Net Cafe Loses Music Download Dispute - Owner Plans Appeal
Bernhard Warner
Reuters - A High Court judge Tuesday found the EasyInternet Cafe chain guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet and copy it onto a CD for $8.16.
The summary judgment brings to a close an 18-month feud between the major music labels and the popular Internet cafe chain built by Greek entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of low-cost airline easyJet Plc.
The UK trade group, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), with member music labels Sony Music, EMI and Universal Music, took the Internet chain to court last year, charging it with copyright infringement.
EasyInternet suspended the commercial service in September 2001. In court it said it should not be held liable for customers downloading copyright-protected materials, a defense rejected by the judge, Justice Peter Smith.
The music industry, which has been fighting an all-out war on illicit CD-copying and Internet downloading, blaming it for falling CD sales, hailed Tuesday's decision.
"Illegal copying jeopardizes the livelihoods of artists and song writers, as well as putting at risk the thousands of jobs directly and indirectly created by the recording and publishing of music," Peter Jamieson, BPI Chairman, said in a statement.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2122494
BBC News - Mr Haji-Ioannou has signalled his intention to appeal against the judgement.
He told BBC News Online he believed the judge sitting in the case had ignored a defence just because it would "open a can of worms" for the music industry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/2702071.stm
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Kazaa strikes back at Hollywood, labels
John Borland
Sharman Networks, owner of the popular Kazaa file-swapping software, has launched a legal counterstrike against the major record labels and Hollywood studios, asserting that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.
In a lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, Sharman claims that major entertainment companies have colluded to drive potential online rivals out of business. The conduct should preclude the industry from being able to defend its copyrights in court, at least until the behavior is corrected, Sharman contends.
The lawsuit is a counterstrike by Sharman, which has been sued for allegedly contributing to massive online copyright infringement. Last week , a federal judge ruled that record companies and movie studios could proceed with their lawsuit against Sharman.
The entertainment industry considers Sharman to be as much an outlaw as Napster and Aimster, two file-sharing services that have been shuttered. But Sharman executives say their business is fundamentally different because the company was created to take advantage of legal online distribution.
“What the industry is incapable of doing is realizing that Kazaa is different,” said Sharman attorney Rod Dorman. “Now (they) have got to face the legal consequences.”
The lawsuit marks a significant development in the most critical online copyright case since the disappearance of Napster. Sharman is being sued along with Grokster and Morpheus parent Streamcast Networks. The popularity of Kazaa, the leading file-trading service in the United States, has brought it to the top of copyright holders’ list of online enemies.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982344.html
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New group wants Congress to oppose Hollywood technology mandates
Jon Newtron
MPAA boss Honest Jack Valenti's feelings are deeply hurt.
Why's that?
Because nearly 30 ungrateful tech firms, consumer groups and trade organizations have banded together as
the Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) to fight attempts to, "force the government to design and mandate technology solutions to digital piracy".
"I am shaking my head in wonderment at this million-dollar campaign to deride us," said Jack in a statement.
And why should that be?
Many of the proposals the ADP are against would allow US government minions to decide precisely what 'anti- piracy' technological measures would be used for consumer electronics systems, including computers.
Cynics believe 'anti-piracy' is actually a euphemism for packages such as Broadcast Flag largely dreamed up by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) - not to mention the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Rather than stopping piracy, they think, the techologies would in fact allow Hollywood to control what consumers see, here and do, make sure they can only do it on entertainment industry approved systems AND provide the industry with hitherto confidential data on what, where, how and when consumers are using their entertainment products.
http://www.p2pnet.net/running/adp.html
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How the net leaves itself open to attack
BBC Technology
The net is making itself unnecessarily vulnerable to crippling attacks, warn experts. Analysis of the queries sent to one of the net's core address books show that 98% of them could have been handled by other parts of the network. Dealing with these queries on the outer reaches of the net rather than at its core could help limit the damage of concerted attacks on key servers say experts.
The report and advice comes as the net recovers from the damage wrought by the Slammer worm that exploited holes in Microsoft software.
