Fightback Or Death-Rattle?
The Economist
The recording industry has launched a wave of lawsuits outside America in a bid to curb illegal file-sharing on the internet, which has contributed to a steep decline in music sales. The industry is cutting costs, consolidating and—finally—getting to grips with legal online distribution
DESPITE a wave of hostile publicity, the 1,500-plus lawsuits launched by the music industry in America since last September seem to have had some success. Final figures for 2003 have yet to be released, but preliminary estimates suggest that the decline that has seen worldwide music sales fall by more than a fifth in the past four years (see chart) was arrested in the second half of last year in America. Heartened by this, the industry’s lawyers launched a second wave of lawsuits—this time in Canada, Denmark, Germany and Italy—on Tuesday March 30th.
This is just one of many defensive measures being adopted by an industry that is feeling the pressure. There has also been a round of actual and attempted mergers and alliances, and a wave of restructuring, in a bid to improve efficiency. EMI has tried to merge with Warner Music, and was also linked with Bertelsmann’s BMG music arm. But BMG instead got together with Sony Music, while Warner Music was bought by a private-equity consortium. On Wednesday, the still-partnerless EMI said it will cut 19% of its 8,000-strong workforce and slim down its portfolio of artists in order to save £50m ($91m) a year.
None of these actions has done anything to change the public's view of the music industry as one that gouges its customers. One reason that the illegal sharing of music files online is still so widespread is that music-lovers know how little of the price of a compact disc goes on its manufacture, or to the artist. Musicians, too, are becoming fed up. In an interview with BBC radio at the weekend, Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall described recording contracts as an “absolute disgrace” which belonged to “a Dickensian era”. He was particularly annoyed that musicians pay for recordings, but the music companies retain the rights to these. He suggested that this “immoral” system be replaced by a leasing type of arrangement, in which the artist gets control of the music once his relationship with the record label ends. Mr Hucknall has set up his own company and plans to re-record old output and release it in competition with existing recordings. Another pop star, George Michael, has said he will release his songs free on the internet, to remove himself from “all that negativity” surrounding the pressure to produce new records that comes from major labels.
When it comes to the internet, the music companies have, after years of burying their heads in the sand, finally got the message. The industry has at last given its backing to online music stores, such as Apple Computer’s iTunes and Roxio’s Napster 2.0 (not to be confused with the company killed off by the music industry for aiding illegal downloads). Even so, the number of 99-cent tracks sold by these companies remains dwarfed by the free downloads still available using the likes of KaZaA and Grokster. The industry has failed to shut down file-sharing companies whose peer-to-peer software has legitimate applications. However, behind the scenes the big labels are understood to be in talks with these pirates, to see if they can agree on a way to extract payments for songs.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the lawsuits against file-sharers in America had a “healthy effect on the industry”, the Wall Street Journal reported. From an initial 250-odd cases, the industry has now sued more than 1,500 alleged file-sharers, of whom around 400 have settled. This provided the impetus for this week’s suits against 247 users in Canada and Europe. One Danish case allegedly involved some 50,000 songs; Denmark has seen a whopping 50% decline in sales of CDs over the past four years.
Despite the industry’s official optimism about its legal strategy, it has limitations. Even after lowering the bar to go after those who have shared hundreds of songs—rather than thousands—the big labels have still sued less than 0.1% of illegal file-sharers; the lawsuits have made many of the others think twice before downloading illegal music, but plenty have continued regardless. Moreover, the strategy has created public-relations problems, exacerbating the public view of the industry as rapacious.
Meanwhile, there are signs that the industry is looking at more imaginative ways to arrest the decline in music sales. Universal Music and Sony Music are both working with their stars to remix songs into shorter versions, up to two minutes long, that can be sold through mobile phones. A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, reckons this market could account for almost a third of all music sales by 2006 if it is priced attractively. There’s the rub: songs on handsets are currently being sold for a pricey $4.50 a time in Britain and $3 in Germany. Anyone for illegal ringtones?
http://www.economist.com/agenda/disp...ory_id=2552490
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Music Industry Emits Static On MP3 Phones
The newest battle line between old and new technology can be held in the palm of a hand. Roiled by technology that allows consumers free access to Internet music files, the entertainment industry wants to lower the sound on MP3 mobile phones.
The music industry is demanding that the new phones only be capable of playing music at radio-level sound quality, but MP3 phone makers oppose the restriction.
Today, Samsung Electronics was expected to unveil its MP3 Anycall phone. But yesterday, instead of anticipating entry to a hot market, the world's No. 3 cell phone maker was enmeshed with record producers and government officials over the operational features of the phone and decided to delay the launch.
MP3 is a format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file while preserving the original level of sound quality. It allows consumers to download unauthorized music files from the Internet.
Between 2000 and 2003, MP3 players along with pirate copies of compact discs and tapes have nearly cut in half the value of Korea's music recording market.
When LG Electronics, the fifth-largest mobile phone maker in the world, and Samsung Electronics announced plans to release MP3 phones this year, alarm bells went off at groups claiming music copyrights, such as the Korea Association of Phonogram Producers and Korea Music Copyright Association.
In a nation where more than half the population carries a mobile phone, the potential for downloading illegal music files is huge in Korea.
All of the major handset phone makers are ramping up their product line. Overall, about 150 mobile phones are expected to debut in Korea this year and with discriminate consumers demanding more and more features, the MP3 option is viewed as a likely favorite. LG's Cyon MP3 phone already is for sale.
"Our industry has been in a nose-dive since the release of MP3 players in 2000. At that time, we felt hopeless because Korean people were insensitive to copyright issues and we did not have any unified organization that could cope with the situation," said Yoon Seong-woo, a director of the Korea Association of Phonogram Producers. "Because the MP3 phone market is big enough to destroy the music industry, we're struggling to defend it."
On the other hand, MP3 phone makers are worried that nobody wants to pay for something that they can download over the Internet for nothing.
In an MP3 player market where 95 percent of songs are illegally downloaded, an MP3 phone that can play only paid music files is unlikely to appeal to consumers.
After fierce debate over the new mp3 phone, the two parties have found some common ground by agreeing that MP3 phones can play illegal music files, but only at low sound quality.
Illegally downloaded music files will only be available for three days at the original high quality speeds until the technology of transmitting illegal music files at a low speed is developed, which will possibly take two months.
However, the controversy is still raging with Samsung Electronics insisting that record producers should eventually let them have high sound quality.
Without an agreed solution with KAPP, Samsung Electronics was inclined to still move ahead with its MP3 phone release. But the Korea Association of Phonogram Producers was said to withhold songs on Internet pages related to Samsung Electronics.
It also said it would consider not releasing any recent songs to mobile carriers and gradually stop providing songs that have been already transmitted to the mobile carriers via a content provider.
Overall, the producers' association is trying to protect artists' rights by discouraging consumers from downloading music files without payment. MP3 producers and mobile carriers' interests are diametrically opposed, as they are trying to attract many consumers by letting them download free mp3 music files.
But some companies have overcome such problems. Apple Computer's iPod portable music player is an example of an MP3 player that works successfully with a paid-for on-line music store. At iPod's website, called itunes, iPod users can download music files for about 99 cents a time and it carries more than 500,000 songs.
For the iPod mini that was released last month, Apple had advance orders for more than 100,000 units - representing sales of $25 million even before its launch.
Korean MP3 producers are still working on providing a music service in collaboration with music portal sites.
ReignComm, the biggest MP3 producer in Korea is also planning to start an online music service through its subsidiary, Uricomm. Samsung Electronics is seeking a coalition with an online music portal to provide songs for its MP3 players.
However, as long as free peer-to-peer music websites like Kazza and Soribada still seduce the fans, artists are hardly going to be rewarded for their music.
Digital sales of download and subscription services are estimated to increase 20-fold and amount to $1.8 billion by 2008.
The prospects for the music industry are still bleak, however, as the peer-to peer file-sharing services will take away $4.7 billion in revenues from the music industry in 2008.
http://www.phonecontent.com/bm/news/gnews/243.shtml
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ITunes Dubbed Music Leader
Apple's approach straddles law, user desires, researchers declare.
Jonny Evans
A Harvard Law School research team has deemed Apple's ITunes "the pacesetter" among digital music sites, noting that the company's approach bridges user wishes and copyright law.
The green-paper report examines how copyright law affects the digital media business, using the ITunes Music Store as a case study.
"In recent months, ITunes, Apple's Online Music Store, has become the pacesetter in the digital media marketplace," it says. The researchers say Apple's business model "responds to many of the current legal and technological challenges in online media distribution".
The report looks at the laws affecting copyright, consumer sales contracts, and technology in different countries in an attempt to figure out how ITunes and other services are likely to succeed in the different legalistic set-ups.
The researchers, from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, identify an "international trend toward convergence on many of the basic principles in these domains."
However, the researchers do not observe the trend observed by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University and copyright law expert. He has identified a trend in terms of U.S. foreign trading policy to encourage other nations to adopt copyright laws he describes as equivalent to U.S. laws. This leads to sometimes-inappropriate harmonization, Lessig told a Royal Society of the Arts conference looking at digital copyright in January.
