offers consumers what they want - a deep library for on-demand listening, a customisable radio service and extremely affordable burns for those songs they just can't live without," said Merrill Brown, senior vice president of RealOne Services at RealNetworks.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_...E15306,00.html

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Western Europe

Computer security firm raided for piracy
Jonathan Tisdall

Police staged a major raid after getting tips that computer security firm Eterra, a Merkantildata company, was using its servers to download and distribute copyrighted music and new Hollywood films. The piracy ring involved over 70 employees and charges were filed against four for violating copyright laws.

The downloading and distribution of copyrighted material was performed over an extended period of time, from both within and outside the firm's offices, financial newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported.

The raid revealed that one in ten of Eterra's employees were involved in piracy, and police emphasized that the firm itself is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

Inspector Rasmus Woxholt of the Oslo police promised a continuing crackdown on pirate copying of films and music.

Eterra's managing director Sverre Bjerkeli said that the firm had cooperated with police after the raid and had considered firing staff involved in the piracy ring, but so far no jobs have been lost.

"Six employees have received a written warning and four have been temporarily suspended," Bjerkeli told Dagens Naeringsliv.

The Norsk Videogramforening (NVF), a member of the International Video Federation, monitors distribution and traffic of vidoe films in Norway and tipped off police about the illegal file-sharing on Eterra's servers. Now Eterra can expect a hefty lawsuit from the entertainment industry.

"This is a very major victory for us. I can promise that we will follow through on this," said NVF head Roald Dye.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) spokesman in Norway, Saemund Fiskvik, was shocked by the news.

"I am speechless. Eterra is one of the country's data flagships. This is like learning (cross-country skiing legend) Bjoern Daehlie used doping. If the police confirm this information then there will be a civil compensation suit," Fiskvik told Dagens Naeringsliv.

According to Norwegian law copying media for private use is legal but distribution is a crime.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/lo...ticleID=551434


European broadband uptake to reach 28 per cent by 2008 – research
Leigh Phillips

By 2007, Europe will overtake the US in terms of the proportion of online households that have broadband internet
access, with 48 per cent of European online households using broadband, compared to 46 per cent in the US, according to new analysis from Jupiter Research. By 2008, 28 per cent of all European households (47m) will have broadband, making it the most common form of internet connection in the region.

In contrast, at the end of 2002, 81 per cent of European online households accessed the internet via a narrowband connection. But consumer interest in broadband is strong and the results of a Jupiter Research consumer survey show that 26 per cent of narrowband internet users are likely to upgrade to broadband within a year. Yet consumers who are keen to switch are currently hampered by limited broadband availability and poor communication of where the service is available. This has slowed migration from narrowband to broadband. These barriers will drop as improvements in broadband technology - such as better exchange equipment - will extend the geographical reach of broadband.

Europe is far from a single market for broadband with diverse adoption levels and although these differences will narrow, diversity will persist. At the end of 2002, broadband penetration ranged from one per cent of households in Greece to 19 per cent in Belgium. By 2008, these two countries will still represent the extremes of Europe’s broadband market, with penetration rates of ten per cent and 42 per cent, respectively.

The bulk of broadband households will be in the largest economies: 12.2m will be in Germany; 6.6m in France; and 8m in the UK. In Spain, the advance of broadband will be much quicker than across Europe as a whole. By 2004, there will be 2.3m broadband households in Spain and they will outnumber the 1.9m with narrowband. For Europe as a whole, it will take until 2008 for this shift in dominance to take place.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16486


Ericsson demonstrates first standards-based SIM-card log-on for WLAN

Swedish mobile communications company Ericsson has successfully demonstrated the first standards based
solution that allows users a single sign-on for both GSM and public WLAN.

At the WLAN Event in London, a WLAN-enabled lap-top was authenticated (identified) by a GSM network, using the same procedure that is used when a regular GSM mobile call is made.

The SIM-card is the standard identification module used in all GSM-handsets. Until now, only proprietary solutions for WLAN logon have been available, in effect curtailing market take-off. With Ericsson`s solution, building on 3GPP standards, equipment from all vendors will be interoperable, and users can use their equipment will work wherever they go.