Your computer knows where to go to get the webpage you want by consulting one of 13 root servers. These translate the text address you type into your browser into a numerical one the net understands. These fast, powerful computers possess lists of the location of other servers holding records of the exact location of the net's many websites. As the master address books the 13 servers are an obvious choke point for the net and have already had been attacked en masse.
Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have analysed traffic received by one root server on 4 October last year and found that it spent most of its time dealing with unnecessary queries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2699071.stm
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Pirates copy Oscar judges' DVDs
BBC News
Pirated copies of the latest Lord of the Rings DVD are flooding into the UK after they were made from a disc sent to Oscar judges. Voters for the Academy Awards are sent copies of all the films in the running, but it is under the strict condition that they are not copied in any way.
More than 10,000 illegal reproductions of the fantasy film have already been seized in Britain, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said. Fact said these direct digital copies were a much better quality than traditional pirated movies, which are usually made using a handheld video camera to record the film during a screening.
The only thing which gives their origins away is a "for your consideration" Academy Award message that pops up every 15 minutes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...lm/2699357.stm
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DivX software delivers movable media
Stefanie Olsen
DivXNetworks unveiled a new version of its compression technology that promises to let Internet users shrink video files on the PC to play back on a range of consumer electronics devices.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982771.html?tag=fd_top
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Developer to revive iTunes P2P
Matthew Broersma
The developer of a peer-to-peer file-sharing plug-in for Apple Computer's iTunes music application has decided to give the software a new lease on life, after it was put out of commission by the computer maker's lawyers earlier this month.
Two weeks ago, Apple ordered developer James Speth to return his iTunes software developer kit and to stop distributing the iCommune plug-in for iTunes. The plug-in allowed iTunes to play or download music from other Macs via a network or Internet connection, potentially giving the music player a peer-to-peer feature.
In a recent message sent to iCommune users, Speth said that he will honor Apple's request to stop distributing his software, but he will build the same features into a standalone application. The next version of iCommune will work with iTunes and potentially other digital music players and will use Rendezvous, Apple's implementation of a protocol for automatic discovery of network-connected devices.
Speth also said that the new version will be open source under the General Public License, the same license used by the GNU/Linux operating system. Open-source software can be freely modified and redistributed, as long as the modified code is returned to the community.
"I'm going to get the basics of the next version done, then get it out the door, with source. Hopefully, from there it will take on a life of its own and get even better," Speth said in the message.
Apple itself has publicly demonstrated the use of Rendezvous to allow iTunes to access other playlists across a network, but has given no indication of when such a version of iTunes might appear. The current version 3 of the program shares playlists with other version 3 "iLife" applications, such as iMovie, iDVD and iCal.
ICommune differs from Apple's concept, however, in that it enables music downloads. Services such as Napster, Aimster, Morpheus and Kazaa have incurred the legal wrath of the music industry for enabling users to trade song files, which record companies say has resulted in mass piracy and declining CD sales.
However, Apple has said that legal fears played no part in its decision to pull the plug on iCommune. The proprietary iTunes software developer kit used by Speth was intended only for making iTunes connect to hardware devices, not to other Macs, according to Apple.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-982441.html
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First Taxis, Now Finnish Music Industry Wants Kindergartens to Pay
Erik, Section Articles
According to an AFP report (German derivative work thereof -
http://www.welt.de/data/2003/01/22/35015.html), the Finnish music industry is asking kindergartens to pay about 20 €uros per month in royalties for singing and performing copyright-protected songs. Marja-Leena Karjula of the national copyright agency Teosto is cited: "Royalties have to be paid for every work that is performed outside of private homes." In a similar vein, last year the Finnish music industry had forced taxi drivers to pay royalties for music played while driving (because passengers might be listening!).
Of course, copyright is not about freedom of speech at all. Those damn kindergarten thieves could always write their own songs. Gotta teach them about copyright while they're still young. Teosto probably took their lessons from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers which, in 1996, tried to force Girl Scout Camps to pay royalties for singing copyrighted songs -- such as "Happy Birthday" and "This Land is Your Land".
http://www.infoanarchy.org/story/2003/1/29/02755/7928
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Piracy not the burning issue in CD sales slide: ARIA
Colin Kruger
While Australian music sales dropped last year, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) concedes that online song-swapping and CD burning may not be to blame.
