"lol no its not its a virus." – New Virus
"Loudeye announced that Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye's wholly-owned content protection subsidiary, has ceased operations effective immediately." – Press release
"There's always been something to replace it that's groovier." – Stacey Snider
"If I visit my family at Thanksgiving and copy 100 gigs from a brother/sister/mother/father/ cousin/niece/nephew/aunt/uncle/family friend, am I likely to want to go out and buy more from iTunes? Is there a backlash against the RIAA and the recording industry in general for their heavy handed tactics and a general increasing hatred towards them and thus a shifting view culturally on the imperative for paying for music vs. getting it for free?" – Thomas Hawk
"I don't understand why we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly successful." – U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass
"There's no reason to compromise right to due process, the right to a judicial review, fair and reasonable standards of evidence in the pursuit of our security." – U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu, R-N.H.,
"The consumer's paying for 20 megabits coming into their home. They should be able to use that 20 megabits to use whatever services they want." – Alan Davidson
"We feel violated. For them to just come along and destroy our community has prompted a lot of death-in-the-family-type grieving. They went through the astonishment and denial, then they went to the anger part of it, and now they are going through the sad and helpless part of grieving. I work in the health-care industry, and it's very similar." – Carolyn R. Hocke
"I was having the most wonderful dream. I had a hat, a tie and no pants on." – Homer Simpson
"Good morning, and welcome to the last show on terrestrial radio." – Howard Stern
"What Slump?" – Lorne Manly
December 17th, ’05
Harvard Group Finds Sharing Can Drive Music Sales
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School and Gartner have released a report focusing on the importance of sharing to the music business.
Key Findings from the report
· Nearly one-fourth of frequent online music users say that the ability to share music with others in some fashion is an important criteria when selecting an online music service.
· One-tenth of early adopters stated that they often make music purchases based on others' recommendations.
· One-third of early adopters of digital media surveyed by Gartner stated that they were interested in online music discovery and recommendation technology that is actually powered by their taste in music.
· Some of the most-regular users of online music services, whether free peer- to-peer (P2P) or paid services, are the most interested in consumer-generated recommendation tools.
The report also predicts that 25 percent of online music store transactions will be driven directly from consumer-to-consumer taste-sharing applications by 2010.
http://digitalpodcast.com/podcastnew...g_of_music_sal
Report – Jack.
Telecoms Want Their Products To Travel On A Faster Internet
Major site owners oppose 2-tier system
Hiawatha Bray
AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors.
The proposal is certain to provoke a major fight with Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc., and Microsoft Corp., the powerful owners of popular Internet sites. The companies fear such a move would give telecommunications companies too much control over a fast-growing part of the Internet.
The battle is largely over video services. Several major telecom companies are working on ways to deliver broadcast-quality television over the Internet. Currently, online video can be slow to download and choppy to watch, even with higher-speed Internet services.
The proposal supported by AT&T and BellSouth would allow telecommunications carriers to offer their own advanced Internet video services to their customers, while rival firms' online video offerings would be transmitted at lower speed and with poorer image quality.
AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet. The companies could also charge websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher- speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers.
The prospect of a tiered Internet with ''regular" and ''premium" broadband services is spawning fierce debate as Congress takes up a major overhaul of telecom regulations. The House of Representatives last month held hearings on a preliminary draft by two GOP congressmen, Joe Barton of Texas and Fred Upton of Michigan, that would give the telecom companies the freedom to establish premium broadband services. The telecom bill is due for action early next year.
A change along these lines would be different from the way the Internet has operated. ''The Internet model has been that carriers cannot interfere with the choices that consumers make," said Alan Davidson, Google's Washington policy counsel.
Google is fighting the proposal, along with other large Internet companies including Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. They fear they may have to pay telecoms millions of dollars to gain access to customers who use the premium Internet services. In addition, they argue, many small Internet start-ups would be unable to pay the fees, which could reduce consumer choice.
''Some of the most valuable new services won't be competitive," Davidson said.
The telecom companies said that since they are spending billions of dollars to build new fiber-optic networks that can carry more data, they are entitled to give their own offerings the bulk of Internet bandwidth, and to charge others for higher-speed access.
''When costs are being driven into an equation, they have to be recovered somewhere," said Bill Smith, chief technology officer of BellSouth. ''Why do fundamental business economics not apply to the Internet?"
Bill McCluskey , director of media relations for BellSouth, said the premium plan would boost profits and encourage higher-speed broadband network deployment. ''The more we are able to make, the faster we will be able to roll out high-speed Internet to 100 percent of our customers," he said.
Verizon Communications Inc., one of the biggest Boston-area Internet service providers, did not return calls seeking comment.
Telecom companies like AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon use a technology called DSL to provide high-speed Internet access to about 16 million US subscribers -- mostly homes and small businesses. Cable TV companies like Comcast Corp. have invaded the telecoms' main business, telephone service. The telecoms want to strike back by offering Internet-based television. They want to offer all the programs now available on cable, as well as movie and game trailers, and full- length films.
But standard Internet service is ill-suited to TV distribution. Video signals have to arrive in a steady stream, but all Internet messages are made up of tiny data packets that travel over the network, and are reassembled at their destinations. Often these packets arrive out of order, or are delayed by a few seconds. This doesn't matter with e-mail or Web pages, but would ruin a TV broadcast or degrade the quality of an Internet phone call.
The solution is to tag the TV or telephone packets with codes that give them a higher priority on the network. These packets would be delivered more quickly, ensuring a sharp picture and clear sound. The telecoms must build additional network capacity to handle these large, tagged files.
Most content providers want equal access to the premium, higher-speed bandwidth, while telecom carriers want the right to treat this premium pipeline as a private Internet. In addition to exclusive voice and video services, telecom carriers could also use it to offer their own Internet services like search and e-mail, delivering them more quickly and with richer features than rival services that could only use the ''regular" Internet.
This could mean big trouble for today's major online information providers. Google doesn't object to broadband providers' efforts to charge consumers more for faster service but wants all content providers to get equal access.
''The consumer's paying for 20 megabits coming into their home," Davidson said. ''They should be able to use that 20 megabits to use whatever services they want."
Davidson has an ally in US Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden. ''I don't understand why we would tinker with the model that has been so wildly successful," Markey said.
Markey said he's engaged in ''intense private negotiations" with telecom companies and congressional colleagues in search of a compromise.
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...ster_internet/
Loudeye to Exit Content Protection Services Business, Reducing Cost Structure
Press Release
Seattle, WA — December 9, 2005 — Loudeye Corp. (Nasdaq: LOUD), a worldwide leader in business-to-business digital media solutions, today announced an important step in its effort to focus its business and reduce its cost structure. Loudeye announced that Overpeer, Inc., Loudeye's wholly- owned content protection subsidiary, has ceased operations effective immediately and will continue to pursue options to maximize the value of its assets.
As a result, Loudeye has reduced its quarterly consolidated cost structure by approximately $1.6 million, or 10%, compared to third quarter 2005 levels. Overpeer expects to incur approximately $200,000 in severance and related payroll costs associated with the closing of its operations, which is expected to be paid during December 2005. In addition, Overpeer may incur additional wind-down costs to terminate property or equipment leases, and other contracts. The cessation of the Overpeer operations may also result in the acceleration of depreciation or amortization or the impairment of certain fixed and intangible assets. Loudeye anticipates that the net assets and results of operations for Overpeer will be presented as discontinued operations in its consolidated financial statements.