Combining public WLAN with mobile systems brings the best of two worlds to the users; higher speed connection at hot-spots and true mobility through nation-wide GSM coverage. Easy log-on and one bill for both WLAN and mobile use are likely to be the most attractive features for the users.

The log-on solution is part of Ericsson's Mobile Operator WLAN - offering for which Ericsson has developed a new node, the Ericsson WLAN Authentication Server.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16490


Peugot-To-Porche - Bluetooth in 20% of all automobiles by 2007 – report

Roughly 20 per cent of all new automobiles globally will have Bluetooth technology by 2007, according to new research from market analysts Allied Business Intelligence. Furthermore, the analysts predict that the automotive application of the technology will offer a range of opportunities to silicon vendors, hardware manufacturers, automakers and gas companies.

Already, Daimler-Chrysler is launching its Uconnect hands-free car kit, which will the techology’s first commercial automotive application in the United States. Across the water, Audi, BMW, Peugot and Saab currently have Bluetooth hands-free car kits as optional extras in Europe.

As the kits cost only E5.60, automobile manufacturers will find Bluetooth extremely attractive, say the researchers, who also feel that the costs will continue to fall.

Initially, the introduction of Bluetooth to cars will focus on telephony, but later on, such services as remote vehicle diagnostics, lower-cost telematics services, advanced automotive safety systems, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and remote audio and video downloads into the vehicle will come online.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16483


Porn, Music Driving European Broadband Gains-Study
Bernhard Warner

High-speed Internet access in Europe continues to grow at a healthy rate, boosted by consumer demand for file-sharing, pornography and music, a new study said on Thursday.

According to market research firm Nielsen/Netratings, the number of European surfers using fast broadband Internet connections at home grew by 136 percent in the year ending in April, 2003.

The beneficiaries of the broadband boom are entertainment sites, in particular adult entertainment, Netratings said.

"The adult entertainment sector has increased its reach year-on-year in all European markets except Italy, where, not coincidentally, broadband access is the relative lowest in Europe," the report said.

The strong demand for broadband is a good news-bad news scenario. For example, major music labels decry the rampant trade of copyright-protected songs, an activity that has surged as home users get faster Internet connections.

Free file-sharing services such as Kazaa and Grokster have become a hit with broadband-equipped music fans who can speedily download large music files. The labels have tried to shut down the services as they blame them for the decline in recorded music sales, which could last a few more years, executives say.

Meanwhile, Internet service providers (ISPs) including T-Online, Wanadoo and BT OpenWorld are banking heavily on widescale deployment of higher-margin broadband access.

The biggest gainer in the past year is Britain where broadband penetration has more than tripled to 3.7 million users.

The UK remains second from the bottom in Europe in terms of broadband penetration though, with 21.6 percent of all Internet users on broadband. In Italy, broadband penetration is at 16.4 percent, or 1.8 million.

France, Spain and the Netherlands round out the top three with 39 percent, 37.2 percent and 36.6 percent of the their Internet users, respectively, on a high-speed connection.

In comparison, the U.S. is the world's broadband leader with 38 million, or 35 percent of Internet users, on broadband. The biggest markets in terms of penetration are in Asia, led by South Korea (news - web sites) and Hong Kong.

If current rates continue, there will be over 53 million Europeans with broadband, five million shy of the U.S., by April 2004, NetRatings analyst Tom Ewing said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...t_broadband_dc


DefaultCity rolls out wireless broadband in Sweden
Andreas Juva

Wireless internet provider DefaultCity has already 15 hot-spots in production in Stockholm, and during May, June
and July, the company plans to build another 15 new hot-spots every month, with at least one hot-spot for every Swedish city with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

Currently the company has 15 hot-spots in operation. 23 hots-pots are under construction, of which, three are being built outside Stockholm. Every hot-spot provides instant access to the internet through a wireless connection also called WLAN, supporting the IEEE 802.11b standard. The speed of the hot-spot internet connection is between 0.5 and 5 mbps.