The message is a significant one from the music industry body, given that its international counterparts say piracy is the primary cause of a predicted 6 per cent fall in global CD sales this year - the fourth consecutive annual decline.
But the industry's statistics and rhetoric are starting to be challenged, with a range of experts finding a number of factors to blame for the down-turn - including the music industry itself.
On the surface, it looked like the global contagion of music piracy may have finally hit Australia, with CD sales dropping almost 5.5 per cent to just under 47 million for the 2002 calendar year.
The overall value of the music market (excluding DVDs and video) fell by 8.9 per cent from $629 million to $573 million. This compares with double-digit sales growth of CDs the previous year, and revenue growth of 8.4 per cent.
Music piracy certainly warranted a mention, but ARIA cited economic conditions and increased competition for the consumer's entertainment spend as culprits. And the proof was more conclusive.
ARIA chief executive Stephen Peach conceded that the industry had recorded a decline as recently as 1996, followed by some flat years since. On top of that, mobile phones and gaming systems have become expensive rivals to the music industry's crucial teenage market.
"I think it's important to recognise that there are other legitimate commercial pressures [on music sales]," Mr Peach said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...534039320.html
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Research project to develop light-speed nets
Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, will launch the Agile All-Photonic Networks Research Network on Jan. 30. The AAPN Research Network is aimed at providing the benefits of all-photonic, fibre optic networks to the telecommunications industry and eventually to all users of the Internet. It has been created by a grant from the government of Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/se...nology/techBN/
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Open Content Network Bows P2P Distribution
The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver large, freely- downloadable content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge "virtual web server" that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened web sites.
Using various web browser plug-ins, users can download open source and public domain software, movies, and music at incredibly fast speeds from this global, distributed network.
Using a new Peer-to-Peer technology, called the "Content-Addressable Web", indviduals will be able to help distribute free content by donating their spare bandwidth and disk space to the network.
Note: Contrary to what some articles may say, the OCN is not a file sharing network like Kazaa. Rather, it is a controlled content delivery network for legitimate freely-distributable content.
http://open-content.net/
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New Week, New Bug Fix. http://locut.us/
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"Xupiter is the worst thing I've ever personally encountered on the Internet,"
Sneaky Toolbar Hijacks Browsers
Michelle Delio
It's the most evil thing on the Internet, according to some of its victims. But it's not a virus, a scam or a raunchy porn site.
It's a browser toolbar that some swear is doing "drive-by downloads" -- installing itself without users' permission -- then taking over their systems and making it impossible to uninstall.
"When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I'd be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears," fumed one of Xupiter's many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.
Xupiter is an Internet Explorer toolbar program. Once active in a system, it periodically changes users' designated homepages to xupiter.com, redirects all searches to Xupiter's site, and blocks any attempts to restore the original browser settings.
The program attempts to download updates each time an affected computer boots up, and has been blamed for causing system crashes. Several versions of Xupiter also appear to download other programs, such as gambling games, which later appear in pop-up windows.
Some said that Xupiter has taken over their browsers.
"Random words and characters now appear when I attempt to enter info on search sites or other forms. It's as if there's a ghost in my machine," New York resident Beth Vanesky said.
Xupiter is also being bundled along with at least one peer-to-peer file sharing program. And the toolbar will install itself automatically when Internet Explorer's security settings aren't set to the highest level.
http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,57467,00.html
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Software innovator David Gelernter says the desktop is obsolete
Company looking at desktop software with P2P capability
Jack Vaughan
David Gelernter's Mirror Worlds Technologies Inc. recently announced the beta version of software aimed at vastly improving the end user's computer experience. Under development since Mirror Worlds was formed in 1997, and now available free for download, Scopeware Vision Professional is a visual information management system that resides above the OS and native file system, allowing users to use quick keyword searches to find ''stuff.''