"We continue to focus our business on growth opportunities with digital distribution. Our actions to exit content protection services will substantially improve our go-forward cost structure," said Mike Brochu, Loudeye's president and chief executive officer.
About Loudeye Corp.
Loudeye is a worldwide leader in business-to-business digital media solutions and the outsourcing provider of choice for companies looking to maximize the return on their digital media investment. Loudeye combines innovative products and services with the world's largest digital music archive, a broad catalog of licensed digital music and the industry's leading digital media infrastructure enabling partners to rapidly and cost effectively launch complete, customized digital media stores and services. For more information, visit
www.loudeye.com.
http://www.loudeye.com/en/news/relea...sreleaseid=269
Overpeer Promo Copy –
overpeer provides powerful solutions for content owners and creators to protect digital media assets
Overpeer, a Loudeye Company, is the leading worldwide provider of digital media data mining, anti-piracy and promotional solutions. Overpeer provides creators and copyright owners with valuable market intelligence on the unauthorized digital distribution of their content assets as well as anti-piracy and promotional tools to protect content and capitalize on previously untapped revenue opportunities across file sharing networks. As a result, our partners gain valuable insight into the unauthorized digital distribution of their content assets and can access to important tools to make strategic business decisions around digital distribution.
Overpeer provides:
Powerful data mining and analytical tools and comprehensive information on digital music, video, game and software usage
Provides view into over 25 billion attempted transmissions every month from 150 million unique users
Highly effective anti-piracy solutions to disrupt the illegal sharing of copyrighted material
Targeted promotional services for companies to capitalize on previously untapped revenue streams across content sharing networks.
If you are interested in learning more about Overpeer's solutions, click here.
http://www.overpeer.com/
anti-piracy solutions
Overpeer's patented technology integrates seamlessly and transparently into the world's most popular file sharing networks - which are responsible for 90% of worldwide file sharing traffic. Overpeer monitors downloading activity on a real-time, 24x7 basis and can be highly effective in minimizing the availability of pirated titles and hindering consumer copyright infringement.
Overpeer operates a fully redundant, fully scaled architecture that enables our partners to respond cost-effectively to the tremendous volume of illegal file trading around the world. Our engineers, all experts in peer to peer networking, have created an extremely efficient, robust, and configurable system that can protect, market, and saturate our client titles on the major file sharing networks.
In an average month, Overpeer experiences over 25 billion digital download hits against its servers, effectively blocking the illicit reproduction of copyrighted material across 150 million unique user sessions. Our effectiveness is verified daily by independent third parties.
http://www.overpeer.com/antipiracy.asp
Clogger of P2P Networks To Shut Down
John Borland
A leading service that attempted to dissuade people from using file-trading networks like Kazaa, by planting millions of fake files online, is being shut down.
Seattle-based Loudeye said Friday that it is shuttering its Overpeer division, effective immediately, in an attempt to bolster the parent company's bottom line.
Executives did not immediately return a request for comment. However, in a filing with federal regulators in November, Loudeye said the Overpeer division had seen declining revenue through much of 2005 and that a major client had dropped its services at the end of the second quarter.
Overpeer rose to prominence in 2002, at the height of the Net's love affair with peer-to-peer networks, offering record companies and movie studios a way to discourage would-be file-swappers looking for hit music or films.
The company used banks of servers around the world to plant false files, so that when a file-trader downloaded the latest Matrix movie, for example, it would often turn out to be garbage data, or an advertisement.
Over time, peer-to-peer networks added features that let users rate files or otherwise make better guesses about the authenticity of downloads. In its financial filing, Loudeye--which purchased Overpeer in 2004--said these tools had diminished the effectiveness of its offering.
The company is seeking to sell the Overpeer assets, it said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/Clogger+of+P2P+n...3-5989758.html
Media Defender Duels With Pirates
Joshua Chaffin
IF media executives were to conjure an image of the digital pirates who illegally share films and music over the internet, costing them billions of dollars a year, it might well resemble the youthful employees of Media Defender.
Based in Marina Del Rey, California, and dressed like college students, they tend to sport the distant gaze of souls who have spent too much time staring into cyberspace.
As it turns out, Media Defender's troops constitute one of the last lines of defence for film studios and record companies in the fight against piracy. Over the past five years, the company has gained prominence in the industry for protecting some of its most valuable properties.
Media Defender, which boasts 95 per cent success rate, offers no technological quick fixes. Instead, it engages the pirates in a constant duel, seeking to outsmart or frustrate them on behalf of clients who pay a monthly fee.
"There's no magic bullet for this, and there will not be a magic bullet," says Octavio Herrera, one of the company's co-founders. "We sell a service, not a product."
Piracy has become an epidemic, costing the film industry an estimated $US3.5 billion ($4.6 billion) last year and wiping out five years of growth for the music business. New technologies, such as the encryption on forthcoming high-definition DVDs, or tracking software that could be implanted in the next generation Microsoft media player, have occasionally raised hopes that a cure might be at hand.
But Jon Diamond, chief executive of Artist Direct, which acquired Media Defender earlier this year for $US42.5 million, believes that entertainment companies may instead have to settle for long-term treatment.
Diamond argues that while the new protections may be more robust, someone, somewhere - perhaps a teenager in Morocco or Marina Del Rey - will eventually pierce them.
"When a DVD or certain encryption method reaches certain adoption levels, they have almost always been hacked or cracked," Mr Diamond said.
Rather fittingly, Mr Herrera and his partner, Randy Saaf, got the idea for Media Defender five years ago when they were working as software developers at Raytheon, the defence company, on advanced radars for the B-2 bomber. The aim was to develop radar that would allow a pilot to locate his prey before being detected himself, and then jam its systems. "It's electronic warfare," Mr Herrera says.
Media Defender takes a similar approach. It monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, constantly searching for the files specific songs or films that users are seeking from one another. If someone requests a song Media Defender has been hired to protect, then it springs into action. It might flood the network with tens of thousands of decoy files, creating a "needle-in-a-haystack" situation.
Another strategy is to send out thousands of its own requests for the same song, confusing the system. The idea is to frustrate file-sharers, although the company insists that it does not actually intrude on people's computers, the move that recently landed record company Sony BMG in hot water.
At first, the industry largely dismissed Media Defender, preferring instead to fight piracy with lawsuits. But that changed as companies such as Napster were displaced by open-source networks such as Gnutella, decentralised file-sharing communities that no person or entity technically controlled.
"There was no one to sue," Herrera says. "That's when we really started to get used."
Nowadays, Media Defender works with the four big record labels and all but one of the seven largest Hollywood film studios. At any one time, it protects tens of thousands of songs. Its pricing depends on such factors as the level of protection a company demands, the type of content to be protected, and the length of time.
The company has begun to use its monitoring capabilities to sell media companies market data about which of their songs and films are being downloaded and by whom. These would-be pirates can then be sent advertisements or offers for legal downloads.
Yet the company's main mission remains security. "There's nothing harder to protect than the No1 song in the country," Herrera says.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E36375,00.html
Darknets vs. Lightnets
Jason Boog
From Napster LLC's dramatic legal showdown to HarperCollins Publishers Inc.'s plan to erect virtual walls around its digital library, Internet file sharing has always been presented as an either/or situation: Either the Napster generation would keep stealing content, or the monolithic corporations would figure out how to end peer-to-peer activity.
