[JackSpratts]

Hmmm…

Fish Exposed To Buckyballs Develop Brain Damage

A university study has found that nanoparticles can cause brain damage in fish.

The small, preliminary study, led by Southern Methodist University researcher Eva Oberdorster, found rates of brain damage 17 times higher in largemouth bass exposed to a form of water-soluble buckyballs than unexposed fish. The concentration of nanoparticles used in the 48-hour laboratory study were .5 parts per million.

Oberdorster said in a written statement that the current study is believed to be the first to show that the particles can cause brain damage, but researchers have not performed human studies. She said she plans studies to determine how the buckyballs can get into the fishes' bodies and cause damage.

Kevin Ausman, executive director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University, said in an e-mail it would be irresponsible to comment too strongly until the work has passed peer review. He also said it's not conclusive whether the effects seen in the study were from the nanomaterial or a contaminant.

The study was presented Sunday at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif.
http://www.smalltimes.com/document_d...cument_id=7630


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New Haven For Free Music: Canada

A Canadian judge ruled this week that it is legal to download copyrighted files for personal use.
Doug Alexander and Peter Ford

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, AND PARIS - Want a free copy of Janet Jackson's newest album? Or the latest song by Sarah McLachlan? If you're in Canada, just go to the Internet.

Music lovers north of the border can swap songs online without fear of breaking the law, thanks to a Canadian court decision this week.

A Federal Court judge ruled Wednesday that downloading songs for personal use or having files available on a computer connected to the Internet doesn't violate copyright laws.

"This is a victory for new technology and the Internet and the rights of users of new technology in Canada," says Howard Knopf, an Ottawa lawyer involved in the case.

But Americans and Europeans beware: this strictly Canadian decision doesn't bring any more clarity to the murky issue of file-sharing in their parts of the world.

"Canadian and American laws are very different," Knopf says. "This won't have any direct effect on the United States, but it'll certainly cause a lot of concern down there."

Nonetheless, this court decision is a blow to the music industry's crusade to stop people from swapping songs through popular Internet file-sharing services like Kazaa or Grokster, also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.

The Canadian court decision comes one day after the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) announced a new wave of lawsuits against 247 individuals in Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Italy accused of illegally sharing copyrighted music.

An intellectual-property lawyer in Germany, where the IFPI has reported 68 individuals to the police, expects the industry body to pursue its case there, even in light of the Canadian ruling.

"My best guess is that the industry will continue its campaign because for the time being that is the only thing it can do," says Stefan Dittmar, a lawyer at the Berlin office of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie. "They have failed to come up with any strategy other than intimidating people. But it won't work."

A spokeswoman for IFPI, whose members brought the Canadian and European suits, says she does not think the Canadian ruling "will impact our European campaign much, because we think it is a misreading of the law in Canada." Should the judgment stand after appeals, however, "it probably will have an impact."

In Denmark, more than 120 people are being sent letters asking them either to stop file-sharing and pay compensation, or face legal action, according to the IFPI. In Italy 30 people have been charged with copyright infringement since the Milan prosecutor's office began ordering raids in January, which have netted computers, hard discs, and files.

So far the legality of file-sharing in Germany has not been tested in the courts, says Mr. Dittmar. "The first cases in Germany are being talked about now, but there have not been any major judgments" to clarify the law, he says.

If file-sharing is ruled to be illegal in Europe, he adds, the Canadian judgment will not shelter European music-swappers, even if they download their songs from a Canadian server. "A copyright holder can pursue an infringement wherever it occurs," he explains. "If you download something in Germany, German law applies."

Just like a library

The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) tried using the courts to force Internet service providers to release names of 29 people suspected of "distributing thousands of digital music files to millions of strangers" for its Canadian lawsuit.

Justice Konrad von Finckenstein not only rejected CRIA's request in his ruling, he destroyed the industry's case by declaring that making files available on a public network doesn't infringe on copyright.

"I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user who places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service," he said.

His ruling backs a decision by the Copyright Board of Canada last December that stated that downloading a song for personal use isn't copyright infringement. The CRIA plans to appeal.

"In our view, the copyright law in Canada does not allow people to put hundreds of thousands of music files on the Internet for copying, transmission, and distribution to millions of strangers," says Richard Pfohl, a lawyer for the CRIA.

The head of Nettwerk, a record label based in Vancouver that represents more than 40 artists including Ms. McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies, says the judge is "completely out to lunch" on this issue.

"He has basically said that anything you've put up in a file-sharing system - it doesn't matter whether it's music, books, movies, it can be any copyrightable material - if people want to take it from your computer that's perfectly fine, because that's private use," says Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk. "But the problem is it's not private use."

Mr. McBride blames file-swapping for driving the global music business into recession.

Indeed, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Britain's record-industry trade association, released a study last week saying that while nondownloaders' spending on music last year was flat, downloaders spent 32 percent less on albums and 59 percent less on singles than the year before.

According to IFPI, global sales of recorded music fell 7 percent in 2002, and while last year's sales figures aren't available it expects similar results.

Ren Bucholz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a consumer advocacy group based in Saf Francisco, doesn't buy such arguments.

"It's always been a red herring for the recording industry to say that file-sharing was responsible for the huge downturn in their sales," he says. "There's lots of other reasons that are much more believable," adding that DVDs, console games, and movies all compete for the same entertainment dollar.

A study released this week by two professors, from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, says that file-sharing doesn't hurt record sales and in some instances it actually increases them.

Mr. Bucholz calls Canada's court decision "amazingly good news" on an international level.

"If this decision holds it means we have a highly industrialized nation with pretty good broadband penetration that has declared that having songs in your shared folder isn't illegal," he says.

No change for US users

Bucholz says Canada's decision won't legalize file-sharing in the US, even if someone downloads from a Canadian server. "Users in the US will still have to abide by US law," he says.

