[JackSpratts]

Quotes of the week: “There are no lyrics, cover art or goodies. The music industry gets to reduce its distribution, marketing and sales costs, while consumers receive the "privilege" of downloading music. Whoever decided that 99¢ was the cost of an online song did not understand that consumer behaviour has changed dramatically. All you have to do is look at Roxio Inc.'s stock price, which dropped again yesterday in the wake of news that its Napster service only had 300,000 songs downloaded since its launch last week.” - Mark Evans

“It might be wise to root for the hackers”. - Rob Pegoraro on the FCC’s Broadcast Digital Flag decision.



Issue 52


The State As Information Manager
Siva Vaidhyanathan

The rise of distributed information systems certainly complicates, perhaps even undermines, the sense of stability within a nation-state. The nation-state is an information system in itself. Among its various roles, it regulates flows of information. One could even venture to define a nation-state as a particular method of information management.

An important characteristic that distinguishes a dictatorship from a democratic republic – apart from its resort to physical repression and denial of basic rights – is how it restricts the flows of certain pieces of information and the technologies that carry them. An authoritarian state, as Hannah Arendt argued, is the constant reminder that the state is the source of “official” information, and that all other information is suspect.

The most oppressive and brutal of world states – Burma, Saudi Arabia, and the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) – can be expected to install technological restrictions on the communicative technologies at their citizens’ disposal. But even relatively liberal nation-states like the United States and Britain are attempting to block or monitor legitimate flows of information, and ignoring concerns for due process or free speech. And because many of these initiatives are emerging through multinational organisations and corporations, citizens have no forum for debate or appeal.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates...8-101-1544.jsp


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U.S. $enators Back 3 Year Prison Term For Movie Downloaders -- Hollywood Smirks
Declan McCullagh

A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.

In addition to the prison term, the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act would punish making such movies available on a public "computer network" as a federal felony with a fine of up to $250,000. It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place.

Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., plan to introduce the legislation at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Joining them at the event will be actress Bo Derek, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti, and Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Hollywood studios have fretted for years about Internet distribution of prerelease movies, meaning films that have not appeared on DVD or in theaters. Footage of "Star Wars: Episode II," "Tomb Raider" and "The Hulk," has reportedly surfaced on peer-to-peer networks before their commercial distribution. In September, the major studios responded by halting their normal practice of sending DVD "screeners" to Academy Award judges.

A copy of the bill seen by CNET News.com, marked "Discussion Draft," represents one of the fiercest attacks yet on peer- to-peer networks from copyright holders' allies on Capitol Hill.

The threat of a three-year prison term kicks in when anyone makes an illicit copy of a movie "available on a computer network accessible to members of the public" when the film "was intended for commercial distribution but had not been so distributed at the time." Once the film is commercially distributed, the felony penalties appear to no longer apply.

Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation because it does not say that any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened."

MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor said that "this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures. It's the first time the U.S. Senate has had legislation that specifically addresses the threat of camcording."

"Piracy for too long has been high reward and low risk," Taylor said. "Legislation such as that being introduced tomorrow will go a long way toward changing that equation."

The Cornyn-Feinstein bill also creates another federal felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for using "an audiovisual recording device" in a movie theater to make a copy of a film and boosts civil penalties available to MPAA member companies when suing over prerelease movies placed on the Internet.

Cornyn's office did not respond to a request for comment. "Copyright piracy is a serious threat not only to the entertainment industry, but also to a U.S. economy struggling to get back on its feet," Cornyn said in a statement. Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are co-sponsors of the bill.

A related proposal has been introduced in the House of Representatives. It covers surreptitious recording in theaters but does not include the three-year prison term for making a prerelease movie available online.
http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5106684.html


Bought and paid for.

Senate Bill Targets Internet Pirates
David McGuire

People who steal copies of films and albums and post them on the Internet before their official release dates could face felony charges under legislation scheduled to be introduced Thursday in the U.S. Senate.

Authored by Sens. John Cornyn (R- Texas) and Dianne Feinstein (D- Calif.), the Artists Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act makes it easier to prosecute suspected pirates who offer "pre-release" movies and music online.

"We're trying to go after the pre- release stuff that is absolutely killing any potential revenue for one of the segments of our economy that's doing well," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Cornyn. The movie studios and record labels are "just absolutely getting clobbered."

The movie and record industries are eager to stamp out pre-release piracy, which they see as one of the most dangerous trends facing their respective industries. This year alone, blockbuster films like "The Hulk" and "The Matrix Reloaded" hit the Web before they hit the theaters. More recently, popular hip-hop artists Jay- Z and G-Unit had to bump up the release dates for their albums when pirated copies hit the Internet.

Internet movie piracy is costing the major studios up to $1 billion a year in lost revenue, according to Macrovision Corp., which develops anti-piracy technology. The largest music publishing and distribution companies lost $700 million to digital file sharing in 2002, according to a report from the Boston-based Forrester research group.

For movie studios, which count on earning revenues from film releases from the time they hit the theaters until well after they come out on DVD, pre-release piracy is especially galling, said Motion Picture Association of America spokesman Rich Taylor.

"If it happens before a film can even penetrate the darkness of the theater for the first time, obviously it has grave consequences," Taylor said.

Under current law, felony charges apply only to piracy suspects who distribute 10 or more copies of pre-release albums and movies, with a retail value of more than $2,500. Under the Cornyn- Feinstein bill, felony charges could be filed against people who share pre-release entertainment online, regardless of the number of copies or its value.

On the Internet, where many pirated goods are offered free over peer-to-peer networks, it can be difficult to place a dollar figure on a single act of piracy. That difficulty has made it harder to prosecute even the most egregious cases of copyright infringement, Stewart said.

For the movie and music industries, which have often faced staunch opposition in their efforts to push stiffer anti-piracy laws, the Cornyn-Feinstein bill could be a slam-dunk. While civil liberties advocates have opposed efforts to topple peer-to-peer networks or impose copyright-friendly technological standards on personal computers, this bill is unlikely to face much opposition.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said the bill addresses the concerns of copyright owners without trampling consumers' constitutional rights. "To us it's a narrow bill, but for them it's a huge problem and this is a good way of taking care of it."

"To the extent that the bill remains focused on those ... problems, it doesn't raise much of a problem for us," Sohn said, adding that she hopes the legislation marks the start of a new approach for the music and movie industries.

"Focus on illegal behavior and not on outlawing technology," she said.

Stewart said it's unlikely that the legislation will go anywhere before Congress goes home for the holidays, but the senators want to use that time to seek support from their colleagues.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has already signed on as a co-sponsor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Nov12.html


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License Revocation
Ed Foster

License revocation is not just a Microsoft thing. Not surprisingly, where it is really starting to become visible are the pay-per-tunes music services. Music services have no choice but to attach some form of DRM (Digital Rights/Restrictions Management) to the music tracks they sell in order to get the record companies to sign up with their service. But for at least some of the services, part of that devil's bargain is to let the copyright holder take back licenses to play those tunes whenever it so chooses. "Your copy of the Software and your access to certain applications that communicate with it are subject to restriction and/or revocation (such as being shut down) for security purposes or according to consistently applied Content-protection policies," reads the Napster 2.0 EULA, for example. "You understand and agree that this would likely result in Content that was previously available for use being unavailable thereafter."

It's ironic that the files being sent to your computer from the new Napster will therefore include lists of revoked music files. And, as Napster is one of those music services that's employing Microsoft's DRM, its users will now come under Microsoft's Windows Media Player license agreements and privacy policies for those lists. "A list of revoked software is sent to your computer whenever you acquire a license," reads one relevant portion of the Media Player privacy policy. "Microsoft will not retrieve any personally identifiable information, or any other information, from your computer by downloading such revocation lists. The only way to avoid receiving revocation lists is to not acquire licenses for secure content."

Of course, just as Microsoft's DRM ambitions aren't restricted to music, its plans for license revocation go much further. Recently I wrote about Microsoft's Information Rights Management (IRM) technology that builds DRM capabilities into Office 2003 applications. Microsoft counts license revocation as one of the attractive features that IRM brings to Office 2003 on its website. For some time now, Microsoft has been talking about how license revocation will work with IRM, even warning that "revocation is a fairly large hammer" to use to eradicate individual documents.

Microsoft explains in some detail how licensing revocation can be used with its overall Rights Management technology. "When a license creator builds a publishing license, she can specify that, in order for the publishing license to be valid, the content consumer must obtain a revocation list from a specified URL at a regularly scheduled interval," notes notes one document for potential developers. "This revocation list is a signed list of content IDs, use license IDs, public keys, or other identifying information that specifies principals that are no longer valid. Therefore, if a company has terminated an employee and wishes to revoke their access to sensitive company files, or if a content key associated with a particular encrypted film has been compromised and made available on the Internet, the licenses granted to that employee or for that content ID can be revoked after use licenses have been granted."