Recently, two prominent Web developers have initiated a conversation that could replace that zero-sum game mentality with the complementary ideas of "Darknets" and the "Lightnet."
Both concepts were created like pieces of open-source code, accepting ideas and modifications from the Internet community. A Darknet is a hidden Web nook where a small group shares digital files. Lightnet refers to a theoretical push towards an Internet where sharing and remixing files is encouraged.
In May, J.D. Lasica initiated the dialogue with his book, "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation." The Web consultant riffed on a 2002 research paper that studied how micro-networks illegally shared music, movies and other digital media—the biggest threat to creators' digital rights after the fall of Napster.
"A Darknet describes a space or environment for private file sharing," Lasica said in an interview with Publish.com. "The Darknet can be a force for good (at least in my book), when people act in a secure space to exchange files or information for legitimate purposes."
Multimedia-sharing company Grouper Networks launches a set of video tools. Click here to read more.
Ultimately, Lasica began to see consumers' desire to play with digital media in new ways: using MP3s as marketing tools, remixing digital music or sharing video clips. He concluded that these Darknets marked an irreversible shift in media relations.
"Customers are redefining DRM so that the 'rights' in DRM flow both ways, not just in the direction dictated by the media giants," he said. As these guerrilla networks evolved, something fundamental was changing—users were pushing for a more interactive relationship with media.
Let There Be Light…
At the Open Media Conference last October, Web developer Lucas Gonze imagined replacing covert Darknets with a file- sharing-friendly vision of a Lightnet. A variety of Webloggers and developers have since helped develop and circulate the idea.
"In a Lightnet world, New York Times audio and video will be about as accessible as text," Gonze said. "Anybody will be able to e-mail the link to a friend, incorporate the item in a playlist, comment on the item on their own home page, and perhaps make a derived work in the form of a remix, Podcast, or videoblog."
In Gonze's best possible scenario, every kind of media, from Hollywood movies to Wall Street Journal articles, would have an accessible URL so bloggers and Web users could play with the content.
Corporations may want to take their cue from The Washington Post, which recently began celebrating bloggers who circulate and link to Post articles, instead of burying articles behind an unlinkable subscription pay-wall.
The trick is convincing content producers to adopt these new modes of consumer interaction. Gonze said he appreciated the two-way nature of MySpace Music, a Web site that combines the small-community sharing aspect of Darknets while allowing musicians to sell music straight off the site.
...But Not Too Much Light
Some corporate analysts caution against utopian fever.
"A young musician still needs to put food on his table," said Andy Moss, Senior Director of Technical Policy at Microsoft Corp. "People who create things that can be digitized are wrestling with what to do with it. It's creating possibility before people can decide what to do with it."
While acknowledging that file sharing has already revolutionized content distribution, Moss predicted that a viable P2P network—the kind that corporations and users can use to cooperate—is still a few years away. But Gonze believes once this paradigm shift occurs, the growth of Lightnets will outpace Darknets.
"Lightnet content will tend to be more popular than Darknet content," Gonze said. "Publishers will give away some content in order to be able to sell other content, and they will find new revenue sources when they become remixers themselves."
Many musicians are undecided on the issue of DRM (digital rights management). Read more here.
Web consultant Clay Shirky said he agrees with Gonze's market shift, and he took the message to his prominent clients, including Nokia, the BBC and the Library of Congress.
"What the corporations have to realize is that real revolutions don't involve an orderly transition from one business model to another," he told Publish.com. "Ironically, the thing that changed Internet advertising was the recession!"
Shirky tempered his advice with some grim realities: Bloggers are undermining journalists' integrity, musicians can't sell enough records and book sales are lagging. Media corporations must adapt to this new environment, or fade away.
To illustrate, Shirky explained how the New York Times Select feature could hurt the august news organization. "David Brooks is now locked behind a Times Select wall. There's a conservative audience that would read David Brooks, but they won't read the Times overall."
According to Shirky, Lightnet technologies could help the Times sell bite-sized pieces of content to micro-audiences, instead of selling the newspaper as a traditional, complete content entity.
The future, it seems, belongs to companies that can compromise between file sharing and content control. The Lightnet could signal a possible truce in the war between the Napster generation and old media distributors.
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1900773,00.asp
Peers And Pals
Chan Chi-Loong
Content companies and carriers can no longer ignore peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Some have even started to partner them.
Tech take: Legal P2P platforms may soon become the content distribution model of choice.
Biz take: P2P is here to stay, and content companies and carriers must learn to work with it.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are alive and well.
Despite all the lawsuits that have been hurled at P2P firms and end-users, P2P networks have evolved and thrived. Despite all the regulations slapped on free P2P voice-over-IP (VoIP) Skype traffic in countries like China and India, P2P VoIP continues to flourish.
In fact, according to CacheLogic, a P2P networks analytics firm, P2P traffic is booming across the globe.
Says Andrew Parker, CacheLogic's CTO: "The single largest traffic type by volume on any ISP network is often P2P traffic." He estimates that on average, at least 50% to 60% of all downstream traffic and 70% of all upstream traffic on an ISP is P2P.
This means that a staggering amount of P2P data is transmitted across global networks. According to research firm TeleGeography, the US consumed about 1,125 Tbps of international bandwidth last year. This translates to about 50 exabytes (50 x 1018 bytes) of P2P data being downloaded in the US every day on average. This is the equivalent of 10 trillion songs, assuming a typical song size of 5MB.
Anecdotal evidence points to P2P proliferation as well. Slyck, a P2P news site, estimates that there are 8 million to 10 million users on polled P2P networks at any one time. Parker says the actual number could be more than double this, as the poll excludes some P2P networks like the popular BitTorrent.
It goes without saying that such large-scale adoption of P2P worry the producers, distributors and carriers involved in the content supply chain.
Legal troubles
From a distribution standpoint, many content lobby groups and their powerful conglomerate backers view P2P networks as the root of all evil.
Often seen as abettors (or at least enablers) of piracy, P2P networks are continually harangued by the likes of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (IFPI).
Unfortunately for them, however, P2P networks, like the mythical hydra, never seem to expire. Lop off one head, and two more spring forth to bare their fangs.
For example, when Napster, the first popular P2P file sharing application, was slain by the RIAA in 2001, AudioGalaxy rose to take its place. When AudioGalaxy keeled over in an out-of-court settlement with RIAA in 2002, its users turned to a slew of second-generation P2P networks. These include FastTrack (with file-sharing clients like Kazaa, Grokster and iMesh) and Gnutella (with clients like LimeWire, Morpheus and BearShare). Instead of being based on a centralized search server like Napster or AudioGalaxy, these resilient second-generation networks do not use a centrally indexed server, making them hard to bring down.
Technology, however, cannot shield these networks from a legal hailstorm, as seen in the current prominent cases of Grokster vs. MGM and Kazaa vs. ARIA (Australia Recording Industry Association).
Another interesting trend is that the typical size of objects being shared has grown over time. In 2002, the average P2P object was musical in nature and about 5MB in size. Today, the vast majority of P2P traffic is due to TV programs or movies measuring over 100MB.
