[JackSpratts]

Reach out and flash someone

Red Faces at Orange as Customer Gets Blue Photos

Mobile phone firm Orange says its picture messaging service can "make someone feel really special."

But when one customer called the company helpline she received some pictures that made her feel outraged instead.

What she expected was a photo from a customer service representative to make sure her camera phone was working. What she got was a series of close-ups his genitals.

"This ex-employee sent some indecent photographs of himself. He was dismissed within a week," an Orange spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

"We've looked into the matter, collated the information and handed it over to the police."

Worldwide camera phone sales are rising fast and expected to total 150 million this year.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6556845


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SBC Offers Wi-Fi Service to DSL Users for $1.99/mo

SBC Communications Inc. (SBC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it would offer access to its network of 3,900 public Wi-Fi Internet access points to its high-speed Internet subscribers for $1.99 per month.

SBC said the discount from the regular monthly charge of $19.95 for its Wi-Fi network was meant to boost usage of Wi-Fi services. The second-largest U.S. telecommunications company has been one of the most aggressive backers of public Wi-Fi service, with deals to put Wi-Fi in McDonald's restaurants and UPS stores, as part of a goal to launch 20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots by 2006.

The $1.99 charge requires a one-year contract with SBC. The company also said new users of its DSL service would get free access to the Wi-Fi network through April 2005.

SBC has 4.3 million subscribers for its digital subscriber line (DSL) high-speed Internet service. It has not said how many subscribers it has for its public Wi-Fi service.

Last week, SBC said it would use its Wi-Fi access points as an extension of the Cingular Wireless network, offering phones that can switch calls between networks by 2006.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6530727


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Electro-Bop music used in marketing for corporate America!
Press Release

While some musicians sing on radio commercials and some actors speak on them, very few people get to do both. But Scott G, who writes and records as THE G-MAN, did just that on new radio spots for Goodrich.

"It's great to be working with such a high-profile client as Goodrich," G-Man stated from his studio in Los Angeles. "Ninety percent of the commercial aircraft in the world have at least one product from Goodrich Aerostructures," G added, "so you know there's a lot riding on the marketing message."

As the owner of G-Man Music & Radical Radio, creators of award-winning radio commercials and music for both radio and TV spots, Scott G is very aware of the needs of ad agencies and advertising clients.

WEB-SAVVY:
In addition to his ad and marketing experience, he is very tuned into the Web. Earlier this year, hundreds of Web sites and newspapers ran a story ("Peer-to-Peer to Launch a Career") of how The G- Man made history by giving his music away on the Internet, encouraging P2P filesharing of his work, and even sending individual tracks to DJs and remixers so they could create new versions of his songs. This resulted in club play, airplay, an indie record deal, a publishing deal, and worldwide press attention.
http://www.prleap.com/pr_1552.html


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Kazaa Goes The Way Of Napster

Kazaa's long-standing position as the most popular online file-sharing software appears to be over. Last month, the daily average of file-swappers on the FastTrack peer-to-peer network, which includes Kazaa and related programs, was surpassed for the first time by users on the eDonkey/Overnet network, according to an online tracking firm.

EDonkey/Overnet averaged 2.54 million users a day while FastTrack averaged 2.48 million, the firm said. Kazaa users make up the largest proportion of FastTrack, said BayTSP spokesman Jim Graham.

Kazaa quickly became the most popular file-sharing software following the demise of the original Napster network, which shut down in 2001 after losing court battles with the music industry.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0...w=wn_tophead_6


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The Beat Goes On: This Recording Industry Bill Would Trap More than Just Illegal File-sharers
Wharton

In its latest assault on piracy, the recording industry is pushing legislation that would extend liability for illegal file-sharing beyond individuals and renegade software-makers to firms with a less direct role in downloading, such as Internet service providers (ISPs) and computer hardware manufacturers.

Stung by court decisions limiting its efforts to curtail file sharing, the recording industry says it needs legislation that would allow it to cast a wider net in its battle against illegal downloading. Proponents of the legislation also say it would protect intellectual property and encourage artists to create new work. Wharton faculty and technology companies, however, argue that it would stifle innovation and investment in technology. "There's no logic to this legislation," says Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader. "It goes against a lot of court decisions and common sense."

The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004, known as the Induce Act, would hold any individual or corporation liable for infringement that "intentionally aids, abets, induces or procures" copyrighted material for illegal use. Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, wrote in a letter to the Senate that "the need for the bill has never been clearer. This legislation is essential for the legitimate online entertainment services forced to compete on an unfair playing field."

The Motion Picture Association of America argues that copyright-protected industries account for 5% of U.S. GDP and should be vigorously defended. "The Act will further protect this vital economic contributor by clarifying for the courts that those who actively encourage others to break the laws designed to protect copyrights should not escape liability for their actions," the association says in a statement supporting the Induce Act.

Opponents of the legislation include more than 50 corporations - among them, Google, Verizon Communications, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo - along with consumer, academic and trade associations. They argue that the legislation would unfairly hold them accountable for others' actions. "The sponsors want to go after a few bad apples but the language of the legislation captures virtually every technology and service company, including ISPs and broadband providers, in its net," says Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel of Verizon Communications. Under the proposed legislation, companies like Verizon could be liable for copyright infringement for merely providing Internet access to illegal file- sharers.

The Consumer Electronics Association leads the opposition. "Right now this is the biggest threat to technology in over 20 years. We just think it will open the floodgates to frivolous lawsuits, hamper investment and stifle innovation," says Veronica O'Connell, senior director of government affairs at the Consumer Electronics Association in Washington D.C.

The proposed bill "is a real rallying point for both sides in the file-sharing debate," says Dan Hunter, Wharton professor of legal studies. "It's a war between these two opposing groups."

Lining the Pockets of Legislators

Republican senator Orrin G. Hatch, an amateur songwriter and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced the bill, which has gone through several rewrites and is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The measure also has the support of Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican from Tennessee, as well as Democratic leaders like Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barbara Boxer of California.

The bill had been scheduled for a judiciary committee mark-up but was withdrawn from the agenda after several days of negotiations between the two sides failed to reach a compromise. While the legislation could be dead this year, it may resurface in the lame duck session after the elections and is "highly likely" to reappear next year, says Jeffrey Joseph, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association.