Now, that's interesting to think about. How tempting will a Hollywood studio find the capability to revoke all licenses it sold to a movie when it decides it's time to re-release it to the theatres? Those sensitive company files that an ex-employee can be barred from accessing might include his original employment contact, for example. Or perhaps documents revealing company misdeeds that a whistleblower was about to leak to the press could suddenly disappear for all time. Would there be such a thing as false advertising when any traces of the misleading ad can be made to disappear?

A world in which all content is DRM'd and subject to license revocation is a world in which history can constantly be rewritten by the powers-that-be.
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/...1/13/8919/8624


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Vanderbilt Mock Trial Looks At File Sharing
George Pradhan

Mary Jones feels that she is being unjustly sued; the Recording Industry Association of America begs to differ.

Over 50 mock jurors were present in Vanderbilt Law School's Flynn Auditorium on Tuesday to hear the case of The RIAA v. Mary Jones, presented by Project Dialogue and Vanderbilt Mock Trials Association.

"I really liked the show," said freshman Bill Robertson. "My only problem with it was how fast and choppy it was - made it seem kind of unsubstantial - but I guess that's just because of the time limit."

Freshman Elizabeth Ryan began with the plaintiff's opening statement.

"Right is always right, and wrong is always wrong," Ryan said. "Wrong is always wrong, and stealing is stealing whether done offline or on."

Freshman Boone Lancaster followed with the opening statement for the defense. Mary Jones was not aware of the downloading of files, he said. Her roommate, appropriately named Sharon Seedee, was the one who downloaded music; Mary Jones was served the subpoena only because she paid the Internet Service Provider bill.

Once the opening statements were concluded, witnesses from both sides were called to the stand and presented their respective arguments.

"(File-sharing) is no different than shoplifting. You couldn't just walk into a store and steal a CD," said Allison Sony, mock record executive.

"(Jones) is representative of thousands of others and for that reason I take issue with her," said mock musician Brian McKnight passionately.

However, Jones, mock president of the Vanderbilt Honor Council, said that she had never downloaded. "I haven't done anything wrong," Jones said at the stand.

"Members of the jury, what we have here today is not sharing, it's stealing," said freshman plaintiff attorney Bill Weimar in his closing statement.

Freshman defense attorney Charleston Bell closed by asking some big-picture questions, in line with this year's Project Dialogue theme "Ideas, Images, Internet: Who Owns What?"

"Who owns what is on the internet?" Bell said. "(File-sharing is) not stealing. It is only taking advantage of the technology that is already here.... So where does this leave the music industry?"

"They can sue, or they can change with the times."

After the ballots were given out to the audience members to vote for whom they felt better argued their case, mock Judge David Williams, vice chancellor for student life and university affairs, gave a few thoughts on the trial.

"This case is hard... since it is a case where technology has evolved faster than American law."

After explaining why and how each side could have been proclaimed the winner, Williams jokingly declared the case to be a mistrial, but then went on to say that on a strictly knowledge-based judgment, he would probably rule that downloading is in fact illegal.

The jurors voted 30-23 in favor of the defense, however.
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/vne.../3fab14143ba2b


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Technologies Of The Year -- Tool For Teamwork

Wildfire, a new release of ProEngineer CAD software, features revolutionary collaboration capability.
Tim Stevens

Collaboration among engineers in a virtual computer-aided design (CAD) space, where each participant can exercise control and contribute to a 3-D solid modeling session in real time, has been a dream of the product- development community for years. In February, that dream became reality with the first production shipments of ProEngineer Wildfire, the latest CAD software release from Parametric Technologies Corp. (PTC), Needham, Mass.

The core of PTC's product lifecycle management (PLM) suite, Wildfire also adds convenient browser-based connection to all solutions in that suite, as well as a new interface and model of interaction with the user. "Wildfire is a breakthrough in the sense that it transforms design from a single-user activity to a collaborative, process-oriented product-development activity for all internal stakeholders and supply-chain participants," says James Heppelmann, executive vice president, software and marketing, and chief product officer.

According to PTC, the key to Wildfire's collaboration power is the first-ever use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology in the field of CAD software to connect design sessions of multiple users. In past efforts at collaborative design over the Internet, session partners attempted to share either the actual geometry data of 3-D solid models, or simple graphic representations of the models. In the first case, networks are too slow to keep up with streaming of such data-heavy files. The static images transferred in the second case allow mark-up of designs, but no actual real-time modeling modifications. P2P technology allows engineers participating in design sessions to run their own CAD programs and simply exchange commands, which are much less data-heavy and move easily in real time across networks. "As engineers, we are actually sharing the application, working together on a live model at the same time from different locations," says Heppelmann. "If you make a change, I see it immediately, and I can respond with a modification of my own."

The new underlying architecture in Wildfire is a Web-based client server, which connects PTC's PLM applications for project and data management solutions through a common Web hub. The first implication is that engineers can access all of these solutions via the browser they are using to run their design sessions without leaving that environment. No saving in one application, opening up another and transferring files. Secondly, the entire product development team, from supplier to customer, manufacturing to sales/ marketing, procurement to service, can selectively access design models and the data attendant to them from a browser as well. Comments and modifications can flow easily between the functions eliminating the need to exchange models via e-mail or hard-copy, speeding and improving the quality of the product development process.

While past revisions of ProEngineer typically contained about 10% new code, Wildfire has a whopping 40% new code, much of it devoted to the new user interface and interaction scheme, which was rebuilt from scratch. Previously, ProEngineer used a traditional menu-based approach to modeling. Wildfire now employs a more intuitive, graphical, icon-driven scheme PTC calls "direct modeling." As one user put it, "It seems the model itself is telling the system how to interact with me."
http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentA...ArticleId=1523


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All Your 99c Are Belong to Us - RIAA, Steve Jobs
Andrew Orlowski

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish? Apparently not.

At an Apple financial analyst conference on Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April. As iTMS is the leading download service, with 80 per cent market share (or so Jobs claimed), where's your 99 cents per song going?

Well, although it costs nothing for the record industry pigopolists, this small ragged army, to make a digital version of one of its hoardings available to hear, somebody must pay. It costs Apple real dollars to provide the hosting service that delivers that digital file to you, and to write the sophisticated software that delivers it. Meanwhile, almost all the cash is flowing back to the copyright holders. Who, when you last looked, were a dinosaur oligopoly of five record labels, desperately seeking a way to preserve their copyright cartel into a new century. They were down, and they were out: but Steve Jobs rode to their rescue.

"Most of the money goes to the music companies," admitted Jobs.

"We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it's not a money maker," he said, candidly.

So now we have it on record: the music store is a loss leader. Jobs said Apple would pay its dues to the RIAA, then seek to make money where it could, from its line of hardware accessories. When the conversation turned to rivals such as eTunes and Napster, Jobs said: "They don't make iPods, so they don't have a related business where they do [make money]".

Running counter to several thousand years of basic human observation, Apple decided it could afford to control those points where we share music. It developed an opportunistic business with such compromises built in: a plan is to infect as many computers it could with restrictive DRM technology to allow us to rights we once took for granted. But why, you ask, is Apple helping an extinct, and unworthy industry back on its feet? Precisely why does this strike you as greedy, desperate and gasping? Let us explain.

DRM is non-negotiable
Digital media presents with a particularly nasty social problem: we love to share and enjoy our common culture, but we want the artists to be rewarded, too. But when the distribution medium is as careless and fluid as the Internet, dues are easily overlooked. We're simply too lazy to reward the artists. However, inspired by NGO-backed initiatives as the move to low-costs drugs, a global consensus is coalescing around the idea of something called "compulsory licensing".

This can take many forms, but if you want it simple, it means a cent on your income tax, or your blank CD purchases. Are you still standing? Good, for this creates a vast pool of wealth from which the artists can be rewarded. It's not alien to most people: we pay taxes everyday for roads we don't use, or healthcare for neighbours brats we'd rather see strangled. But that's how society works: with a bit of give and take. And if it means the artists gets a guaranteed income, that, we can generally agree, is a good thing. Fortunately the technology helps us here: because unlike most taxes, we'll be able to target the most popular. And all this can be done while preserving your anonymity, too.

Imagine such a model: you could click, download and play your favorite as much as you wanted, safely knowing that artists wouldn't be being ripped off, and that your clicks were earning them more money. Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

Stripped to the core, compulsory licensing resolve two real social nasties without each side losing face. A flat tax is simply the easiest way of getting rid of the problem: we all get to swap music, and all the artists get paid. Now, problem: go away. And it's gone.