The evolution has led to a growth in newer P2P networks better equipped to share big files. BitTorrent and e-Donkey are the most prominent of these networks, and comprise a large proportion of P2P traffic, according to CacheLogic. In Asia, for instance, these two networks account for more than 80% of tracked popular P2P networks (see chart below). Singapore has about 70% BitTorrent and 12% e-Donkey traffic. In contrast, South Korea, with its entrenched Korean e-Donkey client Pruna, uses mostly the e-Donkey P2P network (more than 90%).
Co-opt the enemy
Shunning the approach that a few belligerent lobby groups have adopted -- suing their customers -- some content providers are looking at a smarter way of tackling the problem -- by co-opting P2P networks into their ranks.
This revolution started with music. Apple's iTunes Music Store, which opened in 2003, lets users purchase songs via download, hugely contributing to the iPod's success as a lifestyle device. A raft of other sites like MSN music and Soundbuzz followed the trail blazed by Apple.
Come next year, video will walk down this route, but with a twist. It will be free, and via legal P2P networks. Companies like BBC and AOL are going to offer free TV via Kontiki's commercial P2P platform. With In2TV (AOL's ad-supported P2P TV) and BBC's iMP slated to roll out by next month, there is little doubt that legal P2P content will soon become a force to be reckoned with.
Developments like these will definitely worry carriers. If content providers start bypassing them, carriers will loose yet another revenue source. P2P VoIP is already hurting their earnings, and being a pure dumb pipe player won't be a prospect most carriers relish.
Daryl Dunbar, director of 21CN from carrier BT, agrees: "Customers buy services, not networks. You don't want everyone else to extract value above you."
To that end, BT is embarking on its ambitious 21CN plan, which will convert its entire network to the IP platform. It is spending about US$7 billion to migrate 30 million copper lines in four years, hoping to roll out compelling triple-play services - voice, video and data - after that.
Not being able to offer services like IP-TV will spell doom for many telcos -- besides battling cable companies, they will soon have to fend off competition from P2P TV.
Bandwidth, monitoring problems
Revenue losses from content providers aside, P2P poses bandwidth challenges for carriers. P2P traffic gobbles up bandwidth, potentially causing quality of service (QoS) problems and incurring peering costs.
"If your traffic crosses peering links -- and our research shows that 92% of P2P traffic does so -- it can cost quite a bit if you have to pay for expensive transit bandwidth," says CacheLogic's Parker. However, not all carriers experience this problem or will state outright that they monitor P2P.
Singapore cable operator StarHub, for instance, says that P2P is "not high priority for their business" when queried on this issue. A spokesperson says the operator cannot open up the traffic and do deep packet inspection because this will "violate privacy issues" with consumers.
Other carriers like PCCW Global, which offers enterprise services, do state that they track P2P traffic.
Says Dan Lovatt, CEO of PCCW Global, who was in Singapore for VoIP Asia last month: "P2P does have an impact on the bottom line, and it needs to be managed and kept balanced between peering networks."
He adds that monitoring is necessary because when too much traffic flows one way, the truncating carrier can move to charge for it.
http://www.cmpnetasia.com/oct3_nw_vi...ion=Fe atures
The Blue Web
Adult-content providers push the envelop to develop new Internet technologies, allowing downloadable rentals and purchases, putting them a step ahead of the mainstream.
“Without the adult companies, the Internet wouldn’t exist in the way it does today,” pronounced Jeff Williams of the Prague-based William Higgins ‘Drake’s of LA, one of the world’s leading producers of gay porn. Adult companies were the first to earn substantial incomes through the Internet years ago, as users took advantage of the relative privacy and ease of use. Williams adds that the Internet grew on the back of adult- content providers.
Pushing the envelope
Technologies pioneered or first used effectively by adult content providers
· Video and audio streaming of content
· Fee-based services and subscriptions (now provides a major source of revenue for portals)
· Location software, (similar to GPS) which identifies where users live
· Segmented content to reach niche markets
· Mobile payments (which allow fast and anonymous purchases)
· Spam
· Popup ads
· Cookies
The industry played an important role in the spread of:
· Internet
· VHS
· DVD
And it will likely play a decisive role in the battle for the industry standard to the successor of the current DVD format between Toshiba’s high-definition DVD and Sony’s Blue Ray.
“If anyone wants to challenge that, they can try googling ‘sex’ and any other word on the Internet and see the huge difference in the number of results,” said Jonathan Taylor, from BAOL, known in the industry as Bel Ami Online, another Czech- based gay adult content provider.
Last year BAOL launched its own video rental project based on Microsoft’s digital rights management, which allows copyrighted video content to be safely transferred to devices running Microsoft software. The software also allows users to access music and film content and even make copies on disc without breaking copyright rulings.
“You can rent one of our movies [via the Internet] and play it on your computer, TV, mobile phone, or any handheld device,” Taylor said.
BAOL has developed its own software that allows for online rental and runs the pay-per-view and rental services of about a dozen adult content companies. “Adult content companies are more prepared to try innovative things than the mainstream industry in general,” said Williams, adding that the adult content providers aren’t necessarily as worried about copyright infringement than are other providers of content over the Internet.
“I want to be the first company to offer purchasable, downloadable movies,” Taylor said. Currently, no provider of video, adult-content or otherwise, offers lifetime copyrights for digital downloads.
In stores, new releases of BAOL DVDs can run as high as $70 (Kč 1,700), Taylor said, but a downloadable version could be sold for less than half that price, since it cuts out distribution costs.
From a technological point of view, buying movies via the Internet is already feasible, according to Taylor. But the user would have to renew the product key every 30 days. So for now, the company is sticking to rentals. “But we are ahead of the game even here,” Taylor said.
Most companies that allow Internet rentals focus on individual rentals, he explained. But BAOL has developed a system to track customer rentals using points, which are then reflected in the rental price.
A customer gains rental points for being a member of the Web site, for renting a certain number of movies, and for other purchases from the Web site.
Instead of paying $15 for a 15-day rental, a renter will pay only $11 for a 30-day rental, Taylor said.
Fighting piracy
While no official figures exist for Internet porn sales, industry watchers put revenues in the neighborhood of $750 million–1 billion per year in the United States, by far the largest market. Only about a third of sexually explicit material is sold in Europe.
Originally, the music industry took the biggest hit from Internet pirates because music files were smaller and therefore easier to download. But now, with faster Internet connections and bigger bandwidths, it is increasingly easier to download video.
According to a study of an 18-day period by U.S.-based Internet security firm Palisade Systems, some 42 percent of searches on the underground peer-to-peer (P2P) network Gnutella were for pornographic video content, compared to 38 percent for audio files.
The vast majority of piracy attempts are made on new releases, according to William Higgins, owner of the eponymous company. “After 90 days, they aren’t even interested in stealing [new releases],” he said.
Adult content providers consider making inexpensive digital movies legally accessible over the Internet the most effective way to tackle the piracy issue.
“Piracy can’t be stopped, we aren’t naive, but it can be minimized,” Taylor said, adding that he estimates that 50–60 percent of his company’s content is stolen.
William Higgins is working on its own version of a digital rights management system in the hope of minimizing thefts by hackers.
“When Microsoft comes up with a new product, there’s always someone who tries to hack it,” he said, adding that custom-software won’t be as vulnerable. Moreover, Microsoft’s DRM is too complicated, he added.
Improved search engines
This year the adult-movie industry trade show in Berlin presented some 15,000 movies for heterosexual audiences and 1,400 gay movies. With so much content, Internet marketers of the films have recognized the importance of effective search tools.
