[JackSpratts]

P2P Penetration

Over the recent holiday weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time with a friend I don’t see often enough. She’d recently done some work to her home and couldn’t wait to show it off. I brought over some housewarming cyberpresents for the new place and set to work installing them on her family PC.

It’s always interesting to check out the systems of folks who aren’t seriously involved in the Peer-To-Peer scene. It gives me a chance to see what’s hot and what’s not, what’s popular, what’s obscure.

On this particular system I was a bit surprised to find a cleaned version of Kazaa, as I hadn’t thought many besides heavy users even knew about it, but there it was all ready to go. On top of that, she had a powerful anti-spyware application and even ran regular scans with it. Hmmm I thought, the word is getting around.

I had a few surprises for her of course. I turned her on to a couple of good programs like Soulseek and BitTorrent – she hadn’t heard of either - and she jumped right into both. Her eyes went wide checking out the torrent and it was interesting watching her size up what it means for leeches, immediately grasping they have no place on the BT network. She even got the concept that your files can “drain” faster than they “fill”, which is a bit harder to figure when you first watch the progress lines. But she liked it, and kept checking her status, inbound and out.

Soulseek was a no brainer of course, as that one is the closest thing to Napster since, well, Napster. It’s as easy to use as “install and go” - and everyone gets the terrific buddy system immediately.

I popped a couple of up to date CoDecs in the box so she could watch the latest flicks (she’ll need them now) and played around with the system for a few more minutes before heading out to her deck and a sunny afternoon.

The half hour or so we spent at the computer gave me a chance to reconnect with her and have some fun while we were at it, and it also gave me a little more insight into just how far peer-to-peer has penetrated the American consumer market.

It’s one thing to bat around figures like “30%” or “80 million users” but at the end of the day as important (and huge) as those numbers are they’re of little relevance in any personal way. Outside of press releases, policy making and debating points they’re not particularly useful or informative. What’s required is a way to bring those numbers home.

What I need to do every so often is spend time with someone who uses his or her computer in a low key fashion. Like for surfing or chatting or for just keeping in touch with family and friends. This is how many people actually use them, the ones who will carry file sharing from a niche activity right into the mainstream, and in so doing make it indispensable. The future of Internet file sharing belongs to them. If they don’t “get it”, file sharing could well succumb to the constant assaults of wealthy companies and the legislators in their pockets. But if the people get it, and I think that they do, nothing will stop it. After this weekend I’m more convinced than ever that the future of file sharing is in pretty good hands.










Enjoy,

Jack.










Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA
David McGuire

Small Internet radio stations, angered over what they say is the recording industry's effort to wield royalty rates as a weapon to drive them out of business, say they are preparing to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America.

The Las Vegas-based Webcaster Alliance will send a letter today to the RIAA, threatening to sue the group for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act unless the RIAA agrees to reopen negotiations over the royalty rates webcasters must fork over to artists and record labels, Webcaster Alliance attorney Perry Narancic said.

"We're trying to negotiate with these people, but with a big stick," Narancic said.

The existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged, Narancic said.

The Webcaster Alliance has more than 300 members ranging from tiny hobbyists to small broadcast stations with accompanying Internet sites. The group's members include stations specializing in trance, bluegrass, classical and other genres.

The RIAA has not seen the letter and as such had no comment about its contents, but spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the organization has negotiated in good faith with webcasters.

"We have worked diligently to negotiate fair agreements that offer a broad and flexible array of rates and terms to large, small and non-commercial webcasters," he said.

Webcasters of all sizes have wrangled with the recording industry since 1998, when Congress passed a law requiring Internet radio stations to pay royalties to artists and record labels.

Even after the Librarian of Congress inked a royalty compromise last year, many smaller Internet radio operators maintained that the rates were too high.

Under pressure from Congress, the RIAA and its royalty agent, SoundExchange, negotiated tailored royalty arrangements with specific webcasting segments, including large commercial operators, college stations and small commercial stations, like those represented by the Webcaster Alliance. In June, the RIAA announced that it had struck deals with all major classes of webcasters.

But the Webcaster Alliance maintains that the RIAA and SoundExchange did not go far enough to craft royalty deals with small Internet radio stations and that its lawsuit would challenge the special royalty deals it has already struck, Narancic said.

At issue is which group speaks for small commercial webcasters. To establish royalty rates for this class of Web radio stations, the RIAA negotiated with a group called Voice of Webcasters, which represented fewer than 15 Internet radio stations, according to Narancic.

The VOW members, who Narancic characterized as some of the largest "small" webcasters in the country, agreed to a comparatively high baseline royalty rate -- under which all small webcasters would pay at least $2,000 a year to record labels and artists -- in exchange for a break on high, per- song rates.

The $2,000 figure is four times higher than the $500 baseline established by the U.S. Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress and is beyond the reach of the smallest players in the commercial market, Narancic said.

"This is not an industry where people are making money hand over fist and ripping off the RIAA. You can't imagine what the effect of a $2,000 minimum is," Narancic said. "We've got about 10,000 webcasting operations in the United States. Of that 10,000 we're talking about eliminating all but a few thousand."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Jul9.html


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Hollywood Heist

Will tinseltown let techies steal the show?

By Ronald Grover & Heather Green
With Tom Lowry in New York, Catherine Yang in Washington, and Cliff Edwards in San Mateo, Calif.

Premiere day was fast approaching for The Hulk. The film's budget had already climbed to more than $150 million, including an extra $20 million for George Lucas' special effects company to give the giant green hero an extra dose of ferocity. Even the red-carpet ceremony was in flux, with a last- minute move at the insistence of director Ang Lee from historic Grauman's Chinese Theater to the Universal Amphitheater, where the sound was sharper. But that 11th-hour nitpicking was nothing compared with an earlier uproar at Universal Pictures: Two weeks before Hulk's June 20 release, pirated versions of the blockbuster (BBI ) hopeful were already circulating on the Internet after a New Jersey man got his hands on an early copy and surreptitiously posted it on the Net. Worse yet, the film was getting nasty reviews from disappointed sci-fi buffs.

For Hollywood moguls, that script is more terrifying than anything they could ever put on the big screen. More and more, the first showings of the latest Julia or Mel flicks aren't in just the local cineplex. They're on KaZaA, Morpheus, or iMesh, Internet sites known mostly for music file-sharing but now snapping up pirated movies with remarkable ease. Within a few days of Keanu Reeves battling his first black-suited bad guy in theaters in The Matrix Reloaded, an estimated 200,000 folks had already taken in the action, according to an online rating agency, downloading the long- awaited sequel in their dens and dorms. New episodes of HBO's hit Six Feet Under are on the Net, too, and you needn't be a computer whiz to find them.

It's all too reminiscent of the monster that ate the music business. For a town that loves a good sequel, that's one repeat performance Hollywood isn't keen to produce. Only five years ago, music sales were booming. Today, the industry is nearly paralyzed by piracy. Illegal downloads and file-sharing were partly responsible for last year's loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in worldwide music revenues, about 8%, says PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The speed at which music was brought to its knees makes Hollywood execs tremble. "We may not be the smartest guys around," says Peter Chernin, president of News Corp. "But we'd have to be brain-dead to ignore what it did to those guys."

Can Hollywood avoid getting Napsterized? Right now, the pirates are only nibbling at the $65 billion-a-year film and TV business. Downloading a movie is still a clunky affair that can take a few hours, and only 27% of the country's 66 million online homes have the superfast broadband connections to do it.

Most of the piracy so far is through good old-fashioned counterfeiting. The ripping and burning of movies to DVDs is growing into a global underground industry that last year cost film studios an estimated $3 billion in lost DVD sales. It's prodding the guys in Guccis into action: Security folks outfitted with night goggles routinely patrol press screenings, searching for illicit camcorders. Former FBI agents are leading raids of illegal DVD copying plants in Thailand and Malaysia. Industry lawyers are flooding court dockets with lawsuits against all manner of thieves (page 82).

But the digital threat is looming as ominously as the thick flock of crows gathered on the jungle gym in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Technology is coming on quickly that will make the prospect of copying movies and TV shows much more tantalizing -- and far easier. Already, some 600,000 copies of films a day are being downloaded illegally, according to industry estimates, which could cost Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars in lost video sales. A new crop of gizmos, from digital televisions to personal video recorders (PVRs), will soon make duplicating anything on the tube -- from Fox (FOX ) Broadcasting Co.'s 24 to the latest Jennifer Lopez flick -- a couch potato's dream. And within three years, half the online population will have broadband, making it easier to pass programs captured in digital form around on the Net.

The living room is center stage for all this new digital entertainment. But will it be a war zone or a thriving marketplace shared by the creators of content and the makers of the cool machines that deliver it? That's the urgent question facing studio execs. It's not that they can't envision a rosy scenario for convergence, where there's money to be made at every turn -- from movies on demand to Sex and the City fans streaming their favorite episodes on the PC to teens watching videos on handhelds. "We would certainly like to be able to make our content [increasingly] available in a digital world," Comcast (CMCSK ) Corp. CEO Brian L. Roberts told the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention in early June. "But we need to feel secure that we're going to get paid for [it]."

The next few months will be crucial for the Hollywood gang, who are currently wrangling with cable operators, consumer-electronics makers, and the technology industry over protecting their digital gold. Each group has its own philosophies about how much protection -- mandated and voluntary -- the content needs. Historically, working hand in hand with disparate interests has been anathema to the moguls, a single-minded, ego-driven bunch for whom compromise doesn't come easily.
http://businessweek.com/magazine/con...1001_mz001.htm


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Lawmakers in Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont and in 130 cities and counties nationwide have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act.