The Harvard report notes that digital media firms often resort to contract law (couched in terms of service or license agreements) to govern how consumers use digital content.
Consumer rights
"License agreements may override rights consumers would otherwise enjoy under contract law" the study states. It adds, "In both Europe and Japan, these provisions often prohibit users from reselling, lending, or transferring songs--actions which are ordinarily protected under the first sale doctrine of fair use."
The evolution of digital rights management technologies such as Apple's FairPlay, and a legalistic network (such as Europe's recent Copyright Directive) are also part of the observed matrix, according to the Harvard study. An increasing move to recognize the laws affecting digital content in the country of sale within international law is also spotted, so called "first sale" rights.
Harmonization does not yet exist, the researchers say. "Many European nations are still in the process of determining exact implementation of the EU directive," they point out.
Differences in what are construed as "fair-use rights" internationally may also affect ITunes Music Store's business success.
"These differences may have two important effects on online music services. First, broad fair use privileges might decrease the record industries’ willingness to license their music to online music services. Second, and even more important, fair-use doctrines affect users' expectations regarding what they can and cannot do with purchased digital content.
"In order to be successful abroad, services like ITunes must address both the concerns of copyright holders and the different expectations of users around the world," the report says.
Local laws
Additional local laws may also affect Apple's business. For example, European consumers have the right to "withdraw from any distance contract within seven business days without penalty", a right that cannot be lost through contract law. This is because of EU legislation called the Distance Contract Directive.
Because of this law, Tiscali Music Club lets customers "return" downloaded music within seven days.
The report's authors say they are not certain whether this will affect U.S.-based services like ITunes. However, they note, "It will depend on the location of the store's European business center". Apple Europe is based in Paris. France is subject to this law.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which continues prosecutions against individual file downloaders as it seeks to demonize peer-to- peer file sharing, sees "little barrier" to legal action, the researchers say. However, Europe's music industry seems "more reluctant" to launch suits. "Only a few raids have taken place," they note.
"The foreign recording industry places greater emphasis on developing digital rights management, drawing public attention to the illegality of file- swapping, and increasing cooperation with ISPs rather than pursuing litigation," they point out.
The EU's recent Directive on Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights may change elements of the landscape: "It remains to be seen whether this will lower litigation barriers abroad," the researchers say.
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/prin...,115455,00.asp
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DVD Forum Chooses Apple Music Format For DVD Audio
Tony Smith
The AAC (Advanced Audio Codec), the audio format supported by Apple's iTunes Music Store, has been chosen as a key future DVD Audio disc technology by the standard's governing body, the DVD Forum.
According to an unnamed Forum member cited by web site High Fidelity Review, AAC beat Microsoft's Windows Media 9 format, MP3 and Sony's ATRAC because it "sounded better than the others".
Ironically, the Forum recently selected Windows Media as the basis for its future high-definition video DVD format.
First launched in the late 1990s, DVD Audio is being pitched as a successor to the CD. Sony and Philips are similarly promoting their own next-generation audio format, Super Audio CD (SACD). Keen to avoid the freedom the CD format has granted to PC users to rip tracks to compressed audio formats, DVD Audio was always intended to feature copy protection, though initial versions of the specification lack this 'feature' in order to allow manufacturers to bring players to market.
In order to ensure DVD Audio playback on personal computers, the DVD Forum has proposed the inclusion of a DVD-ROM 'zone' on each DVD Audio disc, which the PC-based player will read in preference to the main audio area. That DVD-ROM will hold compressed versions of the songs encoded in DVD Audio format, and its for these compressed tracks that AAC has now been chosen.
In addition to its superior sound quality, the format was selected for its support for both multi-channel audio and DRM. Apple uses the latter to protect tracks bought from ITMS. AAC doesn't inherently feature DRM, but its file structure was devised to allow the addition of DRM-related control data.
Just as DRM is optional within the AAC file, so too is the DVD-ROM zone within the DVD Audio disc. However, the fact that it is there as a choice for music labels to use should encourage more portable music player makers to build AAC support into their devices as Apple has with its iPod. AAC is also part of the MPEG 4 specification.
DVD Audio provides music encoded in multi-channel format, such as Dolby 5.1, or as high-resolution stereo. The latter digitises sound in 24-bit blocks at up to 192kHz, compared to CD's 16-bit quantisation and 44kHz sample rate. With a single-layer disc, that's enough for two hours' high-res stereo, rising to over three-and-a-half hours' playback with a dual-layer disc.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/36463.html
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PIRATE Act Reveals Sen. Hatch as Strange Ally of Pornography Industry
Ernest Miller
Conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R - UT) has frequently cast aspersions on sexually offensive broadcast programming. For example, see his recent comments regarding the current brouhaha over indecency on television (Hatch Decries Declining Morals on Broadcast TV). Yet, the logic of his statements on behalf of the recently introduced "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act" (PIRATE Act) would have the Department of Justice lawyers working on behalf of pornographers. In Hatch's world, the FCC would work to crackdown on indecency while the DOJ fought on behalf of pornographer's rights.
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002700.html
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Funding the War on Filesharing
Donna Wentworth
You may not agree with the recording industry's litigation campaign against people who use peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. No matter. Under legislation introduced Thursday by Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), you'd still have to pay for it.
The legislation in question is the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act (PIRATE Act). It would allow federal prosecutors to bring civil copyright infringement suits--meaning a lower burden of proof and no need to show that a defendant had knowledge of knowledge of/willful engagement in her wrongdoing.
"For too long, federal prosecutors have been hindered in their pursuit of pirates, by the fact that they were limited to bringing criminal charges with high burdens of proof," said Senator Leahy in a statement introducing the bill. "In the world of copyright, a criminal charge is unusually difficult to prove because the defendant must have known that his conduct was illegal and he must have willfully engaged in the conduct anyway."
Two million dollars are earmarked, four U.S. Attorney's offices must set up a "pilot" program, and the Department of Justice is required to file annual reports with the Judiciary committee to identify how many civil actions have been brought.
Okay--so the recording industry rejects voluntary collective licensing, implying that it's a compulsory system and therefore tantamount to the dreaded government solution to a private sector problem. Yet it supports the PIRATE Act--a government solution that would have taxpayers paying for lawsuits, not music.
Says Sharman attorney Phillip Corwin over @ Wired: "It's unfortunate that the entertainment industry devotes so much energy to supporting punitive efforts at the federal and state level, instead of putting energy into licensing their content for P2P distribution so those same people could be turned into customers."
Sure is.
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/002696.html
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OK, That’s It
Furdlog
It’s time to take it to legislators that think hamstringing the use of tools (and asking me to pay for it) is the solution to problems that they’re too lazy to put real thought into solving: Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P (see also Donna’s rundown: Funding the War on Filesharing and Errata)
Maybe these legislators think that the FBI should be spending their time on KaZaA instead of helping to explain the threat of terrorism to Condi Rice and the rest of this administration?
(Yes, I’m pissed - and no I haven’t read the bill yet, and yes, I know that these sorts of bills are generally just showboating, but showboating like this is too dangerous to leave unremarked)
Update: Ernest has put together a comprehensive look at the bill and its discussion, with the conclusion that Senator Hatch may end up spending a lot of time running away from: PIRATE Act Reveals Sen. Hatch as Strange Ally of Pornography Industry. Maybe we can ask Larry Flynt to call a press conference to thank Senators Hatch and Leahy for their efforts? Any other pornographers out there who would make excellent poster children for this initiative?
Further update: PIRATE Act Introduced in Congress
Even further (and later!): Ernest just gives more examples of why it’s really important to think you federalize/"felonize" things — PIRATE Act - Wiretaps for Civil Copyright Infringement?
http://msl1.mit.edu/furdlog/index.php?p=1613
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Students Find Ways to Fight High Cost of Textbooks
With the average price of a new tome reportedly at $102, online retailers and swapping services emerge as alternatives.
Stuart Silverstein
USC junior Kristen Louis is a savvy textbook shopper.
She has tried to save money by purchasing books through an online discount retailer and from a Web-based, student-run "swap" service on campus. When she can, Louis borrows or exchanges books with friends and acquaintances.
"I'm in college, I don't work, and I don't have a whole lot of money," said Louis, a philosophy major from Oakland. Cutting her spending on textbooks, she said, "is one of the best ways I can save."
Students' frustration over the high cost of college texts, along with their willingness to turn to the Internet and elsewhere to find better prices, is fostering book-buying alternatives.
"You can't blame the student for trying to find the best bargain," said Albert N. Greco, a Fordham University business school professor who has studied the college textbook business.
Some campuses are using Internet-based "book swap" services, which create marketplaces for students to buy and sell used texts among themselves.
Online book retailers have been making inroads into the college textbook business for several years, sometimes by offering discount prices.
Some resourceful online shoppers have saved money by ordering from foreign Web sites that sell English-language textbooks for less than their U.S. counterparts.