It doesn't make Steve Jobs feel warm and fuzzy, however, because he thinks he sees a real nasty, short-term business opportunity. Always a nervous kind of character, one to jump too early, Jobs sees a window of opportunity, by tying Apple to be the RIAA's slave.

When that 99 cents leaves your wallet, the RIAA monopoly swallows most of it, and the credit card companies swallow the rest. As the supplicant in this relationship, Apple is left holding the can.

While much of the received wisdom in both the music industries and technology industries see compulsory licenses in one form or another as inevitable, both Apple and RIAA are agreed on the short-term solution. One where the ancient copyright rules spin the money back to the pigopolists, and some sucker, like Apple, is left holding a brand of dubious (and soon to be extinct) value.

Alas it's Jobs who wants to be first - the first tech CEO - to offer himself up for a beheading. Having got so much right about personal computer ergonomics, it's initially surprising to find Jobs accepting a deal on such bad terms. At Wednesday's conference call, Jobs sounded positively happy that he was losing money on iTunes, so he could make the RIAA that little bit richer. But vanity plays havoc with even the finest minds.

At the end of the day it's for Apple's board to peg Jobs' peculiar exercises with such diametric labels as "excusable vanity" or "hopeless cause". But however you sliced it, and with the weight of history bearing pretty heavy, Steve Jobs' decision to give the RIAA a perpetual monopoly doesn't look so smart. As Jobs admitted, Apple is in a supplicant position in which it makes no money.

We like having Steve around, as the Jobs judgement is typically both coherent and devoid of technoutopian fantasies, but this could be fatal
http://www.theregister.com/content/6/33850.html


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Help! My Belkin Router Is Spamming Me
John Leyden

The marketing geniuses at Belkin, the consumer networking vendor, have dreamed up a new form of spam - ads served to your desktop, by way of its wireless router.

Uh Clem. a former Belkin wireless router user, was perplexed to find machines on his network redirected to an ad for Belkin's new parental control system, following a software update.

Clem initially thought that the browser setting on the machine he downloaded the updated software had been changed. But when other machines displayed the same behaviour he realised his router was to blame.

The router would grab a random HTTP connection every eight hours and redirect it to Belkin’s (push) advertised web page.

"It seems the router now supports a parental control and the market droids at Belkin got the bright idea of equipping the router with intrusive nagware," writes Uh Clem. "Of course, I have this strange notion that routers should pass data unmolested by marketeers!"

There is an opt-out link on the advertised page but this failed to appease Clem who, not unreasonably, objects to having to "opt-out from commercials from my router". Because of the ads, he's decided not to buy Belkin products again.

In response criticism, a Belkin product manager came forward this week to confirm the behaviour was designed into the products as a way to make it easier for consumers to sign up to a free trial of its parental control software. Belkin's Eric Deming is keen to allay concerns about the technique which have produced sharp criticism of the company on the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup.

"We don't have the ability to spam you at a later time if you select "No Thanks" or turn off the reminder manually," Deming writes. "I know this feature might be misunderstood and might PO some people. I know the manual could do a better job explaining it. These are all things that we at Belkin are working to remedy."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/33858.html


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Too Much Information
Nathan Cochrane

Despite having more information at our fingertips than any generation before, there is little evidence that our ability to make good, timely decisions has improved. A musician is not someone with an instrument and a songbook. Similarly, to be "information literate" - able to extract knowledge from the welter of choice - we need to know how to orchestrate the technologies and "listen" for the results. As a society we are computer and internet literate yet information literacy lags. We have computer hardware and software but often ignore "wetware" - the first, most important, cog in the information seeking machine is ourselves.

Information literacy is viewed as a "prerequisite for participating effectively in the information society", according to the United Nations' Prague Declaration issued at the end of September. It is essential in reducing inequities, promoting tolerance and closing the digital divide, said the experts from 23 countries, including Australia, in a joint statement following talks in the Czech Republic. They suggested that information literacy should be given the same standing as the "Three-Rs".

The task to improve our awareness of information literacy was summed up by Baroness Susan Greenfield, professor at Oxford University's department of pharmacology and director of the Royal Institution, during a visit to Australia in September.

"One has to draw the distinction between knowledge and information," Greenfield told the ABC's Hamish Robertson. "We are in a time when people can sit in front of the screen and get bombarded with facts and sometimes that's confused for education. But I think that what we owe it to our young people to do is to help them ask questions."

Greenfield believes society is becoming "answer-rich but question-poor". Rather than being forced to learn things by rote, "by burdening our memories, because the cyber-world is doing this for us", we can now concentrate on "asking the right questions ... have a sense of values, develop a morality, develop novel ideas, and that can be done, I think, by giving people a framework.

"It's not so much giving people fact after fact after fact, because they can Google on their computers and do that anyway."

Australia is among a handful of countries, including the United States, that has a national standard for information literacy, through our national library and information association.

"Fluency with information technology requires more intellectual abilities than the rote learning of software and hardware associated with computer literacy," the standard says, in agreement with Greenfield. "Information literacy is an intellectual framework .. which may be supported in part by fluency with information technology (and) sound investigative methods but most importantly through critical discernment and reasoning."

Ralph Catts, a University of New England researcher in the field of adult education who helped to formulate Australia's information literacy standard, says generic skills such as critical thinking and communication will grow in importance to employers.

"As adults are called on more and more to continue to learn, the ability to transfer prior knowledge to new situations becomes more important," Catts says.

"We need to learn more about how people learn to use information in an effective and efficient manner. Information is all about us but to use it effectively we need skills not just to find it but to evaluate it."

Catts says literacy in the information arts is a practical matter and, for instance, can help us avoid being scammed online. The "Nigerian email" and "banking passwords" scams could be neutralised if people were critical of communications they received from scammers masquerading as trusted acquaintances.

He says people need to check for authenticity, currency and reliability. "Unless they are aware of the need to check for a second source of information before it can be considered to be reliable, they get caught."

A British researcher and co-maintainer of the Information Literacy Weblog, Sheila Webber, says governments have paid a lot of attention to plumbing the connections, "but there's the idea that once you've got an internet connection into each school and public library, that'll see us right for the 21st century".

"This ignores the fact that it's what you do with the technology that's important."

Webber says the "Iraq Dossier" - claims by Western leaders about Iraq's security forces, in part plagiarised from a student's thesis - was a classic case of governments underestimating the importance of information literacy, to their embarrassment.

"(Was) the Government hoping its citizens weren't information literate - that they wouldn't have the ability to question what they were told or check things up?" asks Webber, a lecturer in information studies at the University of Sheffield.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...329472603.html


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Wal-Mart Could Make Music Downloads Sing a New Tune
Steve Alexander

"What we're finally seeing is that the free peer-to-peer music downloading networks are being marginalized," said Phil Leigh, founder of the research firm Inside Digital Media in Tampa.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reportedly is looking at beginning to sell digital music downloads by year's end, raising the prospect of new price competition in the online music market. That could significantly reduce the allure of unauthorized free music downloads.

According to the New York Post, Wal-Mart has been in talks to license music from record companies for its own downloading service on Walmart.com. The service is expected to be modeled after Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store that allows customers to download songs for 99 cents each.

Wal-Mart Stores didn't confirm its entry into the market Thursday. The Bentonville, Ark., company is the world's largest retailer and the top seller of music CDs, controlling 14 percent of worldwide music sales.

"At any given time we are looking at new services and products, and digital services is one of those things being looked at," said Cynthia Lin, a Walmart.com spokeswoman in Brisbane, Calif.

Some analysts said rumors about Wal-Mart's entry into online music have been circulating for some time.

In doing so, Wal-Mart would enter a growing field of competitors that includes for-pay providers such as Apple's iTunes, Roxio's Napster (only the brand name of the free Napster remains) and RealNetwork's Rhapsody, as well as free music sites such as Kazaa and Grokster. By some estimates, about 500 million unauthorized copies of songs are downloaded each month. The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major music labels, filed lawsuits earlier this year in response, accusing 261 people of sharing copyrighted music.

Analysts say that online music sales could help reduce free downloading, both because of the potential for price competition and because the for-pay services are easier to use than the free ones.

"What we're finally seeing is that the free peer-to-peer music downloading networks are being marginalized," said Phil Leigh, founder of the research firm Inside Digital Media in Tampa. "The free networks are annoying because they are filled with pop-up advertisements and spyware [software that spies on a user's Internet surfing], and they often don't perform well. It's logical that people will buy music, particularly when they know it will work and they don't have to put up with the possibility of ruinous lawsuits."