Group Takes Aim At Patriot Law
Tim Hearden

Some residents here want city councilors to order police to defy the USA Patriot Act amid growing complaints that civil liberties have become a casualty in the war on terrorism.

A local citizens' group called the Bill of Rights Committee of Mount Shasta is circulating petitions this weekend to have the issue placed before the City Council on July 28.

The group's chairman, 64-year-old retired carpenter Donald Nobach, said the post-Sept. 11, 2001, legislation has bred "a fascist government" that can launch unbridled invasions of privacy and arrest people without warrants.

"This is not really a political thing . . . because civil rights crosses all boundaries," said Nobach, who served in the Air Force from 1956 to 1961. "Anybody in their right mind would want to maintain what I fought for. I served in the military, and I fought for these rights, and I'm not going to give them away easily."

But the group's proposal would face opposition from acting Police Chief Bill Pieruccini, who said he would disregard the City Council's orders and help federal authorities if his assistance were requested.

"The bottom line is at this point, I support the laws and the Constitution the way that the legislators we've elected have seen fit to pass," Pieruccini said. "That's one of my duties as a police chief . . . so I would definitely have a difficulty if my council told me not to support it. We would definitely have a problem."

The Mount Shasta resolution is part of a national effort to curtail the 20-month-old Patriot Act that gives the federal Justice Department sweeping powers to gather information and crack down on suspected terrorists.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill that would end the Patriot Act's authority for broad searches of materials obtained at libraries and bookstores. Boxer's bill would reinstate a previous law that required such searches to be conducted with a specific warrant tied to a suspect.

Meanwhile, numerous interest groups are taking aim at the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which would strengthen the Patriot Act by allowing the government to make secret arrests, place unrestricted wiretaps and create DNA databases on ordinary Americans.

Lawmakers in Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont and in 130 cities and counties nationwide have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act. The proposal by Mount Shasta's Bill of Rights Committee is being reviewed by City Attorney John Kenny.
http://www.redding.com/top_stories/l...toplo043.shtml


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Both Sides Now
Matt Sebastian

Meet Pete Holm, the music industry's worst nightmare.

Sitting in his bare garden-level bedroom, the 23-year-old self-described music nut is rifling through a desk drawer, struggling to recall the last time he actually walked into a record store and bought a CD.

"Does it count if I bought one by accident?" a sheepish Holm asks, explaining how he purchased a DVD recently that, to his surprise, came bundled with a soundtrack album. "No?"

Finally, Holm fishes a leather CD wallet out of the drawer and flips through it, revealing a dozen or so discs by such '90s heavyweights as Nirvana, R.E.M. and Metallica. He ultimately decides the last CD he willingly paid for was a solo album by Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante.

That was two years ago.

"I can't tell if this is embarrassing or kind of cool," Holm says, laughing.

So where does Holm get his tunes? Where else but the Internet, home to all the free songs Holm and millions of his fellow music lovers can download. A graphic designer in Golden, Holm has 15 gigabytes of music stuffed into his desktop computer's hard drive — the equivalent of about 350 full CDs.

"It's not that I'm anti-CD," Holm explains. "It just came to a certain point where it was easier to download something than it was to get in my car and drive to the store to buy a CD. Plus, it's free."

But those copyright holders — in these cases, the musicians or their record labels — aren't necessarily on the same page when it comes to downloading. Some have no problem with the free sharing of their work.

"I think it's the greatest thing on Earth," says Sean Kelly of the Boulder-bred Samples. "I highly support our music floating around out there. You can't get any better press or distribution than this Internet stuff.

"I don't know why anyone's against it."

For small bands that make money touring, there's no practical reason to oppose downloading.

"I think it hurts Metallica and people like that," says Doug Martsch of indie rock trio Built to Spill. "But for a band on my level — smaller bands, that is — I think the Internet really helps get the word out."
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/music...086004,00.html

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File Swappers to RIAA: Download This!
Mike Musgrove

The Recording Industry Association of America's announcement on June 25 that it will start tracking down and suing users of file-sharing programs has yet to spook people, say developers of these applications.

"Forget about it, dude -- even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers," said Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, one of several systems that allow users to upload and download files -- many of which are unauthorized MP3 copies of songs published by the RIAA's member companies. Rosso said file-trading activity among Grokster users has increased by 10 percent in the past few days. Morpheus, another file-trading program, has seen similar growth.

Maybe MP3 downloaders are interpreting the recording industry's threat -- an escalation from its earlier strategy of targeting file-sharing developers -- as a sort of "last call" announcement. Starting June 26, RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a news conference, the group would collect evidence against consumers illegally trading files of copyrighted music, with lawsuits to follow in a couple of months.

Or maybe consumers figure the odds of getting busted by the RIAA's legal team are low: A recent report by research firm Yankee Group estimates that 56 million people use file-swapping software in the United States.

Either way, the number of users seems to have grown last week.

"Anytime you get media attention, you get people interested to try it out," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of Streamcast Networks Inc., which developed Morpheus.

Weiss said he's also seen a surge of postings on Morpheus message boards from users who are ticked off at being in the RIAA's cross hairs. "People are just outraged at the actions of the recording industry," he said. "I've got people saying they want to organize groups to boycott buying CDs now."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hptoc_tn


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Estonia, Where Being Wired Is A Human Right

In a once-crumbling former Soviet republic, even the farmers have broadband Internet access.
Colin Woodard

The journalists covering the shipboard meeting on the environmental problems of the Baltic Sea were desperate.

They had deadlines to meet, but the ship's Internet system was slow and, at more than $6 a minute, expensive. One correspondent was forced to kill a feature story after several fruitless hours trying to send his huge sound file back to London. Online story research was costing other reporters an arm and a leg.

So as the ship steamed from Poland to Estonia last month, reporters appealed for technological help to the media officers of the conference.

That's when Uku Kuut spoke up. "When we get to Tallinn this afternoon, just give me an hour or two and we'll fix your problem," said Mr. Kuut, a mild-mannered Estonian who'd tagged along to help with local logistics. The founder of a Tallinn-based Internet firm, Kuut's card identified him simply as "Internet mogul."

For those on board who had lived in Eastern Europe during the Soviet and post-Communist eras, Kuut sounded as if he were promising the moon.

A little more than a decade ago, Estonia was a crumbling republic of the Soviet Union, where information was tightly controlled and telephones were rotary, rare, and unreliable. Just a few days before, in the Russian port of Kaliningrad, this reporter couldn't find a functioning pay phone to make a local call.

But shortly after docking in Tallinn, Kuut, tools in hand, had set up a wireless, two-megabyte-per-second Internet node in the ship's coffee lounge. "Not a problem," he said, checking messages on his cellphone. "Estonia is a very wired place."

Indeed, 12 years after achieving independence, this tiny republic of 1.4 million has embraced the Internet age with a vengeance.

When it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, less than half of Estonia's people had a telephone line. Monday, 800,000 Estonians own cellphones - nearly 60 percent of the population - and Internet usage and broadband access are approaching West European levels.

In 2002, almost a third of the population used the Internet, according to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. That put it ahead of not only Russia (with 12.4 percent using the Internet), but also much of the rest of Europe - impressive for a country with an average per capita income of $7,000.

And that's not all. Estonians do 80 percent of their banking on the Internet, while businessmen habitually negotiate and close deals by firing text messages to each other's cellphones. Farmers are ordering broadband lines, and motorists on rural roads frequently pass blue information signs pointing them to the nearest place to access the Web.

Inside Tallinn's medieval parliament and prime minister's offices, cabinet ministers and legislators have gone completely virtual, conducting meetings, votes, and document reviews on their networked flat-screen computers.

"We're the first paperless government," says former Prime Minister Mart Laar, from the entrance to the courtyard of his old office. "Journalists have compared [the building] to the Starship Enterprise, and it's true," he adds, beaming with pride.

In 2000, the parliament, perhaps inspired by their new gizmos, passed a law declaring Internet access a fundamental human right of its citizenry. A massive program is under way to expand access to the countryside, where economic development is hampered by lack of decent roads and other transportation links. The Internet, the government argues, is essential for life in the 21st century.

"Some people still think of Internet access as a luxury," explains Kuut, whose company, Vemis, works extensively in rural areas. "But 10 years ago, most people in Estonia looked at hot, running water as a luxury, and nobody would think that today."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0701/p07s01-woeu.html


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A Royalties Plan For File Sharing
William Fisher

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it will soon bring its formidable legal forces to bear on the individuals who share copyrighted music files through the Internet.

Starting as early as mid-August, it expects to file "thousands" of lawsuits against people who make large numbers of songs available on peer-to-peer networks.

The RIAA is right about three things. First, under current copyright law, the behavior of the file swappers is illegal. Second, partly (although only partly) as a result of the ubiquity of file swapping, the music industry is in crisis. CD sales continue to decline, record company revenue is falling at an accelerating pace, and many music retailers are going out of business. Third, among the groups threatened by this crisis are the creators of music--the composers and performers.

The RIAA now takes the position that the only way to solve the crisis and protect the creators is to sue many individual file swappers, hoping that the threat of both civil and criminal penalties will prompt the millions of people worldwide who currently engage in this behavior to mend their ways. Its new strategy has many disadvantages and perils.

The proposed litigation campaign will be extraordinarily costly. It is likely to be ineffective--as file swappers use proxy servers, offshore Internet sites, and encrypted peer-to-peer systems to avoid detection. And it will further alienate the already disaffected community of music consumers. More importantly, better solutions to the crisis in the music industry are available. The more dramatic--but also the best--would be the establishment of a compulsory licensing system.

In brief, here's how such a system would work:

The creator of a recording would register it with the U.S. Copyright Office and would receive, in return, a unique file name, which would be used to track Internet transmissions of the work. The government would tax devices and services used to gain access to digital entertainment. The primary target of such a tax would be ISP access.