Yet US law has yet to be fully clarified. While file-sharing in the US is considered illegal, US judges have not yet ruled definitively on the issue. Most of the Recording Industry of America's nearly 2,000 lawsuits have either been settled out of court or have not yet made it to court because Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to release the identity of their customers who have been sued, citing privacy rights. A US appeals court ruled in December that the industry can't force ISPs to turn over the identities of file-swappers unless the ISPs are formally sued.

In Canada, the music industry's battle to crack down on pirated music is just background noise for many who embrace file-sharing programs.

Mimi Lee, waiting with a friend outside a Vancouver record store, says she's downloaded 10,000 music and videos from the Internet and file-sharing services in the past six years. "I've always thought of it [as] being illegal," Ms. Lee admits. "I'm surprised that the government [made that decision] but for us we really don't care - we still do it."

Such ambivalence has also entered the corporate world, where employees use work computers with fast broadband connections to beef up their online music collection. A study last year by Ottawa's Assetmetrix found file- swapping software installed on company computers in 77 percent of 560 corporations surveyed. Some companies had these programs on as many as 58 percent of their PCs.

Bryan Hsu, a salesman for one retail electronics chain, says customers do ask about the legality of downloading music, but it hasn't dampened sales.

He personally doesn't see any problem copying music files off the Internet - he has 1,000 tunes on his home computer - and applauds the latest news.

"It's good," he says. "At least we can still find something for free."

• Elizabeth Armstrong contributed to this report from Boston.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0402/p06s01-woam.html


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Students Undaunted by New Round of File-Sharing Lawsuits
BY Kim-Mai Cutler

A second round of lawsuits against anonymous file-sharers in college networks has not yet sent shockwaves across the residence halls, students say.

Back at the dormitories, old episodes of “The O.C.” and copies of Outkast’s “Hey Ya” were still zipping through peer-to-peer networks.

“As long as there will be free songs and videos on the Internet, people will find ways to share them,” said freshman Laura Davy. “It’s just too hard to stop them.”

Several students were unaware of last week’s announcement that the Recording Industry Association of America is filing 532 lawsuits against song-swappers nationwide, including UC Berkeley students who have yet to be named.

“This will probably scare students for a little bit and then they’ll just start up again,” said UC Berkeley freshman Megan DuBois.

Still others were unclear about what constitutes unlawful distribution of music.

“I’m under the impression that if you download music and keep it for personal use, it’s OK,” said UC Berkeley freshman Ryan Panchadsaram, who turns to Apple’s iTunes for music.

Others who have heard of the lawsuits have since turned off sharing abilities in large peer-to-peer services.

“On big networks like Kazaa, I block people from downloading my files, but they can’t really find you out through direct connection,” said UC Berkeley freshman Blake Lee.

Indeed, students who complained of garbled music on Kazaa are turning to a direct connection client called DC++, said Kevin Tong, who has since stopped using Kazaa.

Residential Computing does not actively scout the servers for students who share music.

But if students are caught, the university will receive a “take down” notice from an agency representing the copyright holder.

Students then receive an e-mail warning asking them to confirm they have removed the copyrighted material.

Tong was once warned by Residential Computing after downloading a copy of “American Wedding” from a Web site and was asked to quickly delete the file.

Repeated violations are reported to the resident director.

“The thing is we’re teenagers,” Davy said. “This is the age of information and it’s hard not to share it.”
http://www.dailycal.org/particle.php?id=14664


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Australian Music Industry Has Record Sales Year
Thomas Mennecke

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) has taken a similar path to its American brethren, the RIAA. Convinced that file-sharing and CD copying is evil, the ARIA has been actively pursuing Australian based Sharman Networks (owners of Kazaa). Although the industry has not yet declared war against it own customers, it has directly blamed P2P networking for the apparent decline of music sales.

"Apparent" is the key word mind you. Many global music industries, such as the Australian, American and British, have clamored that file-sharing has crippled music sales. However, many critics have questioned whether P2P is to blame, as alternative explanations such as a global economic recession, is more plausible. Interestingly, as the global economy has improved, so have music sales. Oddly enough, despite the increased music sales, file-sharing activity has stood its ground.

While the American music industry is recovering, the Australian music industry enjoyed its best year ever in 2003. However, The Sydney Morning Herald points out that the ARIA's press release, "Music DVD continues its rise whilst CD singles slide further" lacks this one piece of key information. The Herald continues to state that a savvy finance reporter, SBS's Peter Martin, discovered that CD sales topped 50 million copies in 2003. In addition, total sales (all formats) were 65.6 million. This value is well over the 63.9 million sales in 2001.

So, has file-sharing hurt the Australian music industry? The evidence appears to say "no", as Sydney Morning Herald points out that in 1998, a year before the Napster revolution, CD sales were a paltry 39.6 million units.

When looking at the ARIA press release, it fails to mention that 2003 was a record sales year. The ARIA instead discusses that the CD single, an out dated and antiquated relic, suffered a 16.57% decline in unit sales and 23.90% decline in dollar value in 2003.

Many agree that the CD single may have its days numbered, as the Internet has largely replaced the need for this entity. Whether you prefer P2P or "legitimate" sources, it seems bizarre to spend at least 5 dollars for a single when its available online for a maximum of 99 cents.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=438


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Cheqtrack File Sharing

p2pnet.net News:- Ian Dickson has a background in financial services and, while professionally engaged in arcane pensions stuff, also "ran a little dance label and promoted raves".

In 1993/44, he got involved in the Net, built a financial services dot com (Moneyweb) "even advising the
Financial Services Authority on the Internet and Compliance," sold Moneyweb in 2001 and since then has been involved in building a new type of social software community platform he calls CommKit.com and which (he modestly states : ) "is a must for all artists and labels".

However, Dickson also has other interesting thoughts one of which, he's convinced, could be the answer to
the 'How do we make p2p work for everyone?' dilema.

"Maybe someone will take the idea and run with it," he told p2pnet

Now read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

How p2p and a clearing house can save the music recording industry


By Ian Dickson

The Problem

The content industry cannot hope to control its content.