According to Fader, while the legislation has bipartisan support among a few key senators, it also has strong opposition from a broad coalition of interests, including technology firms that often support increased intellectual property protections. "It's very unusual when you see everyone across the political spectrum not only against it, but strongly against it," says Fader. "To be blunt, [the recording industry] is lining the pockets of enough legislators to convince them that it's worth their while."

The recording industry, which is the primary driver of the legislation, has turned to the "political economy" because its current business model is threatened by the rise of file sharing, adds Hunter. "It has resisted the technology because it can't control it and doesn't know how to monetize it."

The Induce Act, if it becomes law, would make the providers of digital services wary of developing any product that might generate lawsuits from the recording industry, which has shown it can be aggressive in pursuing copyright infringement cases in the courts, adds Hunter. "Innovation may be bad for the content industry, but it's almost certainly good for consumers. The stance of the industry is just to sue absolutely everybody to death. This will have a chilling effect."

Fader suggests that the content industry has turned to the courts and now Congress to protect a business model that is changing as a result of new technology. "Imagine if the horse-and-buggy manufacturers had legal loopholes to prevent the development of the automobile. They would use it, but would society be better off?"

The recording industry might engender more sympathy if it had made a better effort to incorporate some form of digital distribution in its business model, he adds. "It has never even run an experiment. It wants to have legislators come in to help it avoid the need to ever do so."

New Business Models Needed

One potential new model would include the use of subscription services, in which consumers can sample music for a monthly fee and download songs for a price. The recording industry has resisted this idea, says Fader, because it is vulnerable to file- sharing. "The model for the industry is to push away from downloading completely," he adds, arguing that the industry has confused music fans by forcing them to distinguish between illegal and legal downloading, which he says can be difficult even for savvy customers.

Fader predicts that if the industry encouraged sampling, its business would grow long-term. "It would put the industry in a far better situation. It would delight the customer. People would be much more engaged in music. They would spend more time listening to music and feel affiliations with artists." Another approach, he says, would be for consumers to pay a subscription fee to belong to a peer-to-peer network. "The fact is, the peer-to-peer genie is out of the bottle. What's pathetic is how the industry keeps making these senseless objections instead of saying, 'Wait a minute, let's give this a try. Let's come up with a business model that would make this whole thing irrelevant.'"

Fader is more sympathetic to the film industry's objections to file-sharing. "With music, sampling is beneficial. You want to hear a song 10 times before you make a decision, whereas with movies, you see it once and it's done."

Joel Waldfogel, professor of business and public policy at Wharton, suggests that in the short-run, passage of the Induce Act would help record companies, which are losing revenue as a result of file-sharing. "Historically, some of the other technologies for copying did stimulate sales," he notes. "The industry didn't like VCRs initially, but that created a big market." As it is now, the current digital technologies make life more difficult for the entertainment industry because consumers can get high-quality copies from the Internet that do not diminish in quality with successive copies. "If this bill were to become law it would probably reduce illegal copying at least for a while. It would benefit the content industry, but the argument that it might chill innovation in hardware products is potentially right as well."

According to Waldfogel, the current vulnerability of the recording and film industries does not arise from a radical new innovation. "What's different here is that instead of the new threat being a substitute technology, or some other entertainment content, it's a complementary technology - technologies for either playing or distributing this content."

He, too, suggests the music industry must come up with new business models. For example, the Internet could allow the industry to slash its distribution costs. "Instead of putting out CDs and shipping them on trucks, they can send them directly at a very low cost. That does suggest a very different business model than charging $15 or $20 for a CD. It might be a much more attractive way to do things. Stuff that is easy to distribute wants to be free. Given that force, I think [the recording industry] needs to come up with a new model for generating revenue."

According to Hunter, the legislative initiative stems from several recent court decisions, particularly a federal appeals court ruling in August favoring two peer-to-peer software companies, StreamCast Networks and Grokster. The court said that a technology company should not be held liable, even if most of its users deploy it to violate a copyright. The decision was consistent with a 1984 Supreme Court decision known as the Sony-Betamax case, which protects electronics manufacturers against copyright infringement lawsuits.

"From the legalistic side, we already have theories about these sorts of liabilities which the courts have adopted pretty sensibly," says Hunter. "If you are something like the iPod or a peer-to-peer system or an ISP, then generally speaking, contributory liability is probably not going to attach to you."

Unintended Consequences

R. Polk Wagner, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who specializes in intellectual property, says the proposed Induce Act may be well-intentioned, but could have unintended consequences. "Even if we all understood that this is not intended to go after the iPod, let's think about somebody creating a new product or service that's not quite an MP3 player or something on the market now. There would be the question, 'Am I going to run afoul of the law that is vaguely written and if the recording industry gets mad at me can it come after me?'"

Wagner generally supports the recording industry in its efforts to protect copyrights, but says the Induce Act's intent to target technologies is troublesome. "Any time you try to lock in a legal scheme and actually define technologies and services, you are going to end up with a disaster." He points out that the theory of extended liability has been used before, most notably in shutting down the original Napster. "Napster itself was not infringing. It was facilitating its users to engage in infringement. The company knew this was what its users were doing and the courts held it had the ability to control" that.

Gunmakers, he says, also have been challenged for being indirectly liable for crimes committed using a firearm. "A lot of people have concerns of underlying liability. The concern is it can turn into open-ended liability for a lot of companies. The decisions can get very random and may be based, not on the actual cases, but on whether people like the individuals involved or not."

Fader points out that the Induce Act has not seen any action in the House of Representatives and is running out of time in the current session of Congress. "At this point it's more symbolic," something to give industry patrons a chance to say they are right, he suggests. Verizon's Deutsch, however, remains worried that the legislation could find its way into a larger package of intellectual property bills, or be attached to some completely different, essential legislation, such as homeland security or appropriations. "The concern," she says, is that "they might sneak this language into an appropriations bill with no floor vote, and bypass the whole legislative process."
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/i...rticle&id=1066


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Fight Songs



The members of Downhill Battle have taken up arms against the major record labels. Are they tilting at windmills, or is this a war they can win?
Mike Miliard

Shuffling down Worcester’s shabby, deserted Harding Street, Holmes Wilson stops and points to an empty brick warehouse across the road. Once upon a time, he says, it was home to the Space, a fan-operated, all-ages performance venue that was forced to shutter about five years ago, to the dismay of the city’s small but vibrant arts scene. But recently there’s been an effort afoot to pick up where the Space left off, to find another spot that could be home to the sort of do-it-yourself music and art events it once showcased. Spearheading the push is a group called DC-FIY: "Don’t Complain — Fix It Yourself."

