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Old 07-08-03, 10:25 PM   #2
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P2P File Sharing is Legal and Moral
Gary Shapiro

Despite the assertions of the Justice Department, downloading is not illegal.

First, fair use rights are guaranteed to consumers by statute, and applied judicially on a case-by-case basis. This means that, while some consumer practices ultimately could be adjudicated as either fair use or infringement, there is scant basis for challenging them as criminal.

The music and film industries claim that there is no such thing as fair use "rights" in an attempt to disparage the term. They say that fair use is only an affirmative defense to copyright infringement and therefore not a right. But various recognized "rights" only may be asserted as affirmative defenses in a lawsuit. For example, in a slander suit, one may assert the First Amendment right but only as an affirmative defense; this does not diminish the fact that the right exists.

Second, time after time, practices of individuals that were initially equated with "piracy" or "theft" have been shown to be neutral or beneficial to copyright owners, and have either been tolerated or accepted as fair use. Think of the VCR and the Supreme Court decision holding that its use to tape full movies is fully legal.

Third, the 1997 NET Act's requirement of a total retail value of $1,000 per infringement should be taken seriously as a barrier to bringing cases against ordinary consumers. This law should not be re-interpreted, after the fact, as a criminal enforcement vehicle against consumer-to-consumer recording and "swapping" practices.

Downloading is not immoral either. To make downloading immoral, you have to accept that copyrighted products are governed by the same moral and legal principles as real property, thus the recent and continuous reference by the copyright community to label downloading as stealing. But the fact is that real and intellectual property are different and are governed by different principles. Downloading a copyrighted product does not diminish the product, as would be the case of taking and using tangible property such as a dress. At worst, it is depriving the copyright owner of a potential sale. Indeed, it may be causing a sale (through familiarity) or even more likely, have no impact on the sale. My son often will become familiar with artists through downloading their music on the Internet and then go out and buy the CD.

The comparison to real property fails for several other reasons. Real property is subject to ownership taxes. Real property lasts forever and can be owned forever. A copyright can be owned only for a limited period of time. Indeed, the United States Constitution declares this. More, copyright law must bow to the First Amendment that expressly allows people to use a copyrighted product without the permission of the copyright owner. This concern contributes to the statutory and judicial concept of “fair use”. The First Amendment includes, not only the right to send, but also the right to receive. Indeed, in 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court in declaring the VCR a legal product, said that it could be okay to copy an entire copyrighted product. So if the Supreme Court expressly held that VCR copying in the home for non-commercial purposes is a legal activity, how is it suddenly labeled as “piracy” because the device is a computer?

The Beatles 1 album, which contained 30-year-old songs that could have been downloaded for free from Napster-like services from day one, but nevertheless sold some 26 million copies. Why? Because people were willing to pay for the quality of a CD over the often barely acceptable sound quality of a download using P2P services.
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/dmc.../msg00008.html


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Matt Richtel

Audio Distributor Receives $6 Million From 2 Investors

Audible Inc., a company that makes audio versions of books and magazines available over the Internet, plans to announce today that it has received a $6 million investment from Bertelsmann, the German media giant, and Apax Partners, a private equity firm.

Shares of Audible, which is based in Wayne, N.J., and was once a darling of the Internet boom, have fallen under $1, closing Friday at 66 cents.

The company's chief executive, Donald R. Katz, said yesterday that the money would help Audible improve its balance sheet and expand, particularly in overseas markets. With its $2 million investment, Bertelsmann has agreed to help market Audible globally, he said.

Apax Partners, with offices in the United States and overseas, contributed $4 million, Mr. Katz said, and intends to add expertise in global technology markets, where it has made previous portfolio investments.

As part of the transaction, Apax also bought about a third of the company's outstanding shares, making it Audible's largest shareholder. Apax bought those shares of preferred stock from Microsoft, which had held the interest since February 2001. Microsoft has retained about 1.9 million shares of common stock in the company.

Mr. Katz declined to give the amount that Apax paid for Microsoft's preferred shares; Microsoft originally paid $10 million for the shares, Mr. Katz said.

Audible went public in 1999 at $9, and quickly earned some acclaim from various Internet analysts for its service.

But the company struggled like a lot of Internet-centric concerns. Its stock has rebounded slightly from a 52-week low of 15 cents.

Mr. Katz said his company had more than 250,000 customers, who either paid for content à la carte or on a monthly basis of $14.95 or $19.95 for books and magazines they could listen to on their computers or download to digital devices, like the Apple iPod.

He said the investment indicated that his company not only had survived the Internet fallout but was poised to thrive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/04/te...gy/04DIGI.html


SBC to Offer Wi-Fi Access at 6,000 Spots

SBC Communications is expected to announce today plans to provide wireless Internet access at 6,000 hotels, airports, convention centers, restaurants and other public locations. The initiative draws SBC into an intensifying competition with start-ups and other telecommunications giants looking to deploy wireless Internet "hot spots."

SBC, which is based in San Antonio, says it will deploy its network over the next three years at locations mostly in its 13-state territory, which includes Texas, California, and Connecticut. Some service will be available by the end of the year, the company said, but SBC has not disclosed how much it will charge users for network access.

The entrance of SBC comes as little surprise to industry analysts, given the number of companies interested in deploying wireless access based on Wi-Fi, a radio-signal technology. In May, Verizon, the telecommunications company based in New York, announced that it would provide Wi-Fi access from phone booths around Manhattan.

Wireless access is also available in a growing number of restaurants, including Starbucks and McDonald's. The earliest entrants in the wireless access market have been smaller technology companies, like Wayport Inc. of Austin, Tex., which provides Internet access at airports.

As part of its announcement today, SBC said it had entered a partnership to offer access to Wayport-operated Wi-Fi areas in hotels and airports.

Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research, a market research firm, said SBC "is stepping in where others have done the same thing." He noted that Verizon had already made that move and that he expected BellSouth to follow suit.

But Lydia Leong, an analyst with the Gartner Group, characterized the proposed SBC deployment as "a significant plan" because of its potentially broad scope in the SBC operating territory. "It's a relatively aggressive move," she said.

Brooks McCorcle, a vice president involved in Wi-Fi at SBC, said the company planned to deploy 20,000 Internet access areas in 6,000 locations, meaning some larger locations will have more than one connection point. Generally that is necessary because the Wi-Fi radio signal is not particularly strong; most users must be within 300 feet of a Wi-Fi area to connect to the Internet.

Ms. McCorcle declined to say how much of an investment SBC would be making in the network. She said the investment would be modest compared with technology investments the company usually makes.

She also declined to say how much the service would cost consumers, but said there should be a subscription service available by the end of the year.

Ms. McCorcle said the company intended to market the service first to business customers, who might want to check e-mail or browse the Internet while traveling or at conventions. She said SBC also hoped to persuade its broadband customers to spend a little more each month for access to the Wi-Fi network.

Ms. Leong said that she did not expect the wireless network to be "a gigantic revenue driver in the near term." She said that SBC was laying the foundation to take advantage of the longer-term growth potential of that technology.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/06/technology/06SBC.html


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Brief History of it All

'Golden Age of Free Music' vs 'Copying is Stealing'
Taylor Walton


The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched an advertising campaign using the slogan "copying is stealing" to convey to the public the message that digital copying (eg. over peer- to-peer (P2P) networks) is as serious and criminal as stealing a CD from a record shop or a DVD from a video shop.

This article considers "copyright theft" in the context of developing technology both in the UK and the US, and the intense battle of rights holders against technology suppliers and consumers, some of whom are harvesting the benefits of this "golden age of free music".

Pre-Digital Age
As long ago as the late 1970s, there were legal disputes in which owners of copyright in music/film, etc. claimed that suppliers of new technology were guilty of copyright infringement offences:

(i) In the late 1970s Ames Records allowed subscribers to hire records from it for a small rental charge. Copyright owners considered that this encouraged copyright infringement and affected revenues as it enabled subscribers to copy the records onto cassette tape. CBS took legal action against Ames Records for copyright infringement on the basis that Ames Records had "authorised" the copying by supplying the subscription service.

(ii) CBS also took legal action for copyright infringement against Amstrad in the 1980s on the basis that, by supplying cassette tape- to-tape recording equipment, Amstrad was "authorising" copyright infringement by users of the equipment.

CBS failed in both cases as the court found, in essence, that Ames Records and Amstrad could not control or prevent the use of the equipment whether or not this involved illegal copying and therefore they did not 'authorise' any copyright infringement.

(iii) In another 1980s US case (Sony vs Universal City Studios), the court agreed that video recorders would be used to copy television programmes. UCS claimed that Sony was liable for copyright infringement as it supplied the video recorders.

Sony was not liable for copyright infringement under US law because it did not have knowledge of copyright infringement and the court agreed with Sony that there were 'substantial non-infringing uses' for video recorders.

The Digital Age
The Digital Age has made copying easier. Music and video can be easily and quickly copied across a range of new media such as CDs, DVDs, MP3 players, hard drives and digital cameras.

A series of legal actions (mainly in the US) have shown that, while consumers exploit the opportunities and rights owners desperately try to stem the tide and regain the stranglehold on the market, the law struggles to satisfy either rights holder or consumer.

Rights holders claim that P2P has cost them billions of dollars in revenue. Only a tiny fraction has been recovered and rights holders are becoming increasingly aggressive in their litigation. Rights holders are now targeting consumers, ISPs, operators and even funders of file sharing systems with their large legal budgets/teams.

Napster – con’t

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32199.html


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WE DON' NEED NO STEENKIN' SPIES…
Richard Chirgwin

WebSense Adds Spyware to Kill List

While Internet filtering has had a troubled history in terms of reputation, spyware is a much easier target.

Whether or not it's installed with user permission, there's no doubt that having active software agents inside a company's network, which are able to report
user behaviour back to remote computers, is a scary scenario for the security manager.

With that threat in mind, WebSense has now added spyware protection to its filtering – sorry, employee internet management – solutions.

The company's president Curt Stacker said the company first started looking at spyware blocking in response to activity on its own, internal network. It then took its experience to its corporate customer base, and Stacker said “we were surprised to find that about 25% of the PCs at our customer sites were infected with some kind of spyware.”

Hence the decision to add spyware protection to the options now available to WebSense customers. The known sources are included in the WebSense database, and new sources added on roughly a seven-hourly turnaround (either in response to customer reports or to the company's own research, Stacker said).

The company is positioning the spyware management as being more active than current software like Lavasoft's Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy (both of which the author has tried). Spyware detection targets the already-infected machine, Stacker said, making it a hugely important tool – but it's unable to identify the incoming traffic as coming from a suspect source.