Whatever happens, there's no way around the problem that content designed to be experienced by people must always be turned into something that can be experienced, and at this point, it can be captured, ie, "the air gap" problem where I buy a DRM protected music file and play it, through a speaker system attached to headphones on a binaural recording head.

Result - an almost perfect copy, DRM broken. I upload to my share system. Soon everyone has a perfect copy of a 'good enough' original. You only need a few people who will break the DRM, to make DRM useless.

Also, the industry has the problem that the buyers perceive that not enough money goes to the musicians, and are loath to pay what they perceive to be a bunch of parasites living off the genius of content creators. Note - perception is what matter here as it determines ideas of fairness.

Fairness - people are, on the whole, willing to pay a fair price for everything. What they want to be sure of is that the money goes to the person they perceive is providing the service. And what people consider fair depends on the strength of their relationship with the content provider.

Summary - the present make up of the content industry is doomed, because it will never be able to stamp out file sharing, and its attempts to do so will alienate the consumers AND new technology will allow creators (new bands in particular) to bypass the present structures WITHOUT losing money.

Cheqtrack could be the solution.

Accept psychological reality, and work with it.

1) People will pay a fair sum, which will be much lower than CD prices, (most CDs have 2-3 tracks that you


play a lot, so work out at $2-$3 per track liked), and must be seen to go direct to artists (who may then pay out of their pocket for other services).

Working numbers - 2c per play, 50c to burn (and have unrestricted use thereafter).

In practice artists would set their own play/burn prices, and users would simply be warned if costs were above their personal settings - eg 'warn if play charge over 3p'.

This is a VOLUNTARY scheme, but works on the basis that most people will actually adopt it, if presented right, because people are willing to pay for the music that they choose to listen to IF they believe that the artists will benefit.

(There will be a freeloader effect, but this will tend only to affect those artists who are perceived to be very rich, or unappreciative of their fans, or who want too much money. I.E. they the problems of great success, not those of the majority of artists.)

By adopting a model of psychologically easy payment it is likely that actual total spend will increase, compared to that of buying CDs, which for most buyers has to be a definite decision.

This may sound outlandish - will people pay for that which they don't have to? Yes. Enough of them will, because they know that if they LIKE something and don't pay for it, then there may not be a next one.

2) P2P is FREE DISTRIBUTION for creators.

Why artists benefit

The Net becomes an interlinked series of P2P nodes.

In effect you want your content as widely distributed as possible to aid distribution to people who want to pay you.

You get paid for every play/burn. Note that while fans will pay to burn (up front income), many people who like, but not enough to buy, will provide a drip feed long term income by playing a track say 4-5 times a year, possibly for life. (Certainly whatever people like at age 25 they pretty much like for ever, and will play, on occasion, for decades.).

Math for artists

100,000 who burn in year 1, and a million who play 5 times a year.

Year 1 income, $50,000 from burns, $100,000 from casuals.

Long term income, $100,000pa for years and decades. From ONE SINGLE TRACK.

Plus, CRM possibilities - the system could track usage and use that to help bands reach fans. (automated or opt in options). So if there were 2000 casual listeners in GL area, the artist could take that into account when planning a tour etc, reach those people directly with tour info, thus garnering extra revenue.

It could also run opt in playlist monitoring - and thus flag to people what new music they might like. This could be automated matching, or human editorial.

There are a lot of other opportunities here, when you combine the automated logs with user choice, and this relationship building will be very important over time, and enhance artist revenue.

Overall - a potentially massive boost to income, AND, an income that spreads over a longer term, and a closer relationship with fans. Very attractive to any creative person.

Read more from p2pnet.


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Groups Go After Illegal Music Swapping Outside U.S.
AP

The music industry's campaign of lawsuits and threats against song-swappers moved overseas Tuesday as trade groups went after 247 people in Europe and Canada they accused of piracy.

The London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said individuals in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Canada had been hit with lawsuits, criminal charges or threatening letters.

The IFPI promised similar actions in other countries in the coming months. National music-industry groups in Sweden and Britain recently began warning users of online song-sharing networks by sending them online instant messages.

``This is our first coordinated effort to take this campaign over the range of countries where file-stealing is a problem,'' said Allen Dixon, general counsel and executive director of the IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide.

The group claims piracy is behind a five-year global decline in music sales. It said worldwide sales of recorded music fell 7 percent in 2002, with a similar plunge expected in 2003 figures.

The Recording Industry Association of America began targeting individual file sharers last fall and has sued 1,977 people. The RIAA has settled some 400 cases, generally for a few thousand dollars each.

The actions in Europe and Canada were taken by national recording industry groups affiliated with the IFPI. The targets were people who made at least hundreds of songs -- 54,000 tracks in one Danish case -- available for distribution and copying on free file-sharing services, Dixon said.

The tactics differed in each country, but in each instance the IFPI hopes to wrest a few thousand dollars in fines or settlements.

More than 120 people in Denmark were sent letters demanding that they stop illegal file-sharing and pay compensation -- or face lawsuits. In Germany, 68 people were reported to law enforcement authorities, while 30 Italians were charged with copyright infringement.

In Canada, 29 people were sued on copyright infringement claims.

In most cases, the industry had the full cooperation of Internet service providers in identifying the defendants, except in Canada, where the recording industry filed its cases against unidentified people it hopes to unmask later.

Analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media said he thought the actions probably would have a chilling effect, as the RIAA cases have. If people are scared into ceasing to share their music collections online, free downloading services like Kazaa will lose their value internationally.

But Leigh pointed out that the U.S. lawsuits came as the industry began to provide strong alternatives to illegal song-swapping -- commercial downloading services including iTunes, Napster 2.0, MusicMatch and Rhapsody. Those services have yet to work out the licensing and logistical issues needed to launch outside the United States.

Leigh expects the music industry to come under fire in Europe and Canada for assuming the RIAA tactic without aggressively launching commercial services there.

So far, licensed commercial download services in Europe are ``small little operations,'' Leigh said.