Finding ''stuff'' may sound like a minor undertaking, but it is not. Finding stuff is becoming the biggest problems for users of desktop PCs. Early efforts to organize computer work, designed around development project software and desktop and file cabinet metaphors, may have reached the end of usefulness. So says Yale University computer scientist Gelernter, who has given the matter special attention.
In fact, the plague of ''unfindable stuff factor'' is gaining wider attention. The fact was observed last fall by none other than Bill Gates on a Comdex-week appearance on Charlie Rose's TV show. Gates told Rose he had set marching orders for Microsoft applications developers to improve the lot of the end user ferreting about for files.
Developers know the problem too well, and a slew of often-expensive development tools has grown up to meet just this need. These tools -- along with the famed Xerox Parc desktop metaphor -- formed the basis, said Gelernter, for the filing solutions we have today. But the metaphor or paradigm -- pick your favorite term -- is overtaxed.
''The icons, the windows and the mouse were great in 1978. They were still good in the early '80s, and they were still hanging in there with Windows 3.0 in 1990,'' said Gelernter. ''But now [this approach] is just outclassed and overwhelmed.''
''As e-mail and the Web became a big thing, it was clear that the hierarchical file systems and tools we've inherited from the '70s would not work,'' he continued. ''Stuff was sloshing around.''
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=7187
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Audio and video material the 'carrot' for home networking
Audio and video material is likely to be what draws the average consumer into home networking, according to a new report from In-Stat/MDR.
The report predicts that DVD players that can access PC video content to be played over the television will be the first mass market products to enable video-based home networking. Leading technologies in the home entertainment network area can expect to see exponential growth over the next three years.
In-Stat/MDR go on to warn, however, that in terms of devices, it is not yet clear whether the PC or consumer electronics cluster will take the leading role in the unfolding market for multimedia home entertainment.
It is also unclear which of the plethora of multimedia home network wiring and standards – including Wi-Fi, ethernet, power line, ultra wideband and phone line – will come to predominate. Brian O’Rourke, Senior Analyst of In-Stat/MDR, believes that given the need for high bandwidth, quality-of-service guarantees and content protection "It is extremely unlikely that multimedia, or Audio/Video, home networks will depend on only one of these options."
The education of consumers is also seen by the report as a key to the success of selling multimedia home entertainment networks. The report states that solutions will have to be simple enough for average consumers to install, or networking companies will have to work with service providers for installation.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=14661
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MPEG-4 on road to rights management
Stefanie Olsen
A streaming-media consortium set a schedule this week for finalizing technical specs for MPEG-4 security and rights management--components that are key to the open standard's adoption among content owners.
The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA)--a global group of companies including Apple Computer, Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems--formulated steps to advance MPEG-4 into its final stages. MPEG-4 is a standard for compressing large audio and video files for delivery over digital multimedia platforms including Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group, the same group that designed MPEG-2 for digital television and MP3 for music files.
First, the ISMA will open for review its technical specifications for the encryption and authentication of MPEG-4-compatible files at the National Broadcasters Association annual convention in April. It plans to set the standard by the end of the second quarter. Second, it will introduce a certification program that lets companies obtain an ISMA trademark proving that their products are interoperable with the standard.
Finally, it has formed a content advisory board, which will direct the specification for digital rights management, one of the biggest hurdles to clear before content owners freely embrace the emerging standard. Members of the board have yet to be announced, but ISMA president Tom Jacobs said the group has talked with all the major Hollywood studios and the Motion Picture Association of America about the specification.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982467.html
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AOL loses Ted Turner and $99 billion
By Jim Hu
Ted Turner is resigning as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner, capping a tumultuous year for the beleaguered media giant.
The announcement came just shortly after the company reported a net loss of $98.7 billion for 2002. Those results included a $45.5 billion fourth-quarter charge related primarily to depreciation in the value of its America Online (AOL) unit, as well as a first-quarter charge of $54 billion in accordance with accounting rules changes that took effect last year.