It’s a slogan that could just as easily belong to Downhill Battle, the nonprofit organization Wilson, 24, founded last summer with friend and fellow Worcesterite Nicholas Reville. Wilson and Reville see a music industry that’s broken — bloated, outdated, money-hungry, monopolistic — and they aim to fix it. With music-sharing technology evolving exponentially and the Internet continuing to revolutionize communication, and with the major labels’ business models crumbling into obsolescence as lawsuits against file-sharers earn them new enemies daily (see "Deaf to Reason," News and Features, October 8), this is a unique moment in history, and Downhill Battle plans to seize it. Wilson and Reville envision a better, fairer music business — one with more diversity, where independent labels have more clout, artists are paid fairly, and music fans are active participants rather than mere consumers. The lessons they learned about community and creativity at the Space have sustained them in their quest to knock the Big Four (label conglomerates Universal, Sony-BMG, Warner, and EMI) down to size. "That’s the sort of direction that we feel the music industry as a whole is going," says Reville, 25. "Decentralization, and empowerment of individuals to be curators of music and be directly engaged with it."

For a little more than a year, Wilson and Reville, along with Downhill Battle full-timers Tiffiniy Cheng, Nick Nassar, and Rebecca Laurie, plus a number of loosely affiliated musicians, designers, programmers, and activists, have been working to effect that change through creative and provocative projects that speak the language of their peers. They seek to counter the misinformation they say is propagated by the major labels (via their lobbying arm, the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA); to raise awareness of and support for a legal P2P collective licensing system that would get money into artists’ pockets; to develop software useful to the peer-to-peer community; and to work in broader ways toward connecting the indie-music scene with the tech community and the free-culture movement. That, they say, is how the music- industry battle will be won.



Are they simply four naive idealists, railing in vain against the system? Or can this modestly funded operation, run out of a spare room in Reville’s mother’s house, really cut the multinational major-label Goliath off at the knees and usher in a new era of legitimacy for the P2P movement? To hear the Downhill Battlers tell it, this is a fight they’ll win. "All the social and economic and technological trends are pointed in this direction," says Reville. "Yeah, we’re on a shoestring budget. But we’re smarter than they are about the Internet, we’re smarter about publicity, and we’re not trying to fake people. We have reality on our side. The overwhelming majority of musicians are on our side. And we’re in a position to totally change public perceptions."

"It’s teetering on the edge, and we know we could be part of tipping the scales," adds Wilson. "It’s really that simple."
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/...s/04210246.asp


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A Left-Right Technology Debate

Washington insiders met to debate how to address possibilities and problems posed by technology.
Larry Greenemeier

In two weeks, the United States will choose a president. While the issues that most affect the business and technology markets aren't likely to swing the election to one candidate or the other, the repercussions of this election on topics such as offshore outsourcing, intellectual property, corporate taxation, etc., are likely to be felt long after all the ballots are counted.

These were the sentiments expressed by representatives of both the Democratic and Republican parties Monday night in New York at a technology debate sponsored by the New York Software Industry Association. The movement of IT jobs to emerging economies continues to be one of the most contentious issues between political parties.

The focus often is on job losses, said Reed Hundt, former Federal Communications Commission chairman for President Bill Clinton. But, he added, "The global arbitrage of wages is more important and serious than the jobs themselves that are being sent overseas, and that's serious." New jobs aren't paying as well as those being outsourced, he said.

Hundt's opponent, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, espoused the Republican free-market viewpoint. "Businesses are moving operations and jobs overseas because the U.S. has corporate interest rates higher than the rest of the world."

Neither Hundt nor Norquist claimed to be speaking on behalf of their parties' standard bearers. Rather, they agreed to the debate in an effort to articulate the views of their respective parties.

The debate also addressed intellectual-property rights and software patents. While these issues are hardly new to businesses, the emergence of peer-to-peer file sharing and open-source software is creating new dynamics. The debaters shared similar, although not identical, sentiments.

"Respect for intellectual-property rights protects IT jobs," Hundt said. Norquist agreed that businesses and individuals want to protect intellectual-property rights, but he wondered whether issuing large numbers of intellectual-property patents for technology was "carving up the Internet infrastructure and complicating the market."

Both debaters were likewise leery of proposed legislation in the Senate that would hold companies liable for creating technology that is used by others to infringe upon copyrights. Hundt called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004, introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a "dangerous bill for the technology industry because it calls file sharing a criminal act." Although the legislation has been put on hold, Hundt said passage of such a bill would mean "we're going to have to hire a lawyer for every kid in America to protect them from the Justice Department." The Bush administration and Congress should be focusing more on spam than peer-to-peer file sharing, he added.

Norquist agreed, saying that the entertainment industry has "cried wolf" in the past when they felt threatened by new technologies such as the VCR. "These technologies instead helped make Hollywood money," he said.

Where they disagreed, however, is how the government should approach containment of spam.

"Most Americans just want spam to go away; they don't much care how," Hundt said.

Norquist criticized Hundt for proposing what he called "one-size-fits-all" legislation. The market should decide the fate of spam, he said.

Hundt countered, saying that he doesn't advocate blanket legislation. Instead, he proposed prosecuting a single spammer as a warning to the rest of the industry.

The debate also addressed the government's role toward technology innovation, an area where Norquist and Hundt agreed the government could do more. Norquist concurred with President Bush's call to make tax credits permanent for research and development. In an April speech in Minneapolis, President Bush also said he would raise federal R&D spending to $132 billion, a 44% increase over the spending when he took office.

Kerry's position is to extend the 20% R&D tax credit that expired in June--a slightly different approach, although both candidates appear to be on the same page.

One way to spur innovation is for the government to be more of an early adopter of technology than it already is, Hundt said. While the economy is improving, corporate investments in capital and R&D are still down, he added, calling for the government to invest in "a little creative pump priming."

Innovation in any field helps the IT industry, Hundt said. "There's not one scientific application or research innovation that doesn't rely on software. Any research done, any investment in research, will be an investment in IT," he said. Taking a swipe at the Republican view that consumer spending has revived the economy, Hundt said, "A consumer-driven economy is great, unless you're selling IT."
http://www.informationweek.com/story...cleID=50500862


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Am I A Music Pirate?
Stanley Theodore

I love the old songs and have a healthy respect for the law, and I'm confused

A TECHIE friend who'd assembled my computer in summer dropped in last week to review its performance and, in the process, thought he'd give me a surprise. He downloaded BearShare. "With this you can get any song," he declared. I admitted having trouble finding full, legal and free versions of stuff like Beethoven's Symphony V, a polka composition from Strauss, Pink Floyd's evergreen Another Brick in the Wall or Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, and he explained that peer-to-peer file sharing technology made this possible.