David Card, an analyst with Jupiter Research in New York City, predicted that "music piracy will go down because of the trouble it takes to download free music compared to buying music."

"The music industry's lawsuits against consumers also have had some effect," Card added. "Our surveys show that 18 percent of adult online file sharers say they've cut back that activity."

Meanwhile, competition from Wal-Mart could further reduce prices.

"Wal-Mart historically does compete on price," Card said. "But I think 99 cents for singles is a pretty good price point, and that there will be good demand for that. It's unclear whether you could sell more online songs at a lower price, but it's very early in the game."

Leigh disagreed.

"I expect that Walmart.com may well experiment with special digital music sales promotions to see if it generates cross sales of other products online. But if music doesn't help sell other products, I don't think they're going to materially reduce the price per song," he said.

Studies to determine whether lower prices would stimulate online song purchases have been inconclusive. Rhapsody experimented with 49-cent songs and said it more than doubled its revenue by cutting the price from 99 cents. But it later gave up on the 49-cent price and settled on 79 cents a song plus a monthly subscription fee. Another study by the New York market research firm Ipsos-Insight showed that consumer demand increased when the price was lowered to 79 cents a song, but that demand didn't rise correspondingly at lower prices.

One big factor in online price competition from Wal-Mart might be whether the company can get the music industry to agree to charge it lower prices for digital downloads than other online companies pay, analysts said.

"Today, license agreements are such that it doesn't make economic sense for online marketers to go below 79 cents a song," said Matt Kleinschmit, Minneapolis-based director of Ipsos-Insight. "But it would not surprise me if the record labels were willing to make some deals. Because, let's face it, there has not been a lot of good news in the music world in the last two or three years."

Best Buy, which offers music downloading services, said it wouldn't be directly affected by price competition because it simply remarkets existing services such as Rhapsody.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32091.html


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Wal-Mart To Hold ID Tag Meeting
Alorie Gilbert

Wal-Mart Stores and its largest 100 merchandise suppliers plan to meet this week to plot the implementation of a new high-tech inventory-tracking system, a project expected to send ripples across the retail industry.

The meeting, scheduled for Tuesday near Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, follows the megaretailer's announcement in June about its foray into a technology known as RFID (radio frequency identification). At the time, Wal-Mart asked its top 100 suppliers to join the effort and, starting Jan. 1, 2005, attach RFID tracking "tags" to the millions of cases and containers they ship to the company.

Among the companies congregating in Bentonville for a full briefing from Wal-Mart are industry giants Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Tyson Foods and Unilever, a Wal-Mart representative said. Some big names in information technology will also be in town, with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Philips Semiconductor and SAP participating in an RFID "tech expo" Wednesday.

RFID tags, which contain special microchips and antennae, are designed to automatically relay to computers precise information
about the contents of product packages and containers. The technology is expected to reduce much of the manual labor and human error involved in tracking inventory via bar codes and could save Wal-Mart close to $8.4 billion annually, according to investment research firm Sanford C. Bernstein.

But less clear are the benefits for Wal-Mart's suppliers, many of whom already have highly accurate inventory systems, according to a recent report from IT analyst firm AMR Research. It's a critical question, given that large suppliers will spend an average of $13 million to $23 million to comply with Wal-Mart's plan, AMR Research estimates.

"Other than maintaining positive relationships with Wal-Mart, almost no company attending the symposium could readily identify immediate value in implementing the technology," the report states.

A spokesman for the retailer dismissed the notion, insisting that the technology will be a boon to suppliers as well as to Wal-Mart. "Analysts always have to come up with something," Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams said.

The benefit to manufacturers comes only when RFID is deployed in stores to decrease stock-out situations, AMR analyst Kara Romanow said. But because of costs and privacy concerns, that could be 10 years away or more, experts said.

Procter & Gamble, which has been deeply involved in the testing and development of retail RFID systems for the last several years, is optimistic that RFID will be more than just another cost of doing business with the world's largest retailer.

"We see that this technology has huge benefits, even at the case and pallet level, in helping us to track our product and helping us understand how long does it take to get through the supply chain," a P&G representative said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1008-5101416.html


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iSP

A new online music service claims to have found a way to lure users away from illegally downloading tracks. Bobbie Johnson explains
Bobbie Johnson

Now is the time of year that record company executives around the globe are likely to be mopping the sweat from their collective brows. With fingers crossed, they hope record releases from their biggest guns will help to boost flagging revenues over Christmas and revive an industry in seemingly terminal decline.

Music label bosses waste no time laying the blame for a downturn in music sales - the culprit, as always, is the internet. Illegal downloading is the Achilles heel of the recording industry, and the term "file sharing" is anathema to the music-label fat cats staring plummeting profits squarely in the face.

But a new service which has just begun testing ahead of a proposed launch in the new year aims to provide a stepping stone between file sharers and the music industry. Instead of being a pay-per-download service or music portal, Playlouder MSP is being touted as a "music service provider" - a one-stop shop that not only provides users with their broadband connection, but also allows them to download as much music as they want legally. And all for a price to compete with big rivals such as BT, Freeserve and AOL.

The concept is simple: subscribers receive a high-speed internet connection and everything else associated with a normal ISP. And like normal internet users, they will be allowed to use file-sharing programmes such as Kazaa or Gnutella. But instead of sharing with users anywhere on the internet, subscribers will remain within a gated community, only able to share with approved users - and therefore only sharing licensed tracks from the labels signed up to the scheme. And in return for licensing their entire catalogues for downloading among the Playlouder peer group, record labels will receive a slice of the subscription fee.

"A lot of people were wondering why no one had found a way to collaborate between record companies and internet service providers," says Playlouder MSP director Paul Hitchman. "The answer's simple: ISPs don't want to share their revenue. We're putting our necks on the line by effectively cutting those revenues.

"We share our margin with the music companies directly. We're trying to cut through the antagonistic relationship between music companies and internet firms."

With recognisable, but credible, names such as Dizzee Rascal, White Stripes and Stereophonics already signed up, and with respected underground labels such as Ninja Tune on board, Playlouder MSP is hoping to appeal to dedicated music fans as well as cautious individuals looking to avoid legal action down the line.

Of course, part of the gamble relies on the slow but steady demolition of the myth of "free" file sharing. Those users who are downloading and swapping tracks are still paying for their internet connection - and, in most cases, paying handsomely, even if the victims of file sharing never see those profits. That's where Playlouder MSP hopes to change the landscape. A deal to gain direct access to the fabled "local loop" cuts out rental costs from BT, allowing them to keep broadband speeds high, prices low and, crucially, allowing record companies to gain profit from an otherwise illegitimate revenue source.

Labels backing the new initiative are hoping this method of top-slicing revenues could be the way forward.

"We are committed to working with the most innovative new media companies," says Martin Mills, the chairman of Beggars Group. "PlayLouder MSP finally offers record companies a way to monetise file-sharing and represents a potential solution for the record industry."

If it is to succeed, though, Playlouder will have to fight hard. It will need to bring major labels on board to give subscribers a wide enough range of tracks to trade, and compete with a burgeoning range of music services. It could be joining the market at exactly the kind of watershed moment which could prove make or break.

"This is the pregnant moment in digital music," says Josh Bernoff, a principal analyst at Forrester Reearch. "Lawsuits are creating doubt among users of free services, while the variety and usability of legitimate digital music services make them a real, usable alternative."

The industry standard for online music is rapidly becoming Apple's iTunes download shop - currently vaunting the fact that it has sold more than 10m tracks in the four months since it launched its service in America. It's an impressive figure - and one that is increasing quickly with the recent launch of iTunes for PC, a move which expands the technology beyond the niche market of Macintosh users and potentially into every internet-enabled household in the US.

But nobody wants to let Apple steal a march in the market, and rivals are clamouring to throw their hats into the ring. Dotmusic, which was bought last month by Yahoo! from BT could be the latest contender to don its spandex pants and jump on stage, with industry watchers speculating about a wide-ranging link-up with AOL and Real Networks. Thanks to the fact it currently holds licensing deals with five major labels, Dotmusic has not yet lost all of its rock star lustre, even though it is something of an internet hot potato, changing hands three times in the past three years.

And recently the trumpets have sounded for the much-vaunted relaunch of Napster, which resurrects the infamous file-sharing application in the form of an Apple-like download store. But still it must compete with the illegal traders on difficult ground.

Those sceptical of the record industry's position believe file-sharing is the scapegoat for waning sales and overpricing. This is the same set of issues raised decades ago by audio tape recording, they argue, simply magnified by the power of the internet.

"Labels are in trouble, and it's not from file-sharing," says Bernoff. "To tap into $2bn in new revenues, they must let people find, copy and pay for music on their own terms."