While `ad-ware' is a relatively harmless manifestation of the phenomenon, the growing awareness of blended-threat security attacks (in which virii or worms report discovered vulnerabilities, or keystroke logs, back to the author) has given WebSense an environment willing to listen to the issue of spyware management.

CommsWorld Comments:

Instant messaging and peer-to-peer networks have added a sense of nervousness to the spyware debate: many P2P vendors have been criticised for commandeering their users' machines as ad servers.

Even more nerve-wracking, the experience of Australian universities now facing court is that copyright owners are increasingly willing to seek out their own sources of information about the networks on which Kazaa hosts reside.

And there's a troubling and difficult question facing both sides of the spyware debate (a question, I'm sorry to admit, that I didn't ask Curt Stacker while I had him on the phone): where should a filter vendor draw the `spyware' line?

There's no doubt that a virus trying to `phone home' should be blocked.

Nor is there any good reason that a company would want its networking bandwidth used by spyware products trying to update remote databases about the clicking habits of its users.

But somewhere down the line, anyone trying to sense spyware is going to find themselves caught in a vice: do they block snoop software from the RIAA? Can a WebSense classify the increasingly-invasive behaviour of legitimate software, from the operating system up, as spyware?
http://www1.commsworld.com.au/NASApp...NT&from=h ome


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Stealing the Net
Jeff Chester & Steven Rosenfeld

Ever stop to wonder what is really happening to the Internet these days?

The crackdown by the music industry on illegal downloading tells just part of the story. Even with the dot-com bust, the digital boom is here, as high- speed connections, faster processors and new wireless devices increasingly become part of life. But the thousands of lawsuits are not just about ensuring record companies and artists get the royalties they deserve. They're part of a larger plan to fundamentally change the way the Internet works.

From Congress to Silicon Valley, the nation's largest communication and
entertainment conglomerates -- and software firms that want their business -- are seeking to restructure the Internet, to charge people for high-speed uses that are now free and to monitor content in an unprecedented manner. This is not just to see if users are swapping copyrighted CDs or DVDs, but to create digital dossiers for their own marketing purposes.

All told, this is the business plan of America's handful of telecom giants -- the phone,
cable, satellite, wireless and entertainment companies that now bring high-speed Internet access to most Americans. Their ability to meter Internet use, monitor Internet content and charge according to those metrics is how they are positioning themselves for the evolving Internet revolution.

The Internet's early promise as a medium where text, audio, video and data can be
freely exchanged and the public interest can be served is increasingly being relegated to history's dustbin. Today, the part of the Net that is public and accessible is shrinking, while the part of the Net tied to round-the-clock billing is poised to grow exponentially.

One front in the corporate high-tech takeover of the Internet can be seen in
Congress. On July 21, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing on the "Regulatory Status of Broadband." There, a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others, told Congress that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be able to impose volume- based fee structures, based on bits transmitted per month. This is part of a behind- the-scenes struggle by the Net's content providers and retailers to cut deals with the ISPs so that each sector will have unimpaired access to consumers and can maximize profits.

The industry coalition spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged
according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company. Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission.

Meanwhile, in the courts, there has been a rash of new litigation spurred by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s pursuit of people who have illegally shared copyrighted music. The music industry no doubt hopes to discourage file-swapping piracy, and some big telecom companies, such as SBC Communications, have counter-sued, saying they will protect their clients' privacy. While that's good public relations, there's more to this story as well. Telecoms, like most big corporations, don't want other businesses, let alone the government, interfering in their operations -- so there's plenty of reasons to counter-sue -- even if the record companies and telecoms have parallel stakes in privatizing the Net.

But there's also a technologically insidious element to this side of the story. The
software now exists to track and monitor Internet content on a scale and to a degree that previously hasn't been possible. The RIAA is taking people to court because it has the technology to track illegal Internet file swapping. This level of content-tracking is the next-generation application of what's been developed to keep children and teenagers from viewing porn at the local library or home. Consider this typical bit of sales arcana from the Web site of Allot Communications, which says its software can track and filter Internet communications and use that analysis to bill consumers.

"Allot Communications provides network traffic management and content filtering solutions for enterprises, IP service providers, and educational institutions... Allot's QoS [quality of service] and service-level agreement enforcement solutions maximize return on investment by managing over-subscription [unintended uses], throttling P2P [peer-to-peer, the music piracy software] traffic and delivering tiered classes of services."
http://www.guerrillanews.com/sci-tech/doc2594.html


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File Sharing and How to Save the CD
Christian Hoopes

All right, music industry, it's time you and I had it out about file sharing.

To be up front about it all, I do understand your position: If we're getting it for free, we're not paying you. If we're not paying you, you can't make your boat payment and, pretty soon, you're in the subway, holding a sign that reads, "Will gouge consumers for food." I can't sympathize, but I do understand.

It can't be like you didn't see this coming, though. Did you really expect us to keep paying $17 every time Fred Durst has a Tourette's attack and decided to record it? And let's be realistic. Does it really cost you $17.00 to get CDs out to the public? I received 4 CD-ROMs in the mail from AOL this week alone; if they all cost $17, then in my lifetime, AOL has invested something like $12 million dollars on promoting its services to me personally.

Some would argue the record business is able to reach a market local acts can't reach, or produce CDs in a professional manner. Others would argue that if you bring in a few tracks, K Mart's photo lab will make you a CD, sleeve and a very attractive tracklisting for $2.95, plus you get a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from the Little Caesar's in the food court. For me, the choice is clear.

And OK, so you claim the people really getting hurt by file sharing are the artists, the ones we profess to love and support. Fair enough, but riddle me this: How much money are these artists getting from the sale of each CD? By the time you carry that fraction of a cent out, they probably owe you. Come on, we're not blind. We all know you guys paid U2 like 80 million dollars for that last album, an LP that lacked more balls than a castrati convention at the Lilith Fair. That money came from your $16.98 profit from that Baha Men CD we, as a nation, collectively got drunk and purchased.

The music industry has a label for file sharing: Music piracy. To me, this is a bit of an overreaction. First of all, it implies people who download songs are like eye patch-wearing bohemians, swinging into the recording industry vaults on ropes with daggers clenched in our teeth and sacking the place, making away with the files and the women as we sing chanteys about scurvy. Second of all, doesn't half of piracy involve selling our loot? It's not like I'm making homemade Eminem CDs and selling them on ebay (although, on a totally unrelated subject, my username is Eminemguy and I have VERY reasonable prices).

Plus, piracy seems a very serious name for the digital equivalent of listening to the radio. It's like if they called checking out a book from the library 'literary molestation,' or taping Frasier "video rape." To compromise, can't we just call it 'music borrowing'? This should make everyone happy. It acknowledges in the agreement that someone else owns the song, and that we are just going to take possession of it for awhile and give it back, in the form of letting other people download it. Seems fair to me.
http://www.ugo.com/channels/music/features/filesharing/


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Supreme Court Audio Set For Downloading
Phuong Le

Getting audio recordings of landmark legal arguments is becoming as easy as downloading the latest Snoop Dogg single.

For the first time, Internet users can download, edit and swap many of the U.S. Supreme Court's greatest hits.

Oral arguments available include those for the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights case and the disputed 2000 presidential election.

The audio files come from the OYEZ Project, a multimedia archive that gets its name from the synonymous phrase "Hear ye, Hear ye."

"There's so much more information and emotion in the human voice that a transcript can't do it justice," said Jerry Goldman, the project's director and a professor at Northwestern University.

Goldman said the bitterness in Justice Thurgood Marshall's voice is apparent when he explains his views in Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, a 1978 affirmative action case. And the silence is deadening in Roe v. Wade when Jay Floyd, representing Texas, makes a joke but no one laughs.

Since 1994, the OYEZ Project, run out of Northwestern, has made audio of the cases available in a "streaming" format that requires a continuous Internet connection. Available were some 2,000 hours of audio dating to 1955, when taping of oral arguments began.

The project is converting the files to the MP3 format, which permits offline listening, use of portable devices and sharing through the same peer-to-peer networks used to swap music and movies. The first batch of MP3 files was released in late June.

Goldman said he ultimately wants to make available in MP3 every bit of Supreme Court recordings, about 6,000 hours in all. He also wants them easily searchable.

"The whole idea is to build a digital commons, make accessible materials that are really valuable in a free and open society," he said.

David Pride, executive director of the Supreme Court Historical Society, said the project appeals to attorneys, particularly those who argue before the court.

"It is the only opportunity you have to see what questioning before the court is like," Pride said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...dable%20Scotus


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Tone-Deaf Music Industry
LA Times Editorial

What is euphemistically called trading music online is theft, most of it petty. Songs downloaded free deny artists and record companies their due. Even so, the recording industry has abetted the robbery with its own greed and ineptitude. Though the industry is showing a glimmer that it understands there are better ways to deal with the problem, it also is employing a legal blunderbuss to pursue small-time downloaders as big- time criminals.

In April, the industry launched an assault against a few big-time outlaws, including students who ran on-campus, large-scale music file-sharing operations akin to the defunct commercial operation Napster. More recently, the Recording Industry Assn. of America filed more than 900 subpoenas to get Internet service providers and university administrators to turn over the names of not only mass pirates but also those who pilfer but a few songs.

With the RIAA threatening to sue consumers under a law that can impose fines of $750 to $150,000 per file shared, the trade group's heavy- handed tactics threaten to put fans — many of whom continue to buy CDs — into not just the doghouse but the poorhouse. Worse, the recording industry's friends in Congress — Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood) — are drumming up more draconian laws that would help federal prosecutors file felony charges against those uploading even a single file. Penalty? Prison for up to five years. While the music business is on this track, why not execute a few shoplifters? Or, instead, why can't the industry, artists and others recognize technology's march, take advantage of it and stop alienating their potential customers?

Artists and entrepreneurs must get fair compensation. But in this give-it-to-me-now Internet age, American consumers demand instant gratification. They want to easily search for tunes, download them immediately and enjoy their collections on CDs of their own creation or on wallet-sized gadgets. Some executives are getting the idea; Apple's new iTunes music store has already sold 6.5 million songs online. But an attempt by industry execs to offer a discounted music "online jukebox" for college students, while a good idea, won't work if the plan also forces universities to police their own computer networks. It also fails to account for tech-savvy students who, if unsatisfied with the selection, will circumvent the system.