This technology has no centralised network and the P2P software searches for songs on different computers located across the globe. I knew that this had been driving the Recording Industry Association of America and its counterparts across the world nuts ever since Shawn Fanning came out with Napster, the first P2P, in 1999. I have written about this and immediately told my friend that this stuff was illegal.
But I still was intrigued, my excite fuelled by a recent disappointment. There was a wonderful music site that had some songs way back from college days, and even some recent hits. There was stuff from the Eagles, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Lionel Ritchie, John Denver, Kenny Rogers and some real blockbusters like My Heart Will Go On from Titanic. The beauty was I could hear the songs from the site using RealPlayer without having to bother downloading them. Suddenly the Webmaster shut down, the site saying it was incurring far more expenses without ever getting back a cent. Clearly the site had a wonderful compilation of songs it wanted to share with anyone interested, but enough was enough - and a favourite site was gone.

I asked my friend to check for Freddie Mercury's We Will Rock You because my son loves it. By the time I'd finished a few calls, he was in the process of downloading a Pepsi video commercial with this song and featuring Britney Spears, Beyonce and Enrique Iglesias, among others. There was a sensational ad, pictured in the Colosseum with these stars portrayed as gladiators who finally quench their thirst with Pepsi. The bottom line was the audio and video quality, which was as good as we get on the National Geographic Channel.

After he'd left, I tried for Hotel California and got it in a jiffy. Another song I couldn't get hold of for almost two decades, Leo Speedwagon's Take It On The Run, came a bit slowly but surely and completely. Subsequent favourites like Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses and Whitney Houston's impeccable songs in Bodyguard also landed. If there was a complaint, it was that each song took 30-40 minutes or more to download. But on arrival, they were as clear as the finest CDs I've heard.

Off and on I've visited music sites like Raaga.com, Smashits.com and Hindisong.com, among others. The compilations are good, but one's favourites are not fully there. One can listen to them off the site, but have to put up with disconnections. By downloading songs one can listen to them on the run, literally. I have always been diffident about downloading songs as they take up considerable space - 3-5 MB for a standard song. I realised I need not worry about space as my hard disk is 80 GB strong, or 10 times more than my earlier computer. Here at least 8 GB is formatted exclusively for music storage.
So I turned my attention to some good old Hindi songs. I got through to Waqt's "Aye Meri Zohra Jabeen", then the evergreen "Ramaiah Vastavaiah". It was too good to be true. Around one in the morning I decided to allow the downloads, however long these took, switched off the monitor and went to bed. And I got songs I'd yearned after for years. For a change I need not buy the entire Dil Ne Pukara album or those of Mukesh's hits just to listen to Waqt Karta Jo Wafa. Or I need not buy Guide or Mohammed Rafi's albums to listen only to Tere Mere Sapne.

In that one week alone I downloaded over 40 songs. In the process these were probably among the half a million songs illegally downloaded through similar file sharing networks every month around the world. I don't know how many of these songs are protected by copyright or meant for free listening, but the fact remains that the songs I've longed to have for ages are with me now.
There were some disappointments: like I couldn't get Jidhar Dekhon Teri Tasfir from Mahaan. To help people like me, there are others, mostly teenagers, who copy the song from an audio cassette or a CD into the computer and upload it into the file sharing network. This is the principle around which these file sharing networks not only thrive but draw an ever growing number of passionate patrons around the world - causing the global music industry to grow more paranoid with each passing day. And they are suffering with sufficient reason since music companies and artists aren't getting their legitimate dues. It is with such heartburn that the RIAA began slapping lawsuits on people who illegally downloaded songs, several of them teenagers. Starting with 260-odd lawsuits in September 2003, the figure today is over 3,400.

As I was finding my favourite songs, the RIAA and Hollywood on 8 October approached the US Supreme Court to shut down similar P2P file sharing networks like Morpheus and Grokster. Two days later the court refused to hear their appeal that an ISP should give the names of the customers who might be swapping copyright protected songs. Though the court offered no comment, reports said other courts in earlier cases held that technologies like P2P and devices like VCRs could not be held liable for copyright violations.

The technology is legal but the process is disputed by the music industry. As a music lover with a healthy respect for the law, I'm confused. Frankly, I don't know what this entails, but I confess I love the songs.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.new...ess=1&id=57524


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Babelfish “translation” from the Dutch

Copyright Does Not Satisfy

In spite of recent adaptations the copyright no longer functions in the current digital society where P2P, web-unwieldly and DRM govern.
Laurens Verhagen

This conclusion reaches almost all participants of symposium 'Alternatieve organised by snappish or Freedom and XS4ALL models for copyright. Whether it concerns representatives of political parties or jurisconsults, the conclusion were certified Friday in Amsterdam: the copyright does not satisfy.

Concerning the next step - how a new author legislation then must see? - is the participants however the piece less with each other once. Lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm are an explained verdediger of the proposition that the rise of Internet requires new rules. He states that the traditional copyright on the slope must because the ancient power proportions between end-user, operator and author have been moved. "De consumer are no longer simple end-user, but are at the same time author and operator geworden." Indicates the lawyer in this respect on the rise of matter such as web-unwieldly and peer-to - pear. No solution "Traditioneel the rights of the operators have been especially emphasised. How we can ensure that also the rights of the consumer attention krijgen?", thus Alberdingk wonder themselves Thijm. The solution is not in any case establishing more laws and more rules, think the lawyer.

That the entertainmentindustrie do not sit wait for thorough adaptations, prove the response of Paul Solleveld of the Dutch association of producers and importers of picture - and geluidsdragers (NVPI). "Het are clear that with the arrival of P2P- diensten the maintenance a piece has become more cumbersome, but that meanss not yet that thus but the copyright must become aangepakt." Of political the entertainment industrie seem be able expect however little support on this point. Tweede- Kamerleden of the PvdA (Martijn of dam), greenness-left (Kees Vendriks) and CDA (Nicolien of Vroonhoven) and the eerste- Kamerlid Ankie Broekers-Knol of the VVD states unanimous that there something must change to the author legislation.