Revenues for the fourth quarter increased 8 percent to $11.4 billion from the same period last year, compared with Wall Street estimates of $11.2 billion, according to a consensus of analysts polled by First Call.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBIDTA) for the quarter rose 16 percent to $2.8 billion, on the strength of double-digit growth at all of the company's divisions, except for AOL, where EBITDA declined. EBIDTA is one of the most closely watched measures of the performance of media companies.
In a surprising turn of events, the company said Turner would step down in May, joining a long list of executives who've departed in the two years since AOL took over Time Warner. Intended to create a powerhouse of old and new media, the deal instead set off a bitter corporate struggle between the two sides when much-hyped "synergies" failed to materialize.
AOL founder Steve Case earlier this month said he would step down as chairman, also in May, under pressure from unhappy investors including Turner, sources close to the company have said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982648.html
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EarthLink to cut 25 percent of jobs
Ben Charny
Internet service provider EarthLink said Tuesday that it plans to lay off a quarter of its work force.
The United States' third-largest ISP plans to make the 1,300 job cuts in "technical support and customer service," the company said in a statement posted on its Web site. It currently employs about 5,100 people.
In the statement, the ISP said it plans to close call centers in Dallas, in Sacramento, Calif., and in Seattle from Feb. 21 to March 23. A facility in Pasadena, Calif., will also be shut down, though the company did not disclose a schedule for this.
"We are regularly faced with new business challenges in an increasingly competitive environment," EarthLink CEO Garry Betty told employees in an e-mail message seen by CNET News.com. "To be successful, we must continually evaluate our business alternatives and be willing to make the decisions necessary to ensure the long-term growth and profitability of EarthLink."
In recent months, EarthLink has lost momentum in its core dial-up business while concentrating heavily on broadband, and critics have questioned whether it has lost the tight focus on quality that established its original reputation.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-982487.html
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EFA outraged over possible ISP liability changes
Electronic Frontiers Australia has expressed outrage over media reports suggesting that the US may pressure the Australian government to remove recently-enacted legislative protection for ISPs.
The report, which appeared in American publisher Ruper Murdoch's national daily, The Australian, indicates that the US considers the matter of ISPs being held liable for the material carried via their services is "on the table" for discussion as part of a free trade agreement "harmonising" "key legislation on commerce" between Australia and the US.
Recently, an American ISP was ordered by a court to provide the name of one of its subscribers who was alleged to have downloaded music via the P2P software, Kazaa. The court order was issued following pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America.
The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides (in part) that ISPs can be held legally liable for content carried via their services unless they act to remove or block access to the content upon receipt of a complaint, which can be issued by any person or company that claims the content violates their intellectual property rights.
"In the four years since the DMCA became law in the United States, it has become a tool of censorship and harassment in the hands of big business," said EFA board member Dale Clapperton.
"By making ISPs legally liable unless they comply with demands to remove material from their networks, it encourages a 'delete first,
ask questions later' policy, which can sometimes see entire web sites deleted on the basis of frivolous, vexatious or unjustified complaints."
The EFA said recently major US chain stores, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart, used complaints under the DMCA to have merchandise pricing for their Thanksgiving sales removed from a web site.
"ISPs are not experts in copyright law, and should not be required to make judgements on the merits of a claim of copyright infringement, especially where inaction could mean a lawsuit against the ISP itself," Clapperton said.
"There exists ample recourse under existing Australian copyright law for intellectual property holders to prevent the publication of material which they claim violates their rights. The proper venue for these types of complaints is a court of law, and the proper remedy is an injunction against publication of the content."
"There is simply no justification for a 'ten-minute takedown' such as the DMCA provides. It only encourages frivolous, vexatious and specious claims of copyright infringement," he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...804451214.html
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Lossless Open Source Music Compressor
Many moons ago, the Ogg project started with a codec called 'Squish.' Squish was an attempt to build a royalty-free lossless audio codec. Someone had a trademark on the word 'Squish,' so the name was changed to 'Ogg Squish.' This was an extremely minor setback, but there was another obstacle to the project on the horizon.
In September of 1998, Fraunhofer IIS sent out 'letters of infringement' to several MPEG audio layer 3 development projects, and focus quickly changed to develop an alternative to mp3. The Ogg Vorbis project was born.