The RIAA now takes the position that the only way to solve the crisis and protect the creators is to sue many individual file swappers.
Secondary targets would include CD burners, blank CDs, MP3 players, etc. Using techniques pioneered by American and European performing-rights organizations, a government agency would estimate the frequency with which each song was enjoyed by consumers. Revenue collected from the tax would then be distributed by the government agency to creators in proportion to the rates with which their songs were being consumed.

Once this alternative mechanism for compensating creators was in place, the old one would be dismantled. In other words, copyright law would be reformed to eliminate the current prohibitions on the reproduction, distribution, public performance, adaptation, and encryption circumvention of published music recordings.

The social advantages of such a system would be large. Consumers would pay much less for much more music. Creators would be fairly compensated--indeed, would earn more than under the current regime. The set of musicians who could earn a livelihood by making their work available to the public would increase sharply. And litigation costs would decline dramatically.
The more dramatic- -but also the best-- would be the establishment of a compulsory licensing system.
To be sure, such a system is not yet ready for immediate implementation. Many technical and administrative issues need to be resolved before it could be launched. But several academics, programmers, and public-interest groups are currently working to address those issues.

The RIAA should join us. Instead of continuing to waste its money and credibility on an unwinnable war against the file- sharing masses, it should cooperate in the design of a solution to the underlying problem that would benefit all of the players in this drama.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-1024856.html


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IFPI: Music Piracy Funding Organized Crime
Ryan Naraine

A European trade group on Thursday linked organized crime syndicates to the US$5 billion underground industry for music piracy and sounded a call for governments to get involved to squash piracy rings internationally.

The U.K.-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents 1,500 record companies in 70 countries, said more than one billion CDs were illegally copied and sold in 2002, funding "an illegal international business worth US$5 billion."

"One in three of all CDs sold worldwide is a fake," the IFPI declared, insisting that much of the proceeds from pirated music are funding organized crime syndicates. In its Commercial Music Piracy 2203 report, the IFPI said the "priority countries" where music theft was rampant included China, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Poland, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.

In China alone, the bootleg CD market is estimated at $530 million, more than 90 percent of all music sales.

While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has adopted an aggressive litigation strategy to stamp out music piracy in the U.S., the IFPI warned that the financial problems in the music industry went beyond the illegal file-sharing networks.

According to the IFPI, the global pirate music market is of greater value than legitimate music sales in every country of the world, except the U.S. and Japan and without government backing to target the organized piracy rings, the industry will continue to decline.

The IFPI report, which offered statistics on unauthorized CD sales, did not measure losses from the online peer-to-peer networks, where illegal file-sharing is rampant.

The IFPI wants international governments to impose tough jail sentences and more stringent copyright laws to combat the organized crime syndicates. "Today's report comes with a three-point call for greater cooperation from governments in the fight against piracy: first, better laws and enforcement rules are needed to protect music; second the massive over-production of discs needs to be regulated by effective Optical Disc Regulations," the group urged.The IFPI, which represents music labels including Sony Music, Warner Music, Universal Music, Bertelsmann and EMI, also called for aggressive prosecution for commercial pirates.

"Music piracy is serious organized crime that can only be tackled when courts deliver serious deterrent penalties," IFPI boss Jay Berman said in a statement.

He said industry anti-piracy teams have stepped up enforcement activities last year, seizing up to 50 million units of pirated discs. The group claimed "spectacular enforcement successes" during enforcement activities in Mexico and in the Philippines, raids that resulted in the shutdown of 71 CD production lines, with a production capacity of 300 million CDs.
www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/2233501


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A Nation of Pirates

Panicked by digital plunder, the entertainment industry fights back
Kenneth Terrell

The raging green monster has broken loose. In a rampage, it tears across screens around the planet, its digitally animated fury leaving a trail of damage estimated at billions of dollars. The mightiest forces of the U.S. government fail to corral it. A marvel of technology, it lures ever more devotees. No, it's not the Hulk, eponymous star of Universal Pictures' faltering blockbuster. That green goliath may be formidable enough to fight an army to a standstill, but even his superhuman strength couldn't stop a more insidious enemy: digital piracy. Two weeks before the film arrived in theaters, a version already was circulating online, available free to users of popular file-trading software.

Piracy has become a national pastime. It's no longer just college kids trading the latest hit by rockers Radiohead or the rapper 50 Cent. Cunning technology, antiquated laws, and growing public disdain for footing the costs of traditional retail business have combined to create a potent cocktail that has Internet users everywhere tipsy on bootlegged bounty. Every day, ordinary people download billions of files: blockbuster movies, cable TV shows, music, video games, software, and nearly every other kind of copyright-protected material available in digital form. The process is seductively simple. Just install the software, available free from a Web site, type the name of the desired file into its search engine, pick among the choices accessible for download, and in minutes to hours--depending on file size and connection speeds--you can find a copy on your hard drive.

After years of trying to curtail this behavior, only to see it expand exponentially, the entertainment industry is launching a new offensive. Having failed to quash the technologies, it is going after the pirates themselves. It vows to bring lawsuits--hundreds of them to start--against people who offer to trade copyrighted materials. Says Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America: "These people are stealing, plain and simple."

This unprecedented tactic could target millions of people--possibly someone in your own home or office--with stiff penalties. It's just the latest turn in a high-stakes struggle. As content becomes divorced from products like CDs and videotapes, its creators need new ways to control and charge for it. How industry, consumers, and the courts adapt to this new reality will determine the shape of digital entertainment and intellectual-property law for years to come. "It ultimately comes down to legislative and regulatory control," says Lee Black, an analyst with the Jupiter Media research group. "And that doesn't necessarily move at the pace of technological change."

Almost three years after U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel shut down Napster, the pioneering service that introduced more than 20 million people to the illicit thrills of skipping record stores, piracy is bigger than ever. Kazaa, the trading software that is Napster's most popular heir, has been downloaded more than 230 million times worldwide, and the phenomenon now goes well beyond music. Long transfer times had limited the popularity of trading movies over the Internet, but broadband connections are changing that. An estimated 400,000 to 600,000 copies of films are traded digitally every day, according to Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

The movie industry estimates that Internet swapping costs it more than $3.5 billion a year worldwide. Record companies are also claiming huge losses. While the sagging economy and the lack of an exciting pop-music trend bear some responsibility for the industry's 26 percent decline in CD sales since 1999--a $4.3 billion drop--digital piracy undoubtedly plays a role.

Shriveled royalties. Many pirates have little sympathy for the big companies, but the record labels are not the only ones hurt. Songwriters, who traditionally have relied on the sales of hit records to provide income for years after they topped the charts, have watched their job's version of a pension plan shrivel up. "My royalties have literally been cut in half by this thing," says Lamont Dozier, a member of the Motown songwriting team that penned dozens of Top 20 tunes including the Supremes' "Stop! In the Name of Love" and the Four Tops' "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)." "It's really taken a toll on my situation."

Piracy is also pinching independent record stores. As bootlegging has spread, these retailers--unable to lure customers by offering bargains on household gadgets or slashing CD prices as stores like Best Buy and Wal- Mart do--have watched their customer base dwindle. "I've never seen a more horrible time," says Ron Liest, whose family has owned Stedeford's Records on Pittsburgh's North Side since 1964. "We were just joking that maybe we should sell Krispy Kremes," says Liest, whose store specializes in rhythm and blues, rap, and other urban styles of music. Independent retailers often champion up-and-coming artists, and their decline could mean a loss of diversity in music.

Yet the convenience and anonymity of file sharing have made it a remarkably guilt-free form of plunder. In effect, the masses of Americans have joined the previously small chorus of hard-core hackers in chanting the credo "Information wants to be free." "For all practical purposes it is stealing music, but I have no moral qualms about it," says Vik, a 21-year-old college senior from Baltimore who uses Kazaa. "When you can get free music, it's hard to resist."

This frenzy of trading draws its strength from the theory of "six degrees of separation"--the notion that only a relatively few steps are needed to link you to any other person in the world. With hundreds of millions of PCs plugged into the Internet at any given moment, chances are high that at least one of them has a digital copy of that rare Bruce Springsteen live recording or missed episode of Sex and the City. Your computer just needs an efficient way of asking other PCs where that particular file can be found. That's where a peer-to-peer software program--such as Kazaa or LimeWire--comes in. It forwards your search request to other computers on the network, each of which searches its hard drive for the file you want. If it's there, that computer establishes a direct connection to yours and begins transferring the tune or video. If not, the computer forwards your request to other PCs. By going out just a few degrees--most peer-to-peer services set the range at seven--your computer can network with about 10,000 other PCs and access a million files. Typically the search locates a copy of the desired file within minutes.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0.../14pirates.htm


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"It's hard to concentrate on one thing. I think I have a condition."

The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive?
Matt Richtel

THIS is Charles Lax's brain on speed.

Mr. Lax, a 44-year-old venture capitalist, is sitting in a conference for telecommunications executives at a hotel near Los Angeles, but he is not all here. Out of one ear, he listens to a live presentation about cable television technology; simultaneously, he surfs the Net on a laptop with a wireless connection, while occasionally checking his mobile device — part phone, part pager and part Internet gadget — for e-mail.

Mr. Lax flew from Boston and paid $2,000 to attend the conference, called Vortex. But he cannot unwire himself long enough to give the presenters his complete focus. If he did, he would face a fate worse than lack of productivity: he would become bored.

"It's hard to concentrate on one thing," he said, adding: "I think I have a condition."

The ubiquity of technology in the lives of executives, other businesspeople and consumers has created a subculture of the Always On — and a brewing tension between productivity and freneticism. For all the efficiency gains that it seemingly provides, the constant stream of data can interrupt not just dinner and family time, but also meetings and creative time, and it can prove very tough to turn off.