Cases against individual song swappers have been contentious in the United States, where Verizon Communications Inc. successfully challenged the industry's use of subpoenas to seek identifying information about Verizon's Internet subscribers.

A U.S. appeals court ruled in December that the recording industry can't use the subpoenas to force Internet providers to identify file-swappers unless a lawsuit is first filed. In response, the music industry has sued ``John Doe'' defendants -- identified only by their numeric Internet addresses -- and expects to work through the courts to learn their identities.

Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said it's unclear whether the RIAA's lawsuits in the United States have significantly reduced free music downloading.

But he said the cases are part of a broader strategy for the recording industry.

Zittrain believes the industry eventually plans to sue Internet service providers (ISPs) directly for failing to police piracy on their networks. If so, he expects the record labels will point to the individual lawsuits filed in the United States and now in Canada and Europe and say, ``Look, we have been trying everything -- it hasn't been effective,'' Zittrain said.

''I think the ISPs are quietly worried about it.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/inte...ing-Music.html


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Fight Against Illegal File Sharing Is Moving Overseas
Mark Landler

The music industry announced legal action Tuesday against 247 people accused of illegal file sharing outside the United States, taking its war against Internet piracy abroad for the first time.

Recording industry associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada have filed lawsuits or taken other legal action, aiming mainly at heavy users accused of offering a large number of songs online.

"This is not a U.S.-only problem," said Jay Berman, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in London. "We always knew we would have to take action outside the United States. At some point, you have to ask yourself when. That moment was now."

The unauthorized swapping of music has wreaked as much havoc on the global industry as it has in the United States. In Germany, where the effects of file sharing are compounded by the rampant "burning" of songs onto blank CD's, sales of recorded music plunged nearly 20 percent last year.

Mr. Berman said the threat of legal action had pinched the renegade file sharing industry. The most popular service, Kazaa, offered more than 900 million files in April 2003, shortly before the industry filed its first lawsuits in the United States, according to Mr. Berman. On Monday night, it offered 550 million files.

"That's still a lot," he acknowledged. "But we believe the number of files being copied has shrunk."

The recording industry said the lawsuits could result in fines or damage payments amounting to several thousand euros a person. Still, the legal actions taken vary widely from country to country.

In Italy, 30 people have been charged with criminal copyright infringement by the public prosecutor's office in Milan, which ordered raids to seize computers, hard disks, storage systems and 50,000 files. In Germany, 68 people have been reported to the authorities for suspected violations.

Denmark has sent "civil demand" letters to 120 people, ordering them to stop illegal sharing of files and to pay compensation, or face legal action. In Canada, the identities of 29 people accused of large-scale file sharing are being sought from their Internet service providers.

The nature of the industry's campaign - it announced no lawsuits in Britain or France, nor any in Asia - attests to the patchwork of copyright laws outside the United States. While the European Union has passed a uniform copyright protection law similar to that in the United States, it has yet to be ratified by all of the union's current 15 member states.

The existing cases are being prosecuted under national laws, Mr. Berman said. He predicted that lawsuits would be filed in other countries, but said the timing is dependent on stricter enforcement of copyright protection.

The British Phonographic Industry, which represents Britain's record labels, has continued sending warning messages to users of file sharing services, though it, too, has threatened legal action.

Critics of the lawsuits said the piecemeal approach would bewilder consumers, particularly in Europe.

"People won't understand the message," said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Jupiter Research in London. "If you're file sharing in Germany, you're in trouble. If you're file sharing in Spain, you're fine."

Mr. Mulligan also questioned the timing of the lawsuits, since, he said, Europe still does not have compelling legal alternatives to the unauthorized services. Sony has announced plans to offer its online music service, Connect, in June in Britain, France and Germany. Apple Computer has also indicated it will introduce its popular iTunes service in Europe later this year.

"This could hurt them," Mr. Mulligan said. "People will think, 'If you try to source music online, you'll have legal action taken against you.' ''

Mr. Berman made the opposite argument, saying that the lawsuits would clear the field for legitimate services. He said that there were more than 50 legal online music services already in operation in Europe and that more than 650,000 people were downloading songs through them.

Still, Mr. Berman said he was prepared for the same backlash that erupted after the American labels began suing file sharers last year. Nearly 2,000 lawsuits have been filed there, including 532 fresh cases announced last week by the Recording Industry Association of America.

"We're not going into this with the idea that we're trying to win a popularity contest," he said.

Gerd Gebhardt, chairman of the German Phonographic Industry Association, stressed that the legal action was aimed at "uploaders" - those who copy songs in large numbers and place them on servers for distribution - rather than people who download the occasional song for personal use.

Under German law, the downloading of music is illegal, too, but only if the user knows the material is copyrighted.

Mr. Gebhardt conceded that the campaign would do little to stem the main piracy problem in Germany: CD burning. Last year, according to a market survey, Germans copied music onto 325 million CD's. The German recording industry sold 133 million CD's with recorded music.

"In the case of one-to-one CD burning, we can't do anything," he said. "But with downloading, we have legal recourse."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/31/bu...s/31music.html


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Wal-Mart Hits Snags in Push to Use Radio Tags to Track Goods
Barnaby J. Feder

When Wal-Mart Stores surprised its suppliers last summer by announcing an aggressive timetable for them to put radio frequency tags on their shipments, it put manufacturers of the most tightly controlled prescription drugs on the fastest track of all. They were supposed to send bulk shipments of such drugs in radio tag containers to a distribution center near the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., by the end of March.

With that deadline just days away, Wal-Mart is now admitting that it will not be met.

A few companies have begun sending radio-tagged drugs, a Wal-Mart spokesman, Gus Whitcomb, said, although he declined to identify them. Mr. Whitcomb said that the company, which operates 3,000 pharmacies, had revised its goal and wanted all drug makers on board by the end of June.

The drifting deadline is the latest in a string of accommodations Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has been forced to make as it pushes to deploy radio frequency identification in its supply tracking process.