Another option for reducing California college students' book expenses is envisioned by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), who has introduced legislation to prod community colleges and public universities to offer textbook rental services.
The available alternatives now account for a small fraction of what Greco estimates is the $6 billion that U.S. college students spend on new and used textbooks each year.
Concerns about textbook costs were highlighted in a report in January by the California Student Public Interest Research Group.
It found that students surveyed in California and Oregon were spending an average of $898 for books this school year. The average cost of a new textbook, the survey found, is $102.44.
CALPIRG's study blamed publishers for the high costs, saying that they often release unnecessary new editions and frequently bundle texts with unwanted extra materials, such as CD-ROMs and workbooks.
The textbook publishing industry defended its practices, and some observers questioned whether CALPIRG's findings had somewhat overstated actual costs.
Still, students appear increasingly interested in alternatives to the traditional college bookstore.
The student government at Cal State Dominguez Hills last fall launched a book swap service that can be reached via a link from its Associated Students Inc. page on the university's Internet site.
David Gamboa, president of the university's student government, said that about 600 students had bought books through the site so far.
By putting buyers and sellers directly in touch, he said, the service cuts out middlemen, and both parties get better prices.
Gamboa said student leaders, in another effort to reduce costs, were urging professors to keep older books on their reading lists, so that students would have more opportunities to buy used copies. They also have asked professors to avoid textbooks packaged with workbooks and CDs.
At USC, student government also offers an electronic book-swapping system, and two other free Internet-based swapping services set up by students have been introduced this year.
One of those services, BookDonkey.com, was launched by business major Caleb Inman and computer engineering major Hunter Francoeur as what they called a "social entrepreneurial" project to help fellow students. Inman and Francoeur said they eventually might try to turn their service into a for-profit business by marketing the technology to other colleges.
Louis, the 20-year-old philosophy major, said timeliness and convenience were important advantages of BookDonkey.com over online book retailers.
With BookDonkey.com, she said, the student does not have to wait for deliveries. "You can just meet somewhere … and exchange the books," she said.
Louis said she had sold an organizational behavior text through BookDonkey.com for $50 that she could not sell back to the USC bookstore, apparently because it was an international edition that was somewhat different from the U.S. version.
She also used the service to buy an accounting textbook for about $60 — about $70 less, she said, than buying it new from the campus store.
Still, BookDonkey.com remains a tiny enterprise, with about 200 books sold so far.
The USC bookstore, by contrast, carries as many as 5,000 titles and generates book sales of more than $10 million annually. The existing services, as well as earlier, failed swapping efforts, have never diverted much business from the bookstore, said Mark Ewalt, an associate director in charge of book sales at the store. "It isn't much of a factor for us," he said.
Textbook rental programs have been offered at university campuses in Wisconsin, Illinois and other states.
The aim of the CALPIRG-backed Koretz bill is to push the state's public colleges and universities to offer students the option of renting books at 50% or less of the cost of buying.
Still, experience suggests that this option might have limited potential.
Pierce College in Woodland Hills, which is part of the Los Angeles Community College District, offered book-leasing from 1999 to 2001. It is planning to resume the service when its bookstore moves into a new building in January 2005.
But during its previous two-year run, the program was expensive to operate, mainly because about 45% of the participants failed to return the books and the school was not always able to collect the students' penalty charges.
In addition, students' savings proved modest.
Larry Kraus, the college's enterprise manager and the originator of the book-leasing program, said students would pay $65 to lease a book retailing for $100.
Yet Kraus said the book-renting program helped students by ensuring that they would not be stuck with expensive books that could not be sold back to the bookstore.
"It's not the end-all. It's not the magic bullet," Kraus said. "It's just another option for students."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology
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IBM Seeks Knockout Blow In SCO Case
It asked for a declaratory judgment in its favor
Robert McMillan
A recent court filing from IBM appears to indicate a growing confidence on the part of the computing giant that it will prevail in its legal dispute with The SCO Group Inc., according to lawyers following the case.
In an amended counterclaim to SCO's lawsuit filed Friday, IBM asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah to enter a declaratory judgment in its favor. IBM asked the court to rule that it hasn't infringed on SCO's copyright or breached its contractual obligations to SCO. The filing further asks the court to rule that SCO, which was at one time a Linux vendor, can't impose restrictions on the software that it previously distributed under Linux's open-source software license.
By seeking a declaratory judgment, which a judge could issue as soon as the discovery process is over and before the case goes to trial, IBM appears to be indicating that it has conducted an internal analysis of SCO's claims and has found them to be without merit, said Jeff Norman, an intellectual property partner at the Chicago law firm Kirkland Ellis LLP.
"It just means that they didn't find any smoking gun. If they had found something really bad, they probably would have gone to SCO and talked settlement," Norman said.
It would be typical in a case like this for IBM to undergo an internal investigation to determine whether any of SCO's claims were true, Norman said. Such an investigation would involve interviewing IBM's Linux programmers and reviewing e-mail and code contributions, he said.
IBM has over 7,500 employees involved in various aspects of its Linux efforts, including more than 600 developers who work in the company's Linux Technology Center.
Jeffrey Neuberger, a partner in the New York office of law firm Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP, agreed that the filing appears to show growing confidence on the part of IBM. "They're saying to the judge, 'We don't know what SCO is talking about; there is no infringement,'" he said. "They must feel very comfortable that there's no infringement."
Because IBM's filing seeks the broad judgment that IBM hasn't infringed on "any valid or enforceable copyright owned by SCO," a declaratory judgment in its favor would prevent SCO from bringing up new copyright claims later in the trial and would have a devastating impact on SCO's case, Neuberger said.
"If the judge comes out and says there is no copyright infringement, then essentially there is nothing else to fight over. It would be the knockout blow to SCO's case," he said.
Representatives from IBM and SCO declined to comment on the court filing.
SCO sued IBM in March 2003 claiming that IBM had violated SCO's Unix license, which was originally granted by AT&T Corp. but later transferred to SCO. Lindon, Utah-based SCO further claimed that IBM had illegally contributed source code to Linux. Last month, SCO amended its complaint to include charges that IBM had violated its Unix copyrights. SCO is seeking $5 billion in damages in the case.
SCO claims that Linux users don't have the right to use the Linux operating system without a license from SCO because Linux violates its Unix copyrights.
"SCO's threats and its claims against IBM and other Linux users are meritless, and are simply part and parcel of SCO's illicit scheme to get Linux users to pay SCO for unneeded licenses to Linux," IBM said in its filing.
How much longer IBM and SCO will continue with the discovery stage of the case remains unclear. In a complicated case, the discovery process can last for years, Neuberger said.
http://www.computerworld.com/softwar...,91789,00.html
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Spammer's Porsche Up For Grabs
AOL says the Porsche has "symbolic value"
BBC
Internet giant AOL has ratcheted up the war against unsolicited e-mail with a publicity-grabbing coup - an online raffle of a spammer's seized Porsche.
AOL won the car - a $47,000 Boxster S - as part of a court settlement against an unnamed e-mailer last year.
"We'll take cars, houses, boats - whatever we can find and get a hold of," said AOL's Randall Boe.
According to Mr Boe, the Porsche's previous owner made more than $1m by sending junk e-mail.
Hitting them where it hurts
AOL is one of the noisiest opponents of the evasive spam trade, and this month joined forces with Microsoft, Yahoo and Earthlink to sue hundreds of spammers.
Seizure of property is becoming a major tactic in these lawsuits, since guilty spammers often protest their inability to pay large fines.
The Porsche-owning spammer, whose identity remains confidential, was one of a group sued last year for having sent 1 billion junk messages to AOL members, pitching pornography, college degrees, cable TV descramblers and other products.
Mr Boe said the Porsche was seized mainly for its symbolic value, as the obvious fruit of an illegal trade.
The Porsche sweepstake lasts until 8 April, and will be open only to those who were AOL members when it was first announced.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3581435.stm
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Wireless Technology: A Cushy Wi-Fi Ride
Fast Net access in a luxury limo.
Michael S. Lasky
Well-heeled business travelers who crave constant Internet access can now stay connected even when riding in a limousine. Limo company Carey International has partnered with In Motion Technology to offer Mobile Office, which allows passengers to use Wi-Fi-enabled devices in transit.
I tried the service on a recent trip to the airport from downtown San Francisco (cost: $90). Carey's black Lincoln Town Car featured comfortable leather seating, a sleek wooden desk, and a power outlet. The Wi-Fi connection's DSL-like speeds let me download my Yahoo e-mail to my Palm Tungsten C in under a minute.
Carey offers Mobile Office service in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.; In Motion expects to partner with other companies, as well. The service is primarily designed for corporate customers, but is also available to individuals (for more information on making reservations, click here).
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115375,00.asp
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Mobile Phones to Operate TV Recorder, Says Opera
Reuters
Mobile phones can soon be used to control a video recorder for people away from home when their favorite programs are on, Norwegian mobile phone Internet browser maker Opera Software said on Tuesday.