Some people who are persistently wired say it is not uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a hand-held device to exchange instant messages surreptitiously — with someone in the same meeting. Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of chatting with actual human beings.

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. — online compulsive disorder.

"It's magnetic," said Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard. "It's like a tar baby: the more you touch it, the more you have to."

Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus. Though many people regard multitasking as a social annoyance, these two and others are asking whether it is counterproductive, and even addicting.

The pair have their own term for this condition: pseudo-attention deficit disorder. Its sufferers do not have actual A.D.D., but, influenced by technology and the pace of modern life, have developed shorter attention spans. They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

"It's like a dopamine squirt to be connected," said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics — a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. "It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure."

"It's an addiction," he said, adding that some people cannot deal with down time or quiet moments. "Without it, we are in withdrawal."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/bu...partner=GOOGLE


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Plextor's PlexWriter Premium
A premium blend of CD-RW features
Andrew Brown

IT'S BEEN QUITE A WHILE since I've done a CD-RW drive review. In fact, the last time I did one, 24X drives were all the rage. This of course raises the question why haven't I done another one before now?

In a word, boredom. The CD-RW world has been stagnant for a while now, with nothing to get really excited about besides faster and faster burn speeds. When you're going from 1X to 2X and cutting thirty minutes or so off your burn time, that's a big deal. But think about 24X drives: The fastest burn time I got in my last review was four minutes, twelve seconds. Assuming for a moment that a 48X drive really is twice as fast, that cuts the burn time to 2:06, shaving just over two minutes off the recording time. Two minutes. Whoop-tee-frickin-doo. Unless you're running a CD burning sweatshop, two minutes just isn't that big a deal. You begin to understand why another CD-RW drive review wasn't at the top of my list.

Fortunately, Plextor has stepped up and brought something new to the table in the form of its new Plextor Premium drive. Not only does it boast the fastest speeds I've ever seen (52X CD-R burn, 32X CD-RW burn, 52X read) it also includes some innovative new features, such as the ability to create encrypted, password-protected discs, or to squeeze nearly a gigabyte of data onto a 700MB CD-R. Of course, such things can look much different in the real world than they do in a press release. Does the Plextor Premium really break new ground? Keep reading and we'll see.
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2...m/index.x?pg=1


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Piracy And Peer-To-Peer
Declan McCullagh

To thwart peer-to-peer pirates, the Recording Industry Association of America is wielding the clunky but mighty club of the federal court system.

The RIAA recently won a court order forcing Verizon Communications to divulge the identity of a Kazaa user suspected of copyright infringement and now says that soon it will sue hundreds of alleged P2P infringers.

Ian Clarke and the merry band of programmers who are creating Freenet are taking a different approach: They're betting that technology, not the law, holds the key to the future. They believe that Freenet, a radically decentralized network of file-sharing nodes tied together with strong encryption, will make it possible to share any kind of file with impunity--and offer superior anonymity in the process.

It might even work. Freenet may not be one of the most popular file-sharing networks right now, but its creators have carefully designed it to be as difficult as possible to censor or monitor. That has implications beyond copyright law. If successful, Freenet could make laws against publishing material such as libelous statements, trade secrets or military intelligence either irrelevant or, at least, unenforceable.

So, is it legal and moral to create and use Freenet? That's a complicated question, but I'd say that the draconian police tactics required to prevent people from running Freenet nodes--measures such as constant Internet surveillance and the banning of encryption without backdoors for law enforcement--mean the costs of an outright ban would outweigh the benefits.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never come close to answering that question. But last week, a federal appeals court ruling in the case against Aimster (another P2P network), suggested that a file-swapping network that cloaks its users' activities might run afoul of copyright law precisely because it is designed to conceal illegal acts.

I asked Clarke, Freenet's inventor, and Matt Oppenheim, RIAA's senior vice president of business and legal affairs, if they would be interested in engaging in an e-mail debate on Freenet and the race between law and technology. I'm delighted to say that both of them agreed. Their exchange follows.

News.com: Should file swappers have any expectation of privacy?
Ian Clarke: Everyone, including file swappers, should have the ability to communicate freely without someone looking over their shoulders. Free communication is essential to free thought, which is essential to democracy.

Matt Oppenheim: An individual who illegally distributes music on a peer-to-peer network has less of an expectation of privacy than a bank robber wearing a mask when holding up a teller. http://news.com.com/2010-1027-1023325.html


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TV 'Brick' Opens Up Copyright Can Of Worms
Benoit Faucon

A French company is ready to launch a device that lets television viewers watch any channel on earth, and may open another front in the battle over digital copyright.

Nexedi SARL's "TV Brick" effectively turns the internet into the world's longest antenna lead. It's now aimed just at Japanese expatriates in Paris, though chief executive Jean-Paul Smets says that's just a first step before launching the product into other European nations. The company argues that the system is on the right side of the law in Japan and Western Europe, though courts may differ; distribution elsewhere could be a walk into a legal minefield.

The €950 ($1628) TV Brick is a device the size of a cable-TV set-top box, from which two cables emerge. The TV watcher in Paris plugs one cable into the TV set and connects the other to a phone line using digital subscriber line, or DSL, technology. A relative back home in Japan buys a similar box from Nexedi SARL's Japanese reseller and connects it to his TV set and DSL line the same way. Broadcast signals travel down the aerial in Tokyo and into one box, where they're converted into internet data and squirted to Paris; the box at the other end pulls the data off the internet, turns them back to a TV signal and pipes that into the set. (The data also travels the other way, so Paris TV can be watched in Tokyo.)

"This product destroys borders," Mr Smets said. "It answers a strong demand. Globalisation has made its way into families and many of them are split between different countries."

Picture quality is poor, though Mr Smets says the expats tell him that homesickness and the desire to keep in touch with domestic culture make that a minor concern.

But there is the law. Broadcasting any TV channel outside normal geographical territory is illegal because TV content rights are negotiated on a per-country basis. Mr Smets argues, though, that the law in Western Europe and Japan allows circulation of copyrighted materials by any method, as long as it stays within a circle of family members and is for non-commercial use. He adds that instructions on the TV Brick detail these restrictions.
http://afr.com/articles/2003/06/30/1056825330084.html


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He FedExes the entire computer – it’s cheaper than uploading the data.

A Conversation With Jim Gray
Dave Patterson

Sit down, turn off your cellphone, and prepare to be fascinated. Clear your schedule, because once you've started reading this interview, you won't be able to put it down until you've finished it.

Who would ever, in this time of the greatest interconnectivity in human history, go back to shipping bytes around via snail mail as a preferred means of data transfer? (Really, just what type of throughput does the USPS offer?) Jim Gray would do it, that's who. And we're not just talking about Zip disks, no sir; we're talking about shipping entire hard drives, or even complete computer systems, packed full of disks.

Gray, head of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, sits down with Queue and tells us what type of a voracious appetite for data could require such extreme measures. A recent winner of the ACM Turing Award, Gray is a giant in the world of database and transaction-processing computer systems. Before Microsoft, he worked at a few companies you might know: Digital, Tandem, IBM, and AT&T. He's also a member of the Queue Editorial Advisory Board.

Shooting questions at Gray on such topics as open-source databases and smart disks is David Patterson, who holds the Pardee Chair of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Patterson headed up the design and implementation of RISC I, which laid the foundations for Sun's SPARC architecture. Along with Randy Katz, Patterson also helped pioneer redundant arrays of independent disks —yes, RAID.
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?...howpage&pid=43


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NEC Develops Water Cooling Notebook Module
Press Release
Submitted by: Fabrizio Pilato

 NEC Corporation announced the development of the world's first slim sized water-cooling module for notebook personal computers that employs a piezoelectric pump driving method. This water cooling-module enables a highly advanced, slim sized, notebook PC with minimal operating noise.

The water-cooling module uses a piezoelectric pump to drive the cooling liquid. This newly structured water-cooling module is developed by integrating the pump and the tank with the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel.

Main features of NEC's water-cooling module

(1) Through optimized design of the radiation plate and the ingenuity of the coolant passage configuration below the CPU attached area, a cooling performance of 80W (2 times that of conventional systems) is realized. Moreover, the optimized piezoelectric pump structure suppresses the operating noise up to the whisper level of about 30dB, in turn enabling highly efficient water-cooling performance.

(2) By development of a piezoelectric pump with higher water pressure and slimmer size (thickness 5mm), the thickness of the aluminum radiation plate that contains the water circulation channel is reduced to within 3 mm. The increase in the thickness of the chassis is reduced to 4mm, half that of conventional water-cooling methods.

(3) By integrating the aluminum radiation plate, the tank and the piezoelectric pump, ease of installation in personal computers and long-term reliability is achieved.

(4) Hermetical sealing is improved through the use of materials with little liquid permeability. In turn the size of the cooling liquid tank is reduced by 9/10 compared to conventional tanks.



Features of the conventional water-cooling system

(1) Water pressure of the electromagnetic centrifugal pump is relatively weak. If the thickness of the circulation channel is decreased, cooling-liquid flow is restricted.

(2) The system is difficult to install as the tank, pump and CPU attached area are all inter-connected to a metal pipe and a rubber tube.

(3) Installation of a large tank is necessary as cooling liquid seeps through the resin parts of the tank, pump and the connection tubes resulting in liquid reduction over time.

The water-cooling module developed by NEC is the slimmest model in the world. When installed in a notebook personal computer increase in thickness is minimized. In order to drive a conventional piezoelectric pump alternating voltage of 100V is necessary. However, with NEC's water-cooling module system the pump can be driven with 5V of direct voltage. As a result it is easy to install in all IT equipment. This product is suitable not only for use in notebook PCs, but also in servers and desktop computers. It is expected that it will be positioned as a core technology for spreading the water-cooling system in IT equipment and that it will be used as an alternative to the conventional water-cooling heat sink and heat pipe.