The digital revolution, like it or not, has transported the music industry to a place where it must thrive online. And the more the industry resists creating legal, easy and affordable ways to download all music — pleasing consumers, artists and entrepreneurs alike — the more it will achieve the opposite: making illegal sharing more entrenched and innovative.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...ent-editorials


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Online Music Not Such A Money Spinner

Financial forecasts for web sales cut as supply fails to meet demand
Marc Ferranti

Though new internet music services this past year have sparked headlines, they have failed to fuel a much faster uptake of online music purchases, according to Jupiter Research analysts.

Online CD sales in the US will remain essentially flat in 2003, at $750m, or seven percent of the entire recorded music market in the country, according to research presented by Jupiter analyst Lee Black.

But Black does forecast long term growth for online music sales, whether they're downloaded tracks or CDs bought on the web. By 2008 he anticipates that these sales will be worth $3.3bn, and the internet will account for 26 percent of music spending in the US. This is down from Jupiter's previous forecast of $5bn by 2007.

Black believes that the problem may lie, not with demand for music online, but with supply. "I talked to all the various players, the retailers, the online services, to come up with the figures," he said, "but essentially, unlike what might be expected in other types of markets, supply has not quickly risen up to meet demand".

Legitimate services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store have suffered at the hands of restrictive licensing rules from copyright owners which is curbing consumer enthusiasm.

However, the biggest problem facing paid-for services like the Music Store and rival Pressplay, is the free peer-to-peer file swapping sites. Only 17 percent of adults say the threat of legal action from the recording industry has led them to cut down on illegal file sharing, according to Jupiter.

Jupiter's analysts say that the situation is much the same as in the US across the globe, stating that online music in Europe has been "stuck" in much the same way it is in the States. Indeed, Apple has had to delay the launch of the iTunes Music Store in Europe because of the requirement to meet complex licensing terms over here.

On the bright side Jupiter does believe such problems should start to be resolved, with online music purchases growing from just nine percent this year to 48 percent in 2008.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm...view&news=3445


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Congress, The New Copyright Bully
Eric Goldman

Congress has become exasperated with its inability to get Americans to stop engaging in copyright infringement. So Rep. Howard Berman jokes that he "probably" does not favor the death penalty for infringers, Sen. Orrin Hatch half-jokes that he would like to blow up the computers of infringers and Rep. John Carter wants to see infringing college kids thrown in jail for 33 months.

However, in more candid moments, members of Congress admit that they don't know what to do next, from a policy standpoint, to combat infringement. A prime example of this policy vacuum is Congress’ proposal du jour, the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACOOPS) Act.

Having criminalized willful nonprofit copyright infringement in 1997 through the No Electronic Theft Act without much success, some in Congress believe the law is too weak and needs more teeth. Thus, the new bill proposes a clear and simple standard for criminal copyright infringement: You commit a felony if you upload one infringing copyrighted work to the Internet.

Have an infringing MP3 in your shared peer-to-peer software directory? Go to jail. Post a newspaper article to your blog? Go to jail. Upload a photo taken by your wedding photographer to a family album Web site? Go to jail.

The bill does not reflect a well-thought-out policy toward criminal copyright infringement. It cannot even be blamed on pandering to the copyright owner lobby. Instead, the bill simply reflects Congress’ stubborn determination to bully the American people into doing what it wants.

In the past decade, through dozens of congressional oversight hearings where usually only industry representatives testify, Congress has been completely convinced that rampant copyright infringement threatens to destroy the American economy. Having internalized this threat, Congress is now determined to fix that problem the only way it knows how--threaten ordinary citizens with jail, despite collateral consequences.

And yet, just about everyone outside the Beltway knows that criminal copyright law has already gone too far. We necessarily commit copyright infringement as an unavoidable consequence of living in a digital society. But the criminal law already treats much of that conduct the same as it treats the blatant piracy that poses more serious jeopardy to copyright owner interests. With the rules so bluntly delineated, we cannot respect them or comply.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-5060347.html


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Survey: Users Want DSL But Can't Get It
Jim Hu

Dial-up Internet users are more willing to upgrade to digital subscriber line (DSL) service than to cable modem service, according to a study.

If they can actually get DSL, that is.

In a survey of 7,700 dial-up Internet service customers, 52 percent of the respondents said they would prefer to upgrade to DSL rather than cable service. By contrast, 38 percent said they would prefer cable. The study was conducted by J.D. Power and Associates.

The main reason for switching is price, the survey found. DSL providers, namely the Baby Bells, have been discounting their prices throughout the summer.

But availability of service is a major stumbling block for DSL. That has helped cable modem providers continue to have nearly twice as many subscribers as DSL, the study said.

"Price continues to be the number-one reason to switch providers among dial-up and high-speed Internet subscribers," Steve Kirkeby, senior director of telecommunication research at J.D. Power and Associates, said in a statement. "However, widespread availability is a critical hurdle that DSL providers haven’t yet been able to jump."

The survey also rated customer satisfaction with dial-up and broadband providers. In dial-up, AT&T Worldnet Service ranked the highest in satisfaction, followed by EarthLink, BellSouth and United Online. Microsoft's MSN, SBC Communications' Prodigy and AOL Time Warner's America Online and its CompuServe Interactive Services subsidiary occupied the bottom tier.

For broadband providers, EarthLink ranked highest in customer satisfaction, followed by BellSouth, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Cox Communications. Adelphia Communications, Charter Communications, Comcast and Qwest Communications ranked lowest.

Broadband providers all showed gains last quarter, but some companies, including SBC and Comcast, outdistanced their competitors.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-5060701.html


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Comcast To Extend 3mbps Trials
Jim Hu

Comcast plans to expand consumer trials for a 3mbps high-speed Internet service, the latest step in the cable giant's effort to double the speed of its standard cable modem product.

The new 30-day trial will begin Thursday in Pittsburgh for subscribers who pay $42.95 a month on top of basic cable TV service. A separate 3mbps test is already under way in Knoxville, Tenn. A company representative would not comment on whether Comcast plans to eventually offer 3mbps service to all of its subscribers.

"The reason (for the trial) is to determine how the change affects the network, how users value increased speeds and to help us develop the broadband experience for the future," Comcast spokeswoman Sarah Eder said.

Eder declined to comment on whether 3mbps plans might be offered as a more expensive option to Comcast's standard service.

The trials highlight the ongoing features war between broadband competitors--in this case, Comcast's cable modems and Verizon Communications' DSL (digital subscriber line) service. Because of their overlapping markets, both companies have toyed with boosting service perks in an attempt to lure more customers.

DSL providers, namely Verizon and SBC Communications, have been slashing prices in hopes of attracting new customers and stealing cable subscribers from rivals.

In May, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in a speech that speed hikes would be one critical factor in differentiating service from that of competitors.

"We should not be satisfied with 1.5mbps of speed," Roberts said, referring to the standard download speed that Comcast offers.

Indeed, some cable providers are already offering faster broadband speeds. Cablevision Systems, which serves areas outside New York, averages 3.5mbps and has been clocked as fast as 6.3mbps for its download speed, according to Broadbandreports.com, a Web site that tracks industry trends. Comcast was clocked at speeds of 1.7mbps.

DSL companies typically offer lower speeds or charge higher prices for comparable service. Verizon, for example, charges download speeds of up to 768kbps for $34.99 a month. The company also offers a premium service that promises downloand speeds of up to 1.5mbps for $59.99.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5060321.html


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Second Quarter Mixed For Broadband Firms
Jim Hu

U.S. broadband growth lagged overall expectations in the second quarter but handed the two biggest cable and DSL providers sizable gains, cementing their respective leads over competitors.

SBC Communications startled analysts last month, reporting 304,000 new DSL (digital subscriber line) customers, dwarfing its closest DSL competitors, Verizon and BellSouth, which added 101,000 and 103,000 new subscribers, respectively.

SBC's DSL service is co-branded with Yahoo and marketed heavily throughout the Web portal. SBC pays Yahoo a percentage of the fees paid by every access customer, while Yahoo shares advertising and e-commerce revenues. Analysts said they are still trying to figure out whether SBC's partnership with Yahoo played a significant factor in SBC's quarterly uptick.

"It seems to speak well (of) partnering with a strong Internet and content brand like Yahoo," Jim Penhune, an analyst at research firm Strategy Analytics, said about SBC. "The flipside is what they give up in terms of revenue and income. They may have captured more customers, but they are presumably sharing the wealth by having an outside partner."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the broadband fence, Comcast maintained its sizable lead against its rivals. The nation's largest cable network reported 350,000 new cable broadband subscribers, compared with Time Warner Cable's disappointing 170,000, Cox Communications' 112,452, Cablevision Systems' 82,700 and Charter Communications' 76,700.

Cable companies claimed that their results, which analysts said came below expectations--with the exception of Comcast--were the result of seasonal factors, such as disconnects from college subscribers. Although it's true that the second quarter is usually slow, Comcast's momentum raises questions about why others disappointed.

Some of this may be due to Comcast's aggressive promoting to customers in the markets of its recently acquired AT&T Broadband.

"There are unique things happening with Comcast," said Mark May, an equity analyst at Kaufman Bros. "They are able to offset competitive pressures and seasonality by increasing their footprint in AT&T markets."

Despite the disappointing quarter for most cable companies, the industry continues to show more inroads into households than does DSL. Numerous DSL price-cut promotions over the quarter highlighted the Baby Bells' determination not to lose more ground to cable companies that are stealing away coveted voice customers.

That's not to say consumers will be seeing price cuts on their cable bills any time soon. Cable's lead in the household remains steady.

"The cable operators so far haven't taken the bait to do price cuts on their own," Strategy Analytics' Penhune said. "I still think they don't have to do it yet and want to maintain their margins for as long as they can."
http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5059126.html


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Patents: An Expensive Tax on the CIO
Lawrence Rosen

SOFTWARE PATENTS cost you money.

Like taxes, they skim from your profit margins, but in this case the fees go to pay for other companies' intellectual property.

For example, your e-mail program, Internet browser and word processor (all patentable) may carry a 5 percent to 10 percent patent license fee. If patented software is embedded in your products or services and the patent holder takes you to court, you could find yourself paying the same markup. Most important, what if this expense comes as a surprise, when a patent holder demands royalties for a patent you didn't even know existed? How would a sudden 5 percent to 10 percent price hike in your product affect your sales, your profits?

That example is not hypothetical. I represented a small computer hardware company that was recently sued, along with 210 other companies, for infringement of a 1985 software patent for processing color images for scanners. My client was unaware of the patent. The plaintiff sought damages in the form of a "reasonable royalty" going back six years. Guess who will pay that royalty? Customers. As far as I know, the lawsuit is still going on, at a probable cost in attorneys' fees alone of $100K per month.