Van Vroonhoven is in striking in disagreement with its partijgenoot minister Donner. "Donner finds that there must be no change in the copyright. I find that worrisome. He has absolutely no eye for a healthy assessment between the rights of consumers and operators. The current copyright takes the Internet into insufficient account. Something must change." The Christian democrate continually think of a solution where not the government, but the market must carry solutions, for example in the form of DRM (digital rights management). Of dam and Vendrik find on the other hand think that the government must play a very active role.

Levies or DRM?

Of the points about which the last word has been not yet said, the question is if the solution must be found in the application of DRM or are now already applied in levies on for example blank DVD's. Both matter. Legal specialists state that this matter cannot each other exist near. Bernt Hugenholtz, hoogleraar informatierecht, are about that complete clear: "Het are or DRM or levies." Also Kamiel Koelman of the free university this opinion has been mattered. Both sketches extended the advantages and disadvantages of DRM and the levy model. A clear winner does not come however. The European policy tends clearly to DRM however, as a result of which is there little space for The Hague deviate. "Possibly are there just basis for the levy model as DRM its pledge do not redeem or as P2P the fight won." thus Koelman say.

As yet there still a levy on dragers sits as CD's and DVD's. The complete symposium is examine as from next week as from the site copyright symposium.
http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/printout.phtml?id=19777


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Dutch Parliamentarians Favour Releasing Public Broadcast Images Into Public Domain
Joe Figueiredo

Parliamentarians from Dutch ruling and opposition parties unanimously agreed that (most) images currently owned by Dutch public broadcasters should be released into the public domain and allowed to be distributed online.

The four politicians - Kees Vendrik (Green Left), Ankie Broekers-Knol (Liberal Democrat), Martijn van Dam (Labour) and Nicolien van Vroonhoven (Christian Democrat) - who were participating in a debate at a symposium on copyright in Amsterdam last Friday also promised to ask the government to take action.

Chairing the debate was Erik Huizer, who is responsible for digital distribution at NOB, the company that provides technical production support to Dutch public radio and television broadcasters.

He described the problems he encounters in his work: “Technically, there are increasing distribution possibilities. However, [distribution] rules are the obstacles. Even a broadcaster’s own production rights forbid online distribution. Programmes made with public funds belong in the public domain.”

“Based on my experience in education, you just about have to fall on your knees and beg for images. This is ridiculous,“ said Ms Broekers-Knol, member of the Upper Chamber, supported by her fellow parliamentary colleagues.

However, Ms Van Vroonhoven did concede that rights to such material released into the public domain should be selective and vary according to usage.

Her comments dovetailed nicely in with the symposium’s theme, Creative Commons (CC), and with recommendations made by Bernt Hugenholtz - professor in information law who sits on a government advisory panel on copyrights and is a proponent of CC - who told the symposium that this sort of licence is ideally suited for such public- domain material.

CC, the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig, law professor at California’s Stanford University, was introduced in the Netherlands in June and is a simpler way of handling copyrights on the internet.

CC licences are less restrictive (unlike today’s ‘all rights reserved’ ones) and come in 12 grades of ‘freedom’, based on usage (where, how and by whom).
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=3911


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Israel

Draft Bill To Legalize CD Burning For Private Use

The Ministry of Justice will determine the types of media on which royalties must be paid.
Hadas Magen

The Ministry of Justice is proposing a draft bill to legalize CD burning for private use.

The ministry yesterday published a draft Copyright Law (Duplication of Material) to legalize the private copying of music CDs, provided that it is done on stipulated types of media. A fee will be paid to the holders of the copyright, performers and recording producers for these types of media.

The purpose of the draft bill is to settle in a balanced manner the widespread private copying of music.

In discussions prior to the publication of the draft bill, Minister of Justice Joseph (Tomy) Lapid stated that the legal authorities should make it clear to the public that the copying of CDs was permitted for private use, and did not infringe copyrights.

At the same time, royalties should be set to be paid to artists and producers who invest their best time, money and talent in their creations, and have the right to be paid for their work.

The draft bill lists the permissible types of media that can be copied. Copying fees will be determined on the basis of frequency of use of the media type for the private copying of music. For instance, if a type of media includes CD burners, the law will explicitly permit the burning of music for private use and impose a fee on CD burners to be paid by the CD producer and importer.

The draft bill proposes that the state collect a fee from media producers and importers. This fee will be distributed to three representative royalties companies, which represent the producers, the performing artists, and recording producers.

The royalties companies will distribute revenue from the fee among their members - artists, performers, and recording producers - in the same way they distribute other royalties from copyrights they manage. The minister of justice will be authorized to set the guidelines for the distribution of the money.

Lapid said, "The state has discriminated against artists for years. Many people earn money from the artists' labors, leaving them with nothing. The time has come to correct this distortion."
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/glob...845974&fid=942


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Free Rhapsody At Adelphi University
Dinesh C. Sharma

Students living on the campus of Adelphi University in New York will get several months' worth of free access to RealNetworks' Rhapsody online music service, the company announced Thursday.

The free access will be available until May, after which students on campus will have to pay a discounted rate of $2 a month. The normal fee is $9.95 monthly.

Additionally, students who commute will be able to get the service for $2 a month, the company said.

Technology companies have increasingly targeted university and college campuses with wireless Internet offerings and cheaper music downloads. Subsidized music offerings are designed to discourage illegal downloads and piracy among students.

RealNetworks has been trying to make a dent in the digital- music market, which is currently dominated by Apple Computer's iTunes service and iPod device. RealNetworks' "Harmony" technology enables songs sold through its retail stores to be played on Apple's iPod. The company recently said it sold 3 million songs for 49 cents each during a three- week promotion. Rhapsody's library includes 790,000 songs and 60,000 albums.

Adelphi University has 8,000 students from 44 states and about 60 countries.

"Providing quality education is unquestionably the university's top priority," Jack Chen, Adelphi University's chief information officer, said in a statement. "However, we at the same time also recognize that easy and low-cost access to online music is important to our students. With Rhapsody, our students will have a legal way to access a vast catalog of digital music."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5409569.html


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Starbucks Opens CD-Burner 'Music Bars'
Correspondents in Seattle

US COFFEE shop company Starbucks is launching the first of its "music bars" where customers can listen to digital recordings and burn their own CDs.