Opera, which made its debut on the Oslo bourse on March 11, said that the Mobile Interactive Programming Guide (IPG) would allow clients to look up television schedules on a mobile phone and then press "record" to a video recorder, no matter how far away.
"The mobileIPG means full freedom to see what you want when you want it," Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera said in a statement.
"It takes just a few seconds to look up the program on the mobileIPG on your handset, and then activate your recorder at home with just a click," he said.
Opera said that it cooperated with two German companies, DiscVision GmbH and TVinfo Internet GmbH, in the research.
Opera's Internet browsers are installed on a range of mobile phones. It said that the new mobileIPG system could attract clients ranging from pay TV operators to mobile phone operators.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4701084
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ILN News Letter
New England Court Rules Scanned Photos Meets Statutory Theft Standard
BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Report reports on State v. Nelson, a New Hampshire Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that scanned images of intimate photographs removed by a landlord from his tenants' residence without permission constituted stolen property under state law. The court dismissed the defendant's argument that he returned the photos, noting that property ownership includes the right to exclude others from possessing, using, and enjoying the property. Article at <
http://pubs.bna.com/ip/BNA/eip.nsf/is/a0a8h0g8d6> For a free trial to source of this story, visit
http://www.bna.com/products/ip/eplr.htm Decision at
http://www.courts.state.nh.us/suprem...4/nelso020.htm
AU State Bans 'Cybersnooping'
New South Wales will outlaw unauthorised cybersnooping on employees using technology including video cameras, email and tracking devices. The new laws would make it a criminal offence to undertake any form of covert surveillance unless an employer could show a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by an employee.
http://australianit.news.com.au/chan...w_news,00.html
French Music Industry Set To Go After File Swappers
France is poised to join a cross-border legal battle against people who swap songs for free on the Internet. This week the IFPI announced suits in several other European countries.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62868,00.html
DirecTV Takes Thousands Of Infringement Cases To Court
The WSJ provides an update on DirecTV's strategy of suing users that acquire equipment to descramble its signal. The company has sent letters to more than 100,000 people and launched lawsuits against more than 24,000 individuals.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...669395,00.html
Korean MP3 Phone Dispute Nears Settlement
A dispute over the availability of MP3 playing cell phones in Korea is nearing a resolution. Samsung Electronics, the world's third-largest cell phone maker, on Tuesday accepted the government's second mediation of allowing people to download free music files and listen to them via cell phones for three days. After an initial phase-in period, the cell phone makers expect to allow MP3 playing only at low-quality sound.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech...7544211810.htm
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Indicted
This is a quick translation of the original page I wrote in french. When I'm pissed off, I write much better in french
Guillermito
It's quite interesting to discover, from the inside, how the french justice system works. I'm back from Paris. I've just been indicted and charged of distributing programs that violated Intellectual Property rights (literally translated, it's "counterfeiting and concealment of counterfeiting"). Maximum punishment for these charges are two years in jail and a fine of 150.000 euros. I'm not yet judged guilty or innocent, but I already had to pay around two or three thousands dollars for two trips to Paris (I live in Boston, MA, USA), plane tickets, and lawyer fees. I already talked about my story here (in french).
Let's start from the beginning. In 2001 and 2002, two journalists suddenly pop up in the french usenet forum fr.comp.securite.virus. They are preparing a serie of two articles (published in no 9 et no 12) in the paper magazine "Pirates Mag'" (an independant journal, 2600- style, which is now almost officially forbidden) about the french generic anti-virus Viguard, by a company called Tegam. They need some independant point of view, and my curiosity about security software is picked up. In march 2002, I published on my website a long analysis about this software. This webpage showed how the program worked, demonstrated a few security flaws, and some tests with real viruses. I showed that, unlike the advertizing claimed, this software didn't detect and stopped "100% of viruses". So, nothing really extraordinary. The company first reacted in a weird way: they denounced me publicly as a "terrorist", probably a nice attempt to make me change my mind. Later on, they filed a formal complaint against me in a Paris tribunal. The computer on which my website was hosted in France was seized by the police, and disconnected (the incriminating analysis of the anti-virus is still present - written in french - on the Internet Archive, and cached by some other people). The redirection with which I signed my e-mails and Usenet posts (guillermito.net) was blocked at the french registrar level, to follow a judge orders. The actual problem is that I coded and shared a few "exploits", ie the practical demonstration of my thorical analysis, which demonstrated the reality of the flaws I discovered, in a way that everybody could reproduce them on their own computer. The judge says that these demonstrations "reproduct and copy the code and structure of the Viguard software" (hence the counterfeiting), which is not true. Since then, I analysed the same way a dozen of steganography softwares (in english this time), and coded a few exploits for them too. Some of these softwares claim to be "unbreakable" or use "military grade encryption", but the hidden data is actually very easily detectable and often retrievable. No security at all.
If independant researchers cannot analyse security softwares and publish their discoveries, final users will just have marketing press releases from editors to assess the quality of a sofware. Unfortunately, it seems that we are heading to this kind of world in France and maybe in Europe.
To use an analogy, it's a little bit as if Ford was selling cars with defective brakes, if I realized that there was a problem, opened the hood and took a few pictures to prove it, and published everything on my website. And then Ford filed a complaint against me for that.
More in my professional domain, because I am a biologist and my job is to discover how biological systems work and publish my results, one can imagine the scandal if a pharmaceutical company filed a complaint against me because I published, for example, that a drug is not as efficient as their advertizing claims.
But when we are talking about computer security, there is no more rationality.
There is something very strange when you are in front of the judge who is doing the preliminary investigation: we do not speak the same language. I'm unable to understand law jargon, and the person in front of me does not understand anything about computer security and the internet. The lawyer is supposed to be the translator. But the lawyer in this case cannot speak during my declarations. It's kind of weird. You have to find a good argumentation, try to explain in simple words complex methods, how programs work, try to show that the accusations of the company are basically void.
There never was a similar judgement in France. The few "counterfeiting" cases I could find concerned people who copied and sold hundred of unlicensed programs, to make some money. That's very different from my case. So my case, like the Tati/Kitetoa case before (Kitetoa showed a commercial website flaw; I showed a commercial software flaw; in both cases the company filed a complaint; Kitetoa was finally cleared of any wrongdoing after two years of a costly procedure), is going to set a precedent. The question: is it possible in France today to publish software flaws, and the practical demonstration of these flaws? I am not yet judged, but I am pessimist about it, and it seems that we are heading towards a negative response. If I am declared guilty, full disclosure is going to be de facto forbidden in my country. Users will have to use marketing press releases from editors to be informed. Except Transfert (RIP - it was an excellent online news agency) and a few friends, nobody really seems to care about it.
For those of you who are not familiar with the computer security world, numerous advisories about software flaws, often including the code to exploit them, are published daily in very famous mailing-lists like Bugtraq and others. Government official organisms in France like the CERTA do the same thing. Even computer engineering schools like EPITECH ask their students to find flaws in anti-viruses. Everybody does it. It's an accepted and widespread methodology to increase the global security level. Even behemoth editors like Microsoft accept it, although not always with good grace, and thank people who discover flaws. I am indicted for doing the exact same thing.
It's a nice world we are heading towards. A world in which software editors have the right to lie blatantly, but an isolated individual cannot publish the technical truth. No more possible counter-balance power. Everything for companies, and too bad for consumers.
To give a quick feeling about the good faith of the two parties involved here, let me remind the reader that the company which filed a complaint against me, Tegam, accused me publically six or seven times at the beginning of 2002 to be a "terrorist wanted by the DST (French secret service) and the FBI", and a "computer pirate". The truth, because I have to tell it, is that I am a researcher in molecular biology in both the department of Genetics of Harvard University and the department of molecular biology in the Massachusetts General Hospital, two venerable institutions.
http://www.guillermito2.net/archives/2004_03_25e.html
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BuckTV - TV Episodes
Thomas Mennecke
When a giant falls in the file-sharing world, another entity is almost certain to take its place. After Napster's collapse, a multitude of newer P2P networks sprung into action, feeding the community's hunger for the file-sharing experience.
Unfortunately, last week we saw the indefinite end of ShareReactor. However, just because one eDonkey2000 link site is gone, does not mean you are out of options.
Let us take a look at BuckTV.net. Their logo "The Place for TV Hits" may very well be right on target. Keep in mind that BuckTV.net specializes in one thing, TV episodes. No music, no software, no CD image, just TV shows.
One of the more striking aspects of the site is the manner in which it is organized. On the right side of the screen is an alphabetical folder listing, where all available shows are organized. While new rips of recent show seem to catch the most attention, older episodes are also widely available. If you are concerned about video and audio quality, older TV shows such are available via DVD rip. New or newer TV shows are usually very good or excellent in quality.
The site also goes an extra step in having a very thorough description of many of the shows they offer, including a TV guide. There is little doubt that BuckTV.net is a TV junkie’s paradise. Many US and foreign based shows are also available.