Big software companies create portfolios of thousands of patents (for example, IBM has more than 27,000; Microsoft has 2,400) designed to legally monopolize innovation. Every large company now seeks a patent portfolio relevant to its areas of business to use as a bargaining chip with competitors. They stack their patent portfolios on conference room tables, weigh them against their competitors', and negotiate cross-licensing fees. Small startups usually don't have the resources to build a stack of patents and may avoid the market altogether, limiting choice for CIOs. Regardless, this defensive rush to the patent office is driving up costs—and therefore, prices—for everyone involved.

When CIOs buy software, they often seek patent indemnification—the software company agrees to fight any infringement claims against you as well as itself—but costs are capped by the vendor, most of whom have shallow pockets. And no indemnity provision would ever cover you if you combined patented technology with your own systems.

Worse, the only way to know whether you've violated specific patents is to evaluate those patents one by one. But the very structure of the software industry makes evaluating the torrent of new patents each year impossible. Software is complex and ubiquitous. Developers from around the world cooperate to write software— especially in the open-source community—but patents are national and vary widely from country to country. The analysis task is monumental.

Sometimes the cost of patents is even greater than a licensing fee—it could mean shutting down the business. That's because a patent owner is not required to license his patent. Kodak had to shutter its instant camera business when patent owner Polaroid felt threatened by competition. Could your programming budget survive a sudden requirement to design around a software patent, assuming it is technically feasible?
http://www.cio.com/archive/080103/debate_con.html


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One Slow User In The Hot Spot Can Degrade Wi-Fi Performance

A group of French researchers said Wednesday that they've spotted a flaw in wireless (news - web sites) LAN technology that could allow one slow user to drag down performance of everyone connecting to a hot spot.

Four scientists, who work for France's Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris,

said in their research paper that anomalies in the IEEE 802.1x standard -- including 802.11a, 802.11g, and the most widely-used Wi-Fi protocol, 802.11b -- can result in degraded performance for all accessing the Internet through a hot spot when just one slow user connects.

They cited an example where several users, who are enjoying a fast 11Mbps connection because they're close to the hot spot, see their performance dramatically drop when a single user -- perhaps because he is further from the access point -- connects at a sluggish 1Mbps. In that case, the French experts said, all are punished for the sins of the one: those users once connected at 11Mbps will see their speeds dragged down to 1Mbps.

The anomaly, they said, is inherent in the CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Avoidance Collision) access protocol, which guarantees equal access to the hot spot by all devices.

While the problem may not be readily apparent to users -- especially when everyone accessing the hot spot is engaged in relatively light-load activities, such as browsing Web pages -- if just one user is downloading files, or accessing audio or video via wireless, others can be penalized.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...4&sid=95573432


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Senator Wants to Limit Patriot Act
Roy Mark

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska) introduced legislation Friday
designed to rollback certain provisions of the Patriot Act, including requiring a court order for U.S. law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance.

According to Murkowski, her bill would not repeal any portion of the Patriot Act, but would curb some the police powers granted under the legislation. The Patriot Act was passed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We must strike a careful and constitutional balance between protecting the individual rights of Americans and giving our law enforcement and intelligence officials the tools they need to prevent future terrorist attacks," Murkowski said in a statement. "To date it appears portions of the Patriot Act may have moved the scales out of balance. My goal is simply to make sure that our laws are balanced."

The Protecting the Rights of Individuals Act (S. 1552) requires that law enforcement agencies demonstrate a cause for suspicion before courts could issue authority to monitor certain telephone and Internet use and also seeks to limit the FBI's ability to review a person's personal data, including medical, library and Internet records.

Murkowski wants the FBI to meet the standards outlined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires law enforcement agencies to have probable cause that surveillance targets are agents of foreign powers.

Just 45 days after the Sept.11 attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. Since then, it has come under fire from a number of conservative and civil libertarian groups for its rollback in privacy rights. The Department of Justice is expected to introduce a sequel, dubbed Patriot II, that, that, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, "would further erode key freedoms and liberties of every American."
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2243881


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Anarchist Web Site Lands Man in Jail

A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson sentenced Sherman Austin to more than the prosecutor had recommended under a plea bargain.

Austin, 20, pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives.

Austin told the judge Monday he "wasn't really thinking" when he created the Web site. "I'd be devastated if someone used this information to harm others," he said.

Austin admitted posting links about bombs to enable people to build and use them during demonstrations against interstate and foreign trade. He told FBI agents he wanted the Web site to teach people about police brutality.

Austin must also pay a $2,000 fine and is barred for three years from using a computer without approval. Wilson said he also may not associate with anyone from a group that "espouses physical force as a means of change."

Austin was arrested with other protesters at the World Economic Forum in New York in February 2002 on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. While in New York, federal charges were handed down in California.

Austin said he took a plea bargain because he feared his case was eligible for a terrorism enhancement, which could have added 20 years to his sentence. The plea deal had called for him to serve four months.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/6459469.htm


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


Caught In The Act
Jo Maitland

The issue of whether the media industy should continue fighting copyright piracy on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks or start thinking of P2P as a new money-making content delivery mechanism came to a rather ironic head recently at Ellacoya Networks Inc.

One of Ellacoya's senior networking engineers was caught downloading a pirated version of The Matrix Reloaded at home and was cut off temporarily by his cable service provider, at the behest of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), acting on behalf of Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the Matrix cash cow.

The irony is that the engineer (we'll call him Neo to protect his identity) was actually downloading the film for research purposes.

Of course, the term "for research purposes" is sometimes used in questionable circumstances (see: Pete Townshend and the Japanese whaling industry). In this case, Neo concedes he was "killing two birds with one stone." He liked the film -- he'd paid to see it in a cinema -- but he was also downloading it as part of his job at Ellacoya, which makes a switch to help service providers manage and control P2P traffic (see ISP Fixes P2P ).

”As part of my job I look for changes in the signature, or sequence of bits in a P2P stream, so that our software is able to drill down into traffic and see exactly what that stream is. That way we can monitor and control it,” says Neo. "But I might as well download something I’m interested in at the same time."

Neo found the movie on Shareaza, a popular P2P network that aggregates four other P2P networks -- its own, eDonkey, Gnutella, and Gnutella2 (not to be confused with Nutella®, the original hazelnut spread®) -- offering its users four times as many files to download. “I was playing around with it to see if the bit streams for P2P files in this application resemble the same patterns as they do in the standalone versions of the client,” he says. “I downloaded The Matrix Reloaded for the heck of it; I’d seen the movie at the cinema and really like it.”

Unfortunately the Motion Picture Association didn’t view Neo’s actions in quite such a disinterested light. The association ordered Neo’s service provider, also nameless here, as Ellacoya probably hopes to do business with it after this incident, to stop him from illegally sharing the film.

To get his cable service switched back on, Neo had to disable file sharing on his computer. Once he'd done that, service was restored within half an hour. “I turned off file sharing in those apps, which makes it harder to see exactly how they work," he sighs. (Sounds like Neo could use himself a pick-me-up -- perhaps a tasty, yet nutritious, Meringue Nest With Nutella Nutty Eggs!)

Neo was caught in the middle of the battle among content providers, service providers, and end users, all desperate to get a slice of the P2P pie (see Movie Studios to Prowl the Net).

The current situation -- which has the Record Industry of America Association (RIAA) and the MPA filing lawsuits left, right, and center to try and stamp out the problem -- won’t work, Neo thinks. And neither will spiteful attempts to thwart P2P networks, he says. One example of this, which he believes to be the work o f the RIAA, is 20 second clips of songs that are appearing all over P2P networks. “The RIAA is seeding trash copies of songs on the Internet to discourage people from using it, but this won’t stop people." (Fight for the Future©, dude!)

It’s Ellacoya’s belief that eventually service providers and content providers will have to work together to provide users of P2P networks a much better service than they get today -- a view shared by KaZaA Founder, Niklas Zennstrom. Users will have to pay for it, mind you, through premium rates for additional bandwidth, but Ellacoya thinks this is where the industry is headed.

In the meantime, watch out folks -- Jack Valenti is out there tracking you down. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=38327


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The Coming Wi-Fi World

Sky Dayton, the serial entrepreneur (who also founded the highly successful EarthLink) predicts where the Wi-Fi industry is going, and what the wireless world will look like.

AlwaysOn: Where do you think wireless is going? What’s your long-term view?

Dayton: I like to take a hundred-year perspective on this stuff. If you look back in history, every time there's been a dramatic advance in communications technology, there's been a similar advance in civilization that follows it. The printing press preceded the Reformation in Europe; telephones, radio, and TV preceded the Information Age. Every time we make it easier for people to communicate with each other, civilization advances to some degree.

The Internet is clearly the greatest medium ever in its ability to allow anybody, at a very low
cost, to communicate with anyone else in the world. I think we’re just starting to see the fruits of that. What wireless represents is clearly the next chapter of the Internet. It’s very early still, but we're rapidly moving towards the time when the Internet will just be in the air that you breath. It won't be in a wire. The backbone and the high-capacity parts of the Internet will still be fiber or wired in some way, but the user's devices are not going to connect with any kind of wire. Wi-Fi is clearly the last hundred feet of the Internet.

AlwaysOn: So you get to be part of the next big advance.

Dayton: Yeah, I guess that's one of the reasons I was so excited about Wi-Fi. To me, it's like the TCP/IP of wireless. It's the single unifying standard around which all the innovation, all the R&D dollars, are concentrated. And unlike CDMA and GSM, or any other attempts at this in the past, there's no bifurcation of that innovation. Any development in Wi-Fi benefits everyone else anywhere else who’s working in it. http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...id=575_0_3_0_C


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Goodbye To Hello In Digital Age – study

A new language has emerged through the use of email and instant messaging which could render "hello" and "goodbye" obsolete within a generation, according to a report.

People using new technologies to communicate are much more likely to start the conversation "hey" and sign it off "laters" than the more formal alternatives, says the study.

Influences from around the world have contributed to a more "familiarised" language which the report has dubbed "globespeak."

Jonathon Green, author of the study, said: "We have a situation where more people use electronic communication than old-fashioned letters. The way these technologies work often results in us talking faster and with more slang.

"It wouldn't surprise me if, in 50 years, there was no longer a need for 'hello' and 'goodbye' in general or certainly in electronic communication," said Mr Green, a lexicographer and author of a dictionary of slang.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology





Digital CD Decks Challenge Vinyl
BBC

The success of a digital system that allows CDs to be scratched and mixed in the same way as 12-inch records could mean the death end of DJs using vinyl, a top DJ and record producer has said.