The "Hear Music" coffeehouses will be open in 15 Starbucks stores in Seattle beginning next week and 30 stores in Austin, Texas starting October 25. The company opened its first music bar as a test in Santa Monica, California.

In a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks will allow customers to create personalised CD compilations and burn full-length albums from a library of 150,000 songs.

"The Hear Music media bar demonstrates another highly strategic extension of our brand as we continue moving towards our goal of transforming the way music is discovered and acquired," Starbucks' chairman Howard Schultz said.

Starbucks said customers would use self-service screens placed throughout the store, which feature a stylus pen to select music. Customers can also create a custom CD for $US8.99 ($12.30) for the first seven songs and US99c for each additional song.

Starbucks operates some 8,500 retail coffeehouses worldwide.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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Music Publishers Sign Deal on Web Radio

Music publishers and U.S. commercial radio station owners said on Monday they had agreed to a new $1.7 billion deal to cover licensing rights for music played over radio airwaves or via radio station Web sites.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), representing over 190,000 members, and the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC), representing most of the nearly 12,000 U.S. commercial radio stations, said it was the largest single licensing deal in the history of American radio.

The settlement, which was approved by U.S. District Court Judge William Conner in New York on Oct. 15, provides stations with the right to perform ASCAP music over the air and as part of a simultaneous stream on radio Web sites, the parties said.

ASCAP's repertory, the largest in the world, contains more than 7.5 million copyrighted musical works, in addition to works in the repertories of over 60 affiliated foreign performing rights organizations.

The agreement finalizes license fees for the period 2001-2003 and establishes new ASCAP licenses for the period 2004-2009. It also streamlines the process for administering license fees, they said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct18.html


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iTunes Downloads Pass 150m Mark
Dominic Timms

More than 150 million tracks have been downloaded from Apple's iTunes online music store, a significant milestone for the company, but new research shows the number of people using legal online services has fallen.

The computer-maker said it passed the 150 million mark when Lauryn Hill's Ex-Factor was bought by a fan in Colorado.

Independent research shows that Apple now has the lion's share - around 70% - of the global market in legal online downloads. Its nearest rival, Napster, which has just launched a pre-pay service in the UK, has just 11%.

The figures come just days after the US computer-maker announced that it had sold over 2 million iPods between June and September, a 500% increase compared with the same period last year.

Sales of the pocket-sized media player and revenues from iTunes - Apple is estimated to make up to 14p per tune from each download - helped Apple drive third-quarter profits to a bumper £59m.

Apple said it planned to boost sales of musical downloads by opening services across Europe in addition to its recently launched operations in the UK, Germany and France.

"Crossing 150 million downloads marks another major milestone for the online music business. We're looking forward to bringing iTunes to even more music lovers when we launch our pan-EU music store soon," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice- president of applications.

Though Wall Street reacted favourably to the news, pushing Apple's shares to a four-year high, new research shows that the company and its rivals are not yet attracting significant numbers of new download devotees, at least not in the US.

A study from US research outfit NPD Group said the number of people paying for legal music services peaked at 1.3 million in April and has fallen ever since.

"Over the 18 months since iTunes launched, paid music download services have been hoping for huge increases in paying customers; however, the number actually doing so has declined to about 1 million users per month," said thes NPD vice-president, Russ Crupnick.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/new...329993,00.html


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Self-Destructing DVDs To Help Market New Film

A little-known Atlanta company hopes to change Hollywood's thinking about movie distribution with a novel marketing plan that includes using relatively new disposable DVDs, the company said on Monday.

At the center of the Convex Group's plan is a low budget Christmas movie called "Noel," directed by Chazz Palminteri, that will debut in up to 10 U.S. cities on Nov. 12. On the same day, the disposable DVD can be bought for $4.99 through online retailer Amazon.com.

A little over two weeks later, the movie will air once on cable television network TNT, which Convex hopes will only spur greater ticket sales and higher revenues from the DVDs, which become unplayable 48 hours after their air-tight package is opened.

The idea represents a major change to the normal release schedule for a film, which generally calls for a debut in theaters followed about six months later by the home video or DVD and more months, perhaps even years, before it hits TV.

The reason for the long release schedule is to earn maximum profits in each market, and conventional wisdom is that rushing a movie into any one arena cannibalizes sales in the others.

Convex founder Jeffrey Arnold believes otherwise. "All these efforts are going to make the (revenue) pie bigger, and we are not going to cannibalize," he said.

Disposable DVDs are not new. A company called Flexplay, which Convex bought in September, has been making them for the Walt Disney Co., and Disney has test marketed them with some success in a limited number of cities for about a year.

Arnold believes disposable DVDs will broaden availability for a movie so that fans who may want to see a film when it is popular but can't get to a theater, could buy the Convex DVD.

The idea could be especially relevant for low-budget movies like "Noel" that open in only a few cities yet compete against national releases of major movies backed by multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. Fans who are aware of the movie but can't find it in their city can turn to the DVD.

"It is hard to get big marketing dollars during the holidays. You have to do something to break through the clutter," Archer said.

Likewise, showing the movie once on a television station with its advertising campaign also helps raise public awareness of the film. Those people who can't find time to watch it, can go to theaters or buy the Convex DVD, Archer said.

Finally, because they are unplayable after 48 hours, the disposable DVDs would not compete with the normal DVDs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5417573.html


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A Preliminary Report on the Chilling Effects of "Cease and Desist" Letters
Tricia Beckles and Marjorie Heins

When does copyright control end and "fair use" begin?

Fair use allows students, artists, journalists, and others to borrow and quote from copyrighted material without permission if they are doing it for purposes like commentary, parody, or news reporting. But the contours of this fair use defense to copyright infringement are vague, and in the real world, most disagreements don't get decided in court. Instead, copyright owners - especially corporate ones - send threatening "cease and desist" letters to those they think are violating their copyrights or trademarks. Needless to say, these letters do not advise the recipients that their borrowing might be fair use.

As part of FEPP's research into how well fair use is actually protecting artists, journalists, webbloggers, and others, we have been examining an extensive database of cease and desist letters put together by the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse (www.chillingeffects.org). Chilling Effects, a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and six law school clinical programs, serves as a resource for those who want to know what the law says about areas such as fan fiction, copyright and fair use, domain names, trademarks, anonymous speech, and defamation on the Internet. The Web site's depository contains almost 800 cease and desist letters, going back to 1997.