“The question is how to define your product on Google so that your company will come up first,” Higgins said. His company is currently revamping their Web site, including an enlargement of their search engines to multiple categories, incorporating the latest customer request, and searches by date.
BAOL said it was devising an even more powerful search engine on its Web site. “It’s called ‘Fantasy Find’ and will be ready soon,” Taylor said. Similar to Amazon.com’s search engine, the new search will not only track what the customer likes and make suggestions, but it will also allow the client to specify the type of movie or scene the customer wants. “He can say I want a blond guy with long hair doing such-and-such in the forest,” and the search will provide the relevant offerings.
http://www.cbw.cz/phprs/2005110701.html
Illegal File Sharing Drops Post Grokster
Nate Mook
According to research firm NPD Group, illegal peer-to-peer file sharing has dropped for the first time since the RIAA began its legal assault in 2003. Since that initial victory, P2P usage has only gone up -- until the June U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Grokster.
In June, an estimated 6.4 million United States households downloaded at least one music file, but by October that number had dipped to 5.7 million, an 11 percent decrease. NPD says the change is the first significant drop it has seen that is not related to "seasonality," such as students returning to school.
The firm largely attributed the drop to the record and entertainment industry's victory against file sharing service Grokster in June. The Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and other P2P networks can be held liable for the actions of their users, depending on how they market their services.
Grokster officially shut its doors in November, joining WinMX and eDonkey, and agreed to pay $50 million to settle music and movie piracy claims. Grokster, like iMesh, has plans to resurface as a legit music download network utilizing technology from its new parent company Mashboxx.
StreamCast Networks, maker of Morpheus and Kazaa owner Sharman Networks have pledged to continue their legal battle against the RIAA and MPAA, although it's unclear how long the two P2P services will remain standing.
But despite the decrease in terms of P2P usage, the number of actual files being traded has gone up since June from 258 million to 266 million. NPD said the difference indicates that major file swappers -- the small percentage of users sharing the vast majority of content -- have not given up.
Also, it's not clear how many users have moved away from public networks to private ones, which are harder to monitor and track. With BitTorrent quickly becoming the new file sharing standard, closed groups have formed around the technology to keep the prying eyes of the RIAA out.
According to another research firm, BigChampagne, illicit P2P use continues to rise, even after the June Grokster decision. The number of average global users peaked above 9.5 million in August and remains over 9 million, say the company's statistics, which are compiled by counting unique nodes and files on popular networks.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Ille...ter/1134598859
File
sales dropping
Why Are Online Music Sales Down?
Thomas Hawk
Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz: "According to Nielsen SoundScan, average weekly download sales as of Nov. 27 fell 0.44% vs. the third quarter. Says independent media analyst Richard Greenfield: 'We're not seeing the kind of dramatic growth we should given the surge in sales of iPods and other MP3 players.'"
How big is the appetite for paid legal downloads, or more specifically, paid legal downloads from iTunes? BusinessWeek Online is out with an article saying that despite iPod sales being up, online song sales most recently are down. Is the case, as BusinessWeek suggests, that legal downloads may be losing their luster?
Certainly the bloom may be off the rose a bit and as BusinessWeek reminds us, "as has been true since the start, iPod owners mostly fill up their players from their own CD collections or swipe tunes from file-sharing sites." But there also may be more going on here as well. A few other things to think about.
1. To what extent are free podcasts cannibalizing music sales? Although I've never purchased a single music track from Apple, I do know that personally my own mix between listening to podcasts and music has changed over the last year. As more and more compelling free podcasts have been made available, I actually listen to a lot less music on my AudioVox SMT5600 than I used to. Sometimes I'm in a mood to just veg and listen to music but a lot of the time I'm more in a mood to feed my mind. As people generally have a fixed amount of "iPod Time" per week (commuting and exercising mostly) could it be that with more great podcasts out there people are less interested in buying music?
2. Have video downloads cannibalized iTunes music sales over the last quarter? Certainly the type of person who might download a video from Apple's iTunes to try it out probably has a high likelihood of already being a current iTunes customer. Have the 3 million or so video downloads to date distracted typical iTunes music downloaders while they play around with the novelty and newness of iTunes video downloads?
3. Is sneakernet gaining traction? One unknown out there has always been how many mp3s are being shared from ripped CDs. As the prices on blank media, as well as cheap external storage drives, continues to drop, are more people copying legally ripped tracks from their friends and family? If I visit my family at Thanksgiving and copy 100 gigs from a brother/sister/mother/father/ cousin/niece/nephew/aunt/uncle/family friend, am I likely to want to go out and buy more from iTunes? If a certain number of people have abandoned peer to peer because of the irrational fear of a lawsuit, does sneakernet represent a new free and easy way to get music without the fear of a lawsuit? Is there a relationship between the price of media and hard drives dropping and music sales dropping?
4. As BusinessWeek mentions there is now more competition from subscription services.
5. Is there a backlash growing against Apple for it's continued use of proprietary formats? Although people love the iPod, do (a few) resist buying iTunes tracks because they don't like the idea that legal music on an iPod MUST come from iTunes and not other sources?
6. Is there a backlash against the RIAA and the recording industry in general for their heavy handed tactics and a general increasing hatred towards them and thus a shifting view culturally on the imperative for paying for music vs. getting it for free?
So why also do people buy iTunes downloads in the first place? There are a few reasons. Convenience. Adequate disposable income. A moral or ethical belief that it is a superior way to consume music than via free peer to peer or sneakernet sources.
As the popularity of the iPod grows, and it becomes cheaper and less and less of an early adopter or upper middle class toy, perhaps the demographics of it's user base are also changing and the mix of income, alternative sources (aka convenience), and less RIAAthinklike individuals may be having an impact as well.
Of course, in all of this, let's be frank, really Steve Jobs could care less if music download sales are down or not. He doesn't make any money on music downloads. Well, he does care to the extent that it affects his ability to negotiate with the music industry going forward -- but as far as he and Apple are concerned it doesn't matter what people are listening to as long as they are listeing to something and as long as it's on an iPod. This is one reason why you've seen Apple so aggressively offering up free podcasts on iTunes and Jobs probably doesn't lose any sleep about the fact that peer to peer and sneakernet are still alive and well. As BusinessWeek correctly reminds us: "So will Jobs change his tune? Not unless he has to. Apple can barely keep up with demand for iPods, which reap as much as 25% gross margins, vs. minimal profits for each iTunes track. So right now there's no reason for the company to alter the way it sells music or make its player compatible with other services."
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1792/why_are_online
Indie Music Available To Podcasts
Songs by acts signed to UK indie record labels are to be made available to podcasters on a trial basis.
The Association of Independent Music is selling six-month worldwide licence deals for its members' music to be used on download radio programmes.
Podcasters will buy licences to access a fixed list of labels' music. Commercial broadcasters will pay an additional percentage of their revenue.
Acts signed to UK indie labels include Franz Ferdinand and The Prodigy.
Previously, few podcasters were able to get licences to use copyrighted material, forcing them to either use copyright- free songs or remove all music from podcasts.
Successful acts
AIM chairman and chief executive Alison Wenham said podcasters who took up the temporary licences would be able to work "without the fear of operating illegally".
She said: "In the absence of an industry wide scheme, AIM has moved to fill the current void, and has created attractive licensing conditions for the use of music from the independent sector of the UK.