NEC Personal Products, Ltd. plans to commercially produce the water-cooling module within two years. NEC aims to create a de-facto industry standard and will actively work towards licensing supply of its module technology to parties outside the NEC Group.
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/334/C1811/


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Surveillance Software Keeps Track Of Rogue MP3s
Munir Kotadia

FutureSoft, an enterprise content security company, has updated its DynaComm i:scan file surveillance product to allow real-time monitoring of Windows-based servers and workstations. The software is designed to search for the presence of unwanted applications, such as P2P clients, IM software or hacking tools, and allows administrators to log, block or remove the offending files.

According to FutureSoft, DynaComm i:scan 3.0 can also be used for protecting internal information by either preventing sensitive files from being accessed by unauthorised users, or keeping a record of when and by whom the file was accessed.

Andy Wooles, managing director of FutureSoft UK, said: "It is like putting a burglar alarm on certain files. If people try and look at them, it is possible to log the attempt or even lock the file."

Wooles explained that DynaComm creates a unique signature for sensitive files, which enables those files to be tracked. "Even if someone renames an executable file as readme.txt, you would still be able to find it," Wooles said.

I:scan works on two levels. Initially, it executes an antivirus-type scan to identify rogue applications, inappropriate content or copyright material. Secondly, the system monitors the network in real time and alerts the administrator if unwanted files are introduced, or "marked" files are accessed.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t26...zdnetukhompage


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Music Industry Faces Legal Hurdles To Suits
Richard J. Dalton Jr.

Grandparents, parents and teenagers could be hauled into court in an unprecedented legal attack on music sharing launched last week by the recording industry, which plans to sue the person responsible for any account used to pilfer copyrighted tunes.

At least, that's the idea. But in practice, experts say, the recording industry faces some legal hurdles in prosecuting copyright infringement. And there are many ways for consumers to avoid running afoul of the law.

The easiest way, of course, is to stop sending copyrighted music to others. The recording industry is not going after people who download free copyrighted music online, though it says this practice is illegal as well. Many music-swapping programs allow users (or their parents) to disable the function that sends music while still permitting downloads.

The recording industry has focused on the people who are sending music, rather than receiving it, because it's easier to find them. The reason: Songs they offer are listed in directories available via the music-sharing software.

The Recording Industry Association of America said it began last week to gather evidence for potentially thousands of lawsuits against computer users who make large numbers of songs available to others - and made sure that it got wide publicity. "The biggest issue for them is trying to intimidate people," said Ray Wagner, a security research director at Gartner Group, a tech market research firm in Stamford, Conn.

Computer users share music, movies and even software online by placing files in a folder on their PC that's available to other users of sharing software, such as Kazaa and Morpheus. The software organizes those files into easy-to-search directories.

The recording industry plans to scan the directories for users offering large numbers of files. The scanner would then identify the user's IP address, which identifies a specific computer connected to the Internet but not the user. The industry would then subpoena the user's name and home address from the Internet service provider for that computer.

But there's a glitch: The provider might not know which user had the IP address. IP addresses are often recycled as computers connect and disconnect from the Internet. Many service providers keep logs of which users have a given IP address at a given time, but some don't.

Another potential stumbling block is that the person responsible for the Internet account might not be the culprit in copyright infringement.

"Is it little Johnny or is it mom or is it dad?" Lohmann asked. "That's going to give rise to some interesting legal issues. Are parents going to be held responsible for what their children are doing?"
http://www.dailypress.com/business/l...ess-localheads


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"Forget about it, dude--even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers." - Grokster president Wayne Rosso.


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Concert Attendance, Grosses Up
Nekesa Mumbi Moody

Concert attendance jumped by 24 percent in the first half of the year as acts like the Dixie Chicks, Cher and the Rolling Stones helped reverse a two-year slide in ticket sales.

Fans bought 13.1 million concert tickets to the top 50 concert tours from January to June, compared to 10.6 million sold during the same period last year, according to Pollstar, the industry trade magazine. Gross receipts were up 26 percent to $678 million, up from $538 million in 2001.

"We're back up to kind of where we were in 2000," said Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor-in-chief. "We had progressively been selling fewer tickets as the prices escalated."

But trouble may be looming for summer tours due to cold, rainy weather that delayed the traditional kickoff in late May and early June. "It's really hard to sell a ticket to an outdoor concert if it's raining all the time," Bongiovanni said.

Concert attendance had been declining steadily since 2000, when 12.9 million tickets were sold. The average ticket price for the first six months this year was approximately $52 -- up only one dollar from the previous year, according to Pollstar. Last year, ticket prices cost an average of $51, up from $47 the previous year.

Yet for the biggest acts, prices continue to rise. Tickets for the top-grossing tour -- Elton John and Billy Joel -- cost an average of $113. The Rolling Stones' average ticket cost $158, up from $119 when they toured last year.

"The really expensive tickets are largely being bought by the aging baby boomers," said Bongiovanni.

Baby boomer acts such as the Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Cher represented half of the top 10 concerts for the first six months of the year. But country acts such as the Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chessney and Tim McGraw also performed strongly.

"The Dixie Chicks were one of the few acts that seemed to do great business just about everywhere they went," Bongiovanni said of the female trio, which wasn't hurt by the Bush- bashing controversy that engulfed them earlier this year.

Though Chessney was the 10th-highest grossing tour, he actually was the top draw according to tickets sold. His tour sold 682,000 tickets at an average price of $36, grossing $24.4 million. In comparison, Elton John and Billy Joel sold approximately 465,000 tickets at an average price of $113, grossing $52.7 million.

One act placed in the top 10 without even going on tour. Celine Dion's Las Vegas stage show has grossed $33.2 million since it opened in March.

"That was something of an experiment, and that did very well," Bongiovanni said.

The top 10 concert tours from January to June, and their grosses:

1. Elton John-Billy Joel, $52.7 million

2. The Rolling Stones, $37.4 million

3. The Dixie Chicks, $35.1 million

4. Celine Dion, $33.2 million

5. Cher, $31.7 million

6. Tim McGraw, $30.6 million

7. Fleetwood Mac, $28.3 million

8. Eagles, $27.2 million

9. Bon Jovi, 26.9 million

10. Kenny Chessney, $24.4 million
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusic/jul10_tour-ap.html


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Some Xbox Fans Microsoft Didn't Aim For
Seth Schiesel

AFTER a 31-year-old Manhattan financial executive received Microsoft's Xbox video game system as a gift in January, he walked to a store and bought a half-dozen game titles. The video game industry would have been pleased to hear it.

After he played those games a few times against computer-controlled opponents, he got a bit bored and signed up for Microsoft's Xbox Live service, which enabled him to play against other people online. The video game industry, again, would have been pleased.

After a few months on the Xbox Live network, in May, he got a bit bored again. This time, however, he opened his Xbox and soldered in a chip that allowed him to change the console's basic computer code and bypass its internal security technology. After installing a new hard drive, he transferred about 3,000 MP3 music files to the system and downloaded illegal copies of 3,500 old-time arcade games. Then he installed the Linux operating system, which allowed him to use the box essentially as a personal computer.

Needless to say, the video game industry would not have been pleased.

When Microsoft released the Xbox in November 2001, it was heralded as far more than a game machine. Even as the Xbox took aim at Sony's PlayStation 2 game empire, the console was meant to lead Microsoft's broader invasion of the living room. Incorporating a hard drive, which made it more readily adaptable than other consoles, the Xbox had the potential to be a digital-entertainment nerve center.

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said at the time, "We're going to put new software that runs on Xbox that, both in the gaming dimension and other dimensions, will amaze people with the power that's in this box."

That is happening, but not necessarily as Microsoft planned. All sorts of new software is indeed running on Xbox consoles these days, and they are in fact becoming home-entertainment hubs, but it is not Microsoft doing the amazing.

Rather, an online confederacy apparently numbering in the thousands - including accomplished hackers of varied motives and everyday technophiles like the Manhattan financial executive (who shared his experience on the condition of anonymity) - is taking the lead. Those involved often call their efforts "unleashing" or "unshackling" - freeing the Xbox to express its inner PC. Technology industry executives, however, often call such activity a bald attempt to hijack the Xbox illegally.

It is a battle that involves many of the ethical and legal issues facing the technology and media industries at this digital moment. What rights do consumers have to tinker with products they own? How far should companies go to protect their intellectual property? What happens when the desires of consumers conflict with the business models of companies they patronize? Who gets to decide just what a particular product may be used for?
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/te...ts/10xbox.html


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Lexmark: We're Not Against Cartridge-Recycling
Chan Lee Meng

KUALA LUMPUR: US printer giant Lexmark International Inc is not against the recycling of printer cartridges and the company tries to reduce refuse as part of its environmental strategy, said Ng Chee Soon, managing director of its South Asia operations.

Ng, who is based in Singapore, was here recently for the launch of new Lexmark products.

He said the company operates two programmes in Malaysia to boost recycling efforts -- the Prebate and Operation Resource programmes.

The Prebate programme offers endusers an “up-front rebate” of 19% off the retail price for cartridges.

In return, the user agrees that the cartridge will be used only once and that the empty cartridge will be returned only to Lexmark for remanufacturing and recycling.

“By selling this Prebate cartridge to the enduser, our resellers are likewise agreeing to comply with these terms and conditions,” Ng said.

Related to that, the Operation Resource programme allows used Lexmark cartridges to be returned to Lexmark for recycling, at no cost to the customer.

In Malaysia, Lexmark has authorised ECS Astar Sdn Bhd to execute the Operation Resource programme.