"Wal-Mart keeps cutting back on its requirements," said Michael J. Liard, the senior analyst following radio tag technology at the Venture Development Corporation, a market research company in Natick, Mass. "They're not ready; the industry's not ready; and the technology is not ready."

A radio identification system uses electronic readers to retrieve digital data stored in microchips embedded in plastic product tags, with metal grids around the chip that serve as an antenna.

Unlike bar code scanners, the radio readers can collect data from tagged items packed in boxes or hidden behind other items. And unlike common bar codes, the digital chips can carry more information about a product, like when and where that specific item was made. Radio tags could one day be integrated with sensors to record and report, among other things, whether refrigerated goods became too warm during the trip from manufacturer to consumer.

One hurdle bogging down Wal-Mart and its suppliers is the cost of the devices. The tags alone cost 25 cents to 30 cents each. Analysts contend that for many users the price needs to fall to 5 cents or less before the investments can be recovered from the savings generated by moving goods more rapidly and accurately through supply chains.

In the drug industry and others where counterfeiting and tampering are major concerns, the tags may pay off sooner.

Everyone, meanwhile, faces challenges like figuring out how far electronic readers can be positioned from the tags without missing crucial data and how to overcome the tendency of liquids and metals to block the signal. While today's readers can easily identify a pallet of Coca-Cola in cans, for example, and cartons on the outside edge of a pallet, they have trouble picking out cartons in the middle of the pallet.

It is also becoming apparent that industrywide standards for advanced tags and readers are developing more slowly than the technology's advocates had hoped. That adds to the incentives for delaying investment.

Wal-Mart was aware of these issues when it announced last June that it expected its top 100 suppliers to use radio tags on shipments by the end of this year, with all suppliers complying by the end of next year. But in November, Wal-Mart told the top group of suppliers - which swelled to 132 participants as companies eager to be pacesetters asked to be included - that the year-end deadline would apply only to a limited number of goods shipped to three distribution centers serving 150 stores in Texas.

The first big test for tagging of pallets and boxes of general merchandise is scheduled for next month in Dallas. Many analysts do not expect a full-scale rollout of radio tagging at Wal-Mart until after 2005.

The use of the technology has been endorsed by the Defense Department and other retailers like Albertsons, the supermarket chain based in Boise, Idaho, and Target Stores, the Minneapolis-based chain that is one of Wal-Mart's largest rivals. And technology giants like I.B.M., Microsoft, Oracle and Sun Microsystems have begun marketing products and services to help manufacturers and retailers gather and store data that radio tagging is expected to generate.

Major suppliers may also be focusing on the broader strategies of deploying the technology rather than what is necessary simply to meet Wal-Mart's initial deadlines.

"A company that might have gotten away with investing a couple of hundred thousand dollars to equip one of its distribution centers serving Wal-Mart in Texas now has to worry about the centers serving Target and Albertsons and how to tie it all together," said Erik Michielsen, an analyst at ABI Research, a technology research firm in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

Over time, he said, spending on software and services to handle the data gathered from radio tags will surpass the investment on the tags and readers. And, he predicted, Wal-Mart is likely to let short-term deadlines slip for suppliers that are investing tens of millions of dollars to make the technology more valuable in the long run.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/29/te...y/29radio.html


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Bush Focuses On Internet Access In Crucial Battleground States
Editorial

President Bush, hunting for votes in hotly contested Sun Belt states, said Friday his administration is working toward wiring homes throughout America with high-speed Internet access by 2007.

``We've got to make sure this country's on the leading edge of broadband technology,'' Bush said. It is vital, he added, to open ``new highways of knowledge'' to spread innovations in education, medicine and other areas, and keep the country competitive in global trade.

Bush also said the tax cuts enacted since he took office were largely responsible for the record high rate of home ownership, a bright spot in the economy he highlighted in New Mexico and again in Phoenix en route to a weekend at his Texas ranch.

During the last three years, Bush has sporadically sought to focus public attention on expanding the number of homes connected to high-speed Internet providers such as DSL and cable. But his call for ``universal, affordable access'' by 2007 was new.

It was a cause sure to resonate with voters still exasperated by slow dial-up Internet connections, or none at all.

In an outdoor speech here, the president stopped short of promising he would reach the goal by 2007, saying instead that ``we ought to have'' cheap high-speed access everywhere. Nor did he offer a detailed plan on how he hoped to achieve it.

But his administration has been working at it behind the scenes. Last month, the Federal Communication Commission voted to write rules for a third way to bring high-speed Internet service to homes: through conventional electric lines, where a homeowner could plug a modem into an electrical outlet.

In November, the FCC expanded the frequencies that wireless devices could use to provide high-speed Internet connections for computers and other electronic equipment.

At the same meeting, the commission voted to make it easier for rural health care providers to tap into federal funds to subsidize Internet connections. The high-speed connections allow rural hospitals to obtain diagnoses and other medical assistance from better-equipped medical facilities in more populated areas.

In his Albuquerque speech, Bush warned lawmakers not to impose taxes on high-speed access. A temporary ban on such taxes expired last fall. The House has passed legislation to make it permanent.

The Internet remarks were part of a speech largely devoted to homeownership. Bush said the current 68 percent homeownership rate was a record high, and he credited both low interest rates and the tax cuts he pushed through Congress in 2001 and 2003.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8287224.htm


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Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales
David McGuire

Internet music piracy has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, according to a study released today by two university researchers that contradicts the music industry's assertion that the illegal downloading of music online is taking a big bite out of its bottom line.

Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.

"Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file sharing, but not everybody who likes to listen to music was a music customer before, so it's very important to separate the two," said Felix Oberholzer-Gee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the study.

Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their "most pessimistic" statistical model showed that illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.

"From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales," said Oberholzer-Gee.

For albums that fail to sell well, the Internet may contribute to declining sales. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf found that albums that sell to niche audiences suffer a "small negative effect" from Internet piracy.