Furthermore, Powernet and DefaultCity customers will from now on be able to surf high-speed wireless internet using either of the two companies’ networks, increasing the number of locations where the customers can use their subscriptions. Powernet is Sweden's second largest wireless internet service provider.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16493


MTV acquires 50% stake in games channel Game One
David Minto

MTV Networks Europe has acquired a 50 per cent stake in French videogames channel ‘Game One’ through a
partnership with French media company Atari.

MTV says the alliance, which marks MTV Networks’ entrée into the gaming arena, leverages the company’s niche audience expertise and represents the next step in the company’s ongoing international expansion.

Game One, a 24 hour local language channel devoted to games, is distributed to 3.5m homes on all cable and satellite platforms in France. The fully-integrated Game One offering comprises interactive elements such as SMS chat, competitions, news, reviews of current games, games tips and a dedicated website.

Commented Simon Guild, Chief Operating Officer, MTV Networks Europe: "Videogames and home entertainment are integral to European youth culture, so we see opportunities to expand Game One to other markets, as a natural complement to our stable of youth and music brands. The alliance will enable Game One to take advantage of MTV Networks Europe’s creative expertise and pan-European infrastructure, whilst Game One will bring its extensive experience of the videogames arena to our network."
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16500


Minister Dermot Ahern launches wireless broadband

Irish Broadband, specialists in broadband wireless internet access, and a wholly owned subsidiary of NTR, the
Irish private sector developer of public infrastructure, has launched its, fixed price 'always-on', broadband internet services in Dublin, with the help of Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.

Speaking at the launch of Irish Broadband, Minister Ahern said: “The launch of this product is further proof of the major strides being made by telcos in delivering on the broadband revolution. Since becoming Minister, I have placed at the top of my agenda the delivery of affordable, always-on internet access. The message to service providers and telcos from me has been to drop price and grow your customer base. We have seen significant price cuts and more are on the way.”

Irish Broadband claims it is the first company to introduce guaranteed broadband connection speeds, offering wireless leased lines equivalent quality at DSL prices. DSL connections are shared with between 24 and 48 other users whereas Irish Broadband customers only share the service with between 4 and 8 other users.

“We offer the only true flat rate service at all levels, and we have no extra charges on any of our services. So users can download as much as they want without being penalised for it” said Paul Doody, Managing Director.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16278


Official: not all Eurovision records are pants

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest may have had a dearth of impressive records in the musical sense, but a rousing record it did manage to produce was the highest level of concurrent video stream usage across Europe ever!

Indeed – and if only this could have gone for the musical records as well – it smashed it.

Whilst over 100m viewers across Europe were tuning into the live television broadcast from Riga, those on the official Eurovision website could log onto four different video streams simultaneously and follow the whole event backstage.

Up to 25,000 concurrent streams were used, a tenfold increase over the previous year, producing a server load that reached almost 4 Gigabit per second. The greatest number of users came from Poland, Sweden and the UK, countries that I hope are now all hanging their heads in shame. The video streams were requested most often from Sweden, the Netherlands and, rather scarily, the United States.

So what lies behind this startling occurrence? Maybe it was the sapphic-though-not-so-graphic Russian teen- divas, t.A.T.u.? Maybe it was the flame-haired German lady-man whose rousing chorus featured the immortal line, “Lets be happy, let’s be gay.” Maybe it was the contest’s eventual winner, the Turkish vampire belly-dancer, locked in a life-and-death game of ‘Twister’ with her harem of backing singers? Whatever it was, it almost certainly wasn’t the UK’s atonal coupling of Jemini – a musical act so gleefully insipid that they made even S Club 7 look like Radiohead.

In 2004, of course, the Eurovision rules are changing, with countries at the bottom of this year’s table forced to sing-off in a qualifying round. Unfortunately, the UK pours such a lot of money into the Eurovision coffers that we’re going to be at the final, anyway. So see you in there! I'll do my best to make sure we take along someone who can sing this time...
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16512


New UK broadband proposal full of hot air?

After BT’s ‘broadband-in-a-box’, a new solution may soon be rolled-out across the UK in an attempt to provide high-speed internet access to even the remotest hermitage of the Scottish Highlands: broadband balloons.