Some figures inside the download industry go even further. "Protecting copyright is really just a smokescreen to hide the real challenge confronting the entertainment industry," says Alan Morris, the executive vice president of Kazaa-owner Sharman Networks - and the man whose picture is most likely to be used as a dartboard by frustrated record company bosses around the globe. His own product, he claims, is under fire because it is about "moving beyond an outdated economic model that is being rejected by the marketplace for which we have a well-conceived upgrade path".
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediagua...081300,00.html


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Berklee College of Music Launches 'Berklee Shares,' a Groundbreaking New Program Offering Free Music Education Online

World-Renowned Music College Encourages People to Share Music Lessons Via File Sharing Networks
Press Release

Berklee College of Music, the world's largest independent music college and the premier institution for the study of contemporary music announces the launch of Berklee Shares. This groundbreaking new program provides free music lessons and encourages musicians to share and distribute these music lessons online.

The Berklee Shares lessons are available at no charge and are made up of a growing catalog of MP3s, QuickTime movies and PDF files derived from curriculum developed at the college by its world-renowned faculty. The lessons are available today for free download on http://www.berkleeshares.com/ , affiliate partner sites and peer-to-peer networks including Limewire and Kazaa. Like MIT and its Open Courseware Initiative (ocw.mit.edu), Berklee is committed to providing music education that is widely available to the music community around the world. The Berklee Shares program is designed to create an open exchange of ideas for musicians everywhere as well as evangelize the Internet as a means to gain unprecedented access to quality education. Berklee believes that digital distribution networks will have a significant impact on the future of music and music education.

"Berklee Shares was born out of Berklee College of Music's commitment to furthering music education through innovative means," said Dave Kusek, Associate Vice President. "Offering free education on the Internet and through file sharing networks underscores the college's core belief that these channels are an effective way to openly distribute meaningful educational content to a global audience. It also serves as a powerful promotional platform for artists to market, distribute and sell their music."

The Berklee Shares program launches with over 80 music lessons spanning instrument performance, music production and technology, songwriting and arranging, music business and careers, music education and music improvisation. The number of lessons offered will expand over time. The Berklee Shares music lessons can help musicians around the globe to play better, write their own songs, teach better, use music technology on personal computers, and further their career aspirations.

The project will use licenses provided by Creative Commons. The Berklee Shares content will thus be marked with technology that signals, in a human and machine understandable way, the freedoms that go with the content. "Berklee College of Music will prove to many the innovation and education that can be supported through a more balanced system of rights," said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons. "We are honored to help Berklee College of Music spread educational content broadly." http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+08:07+AM


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Apple Will 'Make RIAA Beg For Mercy' – readers
Andrew Orlowski

What Apple enthusiasts lack in market share, they certainly make up for in optimism. Apple vs. the RIAA is a foregone conclusion. For some of our readers, the David and Goliath mantles have been reversed, and beggar your logic: Apple's new online music store, which doesn't own any record labels or music publishing properties, and which has begged but been refused the rights to sell low bitrate copies of The Beatles' back catalog, will soon make the copyright cartel beg for mercy. How? We'll see.

Our story, we suspect, introduced many people to the movement behind what's called 'compulsory licensing'. It's a model that's successfully provided low cost drugs to developing countries, by breaking drug companies' IP strangleholds. Now it's being backed by record industry executives who see the explosion of peer to peer PC file swapping as a terminal threat. It's a bit of a blur, admittedly, because it involves some form of flat rate tax and the use of new technology to determine more accurately where the royalties should flow. But it's found a foothold in the industry already. For proponents, it's the least-bad option, and they're willing to dismantle the RIAA and give it a chance.

Only, Steve Jobs would rather you didn't know this was brewing. Apple is presenting a simple duality of piracy vs the RIAA, in which he has stepped in, personally, to soldier a 'decent compromise'. Which is jolly good of him.

So we invited you to shoot down a modest proposition. Some form of a compulsory license model, and it can be finessed as an invisible tax (let's say, we only tax currency transactions, or some other swinish speculators) will soon be discussed and become very, very attractive to ordinary people who suddenly have the freedom to share music without the guilt factor. Because the artists gets recompensed. Meanwhile, what happens to these early online hucksters, then?

At The Register, we like to keep an open mind. We don't like to rule out anything unless it's been proven really impossible, in at least N- universes, so let's entertain this scenario. Oblivious to the licensing schemes that the labels are currently discussing, several readers insist on Apple's right to maintain the RIAA copyright cartel:

"iTunes' business model could well be the death of the cartel," writes Matt Cooney.

Matt actually has a good point:

"If and when online sales make a reasonable percentage of all sales, we'll see artists wondering at contract negotiation time why they can't just sell their music direct to the stores, or though a specialist, low- margin agent such as CD Baby. They don't need the RIAA. The first major artist to do this could well kick off the trend."

This is an excellent point that highlights the potential power of Apple as a distribution channel.

Reader "E" puts its this case even more concisely:

"Apple may look to replace the RIAA pigs by doing deals directly with musicians. The songs could be cheaper - like $.50 - and still there would be more for both Apple and the musicians."

And even more succinctly, reckons reader Steve Carlson:

"Doesn't it make sense for Steve to play the slave while the market is emerging, since he's got the deeper pockets to take the loss from, and simply bleed his competition to death?"

As we write, Apple owns nothing, except a simulacra of an online music store Wal-Mart. You have to close your eyes, and suspend disbelief, to think that the copyright cartel is worried about this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33885.html


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Musical Mergers
Rick Aristotle Munarriz

Pretty soon you probably won't be hearing about the major problems with the five major record labels. No, music sales aren't necessarily on the rise. It's just that the quintet is in the process of downsizing to a quartet -- or possibly even a trio.

With Sony and BMG agreeing to merge their music operations last week, along with the possibility that love songs are in the air between Time Warner and EMI, the sector consolidation may turn this beleaguered industry into a squeezed accordion in no time flat.

Along with Vivendi's Universal Music, the five companies have suffered through three consecutive years of declines in prerecorded music sales and the first half of 2003 offered no respite. While Nielsen//NetRatings has reported that traffic to peer-to-peer song swapping sites has declined significantly since the music industry starting going after individual consumers over the summer, there is little evidence that industry will grow in 2003.

No, if anything, the fact that so many of the major labels are still looking for exit strategies indicates that the prognosis has only gotten worse. Scaring music listeners away from music piracy hasn't helped the industry as much as it has alienated potential fans.

Meanwhile, Vivendi's garage sale continues, which means we might very well be looking at a duet before all of the white flags are tallied. That might be just what the industry needs to finally start making beautiful music together.

With less decision makers and a more concerted effort to win back fans while growing high-margin digital distribution outlets like Apple's iTunes (which is off to a strong start), let's not kill off the music industry just yet. The line between carnage haul and Carnegie Hall is much thinner than you think.
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2003/mft03111002.htm


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New Sony Disc May Slow File Sharing
Reuters

Sony Music, home to such artists as Beyonce Knowles and Bruce Springsteen, said Monday it plans to introduce new CD technology in Germany that prevents users from copying songs to file-sharing sites, but allows them to make copies for their personal use.

The record industry blames its recent sales slump on file-sharing services like KaZaa, which it says are havens for piracy. Last year, major labels issued "copy-protected" CDs that prevent them from being played on computers.

The copy-protected discs faced a backlash from customers and music fans, and several lawsuits emerged from some customers that complained these CDs caused their computers and other devices to malfunction.

But Sony thinks it has an appealing approach: Give customers added incentives to buy copy-protected CDs.

Sony will release rhythm & blues group Naturally Seven's new CD in Germany Monday with a so-called "second session." The disc can be played on almost any device conventionally, Sony Music Chief Technology Officer Phil Wiser said.

It also contains a compressed digital copy of the music that can be quickly copied onto any computer. From the computer, users can copy that music onto Sony portable digital music players.

The CDs also allow users to connect to Web sites with exclusive features such as bonus songs and concert tickets. The features are available only if you have the original CD.

Such features already are available with Sony artists Tori Amos and AC/DC. But the new discs combine the "second session" copy protection with the bonus features, which Sony has dubbed "ConnecteD."

Sony will evaluate customers' reaction to the new technology before introducing it in other countries. Wiser declined to specify a timetable for the technology will be available in the United States.

"We believe we can deliver more value by delivering more immediate content, an interactive experience, a better experience. Even if you could go to a [file-sharing] site and download a single song, you won't get the kind of content that we can deliver."

A label on the disc will say it includes the new copy protection software features.

There are several limitations. The digital files will play only on Sony-licensed digital music players. Wiser said Sony is working on "plug-ins" that will allow the files to be played on more popular players like Microsoft's Windows Media. He expects the plug-ins to be available early next year.