The study stands in opposition to the recording industry's long-held assertion that the rise of illegal file sharing is a major cause of declining music sales over the past few years. In making its case, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) points to data showing that CD sales fell from a high of more than $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003 -- a period that matches the growth of various online music piracy services.

The RIAA has fought illegal music swapping by filing a raft of lawsuits against hundreds of individuals suspected of engaging in music piracy, as well as suits targeting companies like Kazaa and Grokster that make software or run Internet downloading services.

Wayne Rosso, president of the Madrid-based file-sharing company Optisoft, said he hoped the study would spur the RIAA to abandon litigation and look for ways to commercialize file sharing. "There's no question that there is a market there that could easily be commercialized and we have been trying for years to talk sense to these people and make them see that," he said. Rosso formerly ran the Grokster file-sharing service.

Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, an Atlanta company that tracks file-sharing activity, said the findings match what his company has observed about the effect of file sharing on music sales. Although the practice cannibalizes some sales, it may promote others by serving as a marketing tool, Garland said.

The RIAA questioned the conclusions reached by Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf.

"Countless well respected groups and analysts, including Edison Research, Forrester, the University of Texas, among others, have all determined that illegal file sharing has adversely impacted the sales of CDs," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said.

Weiss cited a survey conducted by Houston-based Voter Consumer Research that found those who illegally download more music from the Internet buy less from legitimate outlets. Of respondents ages 18-24 who download, 33 percent said they bought less music than in the past year while 21 percent bought more. Of those ages 25-34, the survey found 25 percent bought less and 17 percent bought more, Weiss said.

Larry Rosin, the president of Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Media Research, said it was absurd to suggest that the Internet and file sharing have not had a profound effect on the music industry.

"Anybody who says that the Internet has not affected sales is just not paying attention to what is going on out there," he said. "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?"

Edison Media Research has done a series of surveys for a music industry trade publication to track the effect of online file sharing on music sales. Rosin said while file-sharing networks can generate advertising value for some CDs, the net effect of file sharing on music sales has been negative.

The Harvard-UNC study is not the first to take aim at the assertion that online music piracy is the leading factor hurting music sales. In two studies conducted in 1999 and 2002, Jupiter Research analyst Aram Sinnreich found that persons who downloaded music illegally from the Internet were also active purchasers of music from legitimate sources.

"While some people seemed to buy less after file sharing, more people seemed to buy more," Sinnreich said. "It was more likely to increase somebody's purchasing habits."

The 2002 Jupiter study showed that people who traded files for more than six months were 75 percent more likely than average online music fans to spend more money on music.

Sinnreich, no longer with Jupiter, has appeared in court as an expert witness on behalf of Grokster, a popular music downloading site that was sued by the recording industry for facilitating music piracy. In that case, a judge ruled that Grokster and several other services that distribute peer-to-peer software could not be shut down just because the software was used to violate intellectual property rights.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Mar29.html


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Industry Repudiates Downloads Research
Iain Shedden

THE head of the Australian music industry has criticised new claims that internet music file-sharing operators, such as the Australian-owned Kazaa, have no effect on CD sales.

Australian Record Industry Association chief executive Stephen Peach attacked findings from a study released this week by the Harvard Business School in the US, which claim that the downloading of music from file-sharing services has minimal effect on CD sales and that in some cases it increases the sales of popular CDs.

Peach told The Australian yesterday that he did not give much credence to the survey because "it undertakes a mathematical analysis of sales rather than just going and asking people about their file-sharing habits. We would challenge the research on a number of levels."

The major record labels, such as Universal, Warner and Sony, have been arguing against file-sharing for years on the strength of their own surveys, ever since Napster's illegal file-swapping service was launched in 1999.

Peach says the industry has an obligation to protect the interests of copyright owners, who are under threat from the free distribution of their work.

"It doesn't cease to be theft just because the person you're stealing from is doing better," he says. "With home taping there was, somewhere, an original, legitimate copy. In this new world order that everyone is trying to promote, there isn't an original copy within cooee. Perhaps one original copy is bought, if you're lucky, and millions of copies are then swapped."

ARIA and Sydney-based Kazaa owner Sharman Networks are embroiled in a legal dispute that resumes in the federal court next month. Kazaa had 3 million online users last year.

This week the court denied ARIA access to documents seized by its piracy unit in raids on Kazaa headquarters in February. The raids were initiated on the grounds that Kazaa's operation was allegedly illegal.

Sharman Networks chief executive Nikki Hemming has welcomed the Harvard research, which she says "supports the vision we've always had for Kazaa".

"We've offered content providers [the record industry] the opportunity to work with peer-to-peer customers for nearly two years, yet the record industry continues its narrow-minded strategy of litigation and legislation," she says.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E16947,00.html


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Australian Record Sales Up
Leigh Phillips

Okay, so the Antipodes don’t come close to counting as European, but this story’s just so juicy you could squeeze it and make lemonade.

While the Australian record industry recently made headlines around the world (and on our very own humble product, DMeurope) when it had engineered raids on Kazaa file-sharing software owners Sharman Networks, as well as on a number of universities and ISPs, it seems that the country’s music sector has been doing rather well lately, which must frustrate to no end the Chicken Littles in the Australian Record Industry Association, who, along with other countries’ music bourgeoisies, have been bleating on* about how peer-to-peer file-sharing is la fin du monde.

The latest stats from ARIA itself show that sales figures for 2003 show an overall increase in music sales and revenue over the previous year of 5.98 per cent. This works out to be some €25m (AUS$40m). There was, however, a decline in singles sales, although CD album sales continue to be robust, with an increase over 2002 in units sold and revenues from the sales.

Nonetheless, diehard ARIA just couldn’t take the good news, as it failed to fit with their anti-P2P ideology, saying in response to the figures: "The industry is encouraged by the significant increase in the volume of CD sales over the past year… [but the adverse impact of illegitimate CD burning and internet file sharing continues to be of significant concern, particularly in relation to CD singles where there has been a significant decline in both volume and value."