The system, called the CDJ-1000 and produced by technology company Pioneer, has been designed to replicate as much as possible a traditional vinyl deck, but taking advantage of modern digital technology. The decks, which have already won a number of awards, have been given great approval by Erick Morillo, boss of Subliminal records and one of the most influential DJs in the world.

"I'm letting technology take over," Mr Morillo told BBC World Service's The Music Biz programme.

"With the introduction of the CDJ-1000 I feel like there's a whole new way of DJing these days."

The key to the system - which resembles a small version of a vinyl deck - is a grooved, touch-sensitive jog wheel, which allows records to be stopped and scratched at any time. Until now, the inability to do this was one of the key reasons DJs had shunned performing with CD decks. Additionally, the system has an internal memory that can remember cue and loop points, and allows tracks to be remixed live.

"When I'm DJing with vinyl, I'm bored now," Mr Morillo said. "With CDJs you can loop the records at whatever point you want.

"I take my filters and I'm remixing records on the fly."

Pioneer say that they developed the system with DJs to try and tackle the problems encountered when using traditional CD players.

"What we did here was look at all the objections that DJs had against using our existing range of DJ CD players, and basically overcome them," Pioneer spokesman Martin Docherty told The Music Biz.

"That's why this product has been so successful, and it's now the industry standard across the world."

The system also has a memory card that recalls edit points for tracks, meaning that a DJ can travel with only the card and their CDs. The card is inserted into another CDJ-1000 deck and the player will recognise all cue and loop points.

"Many DJs are still using vinyl, but they're now using vinyl alongside CD, simply because of the extra performance value," Mr Doherty added.

"DJing is becoming very competitive, and DJs are now looking for alternative pieces of hardware to enhance their set and give them the edge over the competition." Mr Morillo confirmed that he and his record label were abandoning vinyl in favour of the new technology.

"It's funny because I was a spokesman for vinyl. About two years ago I said vinyl will never go away, vinyl this, vinyl that," he said.

"But [the decks] really do feel like vinyl, and you can put as big a show with the CDJ-1000 as you can do with turntables.

"So now, I'll probably be the person that is going to spearhead this whole changeover to CDs and being a vinyl label, it's kind of weird to hear me say that.

"With each vinyl release, we're going to include a CD with all the mixes as well, because that's where it's going." Mr Morillo conceded that the complaint most often levelled against CDs by vinyl enthusiasts - that the sound is too clinical and lacks warmth - remained true.

"The specialists will argue there's a certain sound you're missing, and absolutely, they're right," he noted.

"But the convenience far outweighs the little sound that you may be missing."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3128653.stm


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MP3 Music Goes Hi-Fi
Alfred Hermida
BBC

Ever wished you could listen to the hundreds of MP3 tracks on your PC on your stereo? A range of digital music players are springing up that let you listen to songs on a hard drive on a hi-fi. One of these is a gadget called Slimp3, which spans the divide between your computer and the stereo in the living room. California-based start-up Slim Devices came up with the idea to tap into a generation who grew up with the internet and the now defunct file-sharing pioneer Napster.

"They now have a disposable income and they don't think about CDs any more," said Patrick Cosson, vice-president of sales and marketing.

"They like to listen to individual songs and have masses of playlists. The Slimp3 fits in with a shift of behaviour." The gadget went on sale about a year ago. Now, Slim Devices says thousands of people are using the player every day. Unlike many MP3 players, the Slimp3 does not have a hard drive. Instead, it works by streaming tracks stored on a computer's hard drive to a hi-fi. At one end, the player is connected to the PC by a network cable and at the other to the hi-fi using standard audio cables. The player is designed to be discreet and easy to set up. In most cases, it will recognise the necessary settings and automatically set itself up. But an internet firewall could prevent the computer from seeing the Slimp3.

Slim Devices believes its product will appeal to people in their 20s and early 30s who are used to downloading music over the internet, but do not want to have to listen to the songs on tinny PC speakers.

"We really appeal to the MP3 collector, to people in countries where the whole culture has evolved," said Mr Cosson.

"Once you have content, you want ubiquitous access to it."

Listening to music is straightforward enough. Using a remote control, you can navigate, search and organise all the MP3 music files on a computer. You can also set up playlists and change the settings on the computer, as well as add internet radio stations to listen to. Slim Devices boasts on its site that the player enjoys "high spouse approval" and anecdotal evidence suggests this is the sort of gadget that a partner would welcome, rather than resent.

The key element, though, is not the player itself, but the software loaded on a computer that turns it into a music server.

"It is really hard to do well," explained Mr Cosson, saying that the big challenge was coming up with a system that streamed music to the player without any delays or hiccups.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3097615.stm


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AT&T Sells Software Online
Jo Maitland

AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T) has announced a six-month trial that will link Internet users with its new online software store, but analysts are wary of piracy issues and wonder how AT&T will ultimately make any money from this service (see AT&T Sells Software Online).

The long-distance carrier says visitors to its software store, located on AT&T’s Website, will be able to browse and buy from among 41,000 software titles, as well as download popular packages such as TaxCut from H&R Block, McAfee's VirusScan, and Symantec's Norton AntiVirus software, as well as gaming and graphics products.

Digital River Inc, an e-commerce outsourcing services provider, will build and host the online software store and supply the digital software library, order management, digital product fulfillment, customer service, and fraud prevention as part of its deal with AT&T.

Ma Bell’s goal is to become a one-stop shop for software, which some analysts say is a useful thing. If a user needs, say, anti-virus software but doesn’t know who makes it, he may respond to a big brand-name like AT&T saying, "Just come to us and you'll find what you need."

Others are skeptical of the value AT&T brings by adding another link to the purchasing chain. They point out that this goes against the idea of modern e- commerce, which is to cut out as many "middle people" as possible. “Why not just go directly to the Norton Website?... This service lacks oomph,” says Claudia Bacco, president of TeleChoice Inc.

Another thing customers miss out by not going directly to the manufacturer’s Website is the user support communities attached to these sites. These provide a forum for users to ask support questions, which are answered by other users, not by the manufacturers, and often provide the best tips.

A further drawback with this service involves the issue of online activation and piracy, which plagues all providers selling software online.

It's essentially a battle of wits between the software writers and the hackers. A good example is the DVD copying software, DVDxcopy, which, ironically, is one of the most pirated pieces of software around.

The writers, 321 Studios, keep trying to introduce a password/challenge system to only allow online activation of the software. But the scalawags keep cracking the system so that when a user downloads the pirate version of DVDxcopy from KaZaa, a free file sharing network, they get the cracking software, too.

Beyond all these problems, there’s also the question of how AT&T will make money from this service. Once it stops offering the initial rebates on the software, what incentive is there for customers to use the service? “We will not be sharing the financial details of the agreement we have with Digital River,” says Janet Wyles, an AT&T spokeswoman [ed. note: Hmmm... fishy].

Still, according to IDC, consumers rang up $1.16 billion in sales of digitally delivered software last year, with that number expected to reach approximately $3.46 billion by 2005. Even if AT&T manages to cream off just 1 percent of this, that could be a decent little revenue stream.
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=38312


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Empathy the key to contagious yawning

Empathetic or self aware people are more likely to catch a yawn, according to new research published in the US. The study was carried out by a team from the State University of New York, who wanted to discover what causes yawns to travel from one person to another. Previous research shows that 40 to 60 per cent of people who watch others yawn end up joining in themselves.
http://www.cordis.lu/express/finally.htm


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2003 MOST INNOVATIVE ANTENNA

DefCon Wi-Fi Shootout Contest Winner



The DefCon Wi-Fi Shootout contest staff decided to award a special prize for the antenna design that represented the most "outside-the-box" thinking, that pushed the limits of the conventional wisdom of this day and time -- an award for the antenna that could improvise, adapt, and overcome.

This unique antenna was designed on Thursday, July 31, its component parts were purchased for $98 at The Home Depot in Las Vegas. The team members report that they were almost thrown out of Home Depot because they stayed so late at closing time, trying to make decisions about the antenna materials.

On Friday, August 1, the antenna was built completely from scratch in the desert, on the side of the mountain, in the rain. The large horn was comprised of metal pipes and window screen wire mesh. It had a transmitting element made from cardboard, duct tape and aluminum foil -- and both components worked spectacularly. A bath towel was used to provide shade over the laptop screen, which was otherwise unreadable in the glare of the desert, even with the clouds overhead.

It is true that this antenna's design is an old one... going back at least as far as the early radio astronomy antennas of the 1930s. But regardless of how old the concept may be, this homemade antenna definitely surpassed all of the commercially manufactured antennas in the field of competition. It may be an old idea, but it was innovative in the unexpected resurrection of the ancient design, and in its superb distance performance. For these reasons, the contest staff chose this antenna as the Most Innovative Antenna of the 2003 DefCon Wi-Fi Shootout.

The 2003 Award for The Most Innovative Antenna is proudly presented to: ASLRulz.
http://www.geeknews.net/?info=340


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Software Bill Losing Support
Alorie Gilbert

The key supporters of a software-licensing bill that critics say promotes corporate rights over those of consumers have, in the face of mounting opposition, decided to quit lobbying for its enactment.

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), drafted four years ago, is meant to protect software developers from intellectual property theft by resolving conflicting software licensing laws that vary from state to state.

But critics have complained that the proposed laws favour corporate interests over those of consumers. They say it grants software makers too much freedom in restricting the use of their products and in dictating settlement terms for conflicts.

UCITA has been enacted in only two states, Maryland and Virginia, since the group of law experts that drafted the bill began its enactment campaign.

The group, called the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), anticipated that an additional two to five states would pass the bill after the group amended it last year to address concerns about consumer rights. But the bill's opponents, including the American Bar Association and the American Library Association, refused to back down.

Despite being introduced in Nevada and Oklahoma legislatures this year, UCITA never made any further progress. And four states — Vermont, Iowa, West Virginia and North Carolina — have passed anti-UCITA "bomb-shelter" provisions, which make UCITA laws in Maryland and Virginia inapplicable to residents of those states, according to the Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions. AFFECT is a national coalition that opposes UCITA.

The lack of acceptance has prompted NCCUSL to announce on Friday that it had pulled the plug on all efforts to help states introduce and enact the bill. Without that backing, UCITA is unlikely to gain further consideration from the states, according to Katie Robinson, a NCCUSL spokeswoman.

"Without the conference pushing UCTIA, I don't see any other legislative activity happening on it," Ms. Robinson said.

NCCUSL, which concluded its annual meeting in Washington this week, also disbanded the special committee that oversees its UCITA activity. Ms. Robinson said politics had interfered with the group's efforts in support of the bill, adding that the group may revisit the subject of state laws that govern software contracts and digital information in the future.