Back To The Future
While we were busy working on our own stuff, several projects popped up to embrace different aspects of open and free multimedia. One of the most impressive was FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC does what Squish was supposed to do. More importantly, with version 1.1.0 now released to the universe, it's a more-than-capable full- featured codec that's ready for prime-time.
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/flac.html
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I’ll take mine with a twist. AquaLime, a Limewire Lite, has released v2.86b.
http://fileportal.sprycha.com/module...rder=0&thold=0
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Marketing Tool May Explain Affirmative Action
Could also help P2Ps
Virginia Postrel
DECIDING which shampoo or toothpaste to buy seems a long way from the emotionally charged debate over affirmative action. But an analytical tool developed by marketing scholars to analyze how consumers make brand choices can in fact illuminate that debate.
People have limited time, memory and attention. So when they make buying decisions, they simplify their choices.
"On the shelf you may have 30, 40 brands of shampoo, or 20, 30 brands of toothpaste," explained Jagdish N. Sheth, a marketing professor at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University. But consumers don't take the time to examine every possible choice.
Rather, they reduce their selection to a smaller set of options, based on experience and exposure. "Through learning over time, consumers are really efficient in terms of reducing their transaction costs," Professor Sheth said.
In the 1960's, he and John A. Howard, the Columbia University marketing scholar who died in 1999, developed the idea of the "evoked set" to describe this process of selection.
"The way this information is recorded in memory can influence consumers' preference for brands, and whether the brand will be considered for purchase," Barbara E. Kahn and Leigh McAlister, two marketing professors, wrote in "Grocery Revolution" (Addison Wesley, 1997).
If, for instance, a store arranges yogurt first by brand (like Dannon and Yoplait) and then by flavor within each brand, consumers will tend to select their flavors from the same brand.
On the other hand, the authors write, "If the products had been displayed with all the strawberry yogurts together, then all the lemon-lime yogurts, and so forth, consumers would most likely choose which flavors they wanted first, and then choose which brand name they would most like for that particular flavor."
Similarly, American supermarkets display meats by animal type — beef, chicken, pork, etc. — and then by cut. In Australia, by contrast, grocers arrange meats by the way they might be cooked, and stores use more descriptive labels, like "a 10-minute herbed beef roast." The result is that Australians buy a greater variety of meats.
How we classify goods changes how we make consumer choices. "The composition of the set of final possibilities can have subtle effects on choice," write Professor Kahn of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor McAlister of the University of Texas at Austin. As a result, "brand choices can be influenced without changing the actual preference for a brand per se, but merely by changing the content of the consideration set."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/business/30SCEN.html
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Mr. Bernard acknowledged that there was something odd about transferring digital music files to a physical format, then using one of the world's oldest and slowest communications systems to send it out.
For the Mix Tape, a Digital Upgrade and Notoriety
David Gallagher
THREE or four times a week, Joshua Bernard opens his mailbox and finds a package sent to him by someone he has never met. Inside are homemade CD compilations of music that he often knows little about. The discs have featured big bands, death metal and even some Hawaiian music. The ukuleles did not scare him off.
"You know, it was great," said Mr. Bernard, a Web designer who lives near Boston. "I'm not going out to get the entire Don Ho box set or anything, but it was a refreshing exposure to music that I wouldn't necessarily go out and look for."
That kind of personal introduction to new sounds is a big part of the appeal of mix-CD swapping, an increasingly popular hobby that has spawned an online subculture. Mr. Bernard is the organizer of a typical group of swappers. It has 13 active members who are each assigned a month in which they are to send a mix to the rest of the group. The result is something like file sharing meets pirate radio, transmitted by the Postal Service.
Homemade mixes have long been a part of pop music culture. For many music fans past their college years, the mere sight of a mix on cassette tape can be enough to bring back memories of old crushes and road trips. But now the cassette is on its deathbed, CD burners are standard equipment on many PC's and hard drives are loaded with digital music files ready for burning. This may be the golden age of the mix CD.