Ng said Lexmark collected more than a million used cartridges last year (globally), compared to only about 100,000 cartridges annually before the two programmes were implemented.

Used printer cartridges (or “empties” in industry lingo) have been fingered as one of the contributors to the growing problem of computer waste.

He also said the company’s practices with regard to printer cartridges are not “anti-competitive” and the company does “provide customers with choices.”

In response to an In.Tech query in February, the company had confirmed that merely using a remanufactured or third-party cartridge in a Lexmark printer does not void its warranty.

However, if there is a problem with the printer which was caused by the third- party cartridge, then the warranty will most likely be void, the company said.
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology


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New Anti-Piracy Checks On Terminator 2 DVD

A recent reissue of the blockbuster Terminator 2 contains a DVD- ROM version of the movie with a new anti-piracy technique: 5-day viewing licenses issued over the Internet. The new digital rights management (DRM) system also looks up a PC's Internet address--if the computer has a non-U.S. number, playback of the DVD-ROM will be prevented. The Web-checking system means that even if the DVD-ROM is copied, only one PC at a time around the world can play it back-- bad news for DVD pirates located in Asia and elsewhere. And anyone thinking of copying the movie file from the DVD-ROM onto a hard drive and sharing it online can forget it: The file is only playable from a valid DVD-ROM disc--again, only after online verification. Digital Envoy, a provider of rights management technology, and SyncCast, which specializes in media streaming, worked together to create the digital rights management (DRM) system.

The system works with the DRM technology integrated into Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series and has been included in the DVD-ROM bundled with the Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Extreme Edition) disc set, shipped in North America in early June for US$29.98. The set contains a standard DVD, but the DVD-ROM has a high- definition version that provides three times more video detail, SyncCast spokesman David Nichols told CNETAsia. The movie file is encoded in WM9 format, required for the DRM operation of Windows Media Player 9. The PC playing the DVD-ROM must be connected to the Internet, so as to obtain a license. Content owners can decide which type of license to issue; 1 time play, unlimited play, expires after 30 days, and so on, said Nichols. "In the case of T2, Artisan (the studio releasing the DVD) decided to issue licenses that have to be renewed every 5 days. You can get as many 5 day licenses as you want but each license is only good for 5 days," he said. This allows, say, a notebook user to view the movie for 5 days while on the road and disconnected from the Web.

While Nichols did not reveal fully how the DRM works, it is understood that it requires the online verification of details such as the user's IP address and the unique IDs of the disc, movie file and computer playing the file. "If the user's IP and address is in the region designated by the content owner and they have a valid disc they are issued a license. Users who we determine are outside of the designated region are provided an email address to contact the licensor to request a license directly from them," said Nichols. "Once they prove they have a valid disc, we issue a license to the user's computer. The user can play the file on any drive connected to his computer that has the license. If the user tries to play the content on a different computer, it won't work. If the user attempts to pass the content off to a friend, it won't work," he said. The same DRM system can also be used to protect movie streams or downloaded movie files. Despite the checks, no user information is sent to SyncCast or Microsoft without the user's permission, he added. SyncCast's and Digital Envoy's system are examples of various DRM technologies being tested. In Japan, Sony has been offering movie downloads that are timed to "self-destruct" after a given time.
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=54041


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RIAA Smearing Earthstation 5, executive says.

Legal Threats Against Consumers Drives Millions of Downloads To EarthStation 5 peer to peer network Due To Software's Privacy Features
Press Release

JENIN, West Bank--"Apparently the RIAA appears to be scared out of their minds over the heavy security features of Earthstation 5's software. So much in fact that they have hired numerous individuals to try and persuade users not to use Earthstation 5 by making statements claiming that Earthstation 5 is run by the RIAA," says Ras Kabir, president of Earthstation 5 (http:/www.earthstation5.com).

The RIAA and their attorneys have also come to the fast reality that they have no legal remedy within Palestine. "Since the RIAA admission to the world press that they are able to break the security of the top eight peer to peer companies including Kazaa and their announced intention last Thursday to sue thousands of individual file-sharers, Earthstation 5's peer to peer software has experienced extraordinary demand with hundreds of thousands of users downloading Earthstation 5's software each hour"

"File-sharers world-wide are learning that our Earthstation 5 software hides the identities of its users so they can now freely share their music and movies online without the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA," said Kabir. "Our motto is share...share...share to your heart's content because no one can stop you."

Earthstation 5 also has a FREE multi-user Voice and Video chat system, FREE Dating system and provides FREE video streaming of first run movies and live Sporting events. Earthstation 5 is currently available in English, Russian, Turkish, German and more languages are coming out each week.

Earthstation 5 is provided free to its users and can be downloaded at http://www.es5.com. Earthstation 5 is spyware free, adware free and contains no annoying advertising. Earth Station 5 is located in the Jenin, West Bank.

Ras Kabir's warning to the RIAA, "The next revolution in P2P file sharing is upon you. Resistance is futile and we are now in control".
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+06:59+AM

ES 5 Background


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“The day when the recording industry approaches a trading network as a facilitator and not an annihilator is when the sector will be in harmony once again.”

Download No Evil

The downward download spiral continues with the music industry now threatening to go after individual users of peer-to-peer services. It will happen, but what will happen next? Rick Munarriz thinks the industry has some lessons left to learn. The moment the industry embraces the potential of the swapper will be the real start of the next music revolution.
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

Where were you the day the free music died?

As we power down from the extended Independence Day weekend, you may not realize that the days of freedom as some of you may know it are binary numbered. Of course, I'm talking about the tens of millions of you out there who see the pursuit of happiness and illegal music downloads as inalienable rights.

It probably won't happen until next month, but the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was dead serious last week when it announced that it would be filing lawsuits against individual users of peer- to-peer file sharing networks. It meant business when it went after Napster. It meant business when it decided to make an example out of a few college students earlier this year.

The group lost its battle against swapping software makers Grokster and Morpheus three months ago. But the reason the case was dismissed -- because the companies can't be held liable for the illegal uses and abuses of its software -- doesn't bode well for the end user. In most cases, your Internet Service Provider knows who you are and what you're doing -- and the record companies are now armed with the legal firepower to start taking names.

You won't find too many vocal fans of the RIAA. The organization has become the dirty-work scapegoat for the record labels and recording artists who want to see an end to the piracy -- but only from a safe distance, away from the splash zone of fan alienation. With its advocates silent and its detractors many in the wired world, the vilified organization knows the score. While it won't be refreshing its tarnished image with its battle against Joe Swapper, it also recognizes that it has little left to lose in a war that already sent its chief packing when Hilary Rosen announced her resignation earlier this year.

The music industry is flawed. If you had to align the sector with professional sports, baseball would be a good fit. The owners are losing money. Many star players are under fiscally unfeasible contracts. The fans are resentful of being gouged with high prices. Oh, and when the long ball is scarce, stealing is often the only way to get ahead.

But as bad as the state of baseball seems to be, the music business has it far worse. At least baseball gets a good chunk of money through sometimes lucrative broadcasting contracts -- those who stay at home and watch the game on TV or stream the play-by-play online are still a valuable resource. The record labels aren't as lucky. They have failed to skim any kind of serious green off the broadband- blessed teens.

But in both industries, the plight of the owners remains the same. They can spend time and money in developing talent without making a penny in secondary revenue streams -- where the real money is being made these days. A baseball team won't be able to cash in on the sponsorships that star athletes are privy to, and a record label isn't getting a cut of the tour receipts and merchandising sales that are often the result of the record company's marketing efforts.

That has little choice but to change in the music world. The recording industry can't bank on the prerecorded CD as its only source of revenue. It's a loss leader now.

The music industry is dominated by five major record labels. Sony (NYSE: SNE), AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL), EMI (Nasdaq: EMIPY), BMG, and Vivendi Universal (NYSE: V) should know better than this. In most cases they are diversified entertainment behemoths, built to cash in on the various layers of the consumer's leisure-seeking experience. They are not small. They are usually not this stupid.

With the RIAA penciled in on the frontline, one would think that the five majors would be huddling away in the war room, formulating a plan for the time when the battering ram of public opinion becomes so strong that it crashes through the brittle RIAA and its wafer-thin copyright shields.
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/...ry030707rm.htm


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Napster Founder Developing New File-Sharing Technology
Joseph Menn and Jon Healey

Napster the brand is going legit under new owner Roxio Inc.

Now Napster the person is trying to do the same with an Internet start-up that could, once again, have a far-reaching effect on the music business.

Napster creator Shawn Fanning is looking for backers of technology he's developing that would let file-sharing networks distribute music without violating copyrights, people familiar with the project said.

Fanning's technology would recognize copyrighted songs on a network and let the copyright owners set a price for downloading them.

That's quite a departure from the original Napster service, which let users copy songs from one another's computers free. Bearing the then-18-year-old Fanning's online nickname, Napster launched in 1999 but quickly drew a copyright infringement lawsuit from major record companies and music publishers, which forced it to shut down in mid-2001.

Regardless of whether the gambit works, it demonstrates that 22-year-old Fanning has moved beyond the service that made him a household name. Yet Fanning, who lives in the Bay Area and declined to be interviewed, is still trying to shape the future of the music industry — this time by working with his onetime competitors.

Fanning's new program relies on audio fingerprinting that identifies every song being offered by users on a file-sharing network. As the user submits the song, it would be checked against a database at Fanning's firm to see whether it is copyrighted. If it is, the song couldn't be distributed without payment.

Napster Inc. was trying to develop something similar when it ran out of money and filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Roxio bought Napster's brand name, Web address and technology at a bankruptcy auction.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Roxio plans to offer a new version of Napster by March, but it is unlikely to have any of the file-sharing flavor of the original. Instead, it would be built around the label-backed Pressplay subscription service that Roxio bought from Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.