Although ShareReactor may be gone, eDonkey2000 link sites continue to persevere. The drawback these resourceful sites is their vulnerability to copyright holders, as their centralized location make them easy targets. The jury is still out on whether linking to copyrighted material on P2P networks is legal.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=436
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Circuit City Buys Online Music Store
John Borland
Electronics retailer Circuit City Stores has purchased digital music service MusicNow for an undisclosed sum, the companies said on Wednesday.
MusicNow, formerly known as FullAudio, is one of the oldest subscription services. It recently added an iTunes- like song-download store to its line-up. The company, which currently powers services from SBC Communications, Charter Communications, and others, said it would continue to serve other customers in addition to Circuit City.
http://news.com.com/2110-1027-5182902.html?tag=nefd_hed
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Photo Sharing, Desktop to Desktop
David Pogue
DIGITAL photos are glorious, brilliant, liberating, flexible and free. They can also be a royal pain.
Take, for example, the ostensible joy of sharing today's high-resolution, multimegapixel photo files with friends and family members elsewhere on the Internet. What happens when you try to e-mail some baby pictures to, say, your mother?
Chances are, they'll bounce back to you because their file sizes exceed her account limit. Or if they get through - after a very long wait while they upload - they may well wind up clogging her in-box, exceeding its storage limits and causing all subsequent messages to bounce back to their senders. (Sorry 'bout that, Mom.)
But even if everything goes well, remember that a typical four- megapixel photo measures 2,304 by 1,704 pixels; most computer screens can't show more than a fraction of that without scrolling or zooming. What your mother might finally see of your new family member, in other words, is a pair of gigantic baby nostrils.
The best digital shoebox programs, including iPhoto and Photoshop Album, can automatically shrink your photos to a reasonable size before e-mailing them. But what if your recipients have wisely absorbed the message that, these days, opening any e-mail attachment is a virus risk? They'll never see your photos.
You could post your pictures at a Web site, of course, and just send your mom its Web address. But to do that inexpensively, you need a recessive geek gene and familiarity with such cheerful protocols as HTML and FTP. And to do it simply, you usually have to pay an annual fee, either for a one-click photo-gallery service (like Photosite.com or Apple's .Mac) or for a photo-hosting site. (One attractive exception: webshots.com, where you can post up to 240 pictures at no charge. Your fans can sign up for automatic e-mail notification whenever you add to your gallery.)
Of course you could always drag your pictures directly into an instant-messaging window, using a chat program like Apple's iChat or LifeScape's Hello (an add-on for its Picasa photo software) - but that system doesn't work unless you and your mother are online and chatting at the same time.
It finally occurred to somebody - two somebodies, in fact - that there might be a better way. Why not adapt the desktop-to-desktop, peer-to-peer formula of networks like Kazaa, so popular in music trading, for trading photos? After all, it would be perfectly legal.
The two contenders, ShareALot (sharealot.com) and OurPictures (ourpictures.com), are designed to shoot your photo files directly to the desktops of designated friends and family members, completely bypassing e-mail and Web sites.
The simpler service, and the one most devoted to its task, is ShareALot. When the program is running, a yellow folder icon sits on your Windows or Mac OS X desktop. To share some photos, you just drag them onto that folder. From a pop-up menu, choose Create a New Share. Your ShareALot address book appears, and you click on the names of the lucky recipients.
Now you name your shared batch of photos, type a little message ("Apart from the overturned spaghetti bowl, isn't she cute?") and click on Finish.
The next time your mother spends at least a few minutes online, a Mac dialog box or Windows system-tray balloon will appear on her computer to announce the arrival of the new pictures. When she points to the yellow ShareALot folder icon on her screen and clicks Show Albums in the shortcut menu, your photos will open in her Web browser. (ShareALot simply uses the browser as a viewer. The photos aren't actually on the Web; they're dispatched from your hard drive to your mother's, for viewing even after she goes offline.)
Next and Previous buttons let your mother conduct her own little grandmotherly slide show of your baby shots. Short of hiring a professional mouse manipulator, it couldn't get much easier.
In the current, early release of the software, the Rename, Rotate and Order Prints buttons say "coming soon." Already, though, your recipients can click on the "Higher resolution available" button. ShareALot sends an invisible message back to your computer requesting the transmission of your original jumbo high-resolution picture files, which your fans will need if they want to print out the photos. Otherwise, what they see on the screen are scaled-down, 640-by-480-pixel versions that transfer quickly and are ideally sized for display on the screen.
ShareALot is a treat to use, especially because it's simple, free and equally satisfying for Mac, Windows and (soon) Linux fans. The company indicates that the finished version of the service will offer premium features for a fee - ordering prints, for example - but that basic photo sharing features will remain free.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/te...ts/01stat.html
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For Those Who Play, Laptops Get Serious
Seth Schiesel
HUNCHED over his keyboard, eyes flicking intently over the digital animations dancing before him, Victor J. Group looked just like the other pale young gamers in the basement of a house on a nondescript side street in this Buffalo suburb. With his black T-shirt and blue jeans, he was even wearing the all-but-required uniform.
But unlike most of the others who were stalking, shooting and invading one another at a Saturday night gaming party, he was not performing in the shadow of a hulking computer tower and massive monitor. Victor, a 14-year-old high school freshman, waged his attacks from the $2,800 Hewlett-Packard laptop he bought last summer after working a paper route for 13 months to earn the money.
"I know I could have bought something comparable for about $1,500 less in a desktop machine, but those guys have to carry those towers and monitors out of here," he said, looking over the rows of behemoths. "Three years ago, laptops couldn't have compared to a desktop. Everyone knows that. Even six or seven months ago, desktop gaming was superior to laptop gaming. But things have changed."
Shane M. Kluskowski, 16, leaned over the row of empty caffeine drink bottles that separated him from Victor and said that he was washing dishes 20 hours a week at a nearby diner to pay off his own $2,100 laptop.
"It's the best investment ever," Shane declared. "I am going to keep it for the rest of my life, probably, because I won't be able to afford another one."
It is unlikely that he will actually be able to use his prized possession for the rest of his days. It is certain, however, that the two teenagers are in the vanguard of a significant shift in how the world's most serious gamers show their stuff. For the first time, laptops can compete with the big boys.
"It always used to be that if you did a story on laptop gaming, it would be looking at the best games from two years ago and saying, 'Play these on your laptop,' " said Rob Smith, the editor in chief of PC Gamer magazine. "Now I use a laptop and I can play the latest games flawlessly, and it wasn't even really possible two or three years ago."
While the gaming laptop trend took off last year with specialty PC makers like VoodooPC and Alienware, mainstream manufacturers are now jumping into the fray. In February, for instance, Dell introduced its first laptop aimed specifically at gamers. As overall PC prices continue to decline and competition rages in the budget end of the market, computer makers are realizing that gamers for whom "frame rate is life" are willing to pay top dollar for top-performing machines, including laptops. In addition to high-school students, that audience includes young professional adults weaned on video games.
"The difference between the power of a notebook versus an extremely powerful desktop is getting so close that our customer typically has both a desktop and a notebook," Rahul Sood, 31, the president of VoodooPC, said in a telephone interview. For his contemporaries, "there's basically a bunch of kids that grew up on Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Intellivision," he added. "Well, now we have money, so the people we're dealing with are this young, hip crowd that makes an income and still wants the best they can get in terms of an entertainment experience."
Since the 1980's, laptops have been the weaklings of the computer world. Sure, the gamers scoffed, let the executives write e-mail on their laptops. But when it comes to hard-core graphics and contests in which an eye blink is an eternity, only big desktop towers will do, or so the thinking went.
But no more. Of the 30 or so gamers at the 15-hour party here, four were on laptops. That might not seem like a lot, but it looked like the inkling of a trend.
"Even a couple years ago, there would have been no one on laptops here," said Zachary M. Thomas, 22, the host, who started having gaming parties in his parents' basement in 1996 and now puts on such events a few times a year. "Over the last year, though, we've started to see the laptops come in, and I think they will continue to become more popular. You can finally actually play the games on them, which in some ways wasn't even possible in the past. Over all, it's a mix of affordability, convenience and power in the machine that is making them more popular."
The new breed of gaming laptop is not for everyone. For most consumers and corporate users, the most important factors in selecting a laptop are size, weight and battery life. In those categories, top-end gaming laptops leave much to be desired. They are relatively bulky and can weigh eight pounds or more (while some laptops come in under four pounds), and a user is lucky to coax even an hour out of their batteries.
All of that, however, is secondary for a serious gamer, who is almost surely going to plug into a wall socket and add an external mouse anyway. (While a touchpad or pointing stick might work for some slower-paced strategy games, it is hard to use either device precisely enough for action gaming.)
To conserve battery life, chip makers and mainstream computer manufacturers long focused on reducing the power used in laptops' central processing units, or C.P.U.'s. The ability to render three-dimensional graphics was an afterthought.