"It is heartening to see NCCUSL backing away from a very flawed statute, but it will never be able to write sound law for the information economy until it takes to heart the criticisms of the user sector," Jean Braucher, a member of AFFECT and a professor at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, said in a statement issued Wednesday.

"The debate is not just 'politics,'" Ms. Braucher added. "There are fundamental policy problems with UCITA."

Yet UCITA is not completely dead and buried, legal experts say. Because it's on the books in two states, courts across the country could be influenced by it, according to Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"However, the prevailing wind right now is against UCITA," von Lohmann said. "We think that's a good thing."
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/


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Grooving In Digital
Ian Johnson

In my last column, I mentioned that more and more people are connecting their stereos to computers so that they can listen to digital music beyond the confines of the desk. The result was a slew of letters asking how to transfer old vinyl, tape and CD collections to MP3 or WMA files, and what the benefits would be.

Well, the benefits are easy. At the top of the list: Instead of a mass of vinyl moldering away in the basement or a stack of hundreds of cassettes and CDs sliding around in a drawer, you can store an entire music collection on a few CD-R discs or a single hard drive the size of a paperback book.

For example, a basic 60GB hard drive that sells for less than $125 (Canadian) at the moment can hold roughly 15,000 songs - a month and a half of continuous music - when recorded at the popular 128 Kilobits per second (Kbps) setting. You can store all your music on your desktop or notebook computer's drive, or invest a couple of hundred bucks in a Firewire or USB hard drive so that your collection can be moved easily between machines. For those with a multi-gigabyte MP3/WMA jukebox player, the entire collection can go with you anywhere in a unit smaller than a personal CD player.

Besides portability, it's also quick and easy to find the songs you want when they're stored as MP3 and WMA files. My vinyl, compact disc and cassette collection is quite large, and it used to take me forever to track down the right album when I wanted to hear a specific song (usually because I'd gotten lazy and put the recording back in the wrong sleeve). When files are digitized, they suddenly become searchable by artist or album name, song title, type of music, and so on. You can have the computer or MP3 jukebox comb through a database of thousands of songs in about a second and start playing the track you want.

Durability is also a factor. Tapes get snarled and the quality steadily degrades the more they are played, while vinyl is prone to warping and to music-massacring scratches, and CDs are easily damaged. MP3s and WMAs are digital, so they don't wear out and the only way to hurt them is to hurt the hard drive or player itself.

Yes, hard drives are delicate and they don't last forever - in fact, I had a hard-drive based player fail on me just a few weeks after I bought it. But once you have all your music digitized, insurance is a simple matter of backing your tunes up on a second hard drive or a stack of CD-R discs in case of emergencies. Hit a few keys on your computer, back up the files and you can stop worrying. I've digitized my entire CD collection for disaster-recovery purposes. I have young children who can reach the CD player now and who think CDs are really cool, shiny Frisbees, so I like being able to keep my music collection safely out of the way inside a computer and backed up.

With everything digitized, I can also build my own custom playlists. At a dinner party, I can put on a playlist of several hundred songs that fit the mood of the evening and not worry about hearing Tom Cochrane's Boy Inside the Man or Big Country's Ships 20 times throughout the evening as I used to when my five-disc CD player was set to random-play.

Load the digital files onto a portable player and you get the added benefit of skip-free mobile music, even if you're listening while practicing your latest trampoline routine.

OK, so how's that for a quick outline of the benefits? Now for the caveat.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...y/TechReviews/


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SARS Concert Boosts Stones Sales
John Williams

It certainly pays to play in front of 450,000 people.

The Rolling Stones, Justin Timberlake, La Chicane and Sam Roberts all saw recent album releases get a boost in sales after taking part in last Wednesday's SARS-Stock concert at Downsview Park in Toronto, according to data compiled by Nielsen Soundscan.

The Stones compilation "Forty Licks" moved from No. 79 to No. 41, Justin Timberlake's "Justified" from No. 53 to No. 31, La Chicane's "Ent' Nous Autres" from No. 62 to No. 54, and Sam Roberts' "We Were Born In A Flame" from No 20 to No. 11.
http://www.canoe.ca/JamRollingStones...story-can.html


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Competition Is Clicking In Music

The sanctioned online retailers Buymusic.com, iTunes and Liquid.com have plenty of bargains without a monthly fee, but how much of a selection do they offer?
David Colker

Downloading music from major record companies on the Internet is nothing new, but now you can do it without being a criminal. Currently there are two major, sanctioned online retailers that offer hundreds of thousands of songs or even whole symphonies for download to home computers, for pay. Unlike feeble, early attempts online by the big record companies, these new services -- Buymusic.com and the iTunes Music Store -- offer a large selection without monthly service fees. They aim to not just battle music downloading -- which has been done illegally by an estimated 60 million U.S. computer users -- but also cash in on it. We put them to the test by searching on each for the same 30 music selections, including top pop hits such as Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" and longtime favorites such as the Eagles' "New Kid in Town." We also looked for popular choices in country, rap, Latin, house, hard rock, oldies and classical music, plus some music that is labeled "alternative," such as Fountains of Wayne's "Bright Future in Sales." Finally, we threw in a couple of rarities, such as an accordion rendition of "It's a Small World," as played by a former star of the Lawrence Welk orchestra. (It was not available -- you can decide if that's a good or bad thing.) The tests were done on the two online music sellers that debuted this year, as well as a third, smaller shop: Liquid.com. Buymusic.com and Liquid. com can be used on Windows-based computers, while iTunes is accessed with Internet software only available for Macintosh computers. Officials at Apple Computer, which operates the iTunes store, say they will have a Windows version set to go online by the end of the year. Because Buymusic.com and iTunes have agreements with all the major music companies, the songs offered on them are much the same. The big difference is what you can do with the music once it's in your computer. In general, the iTunes shop places far fewer restrictions on burning it onto CDs, downloading it to portable music players and transferring it to other computers. Liquid.com, from the Liquid Audio company, offers selections from some majors and independent labels that Buymusic.com and iTunes don't have. But Liquid.com's site is undergoing badly needed renovation. "I'd be the first to admit that the customer experience is not what it should be," said Ole Obermann, who was appointed Monday as the site's general manger. "We are working on it." (For results of how many of our selections were found -- including costs and restrictions -- see the accompanying chart.) Buymusic.com, iTunes and Liquid.com aim to steer online music downloaders away from the free file-sharing services pioneered by Napster.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Both Sides Add Porn to Debate Over File Sharing
Jon Healey

As the battle in the courts and Congress over online music and movie piracy intensifies, both sides are fleshing out their cases by turning to pornography.

The music and movie companies warn that file-sharing sites are rife with graphic pornography that insinuates itself into users' computers. Civil libertarians and Internet service providers argue that music companies' anti-piracy tactics open the door for pornographers and others in the seamy online underbelly to invade Internet users' privacy.

The two camps are playing the porn card in attempts to sway the public as policymakers grapple with the dilemmas posed by powerful and unsettling new digital technologies.

Trade associations for the record companies and Hollywood have prodded lawmakers to view file-sharing networks such as Kazaa as hotbeds of sexually explicit images and video. Members of Congress have held at least two hearings and introduced a bill to require parental approval before minors could install file-sharing software.

Meanwhile, Internet service providers and civil liberties groups have argued that a record industry strategy — using subpoenas to force ISPs to identify customers accused of file-sharing piracy — could enable pornographers, stalkers and other shady characters to obtain the names and addresses of Internet users.

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Assn. of America, called such objections speculative "straw men." By contrast, Lamy said, "concerns about piracy, security or unwanted pornography on peer-to-peer networks are well documented."

Last week, one adult-entertainment company may have given the RIAA's opponents ammunition in their fight against the subpoenas. San Francisco-based IO Group Inc., which sells gay male adult videos under the name Titan Media, sent Pacific Bell Internet Services a pair of subpoenas seeking the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of at least 59 customers accused of infringing its copyrights on file-sharing networks.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Internet Subscribers Help Charter Cut Loss
Bloomberg News

Charter Communications Inc., the third-largest U.S. cable-television provider, posted its smallest quarterly loss since 1999 as sales of high-speed Internet access surged more than 70%.

The second-quarter net loss shrank to $37 million, or 13 cents a share, from $160 million, or 55 cents, a year earlier, St. Louis- based Charter said. Revenue rose 7% to $1.22 billion from $1.14 billion.

Charter, controlled by billionaire Paul Allen, added 76,700 customers for Web service through the company's cable lines and reduced capital spending by 73%.

But Charter, which serves Los Angeles among other markets, is struggling with $18.9 billion in long-term debt, four years of net losses and accusations that former executives inflated sales and subscriber figures.

"I think they're starting to straighten out," said Seth Glickenhaus, senior partner at investment firm Glickenhaus & Co. "The Internet is working out and that's a vital part of it."

Charter's capital spending on property and equipment declined to $160 million from $603 million a year earlier. That helped boost free cash flow to $56 million, compared with a free-cash-flow loss of $432 million a year earlier.

Chief Executive Carl Vogel said during a conference call with analysts that he expected less than $900 million in capital spending this year, compared with a previous forecast for as much as $1.1 billion.

Charter shares rose 5 cents to $4.85 on Nasdaq. The stock's value has more than quadrupled this year.

Charter was expected to post a net loss of 49 cents a share on sales of $1.23 billion, the average estimate of seven analysts in a Thomson First Call survey. Per-share results reflect the payment of preferred dividends.

Satellite-TV services offered by EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV, a unit of General Motors Corp., have been taking customers from Charter because its management has been distracted by debt and investigations of its accounting, analysts have said.

Charter had 1.35 million customers for its high-speed Internet service at the end of the quarter. Revenue from high-speed Web service climbed to $136 million.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Phish to Offer Fans Free Music Downloads
Kevin Wack

LIMESTONE, Maine - Phish, the jam band whose open taping policy made it one of the nation's biggest live acts, is again sidestepping the record industry to cash in on the online music revolution.

Livephish.com offers a rare service: soundboard-quality downloads of performances within two days of the concert. Fans pay $9.95 for MP3s or $12.95 for a computer file format where no sound quality is lost during compression.

In the first four months after the site's launch on New Year's Eve 2002, the service generated $1 million, said Brad Serling, whose company runs the site as a joint venture with the band.

"It's beyond our expectations," Serling said. "It's been profitable from day one."

Like the Grateful Dead, Phish has always encouraged fans to record their performances. Likewise, their performances vary widely from night to night, and the band has spawned a subculture of hard-core fans who began trading recordings long before Napster (news - web sites).