Fanning has been acting as a consultant for Roxio while also pursuing his new file-sharing venture independently. Record-company executives say Fanning has been making the rounds of the major labels in recent weeks, demonstrating his technology and urging them to invest in and endorse his system.

If they do, he has told the labels, he would ask Kazaa and other leading peer-to-peer networks to sign on as well.

"It's fantastic, but it only works if Kazaa goes along with it," said one label executive who asked not to be named. He said his label was impressed with Fanning's demonstration and is reviewing the proposal.

Spokesmen for the companies distributing Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster, three leading file-sharing programs, said they hadn't been contacted by Fanning and weren't familiar with his efforts.

StreamCast Networks Inc., the company that distributes Morpheus, is "willing to look at any business opportunity," Chief Executive Michael Weiss said. "If he's looking for us to distribute his software through the Internet, I'd be willing to see what he had in mind."

Grokster President Wayne Rosso said that given the record companies' history of internal disagreements, Fanning would have "a better chance of getting Yugoslavia back together" than convincing all the labels to back the new venture. Another problem, Rosso said, is that Fanning's plan perpetuates a pay-per-track approach that "really isn't the answer in the long run" because customers want to pay a flat fee for unlimited downloading.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/18...ology+.shtm l
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology

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File-Sharing Service May Come To PSU

The school may subscribe to a service which allows students to share music, President Graham Spanier said.
Chris Buell

Although the future of today's file-sharing services is an uncertain proposition, a legal version could be available in the near future for music-hungry college students.Universities could subscribe to a file-sharing service similar to current ones with a one-time fee, allowing students unlimited access, said Penn State President Graham Spanier.

Spanier is a co-chair of the Joint Committee of Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force charged with tackling file-sharing issues."That approach would take what's now illegal and make it legal," he said. "The idea here is we don't want to make criminals of our students -- and Congress wants to." That was one of the most promising ideas discussed when committee members convened in New York about two weeks ago, Spanier said.

"I think we've made tremendous strides," said Bruce Block, senior vice president of technology for the Recording Industry Association of America. He added there was a consensus that universities represented a different situation than the general public.Block said a request for information was sent out to legal file-sharing services about the feasibility and options of such an approach.

"I'm looking forward to hearing what some of these companies are going to suggest as business models," he said. Spanier said pilot programs to test a new music service could be running at universities as early as next spring, and Penn State would likely participate in any such program.

He said the cost of such a program would have to be incorporated into the budget and made invisible to students, or it wouldn't work. It could be paid for through room and board or student activity fees, depending on whether it is offered university-wide or only to students in residence halls.

"We can't really charge the students at all. It's got to be free to them," he said. Spanier equated the arrangement to that of the cable television service offered in the dorms.Either way, Spanier said the university could not afford to pay the current prices for digital music, meaning any subscription service would have to offer the university a significant discount.

Several variations of the service are possible. Music could be streamed for free by students, with permanent downloads costing extra, or downloads could be "tethered," meaning they remain active as long as the user has a Penn State computer account.

Some students expressed skepticism about such a program.

"I don't think it's fair to assess a fee to everyone if they're not using the service," said Brian Hall (senior-letters, arts and sciences). Hall said he does not use file-sharing services and would probably not use a new version offered by the university.

"I'm paying enough to go here without paying an additional fee," he said.

Adam Savit (senior-history) said he uses Kazaa, a popular file-sharing service, almost every day. But he did not think the university subscribing to a service would solve the problem of copyright infringement.

"There's no personal consequence yet to doing it illegally," he said. Until there is, students will likely choose getting music for free, he added.

Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which specializes in intellectual property right issues, said such a service would probably fall short of students' expectations.

Any deals a university might reach would probably be with an already-legitimate file-sharing service, which offer less content and selection than illegal services, he said.

"I think it's a hopelessly misguided effort," Lohmann said. "Students have already indicated what kind of service they want."
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive...03dnews-01.asp


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America Is Behind the Broadband Curve
John Chambers

Cisco CEO, John Chambers talks about how high-tech has changed the global economy, and raises concerns that the US may be falling behind.

The Internet and education will be the equalizers in life. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the industrial revolution life. So with our network academies, which are Cisco's give-back program, we're now in 151 countries around the world. 472,000 students. And you know what, there's no difference in scores from Romania, New York City, Palo Alto, and China. It shows you how quickly things change if people have a chance to participate.

In Afghanistan, we just completed our first semester course. We had 19 students in it that hadn't been to school for six years. You know what, they got much better grades than any major school in the US. You give them a chance, they do fine. And the ability really to participate in this new economy is there.

Speaking of the new economy, I'm a believer in employee ownership. Whether you own a house or a car, stock options are much more than an issue about 'Are you improving transparency?,' which we and Intel -- and others, we'll argue -- are not. We'd be over-stating our expenses by about $3 billion a year on a non-cash basis if we did this. But it also will not change the compensation at the top. That's going to be handled in another way. But the real issue here, which people are missing, is the job implications.

Bottom line -- if you take away the ownership capability and you can get a job in Asia at one-tenth the cost, with a better educated workforce, with a better infrastructure and more supportive government, you're going to see your engineers move dramatically over this next decade. Then unfortunately, once your engineers move, about a year later they become CEOs -- and your business is gone. So let's understand what we're about to do.

If I'm right, you're going to be talking about engineering as high-tech job exports after 2003. This is why you see many of us in the high-tech industry fighting this [expensing of stock options] so strongly and saying, 'Let's study what we're doing, if what we're doing isn't going to accomplish the original goals and results in large job losses.' Silicon Valley has already lost 127,000 jobs. Introducing this type of idea at a time when we're all on our backs is perhaps not the best economic policy. So we ought to think real carefully before we jump off this cliff. As a country, whether the US, or in Japan or in Europe, would you take that type of risk?

On the topic of broadband wireless and how it's impacting the world, South Korea is an excellent example. This is where business and government work together to make huge inroads. About six years ago, when I went to South Korea and talked to their political leadership, it was a conceptual discussion. I went there two years later, and I started having the discussion, but the Prime Minister stopped me, and said 'John, here's my optical strategy, here's my broadband strategy, here's how we're going to migrate through, here's the productivity, and here's how we're going to unite it.' I was taking notes.

The point is, to implement an effective broadband strategy, it has to be a country mission. There are many countries around the world that do a much better job of that than the US does, in the UK, in Germany, in South Korea, and now in Japan. The first thing that has to happen in the US is that it has to be a national priority. Broadband to every American home at an affordable price by the end of the decade. Second, you can't force people to share that infrastructure with their competitors at cost or for nothing. So you have to have predictability in pricing and you have to have a reward for taking the risk.

The third issue is that you cannot get inconsistent regulations or false starts. You can't be negotiating. If you want to delay the implementation and delay it for three to four years, don't put it in the same battle where you lose profit sources and don't allow people to make the investments they need. You have to have competition. Broadband wireless is one of them. But you also have to have competition in terms of the traditional providers in voice and the cable providers. You ought to have options of two to three different technologies. You don't need 50, because we all learned that too much competition is just as bad as too little, in terms of the implementation.

I think it starts from the top -- broadband into every American home by the end of the decade. Other countries have already done that. We're falling behind. In terms of wireless, I think it will be a wireless world. But all of us will use a combination.

So if you just walk through what we did with acquiring Linksys -- whether we do it or somebody else does it, you will have your wireless capability, this connection they're providing your PCs and other devices, in your phone, in your home, or wherever. We just announced the 802.11b phone, that you'll be able to use everywhere, and every time you address the mobile marketplace. Which you will then take to your car and as you're driving your car or as you go onto your campus, we'll grab it back in on the campus, and keep it back in the Cisco network as you go into your office. You'll [connect to] hardware with a wider bandwidth, with even better security. As you go into the airport and go into the frequent flyer club you'll have a wireless connection there. You get on planes -- almost all the planes are now being built with wireless capability in them.

So as the applications become designed to be completely transparent, you won't in theory know -- and I think this is attainable -- what combination of your service provider network, of the Internet, of your own enterprise, you're using -- whether it's fixed wire, wireless, cable, optical -- who cares. I think that's where the world is going.

This is an excerpt from a speech Mr. Chambers gave at Accenture's Global Convergence Forum. In part one of this speech, Mr. Chambers offered insights on the IT investment cycle. In part two, he discussed how Cisco takes advantage of market transitions.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...id=591_0_1_0_C


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Why Is It 'OK' To Nick Software?
Stephen Tomkins

What's the difference between ripping software and shoplifting? None. Yet millions of us twist the arguments and kid ourselves we are not hardened criminals.

Call me prejudiced, but from what I know, I'd say you could well be a criminal.

If you're computer-literate enough to be reading this, there's a strong chance you will know how to copy expensive design software from your friends, or download alien-shooting games from the net without paying. And if you know how to, then the chances are you've done it.

Am I wrong? Don't worry, I won't tell.

The likes of you and me wouldn't normally like to think of ourselves as thieves. We don't pocket CDs in HMV or triple chocolate muffins in Tescos. So why are we happy to steal electronically?

According to the industry, it's because we're a pack of immoral cyber bandits. Developers across the world lose $11bn a year in business software alone, says the Business Software Alliance. It estimates nine out of 10 programs sold on auction sites are pirated.

How Much Top Software Costs:

Adobe Photoshop 7 - £535
Microsoft Office XP - £295
Macromedia Dreamweaver - £325
Through peer-to-peer file-swapping - FREE
Copies to mates - 15p per CD

The booty on your hard drive cost Americans 111,000 jobs in 2001, $5.6bn in lost wages and $1.5bn in unpaid tax. If that doesn't make you feel a twinge of guilt, you're obviously a hardened crook and should consider becoming a career criminal or an oil executive.