"We believe there will be huge global demand for the AIM podcast licence."
The full list of music on offer will be made available on the AIM website as labels sign up to it.
Other acts signed to AIM's 900 member labels who might be part of the deal include Bloc Party, Stereophonics, The White Stripes, The Strokes, Basement Jaxx, Paul Weller and Arctic Monkeys.
Restrictions will be placed on licencees with regard to the amount and manner of use of the agreed music.
An AIM spokesman said the body was determined not to "create a mechanism to enable the creation of free or ultra- cheap compilation albums".
Martin Goldschmidt is managing director of Cooking Vinyl, whose artists include Richard Thompson and Billy Bragg.
He said: "I see podcasting and subscription services as playing a big role in where the music consumer wants to go."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4500094.stm
Wordsmiths Hail Podcast Success
The term 'podcast' has been declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.
The term is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player".
The word is derived from a combination of "broadcasting" and "iPod".
It will be added to the online version of the dictionary during the next update early next year.
Rising popularity
Podcasts have grown quickly in popularity over the past 12 months as they are an easy way of getting digital content and playing it when and where you want.
The term was coined by journalist Ben Hammersley and although originally derived from combining "broadcasting" and "iPod", this definition has become something of a misnomer as podcasts can be listened to on any digital music player.
Some have criticised the term for giving too much credit to Apple, which had little to do with the development of the technology and some have tried to suggest alternative terms such as blogcasting or audioblogging.
Podcasts have become popular because anyone with a microphone, computer, software and a net connection, can produce one themselves.
Their rising popularity is challenging conventional radio's broadcasting and business model.
As a result, many radio stations such as the BBC are making their shows available as downloadable MP3 files.
The BBC began a seven-month podcasting trial in May. Around 20 programmes are taking part in the trial, including Radio 4's Today programme and Five Live's Sportsweek.
Podcasting received a big boost in June, when Apple added a podcast directory to its iTunes online music store.
"Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept," said Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.
"This year it's a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."
Losing words
Among the words that did not make it were two other terms popular in tech circles.
One was lifehack, which refers to a more efficient way of completing an everyday task.
The other was rootkit, defined as software installed on a computer by someone other than the owner, intended to conceal other programs or processes, files or system data.
The term hit the headlines when Sony was found to have included a rootkit as part of the copy protection system on some of its music CDs.
Other words that did not make it include bird flu, sudoku and trans fat.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4504256.stm
Sony BMG Repents Over CD Debacle
Mark Ward
Sony BMG is rethinking its anti-piracy policy following weeks of criticism over the copy protection used on CDs.
The head of Sony BMG's global digital business, Thomas Hesse, told the BBC that the company was "re-evaluating" its current methods.
It follows widespread condemnation of the way anti-piracy software on some Sony CDs installs itself on computers.
The admission came as Sony faced more censure over the security failings of one of its copy protection programs.
Bad publicity
The row began in November when software developer Mark Russinovich discovered that Sony BMG's XCP anti-piracy programs used virus-like techniques
to hide itself on a PC.
The row ended with Sony recalling all the CDs that use XCP and offering to swap customers' existing discs for ones that do not use the much-criticised software.
Speaking to the BBC News website, Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business, said all the bad publicity had made it think hard about its approach to stopping people making illegal copies.
"The key point to remember is that copyright infringement is a huge issue for the recording industry as a whole and that's where we came from originally," he said.
"But this whole story has led us to look at the approach we have to take going forward," Mr Hesse said.
The furore about the XCP software had lead Sony BMG to "diligently re-evaluate" how it protects music on CDs.
He said it was too early to say where Sony was in the evaluation process or what might result, but he said the company was taking the re-examination very seriously.
Patch problems
Sony came in for more criticism this week over SunComm's MediaMax anti-piracy program used on 32 CDs released in the US and Canada.
The problem with the MediaMax software was revealed in a joint statement Sony BMG issued with digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In that statement Sony urged users to install a patch that closed the security loophole that MediaMax opened on PCs.
However, the discovery by independent security researchers that this patch suffered the same security problems as the original program led the EFF to withdraw its support.
The loophole introduced by MediaMax and the patch could have let malicious hackers hijack the programs to gain control of a PC. The new program issued by Sony BMG on 8 December closes the hole in the patch.
"It's a fairly common issue often found in PC games," said Robert Horton, a security expert from NGS Software brought in by Sony to vet its latest patch.
"Its fairly common and the fix is easy to provide through a software update."
He said it was unlikely that any attacker would have been able to exploit the bugs in MediaMax and its patch.
"Even if the issue is only a slight one, at Sony BMG we are very clear that any software security issues are taken with the utmost seriousness," said Mr Hesse.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4514678.stm
Software Industry Shifts Piracy Strategy
Roy Mark
The U.S. strategy for its war on global software piracy is shifting from focusing on the financial damage of intellectual property theft to the economic benefits of copyright protection.
A new study released today by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) concludes that countries with the highest software piracy rates stand to reap the greatest economic gains by protecting intellectual property rights.
"When countries take steps to reduce software piracy, just about everyone stands to benefit," said Robert Holleyman, BSA president and CEO. "Workers have new jobs, consumers have more choices, entrepreneurs are free to market their creativity and governments benefit from increased tax revenues."
The BSA's research, conducted independently by the International Data Corporation (IDC), claims that cutting the current global piracy rate of 35 percent by 10 percentage points over four years could globally create 2.4 million new jobs, $400 billion in economic growth and $67 billion in new tax revenues.
John Gantz, chief research officer of IDC, added that the study "provides a comprehensive snapshot of what we have known all along: reducing software piracy delivers real results in the form of more funding for education, job training, health care and overall economic growth."
According to IDC, a 10-point reduction in software piracy in China, ranked third in worldwide piracy (90 percent), could create 2.6 million new IT jobs by 2009, as many IT jobs as the U.S. has been able to create over the last 30 years.
Russia, a country with the fifth highest software piracy rate in the world (87 percent), could see its IT industry triple in size -- growing from $9.2 billion today to $30 billion in just four years.
"There is a recognition by countries that professional intellectual property protection is a priority for their governments to stimulate their economies," said Chris Israel, coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce. "There is tangible evidence that supports this recognition.
Israel noted that China has committed to make legal purchases of software for its government agencies by the end of this year. Next year, Beijing promises to bring stricter intellectual property protections to its enterprise sector, including state-owned businesses.
"All of the commitments China has made to us are achievable. We have very high expectations," Israel said.
Despite having the world's lowest software piracy rate (21 percent), the study found that the United States stands to gain more than any other nation from a 10-point piracy cut over four years, boosting its economy by $125 billion.
Although the U.S. IT sector is already projected to grow by almost a third between 2004 and 2009, it could grow more than 10 percentage points faster with further piracy reductions.
The study also concluded that while the global IT sector is currently projected to grow 33 percent through 2009, a 10-point reduction in software piracy could spur the global IT industry to grow 45 percent larger by 2009.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3569561
Pirate Trader Sold £3 Million Of Sham Software
Jeremy Kirk
A UK pirate trader sold £3 million of counterfeit software before its website was closed down. Nacha Alexander, head of Microsoft head of Microsoft antipiracy in the UK, said that Zoobon, which was closed down in January, was subject to many complaints from customers after buying goods from the company on eBay. The company's website was shut down following an out-of-court settlement.