To copy the music to the Sony portable player, the technology requires an extra step to copy the files to a separate program to transfer the music to the portable player.

At this point, music can be transferred only to Sony portable players, although Sony executives note that Apple Computer's popular iTunes service works the same way with the Apple-branded iPod.

Earlier this year, BMG introduced similar technology with its hip-hop performer Anthony Hamilton.

BMG, which announced plans to merge with Sony Music last week, is using software from SunnComm Technologies to restrict the amount of copies that could be made of Hamilton's music. The software, however, was quickly hacked.

BMG spokesman Nathaniel Brown noted sales of Hamilton's copy-protected disc did not fall off in the weeks following its release as dramatically as most releases often do, in part due to file sharing. Brown suggested this was partly the result of the copy-protection software. "Consumer and retail response has been positive," he said.

"All copy protections can be hacked," Wiser said. "But if we give people what they are asking for in terms of value, they won't go out and steal it. It's called trusting the consumer."
http://money.cnn.com/2003/11/10/technology/sony.reut/


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Digital-Image Capture Rampant On The Web

Despite the government's continued efforts to protect intellectual property and copyrights, piracy of digital photos and images by content providers is rampant on the Web, a report showed yesterday.

Wui Jeong-hyeon, professor of business administration at Chung- Ang University, said that 68.1 percent of respondents working in Web site creation, video game development, animation and advertising said they resorted to illegally using digital images.

Of the 967 respondents, 9.6 percent said they frequently used illegally copied digital images for their work, while 23.6 percent said they sometimes opted for such stolen images. And 34.9 percent said they have used digital images without securing permission a couple of times.

The preferred channel to get free digital images turned out to be free Web sites that provide such unlicensed pictures, accounting for 33 percent. Those who capture PC screens made up 20.9 percent and and peer-to-peer file sharing was used by 17.6 percent.

About 52 percent of respondents said they have used paid digital images, and 47.8 percent said they have not used such licensed images.

"Digital images are widely used for content production but there is no effective distribution channel," said Wui said. He said those who work in the animation and gaming industries particularly tend to use pirated images or stolen images largely because in many cases they modify and transform the originals.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0311110070.asp


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Group Calls For Peace Talks In P2P Wars
Graeme Wearden

One of the music industry's more active opponents is calling for dialogue and debate between record companies and P2P network users, rather than legal action.

Bill Evans, founder of www.boycott-RIAA.com, launched a new organisation called the International Music Industry Reform Association (IMIRA) last week that could encourage peace to break out in the combative world of peer-to-peer file-sharing.

IMIRA is designed to be a "middle ground" where everyone involved in the sticky area of copyright protection and file swapping can establish working relationships.

"IMIRA will promote discussion on a music industry that takes market, customer and artist concerns and interests equally into account," said Evans, announcing the launch of www.imira.org.

A stern critic of the major record labels, and especially of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in the past, Evans once urged music fans not to buy RIAA recordings, or support RIAA artists for the month of August 2000.

He now hopes to bring an end to the "subpoena war" that he says the RIAA is conducting.

"It's time for everyone within the music industry, smaller and independent labels included, to start taking advantage of the tremendously exciting opportunities that p2p file sharing offers listeners, music-makers and business people on- and offline," says Evans.

Working alongside Evans on IMIRA is Jon Newton, the founder of file-sharing news site p2pnet.net, who is hopeful that agreement can be reached between the record labels and music fans.

"Any number of potentially viable solutions exist. But every one of these has its own advocates and, to the considerable benefit of the major record labels, they're frequently at odds with each other and out of synch with the realities of artist, business and consumer needs," Newton claims.

After years of battling the likes of Napster, Scour and Kazaa, the music industry may not be ready to smoke a peace pipe with those who swap copyright-protected songs online.

Late last week, the RIAA filed 80 new lawsuits against alleged file swappers, in a move that came after it sent a wave of letters warning targets of their legal risk.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9117597,00.htm


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Altnet Issues Legal Notices for Patent Infringement Occurring on File Sharing Networks

Altnet Warns Companies Including BigChampagne, MediaDefender and Overpeer to Cease Infringing Activities
Press Release

Altnet, a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment (AMEX:BDE), the leading provider of secure digital media via Internet and peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies, announced today that it has issued notices to nine companies, including BigChampagne, Ranger Online, MediaDefender, Overpeer and MediaSentry, warning them to cease engaging in activities that Altnet believes constitute patent infringement.

Altnet believes these companies have been using its patented TrueNames file-identifying technology to spoof, track or interdict files on file sharing networks, and that the technology was used improperly to identify people sharing files who were then sued for copyright infringement.

"We continue to focus on protecting and commercializing our patented technology and realizing the potential it offers content owners by commercializing peer-to-peer networks," said Derek Broes, Altnet's executive vice president of worldwide operations. "These companies are using Altnet's patented technology without Altnet's permission to spoof, track and interdict shared files."

Altnet's TrueNames technology facilitates the identification of unique files on a massively distributed network by using a unique file hash identifier that enables one to track, retrieve, monitor and charge for the distribution of content. TrueNames is a method of identifying data based on the actual content of a file, rather than by the file name, origin, location, address or other information that can be easily changed. A unique identifier, or hash, is assigned to the data using an algorithm in a process protected by U.S. Patents Nos. 5,978,791 and 6,415,280, both of which have been exclusively licensed to Altnet for peer-to-peer applications.

"Altnet acquired the TrueNames patents in order to build a commercial solution for P2P operators and content owners. The patent should not be used improperly for any reason," added Broes. "That it is being used without permission in order to research or interfere with the infringement of others' intellectual property is ironic."
http://www.primezone.com/pages/news_....mhtml?d=48047


Altnet Warns Anti-Piracy Companies Against Patent Infringement
James Pearce

Altnet, which sells technologies enabling companies to use peer-to-peer networks as secure, legitimate marketing tools, has issued warnings to companies investigating file-sharers that they may be infringing Altnet patents.

The nine companies targeted by Altnet -- which include BigChampagne, Ranger Online, MediaDefender, Overpeer and MediaSentry -- provide anti-piracy services targeting peer-to- peer networks.

Altnet said it had sent the companies letters warning them to stop engaging in activities that Altnet believes constitute patent infringement. Altnet warned the companies against using its TrueNames file-identifying technology to spoof, track or interdict (prohibit) files on file sharing networks, claiming the technology was improperly used to identify people sharing files who were then sued for copyright infringement. TrueNames is a method of identifying a file based on its content rather than the file name, origin or other information which can be easily changed.

"We continue to focus on protecting and commercialising our patented technology and realising the potential it offers content owners by commercialising peer-to-peer networks," said Derek Broes, Altnet's executive vice president of worldwide operations in a statement. "These companies are using Altnet's patented technology without Altnet's permission to spoof, track and interdict shared files."

"Altnet acquired the TrueNames patents in order to build a commercial solution for P2P operators and content owners. The patent should not be used improperly for any reason," said Broes. "That it is being used without permission in order to research or interfere with the infringement of others' intellectual property is ironic."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0280887,00.htm


Altnet Says P2P Spies Violate Patent Rights
John Borland

Altnet, a company that distributes files legally through Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services, has sent legal threats to nine companies that monitor or meddle with file-trading networks, accusing them of violating its patent rights.

The cease-and-desist orders are the first legal use of a patent Altnet unveiled last June , under which it claims to hold rights to one of the most common means of identifying files on peer-to-peer networks. That technique, which uses a "hash," or a digital representation of all the information in a file, has even been used by the Recording Industry Association of America in its fight against online copyright infringers.

Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment and a close partner with Kazaa parent Sharman Networks, has spent months in discussions with other file-swapping companies about licensing the technology, according to Executive Vice President Derek Broes. But the company has chosen to send legal warning letters to this group of companies because they're using the technology in ways that Altnet wouldn't necessarily approve of. Among other things, Altnet pays Kazaa for the right to place its customers' files at the top of Kazaa search results.

"Our intent has always been to commercialize peer to peer, and if anyone is misusing our patent for any reason, I have to protect that intellectual property," Broes said. "If they're building business on the backs of the patent I worked hard to acquire, then they should talk to us."

Altnet's action, while aimed at some of the underground file- swapping world's chief foes, is likely to ruffle feathers on both sides of the technological fence. The company's claim to own rights to such a basic file-identification technique has sparked considerable controversy inside peer-to-peer circles and has in part been responsible for a political divide that has created two separate lobbying and policy groups in Washington, D.C.

The company acquired the patent in late 2002, from a researcher who now serves as Altnet's chief scientist.

At least one of the companies now targeted by Altnet says the claim is simply off base.