An idea full of hot air? Well quite. But York-based company SkyLinc promises that just 18 base stations for balloons floating at a height of 1.5km above the surface of the earth would be needed to give complete UK broadband coverage. Data transfer would be at over the twice the speed of most broadband services offered today and would be the same in both directions – for uploading as well as downloading.

The balloons – apparently more accurately described as ‘tethered aerostats’ – would be helium filled and fed signals via a fibre optic antenna that could be held stable even in adverse weather coniditons. According to the BBC, the US military has been using a similar technology for more than 50 years.

SkyLinc says it hopes to sign its first contracts with ISPs next year, and has already secured two approved sites in Yorkshire from the Aviation Authority. Though analysts suggest it may be five to 10 years before the system is commercially available, it is thought the system will be able to provide particularly competitive rates to small businesses having to employ leased lines, and will also be extremely beneficial to rural communities.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16472

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Roxio Posts Greater Earnings for Quarter
Reuters

Software company Roxio Inc. reported a larger profit for its fiscal fourth quarter and said it expects a profit in the current quarter, excluding its pending acquisition of an online digital music service.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Roxio reported a net profit for the March quarter of $2.3 million, or 12 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $340,000, or 2 cents.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call expected a profit of 19 cents.

For the June quarter, Roxio said it expects revenue of $23 million, with earnings of 5 cents a share, excluding the potential accounting effect of the acquisition of Pressplay. Analysts on average expect earnings of 7 cents, within a range of a 9-cent loss to a 17-cent profit.

Roxio shares fell 75 cents to $7.26 on Nasdaq.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtechnolog y

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Bush administration seeks to give military spectrum to mobile phones.
Pentagon raises national security concerns.
Jube Shiver Jr.

With the U.S. waging a war in Iraq that relies heavily on wireless communications, a controversial Bush administration plan to transfer valuable airwaves from the military to the mobile phone industry is coming under new scrutiny.

Accommodating growing consumer demand for high-speed mobile Internet access -- as well as for ordinary cell phone calls -- is a crucial challenge for the White House. The administration is trying to balance the wireless industry's voracious appetite for new spectrum capacity against national security concerns. There is also a potential government windfall that would come from the sale of billions of dollars' worth of military airwaves to mobile phone carriers.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtechno logy

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Study finds CIA falling behind in IT know-how
Paul Roberts

A new unclassified report, titled "Failing to Keep Up With the Information Revolution," offers a withering assessment of the CIA's use of IT for intelligence analysis, calling its networking and information-searching capabilities "primitive" and saying that the agency's emphasis on secrecy fundamentally discourages IT use and adoption by CIA analysts.

The study's author, Bruce Berkowitz, interviewed almost 100 CIA employees involved in producing national security analysis, including intelligence analysts, technicians and managers. He asked them about their work and use of technology, soliciting their ideas for using IT more effectively, according to the report.

Contrary to popular depictions of CIA agents using cutting-edge information-gathering technology, Berkowitz found that DI analysts lack access to even the most common information-searching technology for conducting intelligence analysis, such as Web- based search engines. instead, they rely largely on a 1970s-era database called CIRAS, for Corporate Information Retrieval and Storage.

Perhaps the most telling sign of the DI's archaic information-gathering capabilities is the continued importance of DI analysts' "informal source network" of contacts within other organizations or agencies. Those sources provide analysts with the information they need -- essentially the job that search engines such as Google and AltaVista already perform in an automated fashion, according to Berkowitz.

Although the glacial pace of government IT purchasing is partly to blame for the slow rate of technology adoption within the agency, it isn't the primary source of the CIA's troubles, Berkowitz said.

Instead, he put most of the blame on the CIA's obsession with security, which he charged with creating an approach of "risk exclusion" as opposed to "risk management" regarding technology adoption.
http://www.computerworld.com/governm...,81605,00.html

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Stop turning librarians into busybodies
Dan Gillmor

Freedom to read: The nation's librarians were turned into unwilling agents of law enforcement when Congress passed a law most members never bothered to read -- the infamous USA Patriot Act, which gave the government unprecedented new powers to spy on citizens. The law turned us all into suspects.