As part of the settlement, details of the case could not be discussed until Thursday, Alexander said. Other terms of the agreement were also not made public, she said.
The illegal software is believed to have come from outside the UK, Alexander said.
"We're very, very protective of our customers," she added. "We are really trying to work very hard to close down these types of traders."
From August through October, about 21,000 counterfeit Microsoft products were withdrawn from eBay, Alexander said. About 60 percent of those were low-quality recordable CDs and DVDs, she said.
http://www.techworld.com/application...gePos=3&inkc=0
Movie Company Files Federal Piracy Suit Against Tri-State Man
Defendant argues someone else tapped into wireless network
John London
A DVD that retails for $21.99 could cost a local man more than $100,000, News 5's John London reported. Russell Lee is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description. Paramount, which distributes "Coach Carter," presents an unflattering picture of him, saying he not only obtained the movie illegally, but that he uploaded it to an online system called eDonkey so others could steal it, too. "I don't even know what they're talking about," Lee said. "I didn't do it."
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off. "If I can do anything to make people understand that please, if you're using wireless Internet, have somebody install it that knows what they're doing," he said. "Because if you don't, they could get in trouble just like me."
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/hea...20/detail.html
Merry Christmas From The RIAA
Roy Mark
The music industry dropped 751 copyright-infringement lawsuits in the mail today, bringing the total number of legal actions this year against alleged peer- to-peer (P2P) infringers to more than 7,000.
The John Doe lawsuits filed Thursday cite individuals for illegally distributing copyrighted music on the Internet through P2P services, such as LimeWire and Kazaa. In addition to the John Doe suits, the major music labels also filed lawsuits against 105 named defendants.
"At stake is the music industry's ability to invest in the next generation of music and a chance for legal online music services to flourish," Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a statement.
The latest batch of RIAA lawsuits comes a day after market research firm NPD Group issued numbers claiming illegal downloads have fallen 11 percent since the Supreme Court ruled in June that Grokster and other P2P companies were operating illegal businesses.
Those numbers, however, were disputed by Eric Garland, CEO of media measurement firm BigChampagne.
"In fact, in every month since Grokster, P2P activity is actually higher than it was in May/June, or at any other point," he said in an e-mail to internetnews.com.
Whether the amount of illegal P2P downloading is up or down, the RIAA pledged to continue its lawsuits.
"We must do everything to protect the integrity of the marketplace. That means educating fans about steering clear of pirated products and continuing to enforce our rights to send a clear message that stealing music will bring consequences," Sherman said.
The John Doe lawsuits included students at Drexel University, Harvard and the University of Southern California.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3571296
Students Raise Funds For Roommate Sued By RIAA
Ross Liemer
Delwin Olivan '08 might be luckier than the other 23 University students charged with music piracy by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last spring — his friends created a website and t-shirt line to defray the cost of his settlement.
Olivan stands accused of distributing songs via the file-sharing network i2hub, which closed in November following a cease and desist letter from the RIAA.
"When the three-inch-thick outline of the court case against me arrived in the mail, I realized I really had no choice but to settle," Olivan said.
An RIAA representative phoned Olivan on November 5, and told him to settle the case for $5,000 within 60 days or face far greater claims in court.
"These guys want $5,000 from him, and I get choked up thinking about it," roommate Sean Gleason '08 said. "His bank account doesn't have $5,000. He's not an old money Princeton student who gets a $5,000 monthly allowance."
Olivan and Gleason devised a novel way to lessen the financial burden on Olivan's mother — the Free Delwin Fund.
James Hamm '08, a friend down the hall, registered the domain name freedelwin.org. Gleason designed the website. Olivan posed for t-shirts. The roommates then proceeded to flyer Forbes.
"During Fall Break, we worked morning to night," Olivan said.
The Free Delwin site opens with a "manifesto," a tongue-in-cheek introduction to Olivan and his legal woes.
"Thanks to The Eagles, Tracy Chapman and Sting, Delwin now cries whenever he thinks of music," the statement reads. "But what exactly was his crime? Philanthropy. The key to avoiding a subpoena like the one Del is facing is to refrain from sharing, and he knew this."
Olivan does not plead innocence, only financial need.
"Clearly, on the website I don't deny file sharing," he said.
Sympathizers can donate directly to the Free Delwin Fund or pay $10 for a Free Delwin t-shirt. The shirts bear a likeness of Olivan akin to the iconic visage of Argentinian-born revolutionary Che Guevara.
"Delwin has the potential to dominate the world, to be dictator of not one, but two countries simultaneously," Gleason joked.
Supporters have bought more than 50 shirts so far, Olivan said.
He and Gleason plan to sell shirts to their friends at home over Winter Break; many have already pledged their solidarity with the Delwin cause.
"The money is all going to the RIAA. We set up separate PayPal accounts for students who have PayPal accounts and students who donate through PayPal with credit or debit cards. We keep cash donations locked in a box. It's completely legitimate," Gleason said.
Olivan and Gleason said donations and student interest have exceeded their expectations; they will probably order a second batch of t-shirts. Still, they doubt Free Delwin will raise enough money to fully cover Olivan's $5,000 settlement.
The roommates readily acknowledge that people might deem their fund frivolous.
"We're not saying this is like Save the Whales," Gleason said. "It's fun. We hope the website gets people to smile, to maybe donate a few bucks, to post on the message board.
"How many people have really never shared music? Delwin was just one of the unlucky ones who got caught."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ws/14093.shtml
Online Pirates Fail To See Impact Of Mass Downloading
Alex Gelhar
Don’t lie, we’ve all done it at one point or another. Your favorite band releases a new CD, and you already spent your last paycheck taking your significant other to dinner and a movie. What next? Do you wait two weeks until the next paycheck rolls in? Of course not. That’s why there is the internet.
I, like most teenagers, am one of the millions of users who have turned to Peer-to-Peer websites to download a few songs. For awhile, I evaded my guilty conscience by arguing, “The musicians can suffer, they make enough money.” Boy, was I ever wrong, for it is not the musicians that suffer.
In actuality, music downloads barely hurt the artist’s salary, if at all. By contract, they are entitled to a certain chunk of the sales, their royalties if you will. The repercussions of music downloads trickle down the corporate ladder until middle class workers are being laid off.
Now, by no means am I attacking the downloading of music. Yes, I am against illegally downloading music, but that is not the purpose of this column. The purpose of this column is not to simply fill space, but rather to inform.
Far too many people don’t realize the consequences of an action as simple as downloading music from free sites such as Limewire or Grokster. While some analysts have gone as far as saying music will disappear if downloading isn’t stopped, most have merely acknowledged the deleterious effects it has had in recent years.
What most fail to remember, however, is that the industry faced a similar crisis back in the late 1970’s. With the invention of the cassette recorder, people were able to record music from the radio, and bypass the actual purchasing of the album.
Record labels back then campaigned for the end of cassette recorders, in a similar fashion to how companies are now campaigning for the end of illegal downloading. Analysts back then prophesized the end of music, yet it still remains today.
There are actually benefits to this practice as well. Up and coming bands are able to get their music to a wider fan base much quicker with free downloads, and people are able to sample CD’s before they buy them.