Darren McPhee, a product marketing manager at ATI Technologies, a leading maker of graphics chips, said that some laptop manufacturers started putting higher- end desktop C.P.U.'s into laptops a couple of years ago, mainly as a way to save costs. A standard C.P.U. might cost less than a low-power version at the same speed.
Around 2002, specialty makers of gaming PC's seemed to realize that they too could put desktop C.P.U.'s into a bigger laptop. But instead of saving money, the idea was to enhance performance.
As Mr. McPhee put it: "Companies like Alienware and VoodooPC said, 'Hold on. We have this clientele of the high-end gamer. On the desktop side they want a 3- gigahertz C.P.U. and the fastest memory and the latest graphics processor pushed to the max. Those customers want the same thing on the mobile side.' "
Now, manufacturers routinely put desktop-caliber C.P.U.'s running at 3 gigahertz and faster into laptop machines. Some makers are even using Intel's new Extreme Edition Pentium 4 chips, which cost far more than normal C.P.U.'s. Others are using the latest 64-bit chips from AMD. Graphics makers including ATI and Nvidia are making high-end mobile graphics chips that come close to (though rarely if ever quite match) the performance of their top desktop technologies. Some manufacturers are also beginning to allow end users to upgrade the graphics chips in their laptops, just as they do with desktop machines.
The price of that progress is increased heat and power consumption. Dissipating the heat requires bigger cases. Feeding the power means lower battery life.
At the same time, liquid-crystal displays with low response times have become more widely available. L.C.D. screens are inherently slower to respond to electrical signals than traditional cathode-ray tube designs are. The average consumer wouldn't notice the difference, but gamers who measure virtual life and death in milliseconds definitely do. Now, more expensive L.C.D. screens can almost replicate the experience of playing on a big, bulky tube.
It is all part of a broader surge in the popularity of laptops. According to IDC, a technology research firm based in Framingham, Mass., only about 9 percent of consumer PC's shipped in the United States in 2000 were laptops. That figure is expected to rise to 31.4 percent this year.
Meanwhile, the average price of a consumer laptop sold in the United States fell to $1,064 last year from $1,890 in 2000, according to IDC. (The comparable figure for consumer desktop computers fell to $825 from $1,250 over the same time period.)
The target audience for high-end gaming laptops, however, is not too concerned about price. Whether washing dishes or wearing a suit, the users seem willing to pay to play. The top gaming laptops often cost more than $3,000 and can top $4,000, although good machines can now be found for under $2,000.
"Gamers tend to be the heat seekers," said Tim Mattox, a Dell vice president for client product marketing. "What you have in the gamer market is people who value performance over incremental cost savings."
Alan Promisel, an IDC analyst, said that "by moving into this gaming segment, Dell and HP are really opening up gaming to a much broader segment, and it's really going to raise the profile of gaming."
Gaming's profile could not have been much higher at the party in North Tonawanda. Some time before the pizza arrived, Rob Glaser, a 29-year-old Web designer, was getting ready to play Unreal Tournament 2004, a futuristic combat game. His laptop, purchased in December from an obscure Internet shop, was dwarfed by a black water-cooled tower on one side and an equally imposing white machine on the other.
"I wanted a good gaming PC, but I also wanted something I could take with me instead of lugging around this big box," he said. "Now I can have both."
And now that gamers have paved the way, it appears that other potential consumers are being drawn to high-end laptops.
"We are seeing folks going for high-performance PC's as more than a gaming system," said Brian M. Joyce, the director for marketing at Alienware. "Our customers include General Dynamics and Boeing, professional musicians, engineers.
"A lot of professionals need mobile power, and basically it's a lot easier to convince your boss to buy you an Alienware laptop, because it's one of the only really high-performance mobile solutions, than it is to convince him to buy you an Alienware desktop. That's just the way it is."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/te...ts/01lapp.html
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Films: Have Hard Drive, Will Travel
Sharon WaxmanFor years independent cinema has been a big-city phenomenon, the non-Hollywood movies available only in major urban centers and — perhaps — on cable.
Now a New York-based company is trying to take art-house movies to small cities around the country by relying on digital projection. The company, Emerging Pictures, has sent computer hard drives to theaters in five cities to coincide with the opening on April 1 of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C.
The hard drives, which can be connected to inexpensive digital projectors, contain 10 digital films from the documentary festival. The movies will be shown simultaneously in theaters in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Mich.; Lincoln, Neb.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Sarasota, Fla., in addition to Durham.
The theaters are at museums, science centers and universities that not only have underused spaces but also built-in audiences through their membership lists.
The idea is to show high-quality movies to people who usually cannot see them because of the huge cost of movie prints and marketing budgets, explained Ira Deutchman, a partner in Emerging Pictures.
"A lot of really quality films can never get mainstream distribution," he said in a telephone interview. "Those films left on the table can't find a way to reach theatrical audiences with the current economic model. We're trying to bust through this problem of how much you have to spend on prints and advertising to get your film out there."
Distribution has been a persistent problem in independent film. Independent producers and filmmakers have long believed that audiences in the American heartland were willing to pay to see small, interesting movies like last year's "Thirteen" or the unusually animated "Triplets of Belleville," which were both nominated for Oscars.
But only major art-house distributors like Miramax or Focus Features have had the cash to release such movies, and even those that are released often do not earn enough to justify the costs.
"I'm a big believer that the audience does exist," Mr. Deutchman said. "It may not exist in numbers necessary to make it a business to attract a big studio, but that doesn't mean there isn't an audience."
With digital technology each package of 10 films for this year's festival arrived on a single hard drive in a compact box. The cost of the hard drive, owned by Emerging Pictures, is about $10,000.
"Projecting is as simple as working a P.C.," explained Barry Rebo, another partner in the company and a technology expert. "They double-click on a film, and it starts." After the festival the hard drives will be sent back to the company to be reprogrammed with other films and then sent out again. "This is a prototype," Mr. Rebo said. "Clearly we want to grow this as big as we can."
The documentaries at the Full Frame Festival, which is co-sponsored by TheNew York Times, include movies like "Farmingville," about immigrant workers on Long Island; "Home of the Brave," about a civil rights worker who was murdered in the 1960's; and "Dirty Work," about the unsung lives of a septic tank cleaner, a bull- semen collector and an embalmer.
In the past independent filmmakers seeking broader audiences have taken their one or two prints on the road, driving from one regional art-house theater to another. With digital replication, which costs a tiny fraction of the amount necessary for striking a print, the travel is no longer necessary.
Directors of regional art-house theaters say they are eager for sophisticated content, and this is an economic model that makes it possible to get such films more often.
"My whole idea is that eventually this is going to be very important for low-budget independent films we show here regularly," said Dan Ladely, director of the Mary Riepma Ross Media Center in Lincoln, Neb., one of the festival's regional participants. "It will enable filmmakers who do documentary films, for example, to distribute films without spending money on 35-millimeter prints."
Emerging Pictures will share profits from the box office receipts with the theater owners.
Distributors of art-house films in Hollywood say they like the Emerging Pictures concept. "I think it's a noble idea," said Ruth Vitale, co-president of Paramount Classics. "I go to Cannes and Venice and see amazing small films, and we rack our brains — how can we take these on and make money? At the end of the day we don't, because we have to make a financial decision."
If the syndication of the Full Frame festival is a success, Mr. Deutchman and his partners say they will branch out to a few dozen cities in the coming year, though that plan will require advertising funds to attract new audiences.
"Our goal is to have as many as 400 outlets, and we would call it a network rather than a theater chain," he said. "We want to show the world it can work, with the hope that by next year it will be all over the United States."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/movies/01DIGI.html
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Sales are steady, maybe even up.
EMI to Cut Artist Roster and Close 2 CD Plants
Heather Timmons
The EMI Group, which has been under pressure as music sales decline globally and has repeatedly failed to forge a deal in a consolidating industry, said Wednesday that it would reduce its roster of artists by 20 percent and cut 1,500 jobs.
The cuts will result in £25 million ($45.66 million) of savings in the fiscal year ending next March, and £50 million ($91.31 million) in years following, the company said. But EMI will also post £75 million ($136.97 million) in one-time charges and write-downs.
This is the second time that EMI Music, the recording division, has cut artists and jobs since Alain Levy, the former president of Polygram, was hired as chairman and chief executive of the unit in October 2001. The job cuts represent 20 percent of the division's work force.
"Whilst we remain optimistic that the market will return to growth in due course, we are committed to being in the best possible shape to compete in all conditions and take advantage of improving trends," said the group's chairman, Eric Nicoli, in a statement announcing the cuts.
This year, EMI benefited from the singer Norah Jones, whose second album sold 1.02 million copies in the first week of its February release, the best performance of any album in two and a half years. Still, the company said Wednesday that full-year sales in recorded music would be "close" to last year's £2.18 billion ($3.98 billion); most analysts interpreted "close'' as meaning slightly below that level.