(Personally, I think it’s because Midnight Oil haven’t released anything for ages. But that’s me)

* Apologies. Bit of a mixed metaphor there. Chickens, obviously, don’t bleat: goats and sheep do.
http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=1380


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Kazaa Owner Welcomes Survey Findings
Sam Varghese

Sharman Networks, owner of the Kazaa peer-to-peer software, has been quick to seize on the findings of a survey released in the US on Monday which concluded that downloading music had no effect on album sales.

In a media release issued last evening, Sharman chief executive Nicola Hemming said "We welcome sound research into the developing peer-to-peer industry and this study appears to have covered some interesting ground.

"The findings certainly support the vision we've always held for Kazaa and crystallises our vision for the future of content distribution."

The 2002 study was conducted jointly by researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and used data from file-sharing services with 1.75 million downloads being studied over 17 weeks in autumn 2002.

"Consider the possibilities if the record industry actually cooperated with companies like us instead of fighting," Ms Hemming said. "We've offered content providers the opportunity to work with peer-to-peer customers for nearly two years, yet the record industry continues its narrow- minded strategy of litigation and legislation.


"We applaud the independent labels and artists, as well as the Bollywood movie companies and computer game and software developers who have had the vision to engage with us to grow this new industry."

The recording industry, predictably, had a different view. Michael Speck, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, the enforcement arm of the Australian recording industry, said the survey should have looked at the impact of file-sharing services on legitimate online services.

While agreeing that various recording industry officials have claimed in the past that record sales are affected by dowloading music, Speck said the survey also was somewhat outdated.

"The survey's findings confim what we in the industry have always said - that online piracy is about a core of highly valuable content," Speck said.

MIPI has filed a copyright infringement case against Sharman and some other companies following raids on their premises in February. The matter is due back in court on May 14.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...544527334.html


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New Study Keep File-Sharing Debate Raging
news@nme.com

Days after the latest claims that Internet music piracy is directly responsible for declining CD sales, a new American independent study has rubbished the allegations.

Last week the Britishmusic industry produced new figures which it says proves, for the first time, that downloaders are spending less on albums and singles than they were a year ago compared to non-downloaders.

But a joint study by researches at two leading US business schools says this is not the case and in certain circumstances downloading can even help boost sales.

Felix Obeholzer-Gee at Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf, a professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, have tracked millions of music files downloaded through the OpenNap peer-to-peer network and compared them with CD sales of the same music.

The researchers monitored nearly 700 albums chosen from a range of musical genres, downloaded over 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. They compared the download figures to changes in album sales over the same period to see if a link could be established.

The study found that in a "worse case scenario" it would take more than 5,000 downloads to reduce album sales by a single copy.

"If this worst-case scenario were true, file sharing would have reduced CD sales by two million copies in 2002. To provide a point of reference, CD sales actually declined by 139 million copies from 2000 to 2002," claimed the authors.

They even found that downloads can help to sell the most popular CDs - for the top 25% best-selling albums, 150 downloads increased sales by one copy.

Professor Strumpf added that the American music industry's campaign of legal action against file-sharers which began last September, is likely to prove ineffective.

Last week the BPI launched an instant messaging campaign warning UK downloaders that they risk prosecution if they continued with their actions.

Has the download issue made you angry, outraged, scared or delighted?

Would you like to share your thoughts directly with NME? Then we want to hear from you.
http://www.nme.com/news/108025.htm


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ACCC Readies For Telstra Showdown
AAP

AUSTRALIA'S competition watchdog is actively preparing for any courtroom showdown with Telstra over the telco's controversial broadband pricing strategy.

Telstra is facing possible multi-million dollar fines and damages action after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) earlier this month labelled its broadband pricing anti-competitive.

ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel told the ABC that the competition watchdog was busy readying itself should court action be needed, although he hoped another solution could be found.

When questioned whether he was preparing for court, Mr Samuel replied: "Yes. We are at the moment."

"We've started to put together the necessary documentation, briefed senior counsel and we've started to gather together now the witness statements necessary for us to go to court.

"I sincerely hope that that's not necessary, but that's going to be up to Telstra."

Rival internet service providers (ISPs) were angered last month when Telstra slashed its retail broadband internet prices to $29.95 after making a deal with Optus and other parts of the industry to sell broadband capacity to them at $36.

If Telstra is taken to court and found guilty, the telco faces the prospect of a one-off $10 million fine and then fines of $1 million a day for as long as the practice is deemed to have continued.

Telstra claims it has already negotiated prices with over 60 per cent of its wholesale customers, while companies such as Optus, Comindico and Primus have all failed to reach any agreement.

A Telstra spokesman said the telco hoped to sort out the situation before any court action was necessary.

"We hope that the minority of wholesale customers - who are holding out and are wishing for court action - will sign up and we'll be able to successfully negotiate satisfactory deals with them," he said.

He said Telstra had been in consultation with the ACCC over the past few weeks.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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iPod Mini Release Stalled
AAP

APPLE Computer has postponed the overseas launch of the smaller version of its iPod music player, citing unexpectedly strong US demand since the product's launch last month.

The company said it pushed back the international release of the iPod mini from

April to July because it needs more time to meet expected demand.

"The iPod Mini is a huge hit with customers in the US and we're sure it will be the same worldwide once we can ramp up our supply in the July quarter," said Tim Cook, Apple's executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations, in a prepared statement.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...E15306,00.html


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Music Labels Use File-Sharing Data To Boost Sales
Dawn C. Chmielewski

It was one of those sunglasses-required summer days in Los Angeles when Eric Garland, a leading expert on music downloading, arrived for his meeting with a senior media company executive. Rather than talking in the company's air-conditioned offices, the executive led Garland and his partner through a fetid back alley to a secluded courtyard.

Only then did the executive ask his question: Which songs, exactly, are the millions of Napster users illegally downloading? ``I just thought, this is crazy,'' recalled Garland, who had to prop his laptop on a dumpster to give his presentation.