We analyzed 131 cease and desist letters deposited with Chilling Effects during the first five months of 2004 and chose seven typical ones for this preliminary report. Obviously, this is not a scientific sample: those who deposit the letters that they've received with Chilling Effects are likely to be more knowledgeable about their rights than most. And seven is far too small a number of experiences to yield accurate overall conclusions. Nevertheless, we think even these very preliminary results are interesting and suggestive.

Many of the letters are actually not sent to the alleged wrongdoers, but to Internet Service Providers or search engines like Google. Under §512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA"), ISPs must remove Web sites or other online material once they receive a "take-down" letter from a copyright owner saying that the material is copyright-protected. ISPs can be liable for copyright infringement simply for hosting this material, unless they comply "expeditiously" with these take-down letters.1

Seven Examples

Following are descriptions of seven incidents in 2004 based on cease and desist or take-down letters on the Chilling Effects site.

r A March 9, 2004 take-down letter from The New York Times to Verio, the Internet Service Provider for The National Debate (www.thenationaldebate.com) complained that The National Debate infringed on the Times's copyright "by displaying a 'New York Times corrections page,'" and by instructing others in how to "similarly infringe upon The New York Times's federally protected copyrights."2 The page in question, http://www.thenationaldebate.com/oth...orrections.htm, mimics the official New York Times correction page.

The National Debate calls its version "a parody intended to express through satire a dissatisfaction with a policy of The New York Times and was in no way intended to confuse people that it was a legitimate New York Times on the Web page."3 After a tense period, and with assistance from friends on other sites that agreed to "mirror" the National Debate site, the Times evidently abandoned its efforts to eliminate The National Debate's parody version of the corrections page.

TND described this incident as "a misguided attempt to use copyright law to silence criticism of The New York Times," and reported:

FIRST ROUND: Blogosphere 1, New York Times - DMCA 0
NEXT MATCH: Blogosphere v. New York Times - Columnist Correction Policy.4

Obviously, TND was not intimidated by the cease and desist letter, and the Times backed off. The parody site would have a strong claim of fair use had the Times chosen to litigate.

r In a January 28, 2004 take-down letter to Google, Mir Internet Marketing, which sells Web optimization products, claimed that ProLinks, Inc. (www.productivitylinks.com) used 14 words of copyrighted text from Mir's site. The words were: "Search engines are carefully tuned information management systems" and "not a process of manipulation or."5 These phrases, when typed into Google, produced a link to the ProLinks site.

Google responded by providing the following notice when these phrases are used in Google searches: "In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results."6 In addition to this removal of the site's link from Google's search results, the link cited in the letter as containing copyrighted text no longer works.7

In this case, the copyright owner succeeded in suppressing words that ProLink was using to market its products. ProLink didn't have much of a claim for fair use, though the copying of 14 words that are commonly used in describing Web products might be considered so minor as not to amount to a copyright violation. Although Mir would probably argue that ProLink's copying these phrases took traffic away from Mir's site, the nature of the Internet is such that no online business can really assure that potential customers won't wander off to other sites.

r In a March 18, 2004 letter to one Jarrett Graham of www.paypalredirectpro.com, eBay, which owns the PayPal trademark, claimed domain name and trademark infringement. eBay said paypaldirectpro would cause customer confusion - the essence of a trademark law violation. To get their point across, eBay's lawyers also warned: "the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act provides for serious penalties (up to $100,000 per domain name) against persons who use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes or dilutes another's trademark."8

Going to www.paypalredirectpro.com today results in an "under construction" message, which suggests that Graham was sufficiently intimidated to take down his site. It's difficult to imagine much of a claim for fair use here, although some courts have held that companies cannot use trademark law to suppress Web sites that parody or criticize them (e.g., Walmartsucks.com).9

r In a January 28, 2004 cease and desist letter to the owner of the www.sincereamore.com site, lawyers for CBS television asserted that the site's transcripts from the television show Caroline in the City, along with fan fiction summaries of the episodes, infringed CBS's "exclusive copyrights and trademarks." The letter somewhat patronizingly advised that "you may not have been aware of the applicable laws" - without mentioning, of course, that fair use is also part of the applicable law. Although CBS threatened legal action if the information were not removed, the letter assured the site owner that CBS was "quite happy to know" that Caroline in the City had such loyal fans, and to "please understand that it doesn't bring us any pleasure to send legal letters to our fans."10

The site owner removed the transcripts and fan fiction, resulting in an outcry from fans.11 In August, a new owner bought the site and seems to have re- posted summaries of episodes (though not transcripts). She wrote: "woo, I got rid of that depressing letter Ann posted a few months ago. And if you look closely on the left, you're in for a little surprise: The dearly missed section is back!!" There is also a disclaimer explaining that the site is completely nonprofit and has no connection with the producers of the show.12

Fan sites and fan fiction are popular forms of commentary on art and entertainment, and there is a strong argument that their plot summaries, quotes, and other borrowings constitute fair use. Certainly, it's difficult to understand how this activity can adversely affect a television program. In addition, it's important that producers not have total control over cultural commentary on their work, which by necessity often include quotes and borrowings.

r In a January 27, 2004 letter, Pet Friendly, Inc. (a company that designs, manufactures, and markets pet products) told Pet Friendly Rentals of San Diego, California that its use of the term "Pet Friendly" amounted to trademark infringement. Pet Friendly, Inc., calling itself "the exclusive supplier of rope chew toys" for pets "to the largest retailer in the world," claimed that Pet Friendly Rentals' use of "the name Pet Friendly™ will cause the public to mistakenly assume that [their] business activities originate from, are sponsored by, or are in some way associated with Pet Friendly, Inc."13

Despite the letter, Pet Friendly Rentals is still up and operating.14 A search on Google also yields www.petfriendly.ca (pet-friendly Canadian vacation rentals) and http://www.petfriendlytravel.com/Pag...a/georgia.html (ditto for the State of Georgia).