EMI, which also produces the Rolling Stones and Coldplay, is doing better than the industry as a whole, where sales slipped more than 7 percent in 2003, according to estimates from IFPI, an anti-piracy trade group, because consumers continue to download music illegally from the Web. On Tuesday, music industry representatives said they would take legal action against 247 people for illegal file sharing in Europe, the first time that legal action has been taken outside of the United States.
The bulk of the EMI job losses stem from the outsourcing of compact disc and DVD manufacturing. EMI will close its manufacturing plants in Jacksonville, Ill., and Uden, the Netherlands, cutting 900 jobs. The Uden plant's employees will be transferred to MediaMotion, a unit of the ECF Group of the Netherlands, which will handle manufacturing in Europe. The production of the Jacksonville plant, EMI's only manufacturing plant in the United States, will be transferred to Cinram, a Toronto manufacturer.
Music producers industrywide have been increasingly outsourcing the making and distribution of their discs. In July of last year, AOL Time Warner sold its CD, DVD and video manufacturing units to Cinram. Sony and the Bertelsmann Group still produce their own compact discs, but analysts maintain that it is only a matter of time before all the major recording companies outsource manufacturing and distribution.
"That's where the music business will end up, without a question," said Mark Harrington, an analyst with Bear Stearns in London.
EMI will also be cutting about 350 "niche and underperforming" artists from its roster, the company said, and combining some music labels and some marketing departments. The company did not specify which artists would be released. EMI let go about 400 artists and eliminated 1,800 jobs in 2002, with positive results.
Analysts said it was unclear whether this round of cuts would help the bottom line, or eat into future profits. But the market reacted favorably to the announcement, sending EMI shares soaring almost 8 percent on the London Stock Exchange, to close at 277.5 pence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/bu...a/01music.html
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Warner Music Names East Coast Managers
Reuters
The Warner Music Group outlined a new East Coast management structure on Wednesday, continuing the record company's transformation under new ownership by an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr.
Warner named Jason Flom, Lava Records' president and founder, as chairman and chief executive of the Atlantic Records Group, consisting of Atlantic, Elektra and Lava Records.
Warner Music now operates two label groups, including the Elektra- Atlantic-Lava combination on the East Coast and Warner Brothers Records, headed by Tom Whalley, on the West Coast.
This month, Warner Music, purchased for $2.6 billion by Mr. Bronfman and other investors, ousted several executives and cut 1,000 jobs.
Atlantic's president, Craig Kallman, on Wednesday was named co- chairman and chief operating officer of the Atlantic Records Group, while Julie Greenwald, formerly executive vice president of the Island Def Jam unit of Vivendi Universal, was named president, reporting to Mr. Flom and Mr. Kallman. Atlantic's founder, Ahmet Ertegun, will continue with the company as founding chairman of Atlantic Records.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/bu.../01warner.html
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What's Next
All the World's a Soundstage as Audio Formats Evolve
Seán Captain
DESPITE the ultramodern aura of devices that play compressed digital music files, from the Apple iPod player to the Rio Karma, they all share one anachronistic trait: they only have two audio channels. The basic stereo format used on vinyl records since the 1950's and carried over to CD's in the 1980's still defines most recorded music.
By contrast, DVD movies come with Dolby Digital 5.1-channel soundtracks that can parcel the audio among five speakers (and a subwoofer for extra-low tones) to provide the illusion that you are inside the action, surrounded by sound.
Such surround-sound or multichannel audio is making its way into recorded music through high-end entertainment systems that play Super Audio CD's or DVD Audio discs. But surround sound may soon come to the Internet and hand-held music players as well.
The Fraunhofer Institute, the German research center that led the effort to create the MP3 digital music format, recently announced a new version called MP3 Surround that adds the extra audio channels needed for 5.1 sound without appreciably increasing file size. According to Jürgen Herre of the institute, MP3 Surround files can also play in conventional stereo mode on two-channel devices.
While the MP3 format was a pioneer in the original online music explosion of the 1990's, it's a latecomer in adding surround sound. Microsoft's Windows Media format, MP3's main competitor, added multichannel capability (for up to 7.1 surround sound) in its Windows Media Audio 9 version. Microsoft introduced the format in September 2002 with Peter Gabriel's "Up," the first album recorded in the surround-sound Pro version of Windows Media 9. Since then, a few artists, including Sheryl Crow, DJ Andy Hunter and Pink Floyd, have released singles in the format.
RealNetworks introduced a surround-sound version of its format, called RealAudio Multichannel, in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. No major artists have released recordings in RealAudio Multichannel yet. And the handful of titles in Microsoft's WM9 Pro recordings represent only a tiny portion of all compressed digital music.
Few paid music services use MP3 because, unlike most other formats, it does not have a built-in digital rights management mechanism to restrict copying and swapping, although companies can add that capability. That same trait, of course, has made the MP3 format wildly popular for ripping music from CD's to compressed files and swapping them over the Internet.
But the surround-sound version of MP3 is unlikely to have much appeal to swappers because, unlike conventional stereo CD's, the Super Audio and DVD Audio discs that contain surround-sound music use formats that prevent ripping.
Dr. Herre of the Fraunhofer Institute said he had just begun speaking with record labels about using the MP3 Surround format for legal downloading. The Recording Industry Association of America, which is pursuing an aggressive legal battle against music trading, has not taken a position on the format.
Another seeming barrier for surround sound in MP3's or other formats is that the main devices using them - portable music players - have only two speakers: the left and right headphones. So some manufacturers view the issue of surround sound as largely irrelevant.
"Does it matter for us? Not particularly," said Richard Bullwinkle of Rio, a maker of hand-held digital music players.
Yet surround sound may not need more than two speakers. A few years ago, Dolby Laboratories introduced Dolby Headphone, which manipulates multichannel signals to create the illusion of more than two speakers when the listener is wearing only two. Last year Dolby introduced a similar technology for stereos called Dolby Virtual Speaker.
Dolby's technology has just begun to make its way into products like Denon's $699 two-speaker DM71DVS home theater sound system. It is also used in some DVD-playing software that allows people to watch movies on laptops and hear the multichannel soundtracks through headphones. Ron Vitale, Dolby's director of consumer marketing, says the company is working on getting the software to run on the processors of hand-held devices, including digital music players and even cellphones.
Compressed audio with surround sound may find a home in downloaded movies, where limited bandwidth makes the compressed files attractive. Surround sound in recorded music is "a matter of personal taste," says Phil O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for the audio technology company Creative Labs. Some people like to hear the sounds of a crowd from a concert recording or a guitar reverberating around the room, while others are happy with stereo. But by going to the movies and watching DVD's at home, consumers are growing accustomed to surround sound in movies.
Many movies available for downloading use the DivX format for video compression and the MP3 format for audio. (Many newer DVD players can read DivX files.)
Moving to MP3 Surround would give these downloadable movies the multichannel effects of their DVD counterparts. But movies can also be compressed with several other formats, including Windows Media and RealVideo. A handful of films, including "Terminator 2" and "Standing in the Shadows of Motown," have been released on DVD in the Windows Media format, which supports not only 5.1 sound but also high-definition video unavailable on standard DVD's. Those versions can play only on PC's now, but Microsoft is lobbying to get support for its format built into DVD players.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/te...ts/01next.html
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Sharing Music Over Internet Not Illegal, Federal Court Rules
Surprise ruling stalls music industry's planned lawsuits against uploaders
Gillian Shaw
Canadian Internet music fans can breathe easy with Wednesday's Federal Court decision that will protect them from the prying eyes of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
In a move that marks a blow to the recording industry and online music sellers, computer users who freely share music online were delivered a reprieve from the industry's plan to file lawsuits against 29 John and Jane Does it alleges are high- volume music traders.
Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled Wednesday that the CRIA did not prove there was copyright infringement by the 29 so-called music uploaders. The ruling means Internet service providers won't have to hand over the users' names, a prospect that had already sent a chill through the music- sharing community.
It was more bad news for the recording industry that was already scrambling to denounce a study released on the eve of the court decision by researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The study found, contrary to industry claims, that online file-sharing isn't responsible for the decline in CD sales.
In what analysts termed a stunning decision, von Finckenstein ruled that file-sharing, the uploading and downloading of files over the Internet using shared directories like those on Kazaa, is not illegal under Canadian copyright law, reaffirming what the Copyright Board of Canada has already ruled.
The overriding issue saw the court rule there is no infringement of copyright in the file-sharing practice.
"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings," Von Finckenstein wrote in his 28-page ruling.
"They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P [peer-to-peer] service."
Peer-to-peer is a type of connection between two computers; both perform computations, store data and make requests from each other, unlike a client-server connection where one computer makes a request and the other computer responds with information.
Von Finckenstein compared the action to a photocopy machine in a library.
"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 that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service," wrote the judge, who was commissioner of competition at the Competition Bureau of Canada from 1997 until last summer when he was appointed to the Federal Court of Canada.
The CRIA vowed to fight the ruling which was cheered by technology and privacy advocates alike.