The reason for the cloak-and-dagger theatrics, which continue even today: While the music industry publicly flays Kazaa and other file-swapping services for aiding piracy, those same services provide an excellent view of what's really popular with fans.

Record-label executives discreetly use Garland's research firm, BigChampagne, and other services to track which songs are traded online and help pick which new singles to release. They increasingly use such file-sharing data to persuade radio stations and MTV to give new songs a spin or boost airplay for those that are popular with downloaders.

Some labels even monitor what people do with their music after they download it to better structure deals with licensed downloading services. The ultimate goal is what it always has been in the record business: Sell more music.

``I know of a case where an artist had obviously gone with the wrong single, and everyone loved this other song they had on their record,'' said Guy Oseary, Madonna's business partner and head of her label, Maverick Records. ``In the world of what we do, it's always good to have real information from real fans.''

Maverick used BigChampagne's 100-city breakdown of popularly downloaded songs to persuade radio stations to start playing a new band, Story of the Year, during prime daytime listening hours instead of at night.

The online data revealed that despite Story of the Year's lunar rotation, its single ``Until the Day I Die'' ranked among the top 20 most popular downloads, alongside tracks from Blink-182, Audioslave and Hoobastank that received significantly more airplay. And when the band performed in a city, ``we didn't necessarily see the phones blowing up at radio, but we saw download requests for the song skyrocket as they went through,'' said Jeremy Welt, Maverick's head of new media.

Armed with this data, Maverick fought for more airtime at radio, which translated into more CD sales. Story of the Year's album, ``Page Avenue,'' just went gold, selling more than half a million copies.

``I definitely don't like to spin it that piracy is OK because we get to look at the data. It's too bad that people are stealing so much music,'' said Welt. ``That said, we would be very foolish if we didn't look and pay attention to what's going on.''

It's not an isolated example.

Garland said Warner Bros. followed a similar promotional strategy with ``Headstrong,'' the new single from the Los Gatos rock band Trapt. Indeed, nearly all the labels work with BigChampagne on a project or subscription basis, he said.

Some promoters at the major labels have gone a step further, using advertising agencies or other intermediaries to place ads on popular file-swapping networks to promote new acts.

Before the music industry effectively shut down AudioGalaxy in 2002, the labels would pay the file-swapping service to sponsor search terms to direct fans looking to download songs from, say, Radiohead, to an emerging band with a similar style.

``We'd promote it to you right there,'' said AudioGalaxy founder Michael Merhej, whose account was confirmed by two independent sources. ``The link took you to a third-party Web site done by the label, but you couldn't tell it was done by the label. . . . This went on for a long time.''

None of the major labels has been as bold as Artemis Records, a New York-based independent label with such mainstream acts as Lisa Loeb, Rickie Lee Jones and Steve Earle. This month, it began distributing paid versions of these artists' songs on Kazaa and other file-swapping networks. Using technology developed by Kazaa's business partner, Altnet, the first listen is free. After that, downloaders must pay 99 cents to buy the song, as they would on licensed services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store.

``My feeling is there's a promotional value to exposure,'' said Artemis Records Chairman Danny Goldberg, an influential industry player who previously headed Mercury Records, now part of giant Universal Music. ``Give something away for free, and hope they fall in love.''

While the smaller labels are willing to discuss the value of file-swapping information in promoting their artists, the legal crusade by the industry's giants to shut down Kazaa and two other file- swapping services, Morpheus and Grokster, makes it difficult for them to admit that they, too, want to know what's being downloaded.

Indeed, all but one of the Big Five labels refused to discuss how they use data from the file- swapping services, which are also known as peer-to-peer services because the files are technically exchanged between individual computer users.

A spokesman for Warner said he'd been advised against granting an interview, for fear of undermining the company's legal arguments that such services have no significant legitimate uses.

The one executive who spoke on the record said the download data provides a glaring look at the obvious.

``Kids in the neighborhood, they get the track they want because they heard the track on the radio or at a friend's house,'' said Ted Cohen, a senior vice president at EMI. ``I don't think you're going to see this great undiscovered artist discovered on peer-to-peer. The ones getting the biggest numbers are getting the biggest play.''

Nevertheless, EMI pays researcher NPD MusicWatch Digital to watch everything NPD's panel of 40,000 computer users do with the songs they download from file-swapping networks or purchase or transfer from CDs. EMI plans to use the information to shape artist promotions and craft terms for future digital distribution deals.

Wayne Rosso, chief executive of Optisoft, said file-swapping services like OptiSoft's Blubster and Piolet have helped the record companies, not hurt them.

``It's a great marketing vehicle,'' Rosso said. ``In fact, they should be paying us.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...gy/8318571.htm


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File-Sharing A Matter Of Balance For Metallica

The names "Metallica" and "Napster" are going to be forever linked in the public's mind after the metal band was the first big name to publicly take on the downloading service."I park it in an area of my brain that I rarely access," says drummer Lars Ulrich, who was the spokesman for the band in the controversy. "The only time I think about it is in interviews when I'm asked about it."

Metallica went after the file-sharing service and were lambasted as greedy rock stars - until the rest of the industry realized they were right.

"It was very difficult to have this kind of spotless thing going for so many years, then all of a sudden you're the most hated band in the world," he says. "People so just missed the point. This was not about downloading. It's not about money. It's about choice or control.

"Of course downloading is the future. A 3-year-old could tell you that. But on whose terms? On the artists' terms? On the record companies' terms? On the fans' terms? Or on the software producing companies that made the downloading available? That got lost behind the greedy, record-company-loving Metallica."

One of the ironies of the situation is Metallica leads the pack in legally selling entire shows, past and present, to fans via the Web. Not only are they available in MP3, but also as FLAC files - a lossless way of downloading that is on the technological edge, even more advanced than SHN files.

"We're trying to find the right balance between all the stuff and still have one or two shows left for that commemorative box set in 30 years or whatever," Ulrich says.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...768102,00.html