BigChampagne, a Los Angeles-based market research company that's come to prominence recently by providing record labels and other entertainment companies with reports of what files are most popular online, says it doesn't use Altnet's technology.

"I think at first blush this looks like a case of mistaken identity," said BigChampagne Chief Executive Officer Eric Garland. Identifying files "is not really the business we're in."

Garland said his company does do some file identification in order to ensure the accuracy of its aggregate data reports but does not use the hash technique.

Several of the other companies targeted take more direct action inside file-swapping networks, posting false versions of files in the hope of steering would-be downloaders away from the real ones, or taking snapshots of individual users' hard drives to use in copyright-infringement actions.

The full list of companies targeted by the Altnet letters includes

• BigChampagne
• BayTSP
• Cyveillance
• MediaDefender
• MediaSentry
• NetPD
• Overpeer
• Ranger Online
• Vidius

Altnet is asking the companies to stop using the hash technique in their businesses unless they take a license.

Broes said he had no immediate plans to pursue a similar strategy against the RIAA, which has publicly outlined its use of file hashes to identify copyrighted files downloaded from Kazaa users' hard drives.

"We have a good relationship with the RIAA, and we have lines of communication open with them," Broes said. "It is not a notice that we have served."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5106093.html


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Kazaa To Launch P2P Print Ads
John Borland

Kazaa parent Sharman Networks plans to unveil its first offline advertising campaign next week, in which it will exhort computer users to defend file swapping and tell entertainment companies they can make money too.

The Australian company has been scrambling for months to find a way to convince record companies and movie studios that it is sincerely interested in becoming a legitimate, licensed distributor of mainstream entertainment content. It hasn't yet been successful--Sharman and Kazaa, its file-swapping software, are still the target of lawsuits from the entertainment companies. Sharman hasn't struck any large-scale distribution deals with major studios or record labels.

According to a brief statement previewing the campaign, the print ads will be a "call to action to peer to peer (software) users to communicate the message that, given the chance, users will pay a fair price for movies, music and games from P2P networks."

The ads are also intended to tell traditional entertainment companies that they are "missing a huge opportunity" to reach file- swapping communities, according to the statement.

For much of its two-year existence, Sharman has been pursuing two goals that many see as mutually exclusive. Its Kazaa software has created far and away the largest file-swapping community online, built in great part on the unauthorized and unregulated exchange of copyrighted works, such as music and movies.

But it also has worked increasingly closely with Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, to persuade the file- swapping community to buy or download authorized versions of entertainment content such as music or video games. Ultimately, the company has claimed in lawsuits filed against the recording industry and Hollywood studios, it intended to push unauthorized sharing almost wholly off the network.

"By relegating non-(copy protected) files to a subordinate and comparatively unattractive access location...Sharman intended to promote and encourage only business appropriate file sharing and to share the net payments for (copy protected) works lawfully exchanged by users of the (Kazaa) software with Altnet," court papers filed by Sharman in September said.

Sharman and Altnet have also been working though a trade association they started, the Distributed Computing Industry Alliance, to try to create a forum where entertainment companies, Internet service providers and file-swapping companies can agree on business models that serve all three interests. To date, that group has found it difficult to attract other parties into serious discussions, however.

The Sharman print ad campaign will launch on Nov. 19, the company said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5106581.html


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Donating money…

321 Studios Advocates Fair Uses in Digital Copyright Law

DVD Backup Software Vendor Supports Electronic Frontier Foundation's Efforts
Press Release

DVD backup software vendor 321 Studios today announced it will donate as much as $1 million over the next year to online civil liberties organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). 321 Studios hopes to support EFF's work in advocating for digital copyright law responsive to consumer needs and to educate its customers about these issues.

The company will donate $25 toward EFF's efforts for each sale of a Lite-On DVD burner and DVD X Copy Platinum software bundle through the 321 Studios website or at the 321 Studios Touch Point Customer Service Center in the St. Louis Galleria Mall.

"We are very pleased that 321 Studios has chosen to recognize the important work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation with a generous financial contribution over the next year," said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. "321 Studios knows firsthand the importance of advocating for copyright law that preserves the balance among content-creators, innovators, and the public."

"This is a natural partnership that allows our customers to join the fight for digital rights. The EFF is working to protect those rights including that of Americans to protect their home entertainment investment through DVD backup and repair," said Robert Moore, President and Founder of 321 Studios. "As the leader in the DVD backup, repair, and creation software industry, it makes sense for 321 and our customers to put some economic muscle behind that fight."

Last year, 321 Studios filed a declaratory relief action in federal court asking a judge to confirm that its software, which enables consumers to make backup copies of DVDs they own, does not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The major movie studios counter-sued to prohibit 321 Studios from selling and distributing that software. EFF submitted a friend-of-the- court brief arguing that the DMCA cannot constitutionally prohibit tools, like 321 Studios', that enable the public to make fair use of their media. The court has not yet ruled on the case.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20031111_321_studios_pr.php


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CD Players, VCRs Losing Edge In A Digital Age
Chris Gaither

As consumers make out their holiday wish lists this year, two stalwarts of home entertainment from the past decade will be conspicuously absent: the VCR and the compact disc player. Both are losing out to the digitization of movies and music -- and to tumbling prices.

Most music lovers are expected to choose pocket-sized digital music devices, which can store thousands of songs, instead of CD players. And for the first time, the price of DVD recorders is expected to drop below $300, enough to start pushing the devices into the mainstream.

The rise of digital music players and the improvement to the DVD format are part of the technology evolution that disrupts the home entertainment industry every decade or so, enticing consumers to upgrade their entertainment collections. The vinyl record, videocassette, and now discs have all marched music and video toward the next era: digital distribution.

Until now the VCR, which is in 94 percent of American households, has been able to hang on to its popularity primary because of its ability to record programs from television.

But the VCR is about to lose its final edge. The prices of DVD recorders, which can copy television shows or home movies onto blank discs that cost about $2, are expected to fall faster than the prices of DVD players have.

"You'll see $299 this holiday season, if not lower," said Scott Jacobi, a senior buyer for Best Buy Co., a Minnesota electronics chain that has 21 Massachusetts stores.

Also on the immediate horizon at sharply lower prices: digital video recorders like TiVo, which captures TV programs onto a storage drive like a computer's. People who have them rave about the ability to pause live TV and skip commercials. After mail-in rebates the entry-level TiVo costs $199 plus monthly service fees. Analysts said these devices will eat into VCRs, too, but nowhere near as much as DVD recorders, which will include more TiVo-like features themselves.

Meanwhile, cable companies are starting to build digital recorders into their set-top boxes. Comcast Corp., for example, plans to offer the service in Massachusetts and New Hampshire next year. The new technologies "put the final nail in the VCR coffin," said Sean Wargo, an analyst for the electronics trade group.

Digital distribution of music will eventually replace CDs, analysts said, because digital music files are becoming easier for more people to buy over the Internet and store on computers.

"In five to seven years the music CD industry could be pretty much eliminated by online music distribution," said Jonathan Hurd, vice president of Adventis Corp., a Boston technology strategy consultant.

But other analysts said the demise of VCRs and CD players will take longer because many consumers will not trust the new technologies enough to give up physical copies of movies and music.

Take Tony Mercadante, a 40-year-old promotions director. A custom-made pine rack takes up most of the hallway in his Everett apartment, displaying his collection of more than 2,000 CDs.

"It's a part of who I am," he said of his collection. "To have it just on a hard drive where it exists only in the virtual world, it's not the same. To me collecting means having it in your possession."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...a_digital_age/


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IN THE PIPELINE: ISPs Poised To Punish Biggest Customers
Roger Cheng

Internet service providers - besieged by rampant use of peer-to-peer services that clog up bandwidth - are preparing a series of measures to control the amount of bandwidth people can use.

At least one ISP already is poised to strike. Cox Communications Inc. is implementing a new, tiered pricing system that will charge more to heavy users of bandwidth. In doing so the company hopes to reconcile the bandwidth needs of two types of customers - the hardcore user who downloads movie or music files, and the modest user who logs on for e-mail or light web surfing - and to profit from it.

Cox said it has rolled out this plan in a few select markets, with further expansion in 2004. The premium version costs $79.95 to $89.95, while the low-cost choice goes for $24.95 to $29.95.

People who hog up Internet bandwidth have been a growing problem for the industry since the emergence of peer-to-peer file sharing services. According to industry data, up to 60% of the Internet's total bandwidth is used by 5% of the users entrenched in file swapping on sites like Kazaa or Grokster - services that allow people to trade media files through the Web.