Admittedly, the figures may be inflated. How do they know you would have bought the software if you hadn't half-inched it? And how do we know that if you'd paid for it they would have spent the money on creating new jobs, rather than on executive jacuzzis or a new laser corkscrew for Mrs Gates?

Deflate the figures if you like, deep down they still remind us of what we always knew: our virtual shoplifting may feel safe, respectable and innocuous, but that doesn't stop it harming anyone.

When you make it out of the doors of cyberspace with your Mac bulging, someone somewhere loses out.

All of which is terribly obvious and brings us back to the question why do we feel so comfortable with our theft?

Because it's virtual? We haven't taken anything solid or physical, so we don't feel we've taken anything at all. I'm sure that's part of it, although the icon stubbornly remains on the desktop, reproaching us every time we use it.

Another reason is our uncertainty that we've stolen anything. How can we have, when no one has lost anything they used to have? A valid philosophical question to be sure, though the law doesn't see it that way.

But the most important reason is also the most depressing. We don't feel bad because there's no risk of our being caught and punished. If I pocketed a bottle of whisky in the supermarket I'd be so anxious about the security guards grabbing me, plagued with visions of shame and humiliation, police cars and magistrates, that even if I got away with it I'd feel horribly guilty.

That doesn't happen with computer applications, even though they tend to cost much more than the kind of whisky I buy.

This isn't a flattering thought. It suggests the main reason I tend to behave decently and honestly (in my own way) is not that I am decent and honest, but that I know bad things will happen if I don't.

26% Of Business Software In Uk Is Illegal

That's down from 42% eight years ago

There's one more reason why we're not more troubled by our ill-gotten games, I think. It's that we don't really mind ripping off huge fat-cat corporations, which would probably do the same to us given half the chance.

The ethics of intellectual property are not only about individuals. If companies charge extortionate prices because they can, perhaps they ought to get their own house in order before suing customers. And if they package their software in sweatshops, who's ripping off whom?

Consider the cautionary tale of music CDs. Everyone, bar the music industry, agrees they've been sold at vastly inflated prices since the 80s. Along come CD writers and MP3s and the market collapses about their ears. Who's surprised?

If bootlegging acts as a safety valve to keep software prices sensible, might that not be such a bad thing after all?

So what are we to do? Perhaps "trial piracy" could offer a reasonable compromise between us and the marketers. The unconventional software billionaire Kai Krause suggests this rule of thumb: "If it's still on your hard drive after a year, pay for it.'

And if you can't manage that much, you can just relax in the knowledge that you are simply a Bad Person. At least you're not alone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3049966.stm


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Western Europe


'Brussels Tea Party' A Genuine Prospect?
David Minto

The EU faces a large-scale revolt from American online businesses disgruntled by a change in EU tax laws regulating the digital sale of goods and services, according to Jason Duke, Managing Director of UK software development company Strange Logic.

From last Tuesday, companies engaging in e-commerce have been required to pay the rate of value-added tax (VAT) for the EU country in which their goods are consumed. The previous regulations allowed US companies to escape paying any VAT when engaging in e-commerce within the EU, because the levy was determined by the country in which the company was based.

Mr Duke claims, however, that US business s have been shocked to now find themselves responsible for collecting European VAT when they make a sale. "Many of the discussions with North American colleagues used language reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party and the American War For
Independence," he said.

Mr Duke went on to assert that some American business owners are now refusing to sell to EU consumers, protesting against what they as a

Of course, many EU e-commerce protagonists are unlikely to too sorry for their US and non-European counterparts, considering that they themselves have always had to tax the services and products they sell, and have therefore been at a competitive disadvantage in their own backyard.

However, Duke says he is offering a free solution to all those reluctant tax collectors out there, with software enabling businesses to recalculate the price displayed on their websites to incorporate the country specific VAT. For companies of a more severe bent, the application also allows them to ban EU visitors.

A anti-digital-VAT website has been set up, the wittily named BrusselsTeaParty.com, where businesses and EU consumers can get technical information and reports, and can also register their views on the issue.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16978


50% of German Web Users Still Regard Downloading As 'Difficult', report

German internet users have reservations about pay-download services to the extent that 62 per cent will first attempt to find the digital material free of charge and 15 per cent absolutely refuse to go near any digital content with a price tag, according to a new survey by Mummert Consulting and the University of Karlsruhe.

The statistics gleaned do not all come as bad news, and researchers found that half of those surveyed had paid for downloaded data at least once.

However, it was the reservations surfers had about paying for downloads that were articulate most strongly. Only one in ten buyers claimed to perceive no problems with the pay-download combination. For the rest, chief among the concerns were the quality of the downloaded material (53 per cent of those surveyed feared viruses or incomplete files) and the difficulty of complaining (40 per cent). 50 per cent of respondents said they would characterise the operation of downloading as difficult.

Interstingly, however, relatively few concerns were directly attributable to the billing mechanisms involved. Whilst many surveyed questioned the trustworthiness of operators (49 per cent) and feared hacker attacks (39 per cent), only 17 per cent thought there was a lack of suitable payment options and only 17 per cent again cited incorrect account billing as a concern.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16991


Operating Your Computer From Half A Kilometre Away

US-based company Gefen has announced that it has developed a technology allowing USB-based computer peripherals, such as digital cameras, camcorders, scanners, printers, keyboards and mice to be used up to 1,650 feet from a computer.

Gefen’s USB-500 trumps the previous Gefen product, the USB-400, which allowed multiple USB devices to be used up to up to 330 feet away from the computer they were operating. Most USB devices have a connection limit of 17 feet.

So why would you want to operate your computer from half a kilometre away? Well, according to Gefen, its devices are widely used in manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare industries, where computers may need to be operated in unsafe or unusual environments that could endanger the central processing unit. Geefen says the USB-500 also provides a solution for any type of remote multimedia presentation capability that can be controlled with computer equipment.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16989


Skanova Wins New Municipal Broadband Contract

TeliaSonera’s new unit for wholsesale and third party business in Sweden, Skanova, has won a contract to build a broadband network in the Municipality of Vansbro.

The administrative board of Dalarna County approved the Municipality of Vansbro´s application for funds to build a broadband network, with Skanova as the provider of a municipal core network. Most areas of the municipality are now expected to be connected by the end of 2003.

“We received several tenders but Skanova was the only company that could meet our requirements for a fast build- out rate and implementation,” said Gunnar Magnusson, chairman of the Vansbro municipal board. “Broadband is incredibly important, especially for the business and industrial community. If we can´t keep up with technology trends and quickly arrange connections for enterprises and households, there is a risk that many companies would leave our municipality.”

The broadband network in Vansbro will a combined fibre-optic and ADSL network. The network will be built out in Vansbro, Hulån, Dala-Järna, Nås, Uppsälje and Äppelbo. A network linking these towns will also be installed.

Up to the summer of 2002 it was not possible for Swedish municipalities to apply for government assistance to build out broadband networks based on ADSL technology. Now that the regulations have been changed, all of Sweden´s municipalities can gain access to broadband through a network that is installed parallel to their existing municipal core network.

During the spring Skanova signed similar agreements with municipal authorities in Ångermanland, Östergötland, Bohuslän and Västmanland, among others.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16980


Broadband Net Speeds Ahead
BBC

The number of Britons with high-speed net access is continuing to grow.

According to the Office of National Statistics 17% of net-using households have a broadband connection. Numbers look set to continue growing as firms start offering new ways to get a fast link to the net.

BT has also announced that it is equipping more telephone exchanges with high-speed links in response to customer demand.

The net is now being used in 47% of British households, according to the Office of National Statistics. In the three months covered by the research, 54% of adults said they had used the net. The majority of people, 81%, go online via a dial-up modem. But a growing number of net-savvy homes, 17%, use broadband. More people are going to be able to get broadband too as BT reveals the level of demand needed to persuade it to extend high- speed links to a further 500 telephone exchanges.

Rather than wire the whole country up for broadband via telephone wires - a technology known as ADSL - BT chose to only upgrade exchanges in some towns and villages if demand was high. It is measuring demand by setting up a system that lets people declare their interest in buying broadband should their local exchange be upgraded. BT said that 56 of the exchanges in its new list would be upgraded immediately as enough locals had already registered their interest.

The telecommunications firm launched the registration system in July 2002 and so far more than 470,000 people have signalled their interest in broadband. It said that 300 local exchanges have already been upgraded and a further 400 are due to be fitted with ADSL technology.

Some keen net users are finding other innovative ways to get broadband. This week four residents of a street in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen in Scotland, started getting high-speed net access via power lines. The Powerline technology pipes data through electricity cables and lets users surf the net via a connector that plugs into a conventional electrical socket. It can work at speeds up to two megabits per second. Scottish Hydro-Electric is behind the technology which was piloted in Crieff and Campbeltown before being rolled out in Stonehaven. It will also be offered to other customers of other companies of Scottish and Southern Energy - the parent of Scottish Hydro-Electric.

People living in rural areas of East Anglia and East Midlands will soon be offered a chance to get broadband via wireless technology. From the end of September a company called Wireless Rural Broadband is setting up a service that gives companies a radio-based 54mbps net link for only £10 per month. Although primarily meant for companies, the firm said it would consider taking orders from home users too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/3055389.stm


French Court Takes Music Label To Task Over Copy-Protection Warning
BNA

A French court in Nanterre has taken EMI Music to task for failing to provide full disclosure of copy-protection on a CD. The company informed purchasers that the CD contained protection but did not advise that it would not work with certain CD players. The court considered the insufficient warning to be misleading to consumers. Case name is CLCV v. EMI Music France.

French language decision at http://www.juriscom.net/documents/tg...re20030624.pdf