It also turned librarians into snoops. Under the law, says Karen G. Schneider, chair the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the California Library Association, ``the federal government can access library or bookstore records -- the books you have checked out, the logs associated with your Internet or e-mail activities -- without having to get a traditional search warrant.''

And you, the library or bookstore patron, are not allowed to know about this fishing expedition into what you read.

I have no problem with the FBI getting access to someone's library records after persuading a judge to sign a warrant. In that case, some kind of probable cause has been established.

But to give the government untrammeled -- and unmonitored -- access to our personal lives is a perversion of liberty.

Some libraries have put up signs notifying patrons that their reading habits are no longer considered private. Other libraries, and several bookstores, are destroying records showing what books its customers have borrowed or bought.

None of those responses should be necessary. The best new idea is from Congress, believe it or not: a bill that would repeal this section of the UnPatriotic Act. It's called the ``Freedom to Read Protection Act.'' Authored by Vermont's independent congressman, Bernie Sanders, the bill has been endorsed by about 100 of his colleagues, according to Schneider.

The bill, HR 1157, needs your support, too. Call your member of Congress and fight for your own freedom to read without someone peering over your shoulder.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/5960524.htm

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Coming to a P2P Near You – Physical, Downloadable Stuff
Peter Wayner

VIEWED through the fantastic lens of science fiction, three-dimensional printers seem as amazing as the transporters in "Star Trek." In goes a digital idea of a thing and out comes the thing itself.

In practice, three-dimensional printing is fairly mundane. Many such machines use a computer-controlled stream of a chemical or laser light to bind a powdery material, layer by layer, into an object. Just as a modern printer uses billions of tiny dots to produce images, three-dimensional printers arrange billions of tiny flecks of plastic or metal to produce objects. Computers ensure that the billions of bits end up in the right place, a process that can take several hours or even a day.

The machines are very expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars or more, and are used by industrial designers or engineers to make prototypes of parts or other objects.

But some companies are considering the possibility of producing a lower-priced version that could eventually find its way into homes. Then, for example, a grandmother could e-mail a toy to her grandchild by sending a software file, or the angler in the family could prepare for a day of fishing by printing out a few lures, optimized for the season and the weather.

Kevin McAlea, the senior vice president for worldwide revenue generation at 3D Systems, a printer manufacturer based in Valencia, Calif., said that mass production could lower the price of the machines, but that no one knew whether there would be a market.

There are many competing approaches using combinations of plastics, paper, metal and glue that are sprayed, melted, cut, dissolved, precipitated and catalyzed by chemicals, heat and light. The machines from the Z Corporation, a small company in Burlington, Mass., for example, spread a thin layer of powder that is bound into the right shape by a liquid that is sprayed from an ink-jet print head adapted from a Hewlett-Packard design. The machines repeat this process to build up the object.

For powder, the Z Corporation uses starch or plaster. "A lot of our materials are food-grade," said Marina Hatsopoulos, the company president, "but they aren't very tasty."

Ms. Hatsopoulos explained that the starch in her company's machines keeps the inner parts separate. "We can do a ball in a ball in a ball," she said. "We've got really cool ball bearings."

The quality of the finished object varies. The Z Corporation machines, for instance, deliver a rougher, sandy surface at a relatively low price. The print heads can also color the material, producing objects with intricate patterns on the surface. Tools that rely on lasers usually offer more precision and a smoother surface at a price that may be several times greater.

Tim Reher, the president of Print3d.com, a model-making shop, sells models he makes with a Z Corporation printer and finishes them with wax, glue or plastic resin.

"It acts pretty much like a sponge," he said. "You can take a starch part and build a flexible part by impregnating it with an elastomeric urethane."

"I say to people, 'Tell me what you want to do,' " Mr. Reher said. "You can make it act like a piece of plastic. You can paint it. You can snap-fit it. You can actually use the part. I've heard of pieces attached to the outside of an F-16."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/29/te...ts/29howw.html










Until next week,

- js.









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Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16411 May 24th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16318 May 17th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16211 May 10th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16135 May 3rd



The Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts@lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.