Since Livephish's launch, many of the band's young, digitally adept fans have proven willing to pay for an improved version of what's already available at no cost. Sound quality is better, and fans appreciate the convenience of being able to access the equivalent of three CDs of music just 48 hours after the show.

During an end-of-tour festival last weekend that drew an estimated 70,000 fans to the remote town of Limestone, a long line of concertgoers snaked outside a white tent called the House of Live Phish. Fans used Apple iMacs to make their own free CDs from a menu of three or four songs performed at each of the band's concert stops this year.

Some burned their CDs, then jumped right back in line. And fans offered rave reviews of the Livephish service.

"To release it two days later in soundboard quality is the ultimate treat for a fan," said Brian O'Neal, 28, of Nashua, N.H. "I think that could be the greatest thing a jam band ever did."

Eighty percent of each concert's sales at Livephish.com come within a week of the show, according to Serling.

"This is totally new," gushed Bret Berman of Boulder, Colo. "And I think a lot of bands are going to start doing it."

Some other bands are tapping into the market for their live performances. Pearl Jam has begun releasing CDs of each of its concerts, and New York- based Rockslide sells CDs of live shows by a number of lesser-known bands.

The biggest hurdle is likely to be record label resistance, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...c_phish_online


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A Phishy Tale
Jon Newton

Phish has a message for the Big Five labels, the RIAA and bands such as Metallica.

Downloading can work for you.

Phish is already a virtual cultural symbol not just in Vermont, from whence it hails, but across the US and one of the reasons the band is so popular (other than the fact its members are excellent musicians) is: like the Dead, it's always allowed people to tape.

In other words, Phish is one of the most genuinely progressive bands out there with a huge, intensely loyal following, and now it's a) found a way to make downloading work positively; and b) showed the labels what can be done with a little imagination and goodwill.

What Phish has done is to make its entire Phish summer tour available for download at $9.95 (for mp3s) or $12.95 (for flacs) per concert.

It's an extension of the multi-CD Live Phish series launched in October 2001, the bands says, and, "As with the CDs, the downloads feature complete, unedited, mastered shows from Phish's extensive archives. The download format is a natural progression for the serious collector and the new fan alike, offering an opportunity to listen not only to older shows, but to shows from a current tour very soon after they've happened, mastered directly from the soundboard.

"The price of each show is based on format and length. Each show is available in two formats: MP3 (standard) and FLAC (premium). Most shows are two sets, but some (like New Year's Eve for example) are three sets."

So why would anyone want to pay for a show they can tape for free?

Unlike the recording industry at large, the band has been smart enough to understand it has to pay attention to its 'consumers' - its fans and followers - and treat them with respect. This is reciprocated. Phish phans want to see their favourite group flourish.

Does this mean the taping days are over? No, says Phish,

"For the most part, our taping policy remains unchanged. As with other official Phish releases, you may not copy (except for personal use) or trade files offered through Live Phish Downloads."

But it says there is one significant change.

Its policy, "now allows for audience recordings of any show to be traded person to person or through online repositories, whereas previously it was forbidden to offer audience recordings of shows that had been officially released through online repositories. This change applies to live shows released on CD as well as via download."

And it gives back in other ways. For instance, the Mockingbird Foundation is a non-profit organization of Phish fans founded in 1997 to generate $$$ for charity. There are no salaries and no paid staff and Mockingbird exists almost entirely online, meaning it avoids real-time travel and other expenses usually associated with grant-making bodies.

In the meanwhile, could the PhishPhilosophy work for other bands - or for you?

No reason why not. Unless, of course, you've already been drawn and quartered by one of the labels which now owns you - and your concerts - body and soul.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/phish.html


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Doing a Perry Smith

You never know when the RIAA site will go down again. Denial of service? Hackers? Typical RIAA screw-ups? No one knows. And no one cares. But that's all changed ; )

Apparently, TST, the RIAA's hosting company, has moved the RIAA's servers to ....

... Verizon's network.

In RIAA ignores court battles, picks Verizon to host site, The Register's Ashlee Vance says Verizon confirmed that, as of July, TST's own site ended up on Verizon's network, as well as the RIAA's.

"We have to provide the service to a customer that asks for it," Vance quotes a Verizon spokeswoman as saying. "TST is purchasing access service from us, and then its their decision what to do with it. It does not change any of our positions on the RIAA case."
http://www.p2pnet.net/article/7375


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The P2P Dark Horse

About seven months ago, you'd typically see four or five different p2p apps named on the Lycos 50 list, says Terra Lycos, which among other things, owns the Lycos search engine.

And up until January, KaZaA (#3) was so dominant in the file- swapping world, "that even though its competitors get searches each week, none of them actually make the list," says the company.

But things have changed with the appearance of QuickMX says Terra Lycos.

QuickMX v1.1 is a WinMX download tweaker and accelerator which allows unlimited find-sources, handles efficient auto-find-sources for broadband connections, resulting in faster sources finding, and threfore - faster downloads.

"Searches for this program seem to have come out of nowhere, as just two weeks ago it received zero searches," says The Lycos 50, adding, "oddly enough, WinMX searches aren't going up despite the newly found popularity of QuickMX."

Twenty-eighth on the list at the time of writing, it's still climbing.
http://www.p2pnet.net/article/7367


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Steal This Book
The latest Harry Potter was digitally pirated. What's next?
Joy Press

Last week, an e-mail with the subject line "Free Stuff" appeared in my inbox. But this e-mail didn't contain a virus or an invitation to enlarge my penis. It was a large file purporting to be the new cookbook from Jamie Oliver, who achieved international celebrity as "the Naked Chef," with several best sellers and a popular cooking series on the Food Network. Complete with well-designed pages and color photos, this digital "book" quickly whipped its way around the world, even after Oliver's British publisher declared it a hoax. These were genuine Oliver recipes, but the book was cobbled together from his previously published cookbooks.

Scam or not, the speed with which the Naked Chef streaked across the Internet suggests that a new, disquieting era for the publishing world may be in sight. In an age when manuscripts circulate in digital form and scanners can swiftly convert hard copy into e-mail-able material, books are clearly vulnerable to piracy. Right now, devastated by file-sharing and bootlegging, the record industry is desperately trying to shut the barn door long after the horse has bolted. Hollywood, too, has been spooked by hackers uploading movies to the Internet. Can the publishing business afford to make the same mistakes?

Bibliophiles find absurd the idea that people will ever abandon the sensuous pleasures of reading—the smell of the paper, the heft of the book—for dematerialized text on a screen. But record collectors said the exact same thing about the compact disc, complaining about the sterile perfection of digital sound and the disappearance of lavish album sleeves. Since then, a new generation has emerged that is totally comfortable with the idea of music as disembodied, digitally encoded information. Instead of records, the new fetish objects are the sleekly futuristic-looking MP3 players and iPods, which are prized more for their portability, ease of use, and ability to amass vast quantities of sound files than for the actual music coming out of them.

Still, most publishers are skeptical that readers will trade paper for pixel, pointing to the relative failure of the eBook as proof that people don't enjoy viewing text on a screen. (There are plenty of other reasons eBooks haven't caught on, though: The technology isn't yet up to snuff, and the lack of a uniform format for eBook players severely limits which eBooks you can access.) But if a book you were dying to read—let's say the new Jonathan Franzen novel—just popped up in your e-mail box, would you delete it? And if you already have it, or know you can get it for nothing, would you really trudge to Barnes & Noble and pay the full hardback price? Be honest: not always. This is what has left record stores like Tower looking like the Marie Celeste.

What steps are publishers taking to prevent piracy? Surprisingly, the answer is: very few. "If it's really important, I hide the manuscript under my desk," laughed an editor at a major house. Security measures are only used with heavily embargoed books, when advance copies are limited to an extremely select few reviewers and in-house personnel. EBook publishers had hoped to protect content from bootlegging with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial statute prohibiting the development of technologies that interfere with copyrighted material, but a lawsuit last year suggests these legal issues are still up in the air. Despite the risks of piracy, some mainstream and university press publishers are embracing the idea of digitizing back lists as a step toward creating a system where college students pay for downloaded texts, rather than just photocopy them. Of course, it was computer-savvy college kids who pioneered the whole peer-to-peer MP3-sharing free-for-all.

Now, academic texts aren't likely to fuel a roaring black market trade. And it's hard to imagine anyone going out of their way to pirate collections of literary short fiction or novels (bar the occasional cult figure like Thomas Pynchon or Neil Gaiman). But many categories clearly are vulnerable to piracy, such as self-help, travel guides, cookbooks, technical and reference books—all of which are designed to be used piecemeal rather than read all the way through. Digital versions of these books might actually make for easier use—you can efficiently search for a citation or pasta recipe.

And surely any timely or hotly anticipated book—political memoirs, blockbuster sequels, salacious tell-alls—is highly susceptible to future bootlegging; in the last few months alone, we've seen a sharp increase in publishers embargoing books, hoping to keep contents from seeping out in advance. Just imagine the wildfire Web circulation that would ensue if something like the recent Hillary memoir had somehow leaked in digitized form.

In fact, something equally dramatic has already occurred: A file containing The Order of the Phoenix, the most recent Harry Potter book, did make the rounds on the Internet just hours after the book went on sale, its 870 pages apparently scanned in and distributed by rabid fans. If this doesn't signal that it's time for book publisher to perk up and pay attention, what would?

How exactly would books escape in digitized form? When I worked as an editorial assistant in book publishing in the early '90s, we trafficked in paper manuscripts, and the main fear was leaks to Hollywood scouts. Now leaks are often considered an integral part of creating a buzz; when publishers aren't trying to keep contents to themselves, they're looking to leak them strategically. In some cases, agents and editors e-mail entire manuscripts around town. Even if something's sent out in old-school paper style, today's scanners can quickly convert a whole book to a format that's easily e-mailed or uploaded. That's apparently how Harry Potter pirates got The Order of the Phoenix online, scanning every one of its 870 pages manually. This takes longer than creating a sound file, and digital files don't look as good as a well-packaged book. But the visual experience of reading onscreen may soon improve drastically, thanks to new technology like the TabletPC—screens that are the same size as a piece of paper, more portable than a laptop, and have crisper imaging.

The old argument that no one likes reading on a computer has pretty much eroded. In the last five years or so, we have all become accustomed to reading newspapers online, not to mention the explosion of Web media—from blogs to the magazine you are looking at right now —that don't exist in print at all. This will only become more true not less true. Just because publishing people can't conceive of book piracy doesn't mean it can't happen.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086800/


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Droppin like a rock…

iTunes Sales Continue to Fall
Ciarán Tannam

iTunes have been one of the few pay for download services that have been very willing to release figures about sales since day 1. Any time anyone has asked for download figures they have been more than forthcoming with regard to weekly sales.