"Pet friendly" is a common enough term that trademark confusion is unlikely. Just as Fox News couldn't stop Al Franken from using the term "fair and balanced," so it's difficult to maintain that any one company can own the term "pet friendly." Evidently, Pet Friendly Rentals was not intimidated, despite the threatening tone of the cease and desist letter.

r In an April 14, 2004 letter from Waathiq & Associates' attorney to Google, Waathiq demanded that Google remove links and search terms relating to David Waathiq and leading to www.worldwidewarning.net, which contains numerous vociferous allegations against Waathiq's business practices.15 It is not clear how Google responded, since using David Waathiq as a search term still leads to the WorldWideWarning site.16 In this case, it doesn't seem that defamatory (but arguably true and therefore legal) expression about Waathiq was chilled.

r Finally, a February 5, 2004 letter from Chick Publications, Inc. to OSP System Management Enterprise, Inc (a Web hosting company) claimed that www.howardhallis.com, a comedy and comic-book site, contained copyrighted artwork created by Jack T. Chick, and demanded its removal.17 OSP notified Hallis, who deleted Chick's artwork, evidently assuming that he had no right to use it for purposes of parody. He wrote: "Taken down due to legal stuff. It will never appear again. … Sorry folks. Cthulhu destroys all that you love!" He added: "I myself don't agree with Chick's fundamentalist Christianity … The piece was done in fun, but you got to realize that the laws can censor you. Just look what's happening to Howard Stern."18

On this same Web page, Hallis has posted letters from his fans protesting the suppression of his parody. One reader wrote: "i was very impressed by your 'Cthulhu Chick Tract' - i thought it was hilarious, and a nice spoof on the original (which i consider intellectually insulting). i am sorry that you had to take the page down. However, i am also surprised, as i thought that 'fair use' laws allowed the modification of copywrited material for parody purposes."19

As this reader suggests, the parody may well have been protected by fair use. Since Hallis felt forced to remove it, this is a good example of how the DMCA's take-down provision undermines fair use.

Preliminary Conclusions

Even based on this small number of examples, we can infer that cease and desist letters sometimes - but not always - have chilling effects on speech that might qualify as fair use. Critical factors in determining whether the recipient of such a letter will comply seem to include awareness that fair use provides a defense; support from the community; and a non-risk-averse temperament.

DMCA take-down letters seem more likely to have consistent chilling effects. This is because the law requires the ISP to remove the material once the letter (if it's in proper form) has been received, without actual proof of a copyright violation, and then puts the onus on the Web speaker to assert his or her rights. Yet even here, we found one example of a take-down letter (regarding the WorldWideWarning site) that did not result in suppression of the accusations against David Waathiq.

As FEPP's research continues, we will try to learn more about how artists and others react to cease and desist letters, and what kind of support and information is available for those who receive them.
http://www.fepproject.org/commentari...anddesist.html


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In brief

Citrix Systems Inc., which makes file-sharing software, surged $2.53, or 12 percent, to $23.21, for biggest increase in the S&P 500. The company said fourth-quarter profit excluding some items will be as much as 27 cents a share, exceeding the Thomson estimate of 24 cents.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...kbU&refer=home


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Toe-to-Toe Over Peer-to-Peer
Michael Grebb

Amid the recent collapse of talks over the Induce Act in Congress, record labels are closing in on deals to enable several new peer-to-peer services to emerge -- with the sanction of major record labels that have so far derided P2P as a haven for piracy.

At a panel held Wednesday by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, at least one record industry representative predicted that such sanctioned P2P services will start to proliferate in the next several months.

"We are going to see three or four of these in the very, very near future," said Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations and legislative counsel at the Recording Industry Association of America.

Glazier said the new services will be consumer-friendly and enable the portability that digital music consumers demand, all without running afoul of copyright law. "P2P technology is great," Glazier said. "It can be harnessed for good or harnessed for bad."

After the panel, Glazier told Wired News that it's still unclear whether consumers will be willing to pay for P2P services, but companies such as Wurld Media and Snowpack are trying to wrap up deals with various record labels to try out new service models.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chief sponsor of the Induce Act, has praised such companies as the exception to so-called bad actors like Grokster and Morpheus, which he and the content industry charge are inducing people to violate copyrights.

Hatch, along with Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), initially introduced the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (SB2560) in June. But the tech, consumer electronics and internet industries opposed the bill, fearing it could suffocate innovation across multiple sectors by broadly criminalizing the creation of products that could "induce" copyright violations.

Talks between the content and tech camps to draft a compromise version of the Induce Act crumbled earlier this month.

Experts are starting to wonder whether content owners and the technology community will ever be able to agree on how to treat P2P networks.

Adam Thierer, the Cato Institute's director of telecommunications studies, said after the panel that both sides seem as far apart as ever.

"I don't care how long you lock everyone in a room and tell them to try to strike a deal, there are just some copyright issues where compromise proves impossible," he said. "This is one of them."

To be sure, the panel described failed negotiations over the Induce Act as a disappointing and somewhat grueling exercise.

As for the tone of the meeting, "I think the State Department calls them 'spirited,'" said David Green, vice president and counsel for technology and new media at the Motion Picture Association of America. "Everyone who was in the room wanted to get out of the room as soon as possible."

Both sides acknowledged, however, that they were at least able to define sticking points, which should help if and when the Induce Act rears its head again next year.

But Gigi Sohn, president of public-interest advocacy group Public Knowledge, said language advocated by content owners remains far too broad for consensus to gel. She said content owners' promises that they would only target P2P companies under the Induce Act and not go after devices such as iPods or TiVo digital recorders remain suspect.

"Despite the promises of 'oh, no, we won't sue you,' history has proven otherwise," Sohn said.

Markham Erickson, general counsel for NetCoalition, said the talks really broke down over a fundamental fear that almost any service or software could be construed as a suspect P2P network. He pointed out that even internet browsers allow people to copy files.

"The entire internet is one big copying machine," he said.

Furthermore, he said Hatch pushed too hard for a bill this session without any consensus among parties. "We needed a lot of time to work these things out," he said.

One wild card that could change the dynamics of the debate is the Grokster decision, in which a federal appeals court in August upheld an April 2003 U.S. District Court decision that P2P services should not be held liable for the illegal behavior of their users.

The day after the Induce Act talks broke down earlier this month, several record labels and movie studios asked the Supreme Court to overturn the Grokster decision. The court has yet to rule on that petition.

If the court takes the case and rules in favor of the content industry, "the push for legislation will likely go away," said Thierer. But he said such a decision could also prompt the tech industry to wage a fight for new legislation to codify the two-decades-old Betamax decision, which has protected devices that may have some infringing uses.

In the end, Thierer said he fears the lack of compromise could open the door for compulsory licenses for internet- distributed content.

"I hate compulsory licenses since they are little more than forced contracts and government price controls, but that's where we are heading," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65414,00.html
















Until next week,

- js.














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