"ISPs have been throwing more bandwidth at the problem, but that clearly does nothing for potential revenue," said Lindsay Schroth, broadband infrastructure analyst for research and consulting firm Yankee Group.

Now, ISPs are considering implementing systems that tell them who's a peer-to-peer user and who's simply Web browsing - and control them accordingly.

The alternative to limiting bandwidth is to build more capacity, which is a short-term solution that offers no return on investment.

The increased bandwidth use by peer-to-peer services is driven by larger media files, which perpetuates an endless cycle. As Internet speeds increase, so do the size of media files downloaded and bandwidth consumed, said Phil Morle, chief technology officer for Sharman Networks Ltd., which distributes Kazaa.

"ISPs are sweeping the dust under the carpet by blaming P2P," Morle said. "They need to look at the broader issue and look at how the Internet is growing."

Technology such as P-Cube's system isn't on the company's radar right now, Morle said, adding that he hasn't heard many complaints about download speeds from Kazaa's users in areas where P-Cube has installed its system.

To the record industry, which has sued individuals to discourage unauthorized swapping of music files, technology like P-Cube's system could be used to stop copyright infringement, said Matthew Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the Recording Industry Association of America. Oppenheim said he can see ISPs ultimately encouraging users to get their music online through legal channels. But right now, he said, the technology's potential is getting lost in the noisy debate about whether downloading music files is stealing or sharing.

Not everyone is convinced that restricting traffic is an urgent priority. Gartner's Leung said Internet service providers are actually touting higher bandwidth, rather than considering limits at this point. She noted the size of the market for providing tiered services is still relatively small.

One major cable company said it isn't taking action against peer-to-peer traffic, and is actually offering more bandwidth. The potential for this kind of technology lies more in its ability to identify types of traffic, rather than its power to limit, said the company's senior engineer. His company is in talks with a few of these private companies, but doesn't see any tests beginning until at least late next year.
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/031111/15/3fs9w.html


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Maestro Tries To Lose Label Of Music Pirate
Paul Sexton

If thoughts could kill, record moguls would be moonwalking over Alan Morris's grave. Mr Morris is executive vice-president of Australian software distributor Sharman Networks, a name that does not usually raise music executives' blood pressure. But mention Kazaa, the name of the file-sharing software the company distributes, and industry bigwigs reach for their rifles.

When it bought Kazaa in 2002, Sharman acquired a service that had already been shut down once after being fined by a Dutch judge for facilitating the illegal downloading and sharing of copyrighted music.

Since then, the number of copies of Kazaa software loaded on to personal computers has risen to an estimated 278m, making it one of the world's most downloaded programs. With the once-infamous Napster music website relaunching as a paid-for legal download service, Kazaa has become the bête noire for an industry quick to blame digital piracy for falling sales.

Mr Morris, an affable Englishman and a former pay-TV consultant, is unfazed by press vilification or writs the company has attracted from the Record Industry Association of America, which he describes as "muscleheads". "We're very clear that we don't condone copyright infringement," he says. "We acquired [Kazaa] with the simple objective of being the world's largest and most effective distributor of licensed content. It'd be crazy to do it for any other reason."

Indeed, Sharman estimates that 100m legally licensed files have been distributed using its peer-to-peer (P2P) software. But its protests that it wants a mutually beneficial deal with the record business are undermined by the tacit admission that, along with its legitimate use, grand-scale copyright theft by Kazaa users is also taking place. And its efforts to be seen as a legitimate partner are not helped by the ambiguous nature of its business model, technology and corporate set-up.

Although the parent group is a software publisher, Kazaa's current business model relies on selling online advertising. Users can download free Kazaa software in several variants from www.kazaa.com or other websites.

When Kazaa-equipped users search for music files online, they view and access folders on anonymous Kazaa users' PCs containing stored music, games or video content. Provided the user is online, they can download them by connecting to their PC - the P2P connection. If not, the software searches for one that is online.

Most of these files are "free" because they have been illicitly downloaded from websites or burnt from CDs or DVDs. Others are protected by so-called digital rights management (DRM) software and involve a payment split between the rights owners and Kazaa.

Although users do not have to visit the Kazaa.com website to search for files, an estimated 60m people have registered to it, thus creating the market to sell advertising to this audience.

Sharman Networks is run, day-to-day, by an affiliated management group in Sydney but its headquarters are on the little-known island of Vanuatu, described on its website as "the South Pacific's premier tax haven".

Unlike Napster, which had a main content server that gave its opponents something to aim their legal challenges at, Kazaa operates a more decentralised P2P structure. Attempts to close it down will prove legally fraught and do little to deter the millions already using Kazaa or other P2P software.

These characteristics hardly endear the group to music executives, who see it more as part of the problem of digital piracy. Mr Morris retorts: "While we don't condone it [piracy], it seems ridiculous to suggest that [it's the cause of] the record industry's woes, which have been going on a lot longer than P2P. Research suggests that two-thirds of people, once they become peer-to-peer users, buy more CDs.

"It has been suggested, doubtless unfairly, that if P2P didn't exist, the record industry would have to find some other scapegoat. Certainly there's no evidence to suggest that if somebody downloads an infringing file, that's a lost sale. That's naive. In most countries, there's not a sterling or dollar decline, there's just a decline in units. You might well therefore think there's a pricing issue."

In May, Cooking Vinyl, an independent British label, trialled Kazaa to promote two tracks from Richard Thompson's The Old Kit Bag album. Two tracks were available free for 24 hours, after which there was an option to buy them for 25p each.

"We didn't sell many downloads. They need to do another test," says the label's managing director, Martin Goldschmidt. "If they can come up with a way to make labels money, labels will take it. If they can't, labels will call them pirates. There's some truth in that, but there is also an element of making them the scapegoat for not having an internet policy."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...1066565779234#


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Penn State Students Do Slow Burn Over Music- Download Deal
W. David Gardner

Pennsylvania State University's pioneering agreement with Napster to provide music downloads to students is meeting with student response ranging from downright criticism to a wait-and-see attitude.

“It's a mixed bag,” said student leader Joseph Curigliano. “We don't have enough details. No one knows how much it's going to cost. I wonder how this is going to help us academically.”

Curigliano, who is president of the state university's Council of Commonwealth Student Governments, said a group of student representatives met after the program was announced last week. Many students at the meeting and elsewhere have voiced concern over the program.

A group of students at the Penn State Erie campus have been attempting to organize students to boycott the program. They were said to complain that some students who would not use the program would be paying for it through the college's IT fee.

Penn State's President, Graham Spanier, and Cary Sherman of the Recording Industry Association of America announced the program. The two men also serve as co-chairmen of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, a group formed to curb the illegal downloading of music from the Internet. They called the Penn State program “revolutionary” last week, and presented it as a model for other colleges to adopt.

But the program, as announced, is complex and most students are trying to pick their way through its details. The program will be implemented in university residence halls in the spring.

While there was much hoopla about the “free” service, students were questioning that statement. The cost will be bundled into Penn State's $160 per semester student charge for information technology. The college's student newspaper, The Digital Collegian, suggested that university officials explain the cost better.

“One possible explanation is that other services previously provided by the technology fee will be compromised in some way,” the newspapers editors said in an editorial. “A second option is that in the past, students were being overcharged for the fee.” Some students also questioned the proposed cost of 99 cents for each downloaded song they want to burn into a CD or load into an MP3 player.

Hounded by the recording industry, Napster declared bankruptcy and has since been reincarnated as a division of Roxio Inc. which recently relaunched the popular Napster 2.0 music service, charging 99 cents a song and $9.95 an album. A key piece of the Penn State program is the “tethered” way that songs will be offered to students; students can keep songs on up to three computers, but to burn songs into CDs or MP3 players, a charge of 99 cents a song will be levied. Joe Curigliano said the whole process seems complicated, but he said students are likely to wait to see how the program plays out in the spring.

Curigliano pointed out that students often swap music and wonder whether they will be able to under the new program. He added that he doesn't copy music from the Web, but he copies occasionally from radio broadcasts and he wonders exactly what the distinction between the two is. “It's a funny thing about the industry,” he said. “You can take it off the radio. The recording industry hasn't protested loudly about that.”

The Collegian newspaper said some students will continue to use peer-to-peer downloading programs like Kazaa, which can be used to burn songs into CDs and MP3 players. Kazaa is also more difficult to police because it originates in Sweden.

One student said those left out by the program are candidates to use Kazaa. The Penn State program can only be used on Windows 98, 2000 and XP, leaving out students with Windows Millennium Edition (ME) and Apple computers.

Noting that many music-downloading services already exist on the Internet, the Collegian asked rhetorically: “What then is Penn State really offering? If Penn State is not offering anything more than what already exists, why is the university getting involved at all?”
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20031111S0015