"It's not just a victory for file sharers, it is a victory for technology itself and for Internet users in Canada," said Howard Knopf, a lawyer with the Ottawa firm Macera and Jarzyna, representing the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Internet Clinic.
"It is a victory for anybody who does research, who is interested in innovation, education -- anything where file-sharing might play a role."
The court decision puts an immediate block to plans announced Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry to take its fight against file-sharing to several countries around the world, including Canada. The IFPI said 247 file-sharers worldwide would be targeted with lawsuits, including users in Canada.
The IFPI is based in England and was not available to comment on whether it is changing its plans since file-sharing has been ruled legal in Canada.
In Canada, the Canadian Recording Industry Association vowed to continue fighting what it calls the "widespread infringement of music copyright on the Internet."
CRIA general counsel Richard Pfohl said the association expects to appeal the decision.
"In our view, the copyright law in Canada does not allow people to put hundreds or thousands of music files on the Internet for copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers," he said in a prepared statement.
"We put forward a compelling case of copyright infringement in seeking these disclosure orders. We presented more initial evidence than has ever been put forward in a request for disclosure of user identities from ISPs --which Canadian courts have granted on numerous occasions."
The CIRA motions filed on Feb. 11, if granted would have required Bell/Sympatico, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communciations, Telus Corp. and Videotron Telecom to reveal the identities of subscribers it alleged were sharing music on a large scale.
Not surprisingly, the ruling pleased Sharman Networks, the company behind Kazaa.
"We welcome today's ruling as a win for peer-to-peer technology and its users," said Nikki Hemming, chief executive officer at Sharman Networks, the Australia-based company that owns Kazaa and operates kazaa.com.
"We hope that this decision marks a turning point away from litigation and towards cooperation between peer-to-peer providers and the entertainment industry."
Calling the decision "stunning," Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in Internet and e-commerce law and technology counsel with the law firm Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt said he anticipates it will push the industry to increase its lobbying efforts for legislative change to copyright laws
"Certainly the copyright aspects of this decision came as a bit of a surprise to a lot of people," he said.
Geist said there were questions about the evidence advanced by the recording industry, weaknesses that were pointed out by the judge.
The recording industry was seeking to tie IP (Internet protocol) addresses and names, a method that wouldn't guarantee making a correct identification of people who are heavy file-sharing users.
"You're not necessarily talking about a single person, or the same person," said Geist.
Knopf agreed.
"If you're living in an apartment building and have WiFI network and you're not very careful about how you set it up, you could be sharing your network with 300 of your friends and neighbours," he said, adding the user wouldn't necessarily know if someone was engaged in extensive file-sharing using the same IP address. (WiFi -- wireless fidelity -- is a local area network that uses high frequency radio signals to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet.)
Geist pointed out that the ruling could have simply stopped with that issue.
"The judge could have ruled on this alone but he went much further," he said.
The ruling dealt with the issue of privacy and striking a balance between privacy and the right of copyright holders and also with the ISP's contention that they should be compensated for the cost of complying with the motion if it were to go through.
The ruling thrilled Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications, whose company had vowed to protect the privacy of its subscribers.
"As you can well imagine we're delighted at Shaw as are Jane and John Doe who were certainly named in their warrants," he said. "We're delighted that the arguments that we put forth were in fact compelling enough for the judge to make the decision.
"He really looked at those two issues: One was the whole issue of privacy as well as the unreliability of the data that they were asking for."
Bissonnette said Shaw customers appreciated the company going to bat for them.
In the U.S. some Internet file sharers were forced to settle for thousands of dollars with the Recording Industry Association of America and Bissonnette said Wednesday's ruling protects Canadians from such actions.
"The CRIA thought they had a slam dunk," he said. "You can look at what's happened in the U.S. and the approach of the recording industry there, which is somewhat bullying."
For Telus, both an Internet service provider and a seller of online music through Puretracks, Wednesday's ruling had a double impact.
Jay Thomson, assistant vice-president of broadband policy for Telus, said the company was glad the ruling protected the privacy of its customers.
"It's a very interesting decision," he said. "I think there is going to be a fair amount of fallout from it.
"It shows we stepped up when it comes to addressing our customers' concerns and we're pleased with the results and think they will be too."
Thomson said it is too early to determine what impact the ruling will have on Puretracks' online sales.
"We have a marketing arrangement with Puretracks," he said. "We certainly have an interest in promoting that service as clearly one that is a legitimate service and provides the kind of access to music that might not be available through the peer-to-peer networks.
"It's too early to say as a result of today's decision what the impact will be on services like Puretracks."
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vanc...6-fbf956ea5828
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What It Iz: Scofflaw!
Theft of intellectual property seems like the only crime black people don't get busted for on the regular basis. So I don't mind telling you, I stole music.
Jimi Izrael
It's probably from my background as a club DJ, but in the main, I'm an LP guy — I like to listen to music from a turntable. I like the way vinyl sounds — warm and soulful, compared to CDs. But times changed, and it got to the point where only DJs can find LPs with any regularity, and even then at outrageous prices. So I did just what you did — I put my record collection in the basement and proceeded to buy all my favorites on CD. At $18 a pop, though, that got to be an expensive proposition.
If this technology had existed when I was a kid, I never would have left the house.
A few years back, I kept hearing and reading about a way to get music off the internet for free, but I didn't pay it much attention. I'd read that the fidelity of the selections weren't that great and besides, it was illegal. But after spending $100 on a handful of CDs that contained only a couple of hot tunes the idea of illegal file-swapping became more and more enticing. So about a year ago, I got a T1 line put in and hooked up the ole' Toshiba... and I started stealing music. I'm not afraid to tell you about it either — theft of intellectual property seems like the only crime black people don't get busted for on the regular basis.
You'd think I'd have some problems about stealing another's intellectual property. After all, people steal my work by posting it and sometimes printing it without proper permission or compensation, and it pisses me off pretty good. But I'm no millionaire —Courtney Love or Dr. Dre whining about losing a few cents from the comfort of their mansions just doesn't engender any sympathy from me. Besides, the record companies are charging too much money for a CD.
And it's not just music. When I first entered the world of file-sharing, I had no idea you could download computer programs, TV shows, porno flicks and films of all types with this technology. WordPerfect, The Sopranos, Spongebob Squarepants, Bootytalk — it's all there. I was shocked, disgusted, yet intrigued, by the things you can bring into your home at the simple click of a button. Free music, TV shows, movies and smut? Giddy-up.
If this technology had existed when I was a kid, I never would have left the house. Thanks to the internet and file-sharing, your 11-year-old probably owns more software and knows more about sex than you ever could. God Bless America, man.
At first, I thought that as soon as I downloaded my first song, the Feds were gonna come kicking my door down Starsky and Hutch-style and bust my black head open like a casaba melon, reading off a litany of charges. But I'm real with mine — a scofflaw of modern convention if ever there was one — plus I'm cheap. So I looked through the various kinds of free peer-to-peer file-sharing services until I settled on Morpheus. I downloaded my first song — Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" remix — and to my surprise, nothing happened. No helicopters, no trained police dogs or baton-wielding vice cops in cheap suits — nothing. Not even a phone call admonishing me to watch my step. "Hot Like Fire" played clear like a bell — none of the skipping or muffled levels I'd read about. So from that moment, I started flipping through the mental Rolodex of songs I loved but wouldn't buy and began searching for them. To my surprise, they were all there: from the Jimmy Castor Bunch to Bjork, Massive Attack and everything in between. I'd found the promised land of free music. Or so I thought.
The searches sometimes took a long time, and could take anywhere from a few seconds to an hour to download. Morpheus was okay for a minute, but then I switched over to Kazaa, which is known for having a better selection. But it came with a few strings. When you download Kazaa or any other free service, they tell you that you are accepting programs that will subject you to all kinds of commercial come-ons. It doesn't sound so bad, but nobody tells you how many. Morpheus wasn't bad with the pop-ups, but the service sucked. Kazaa had great service, but just like with everything, there was a catch — pop-ups, man. Pop-ups out the yang.
Ads for penis enlargement, breast augmentations, home cleaning products, Russian mail-order brides, hemorrhoid remedies, gender reassignment surgery (!) and cheap, teenage sex began appearing on my screen randomly and in fast succession. I spent more time fighting off ads than getting any work done. All those ads would drop off spy ware in my computer, and that made me nervous, never mind that my computer ran slower. It wasn't just the ads. The quality of the downloads ebbed and flowed — and sometimes I'd try to download a cut only to hear some fool shouting throughout the whole song: AYO, SON! PICK UP MY NEW MIX CD, YO! I'm all for self-promotion, but I don't want to have to download eight versions of the same song just to get one that is promo-free.
Between the bad downloads and the pop-up ads, I just couldn't take it anymore — I removed Kazaa and Morpheus from my hard-drive, and I've been music-less for a few weeks. I'm even thinking about going legit. But I have to admit it — even though I don't miss the ads and the headaches, there's something about breaking the law and beating the system that's a rush.
http://www.africana.com/columns/izra...31scofflaw.asp
Until next week,
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js.
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