In the end, what it all comes down to are your own personal beliefs. But with options like Napster that are cheap, and legal, it is a wonder why more users haven’t jumped on the opportunity.
http://www.the-index.org/cgi-bin/story.pl?1024pirates
Korean Bill Attacks Internet File Sharing
Internet community says proposed law will kill industry
Roberto Spiezio
Programs like Kazaa, Emule, Limewire, Soribada, Pruna and the ancestor Napster are popular among many Internet users who use them to download songs and videos with the so-called peer-to-peer protocol, or P2P.
This habit violates copyright laws nearly all over the world, including South Korea. But the "music" could change soon, if a national bill aimed at stopping file sharing is approved.
Uri Party Representative Woo Sang Ho proposed a law requiring Internet companies to supervise file transfers between their users and stop transfers when the contents are subject to copyright. MP3s, music videos and movies are surely on the blacklist. Companies that don't abide by the proposed law risk fines up to 50 million won (US$48,000).
The control system should be implemented by the Internet Service Providers through filters and monitoring tools, but the law shouldn't affect services like instant messaging and Web mail.
Woo's staff claims the lawmaker will push the proposal, which could be approved by the end of this month, according to the Korea Times on Dec. 7.
This initiative triggered outrage and protests from Internet companies and Internet users, who overloaded Uri Party's Web site and other Web portals like Naver with messages against the bill.
The Korea Internet Corporations Association said in an official note that the idea of such a law is "naive," and it "would kill the emerging Internet industry."
Even if there are advantages for copyright protection in the short run,, in the long run there won't be advantages for the copyright holders, let alone Internet users and providers, the association said.
http://english.ohmynews.com/rolling_...4&ad_tim e=50
Song Sites Face Legal Crackdown
Ian Youngs
The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.
The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.
MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.
He said unlicensed guitar tabs and song scores were widely available on the internet but were "completely illegal".
Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can "throw in some jail time I think we'll be a little more effective".
Bitter battles
The move comes after several years of bitter legal battles against unauthorised services allowing users to download recordings for free.
Publishing companies have taken action against websites in the past, but this will be the first co-ordinated legal campaign by the MPA.
The MPA would target "very big sites that people would think are legitimate and very, very popular", Mr Keiser said.
"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."
David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, added his concerns.
"Unauthorised use of lyrics and tablature deprives the songwriter of the ability to make a living, and is no different than stealing," he said.
"Music publishers and songwriters will consider all tools under the law to stop this illegal behaviour."
Sandro del Greco, who runs Tabhall.co.uk, said the issue was not serious enough to warrant jail time and sites like his were not necessarily depriving publishers of income.
Learn
"I play the drums mainly but I play the guitar as well. I run the website and I still buy the [tab] books," he said.
"The tabs online aren't deadly accurate so if someone really wants to know it they'll buy the book.
"But most of the bands I listen to don't have tab books to buy so if you get them online, that's the only way you can really learn it unless you work it out yourself."
The campaign comes after lyric-finding software PearLyrics was forced off the internet by a leading music publishing company, Warner Chappell.
'No alternative'
PearLyrics worked with Apple's iTunes, searching the internet to find lyrics for songs in a user's collection.
"I just don't see why PearLyrics should infringe the copyright of Warner Chappell because all I'm doing is searching publicly-available websites," PearLyrics developer Walter Ritter said.
"It would be different if they had an alternative service that also provided lyrics online and also integrated [with iTunes] like PearLyrics did.
"But they don't offer anything like that at all."
Warner Chappell were unavailable for comment.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm
Communities
For Online Star Wars Game, It's Revenge of the Fans
Seth Schiesel
For two and a half years, Emily E. LaBeff, chairwoman of the sociology department at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Tex., spent 30 hours or more each week playing the online computer game Star Wars Galaxies. Not for research, but for fun.
Logging on to the game on weekends and many nights after class, Ms. LaBeff directed Athena Wavingrider, a powerful Jedi she created, through the far corners of the Star Wars universe, fighting on behalf of the Rebel Alliance against the tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Like millions of other online gamers, Ms. LaBeff, 54, discovered a camaraderie and friendship with other players that were far more important than the play itself - relationships that can be hard to replicate in "real life."
"It's replaced my television time, and I don't go to the movies anymore," she said, chuckling. "I don't keep my car as clean as I used to. But it's not because of the game itself. It's because of the people." She added, "We all had this wonderful second life together."
And now it's all gone, at least in any form that Ms. LaBeff and thousands of other Star Wars Galaxies veterans would recognize.
Last month, LucasArts and Sony's online game division, which have jointly run Star Wars Galaxies since its introduction in 2003, suddenly turned the game upside down, making the most sweeping changes ever made to a persistent online game. ("Persistent" means that the game world is constantly running, and players may log in and out as they please.) Unsatisfied with the product's merely moderate success, the companies radically revamped the game in an attempt to appeal to a younger, more trigger-happy audience.
Previously, the game was unabashedly complicated, appealing to mature, reflex-challenged gamers with its strategic combat style and deep skill system, which allowed players to carve out profitable, powerful niches as entertainers, architects and politicians. Now the game has become self-consciously simple, with a basic point-and-click combat system that is meant to evoke the frenetic firefights of the "Star Wars" films.
To Sony and LucasArts, the changes are a necessary step to help the game appeal to a broader audience. (The companies do not release subscriber figures, but many gaming experts believe that before the changes, Star Wars Galaxies had about 200,000 subscribers, each paying about $15 a month.) But to thousands of players, the shifts have meant the destruction of online communities that they might have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours constructing. Now many Galaxies players are canceling their accounts and migrating to other online games. They are swapping tales on "refugee" Web sites with names like Imperial Crackdown (imperialcrackdown.com). Ms. LaBeff, for instance, said that she had canceled all three of her Galaxies accounts and had joined a new guild in World of Warcraft, another game, with her old Star Wars friends.
"Someone might wonder, well, it's just a game, what's the big deal?" said Robert Kruck, 54, an engineer for Motorola who lives in Schaumburg, Ill., who said he had canceled seven of his eight Galaxies accounts. "But for many people it is much more than a game," he said. "It is a part of their lives where they have invested huge amounts of time building a community. And that community has been based on a sophisticated, mature game. So now, for them to take an adult-level combat and economics simulation and turn it into a mindless game for 10-year-olds is a violation of that community."
For Sony and LucasArts, the idea has been to make the game more "Star Wars-like," tying it more explicitly to the films.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.
"We knew we were taking a significant risk with our existing player base, but we felt so strongly that we needed to make these changes for the sake of the game's long-term future that we all held hands, LucasArts and Sony, and went forward," Ms. MacIntyre said.
It may, however, be a rocky path, because the revamped game is receiving mostly horrible reviews from players. On Gamespot.com, a leading game Web site, about half of the more than 600 players evaluating the game have rated it "abysmal." Some 14 percent have called it "terrible," and 6 percent have described it as merely "bad." The game is described as "perfect" by about 12 percent and "other" by 18 percent.
"We just feel violated," said Carolyn R. Hocke, 46, a marketing Web technician for Ministry Medical Group and St. Michael's Hospital in Stevens Point, Wis. Ms. Hocke said she once had as many as 10 separate Galaxies accounts but has canceled all but one in the last two weeks.
"For them to just come along and destroy our community has prompted a lot of death-in-the-family-type grieving," she said. "They went through the astonishment and denial, then they went to the anger part of it, and now they are going through the sad and helpless part of grieving. I work in the health-care industry, and it's very similar."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html