It is easy to accumulate these figures and come up with a sales pattern for iTunes.

In the first day April 28th iTunes sales were at 200,000 per day. By May 5th CNet were reporting that sales had topped 1,000,000 meaning 140,000 songs were been sold per day. By May 14th this figure had fallen to 125,000. While figures published in the The NY Times on May 28th translate the figure into 100,000 per day.

The decline continued from there. 5 million tracks had been sold by June 23rd meaning the average daily sales had now hit 89,000. The figure hit 6.5 million on July 22nd translating into 52,000 sales per day.

The sales figure may reflect seasonal variance and other launch hype related factors. However there is a clear decline in place and with iTunes still failing to sign up some big bands the perceived success of iTunes is not quite what all are making it out to be.

Figures complied with special thanks to John Willsey
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=208


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Eurocrats To Criminalise Buskers Singing "Yesterday"
Vendors can bend your mind
INQUIRER staff

OUR OLD MUCKER Rupert Goodwins at ZD Net pointed out in a column earlier this week that the proposed European IP Enforcement Directive is a broken crock at the end of a sepia rainbow.

Rupes says that the 54-page long document has lots of meat in there that could make €urocitizens' lives a living hell and get you banged up for such crimes as busking Yesterday in public – and so breaching copyright – as well as putting way too much power in the hand of vendors and way too little €urocitizens' way.

Some examples could include using non-Sony batteries with a Sony MP3 player, getting time in the slammer for finding out whether you've RFID tags in your clothes, or using unauthorised tyres on your Sinclair C6.

As Rupes points out, in his article here, it's turning intellectual property into thought crime.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10907


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Mouse Groomy! http://www.elecom.co.jp/news/200307/groomy-mouse/


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Opera Claims Big Browser Download Breakthrough

Our stats show IE way up there
INQUIRER staff:

SMALL BUT perfectly formed Norwegian browser company Opera claims it's made a breakthrough and had a record number of downloads for its software.

It claims, according to Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, that it's user base is now near 10 million and rising.

The same article says Opera is going to have a record year in 2003. It's always nice to see a David slinging a stone at the Goliaths of this world.

An investigation of the INQ's July logs throws some fresh light on this phenomenon. We have many many millions of page views a month with readers from all over the world, and one of the functions shows the browsers used to visit this site.

That pretty clearly shows the way the browser cake is crumbling, we suspect. The log software we use has categories for Netscape Navigator and Netscape Compatible, while it doesn't break down what the "others" are, and also includes some oddities, such as Real Player G2, which however are tiny fractions of the big ones.

· Microsoft Internet Explorer 76.2%
· Netscape Navigator 17.53%
· Others 1.63%
· Netscape Compatible 3.16%
· Opera 1.57%
· Lynx 0.03%
· Web TV, OmniWeb, USR IE, Real Player G2, IWENG, NCSA Mosaic, Spry Air Mosaic The rest

So Opera looks like it's doing reasonably well, although the Others, whatever they are, are doing better. We use Web Trends software, which doesn't seem able to detect spoofing, so the results are of course, subject to critical analysis.

Because crafty little Opera can identify itself as Internet Explorer, if users so wish.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10886


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GPL May Be Unenforceable Under German Law

Study concludes liability of software developer community is unresolved issue
John Blau

DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY -- German has opened the doors wide open to open source software, with the federal government leading the charge. But users here could face some serious legal issues, according to Gerald Spindler, a professor of law at the Georg-August University in Göttingen.

Spindler was asked by the German software association Verband der Softwareindustrie Deutschland e.V. (VSI) to examine the legal implications of open source software. His 123-page, highly- detailed study comes to several conclusions that could make many existing and potential users of open source software think twice about running the increasingly popular "free" software on their computers. Among them: The General Public License has no legal validity in Germany.

It's worth noting that VSI is a lobby group for closed source software vendors and that any report from this camp is likely to be critical of open source.

However, Spindler, a well-known authority on legal issues concerning e-commerce, the Internet, and telecommunication, and vice chairman of the German Society of Law and Information Science, claims no association with VSI in the way of past or present employment or sponsorship.

His study, "Rechtsfragen der Open Source Software," is currently available in German at: http:// http://www.vsi.de/inhalte/aktuell/st...inal_safe.pdf. Spindler can be reached at: lehrstuhl.spindler@jura.uni-goettingen.de

Interview mit Herr Professor http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...ceable_1.html.


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POP MUSIC

Now Fans Call The Tune

The same era that has vexed the recording industry has brought more control to the consumer.
Geoff Boucher

If you stroll down to the newest store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, you will find an elaborate mobile in the front window that spins gently as customers and the coastal breeze come through the door.

Revolving on the arms of that mobile are album covers that suggest a music boutique with a zeal for the eclectic — there's the Who, Willie Nelson, the Ramones, Marvin Gaye, 50 Cent, the Flaming Lips and dozens of others. Inside, though, you will find no CDs, much less vinyl, and with a bit of romantic license, you could imagine it's the winds of revolution that make those album covers dance.

The shop is the new Apple Store, and in its sleek interior you will find the computer company's hardware as well as assorted gear and software. The albums in the front window are essentially an advertisement for a music store that exists only in the digital ether of the Internet and sells songs for 99 cents apiece. It's called iTunes, which you may or may not know firsthand but probably have at least heard about via a series of engaging television commercials with bubbly fans singing their favorite hits.

In a music world in upheaval, iTunes, with its paid downloads of music, is the closest thing to an interim government in the lawless land created by Napster and its revolutionary ilk, and while its future is uncertain there is no denying that the real estate on Third Street in Santa Monica is a foothold in a brash new world.

The sunny visions of those Apple commercials are hard to reconcile with the gloom and doom that have been pervasive in the music industry in recent years. The grim chorus is now as familiar to the public as any Top 40 hit: Piracy has gutted profits, CD sales are going steadily south for the first time since the format was introduced in the 1980s, corporate conglomeration has stultified any art in the commerce of record labels, radio and the concert business.

All of that is true, and in private even the titans of the business express fears that probably echo the anxious mutterings of railroad barons in the days when Model Ts began rolling down the line. But here is the funny thing lost in the histrionics: Today may be the very best time to be a music fan, especially one looking for a connection to a favorite artist or guidance and access to the exotic or rare.

Be it the iPod (the popular Apple portable digital player), alluring satellite radio services such as XM, the fan-beloved minutiae posted on Web sites, the availability of live music performances on AOL, the esoteric music videos streaming off Launch.com or the self-tailored satisfaction of burning a homemade mix on CD at home, there is a singular zest to the modern fan experience today.

All that has been flummoxing to the formal music industry, which has little control or obvious major profit source in any of the above. Mainly because, in the past five years, the experience of being a music consumer has been increasingly determined by that consumer, not the artist or the industry.

The big screen has a map of the United States and, with a click of a mouse, it is filled with red dots, more than 50,000 of them, spread through every state but clustered in metropolitan areas like hot spots on a thermal chart. The dots represent music fans, mostly teens, mostly male, and they are part of a curious and potent community that finds its hub at the Web site of StreetWise Concepts & Culture. StreetWise uses the members to market and promote bands, new films, video games and anything else that skews toward youth, and the members in turn get cool merchandise, backstage passes and, most interestingly, a big say in the shaping of products and projects before they reach the public.

The company is the brainchild of David "Beno" Benveniste, also the manager for System of a Down. The early grass-roots promotion of that band led to the StreetWise model, but now the company has been contracted to use the same "viral" approach for Radiohead, Nokia, Coca-Cola, NASCAR and many others. The lifestyle and wants of the new music fan may be a riddle to major record companies, but they are the basic programming at StreetWise.

"Look, the kids are so smart these days, they can find, retrieve, disseminate, produce any piece of music or technology now on the Internet. They can take a song, send it to a friend in North Africa, remix it how they want, make their own video for it and make it their own. And that technology makes them so powerful. It's not about the radio programmers anymore or promoters. It's about a kid in homeroom in Iowa now. Everything is different now."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Ween Thrives on the Web
Neil Strauss

The first time I met the eclectic rock duo Ween was at a diner in southern New Jersey just over 10 years ago. It was not long after Nirvana had a surprise hit with "Smells Like Teen Spirit," so record labels everywhere were scrambling to sign college-rock bands, even if, like Ween, they had nothing to do with grunge.

Ween at the time was simply two old friends in their early 20's, Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman (nicknamed Dean and Gene Ween, respectively), who spent a lot of time in their crude home studio, hastily recording odes (at various tape speeds and in different musical styles) to mononucleosis, Mexican food and pumping gas. Excited at having just been signed to Elektra Records, the pair were looking through the diner jukebox to find their labelmates — the Doors, Queen and, a particular Ween favorite, Bread. "How cool is that?" Mr. Melchiondo said, as he realized that he would be part of the Elektra legacy.

Like most pop dreams, the reality was very different. Today, Mr. Melchiondo and Mr. Freeman are celebrating a new turning point in their career: their separation from Elektra Records.

"Anything is going to be better than Elektra was," Mr. Freeman said on Tuesday, speaking by telephone from a tour stop in New Hampshire. "They just didn't do anything."

The door Nirvana opened has long been slammed shut. Most of the surviving alternative bands that were signed to major labels in the wake of the Seattle frenzy (and that, like Ween, were never built for mainstream success) have returned to releasing music independently for a core niche audience. But something has changed between the early 90's and their present-day return to independence: the Internet. Bands no longer need the resources of a record label to stay in touch with their fans, deliver new music to them and make a living.

Since leaving Elektra Records, Ween put out two CD's of live recordings on their Web site, www.ween.com. "On Elektra our best-selling record sold 200,000 copies or more," Mr. Melchiondo said. "But we still owe all this money to the label. Then we sold just five or ten thousand CD's through our Web site and raised $100,000 to make our new album."

Ween is well suited to the Internet. It makes a lot of music quickly, and, unlike most other acts, doesn't mind the songs being freely traded. On the group's Web site, its music is played 24 hours a day. And the band is currently finishing an innovative file-sharing software package that will allow fans to trade Ween files without restriction. The program's working name was Weenamp until the band received a cease-and-desist letter from AOL Time Warner, which owns the Winamp music player.

"Ween has gotten more popular because of our giving attitude," Mr. Melchiondo said. "You can bring a film crew to a Ween concert and do a seven-camera shoot and nobody would stop you."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/ar...ic/07POPL.html











Until next week,

- js.









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Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17108 August 2nd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17051 July 26th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16975 July 19th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16893 July 12th





Jack Spratts’ Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts at lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.
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