Of course, this is also the golden age of copyright infringement, and the music industry is using technological and legal measures to crack down on piracy. The industry views most forms of copying as theft, and it sees little difference between making a mix CD for a friend and copying an entire album to sell on the street.
Frank Creighton, who directs antipiracy efforts for the Recording Industry Association of America, said that money did not have to be involved for copying to be illegal. While mixes on cassette tapes may not have inspired the wrath of the record industry in the past, Mr. Creighton said, digital mixes have better sound quality. And given the proliferation of CD burning for friends and relatives, "it would be naïve of us to say that we should allow that type of activity," he said.
Mix makers counter that they are not hurting the music industry and are perhaps even doing it a favor by helping lesser-known artists get heard. Some fear that in its zeal to stop piracy, the industry could take away freedoms that music buyers have enjoyed for years, possibly hurting itself in the process.
"The mix CD is really a great promotional opportunity for bands that aren't going to be on the radio," said Fred von Lohmann, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which campaigns against limits on digital technologies. Mr. von Lohmann, who is a member of two mix-swapping groups, said he recently bought a CD by a band called the Donnas and found that the disc's copy protection prevented him from playing it on his computer. That meant he was unable to put the band's music on a mix.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30mixx.html
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Eclectic Favorites of a Mix Master
Jim Januszewski selected a few favorites from among the thousands of mix CD's that visitors have contributed to his site, Art of the Mix (artofthemix.org):
A Warped Romance
Theme: Song titles form a mini-drama.
Mix maker: Jere Chandler, Birmingham, Ala.
Sample tracks: The Smiths, "What Difference Does It Make?"; The Darling Buds, "It Makes No Difference"; Archers of Loaf, "What Did You Expect?"; Roxy Music, "More Than This."
Twenty Mortal Murders:
Macbeth
Theme: A mix that follows the plot of "Macbeth." Quotations from Orson Welles's 1948 film adaptation are interspersed between the songs.
Mix maker: Randy Gatley, Vancouver, B.C.
Sample tracks: Richard Hell and the Voidoids, "Betrayal Takes Two"; Howlin' Wolf, "Moanin' at Midnight"; The Clash, "Somebody Got Murdered"; The Fall, "There's a Ghost in My House."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30fave.html
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Always online? See if your copy of XP is susceptible to “Messenger Service” spam.
www.mynetwatchman.com/winpopup.asp.
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No baloney
Record Performance at Sony - Profits Double
Ken Belson
The Sony Corporation reported today that its profits doubled, to a record, in the October-to-December quarter as sales of its PlayStation 2 video games and a string of hit movies offset lukewarm demand for its electronics.
The company's prospects this year, though, are clouded by a potential downturn in consumer spending in the United States and other big markets and continued pressure from competitors to cut prices of digital cameras, computers and other gadgets. Analysts also warn that Sony's movie studio and games operations are unlikely to continue their record performance in 2003.
Last year, though, Sony's fortunes were lifted by a strong showing during an otherwise lackluster holiday season. Sony sold 42 percent more PlayStation 2 game consoles in North America during November and December as cumulative sales worldwide topped 50 million. Sony's movie studio also had record ticket sales of $2.75 billion last year thanks to hit movies like "Spider- Man" and "Men in Black II." Sony also earns a royalty when the movies are sold as DVD's and videos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/bu...9CND-SONY.html
Citing Health, Sony Chief Steps Down
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/bu...ss/29SONY.html
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The dinuclear ruthenium done it.
Make up your mind. Two-Tone LEDs glow different colors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30next.html
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Kewl. New Printer Does Discs
Ian Austen
High-speed CD-ROM drives provide faster data transfers, but they can run into trouble with self-adhesive CD labels. At high rotational speeds, the weight of the labels can throw the discs off balance, causing unpleasant vibration or even damaging the drive. Advised by manufacturers to avoid stick-on labels, most people have reverted to scribbling on their discs with a marker.
Soon users of Epson's Stylus Photo 960 printer ($349) will be able to apply their artwork and typography to home-burned CD's without worry. The Photo 960, which already had an unusual flat paper path, is to include a tray that will accept a single CD or DVD for printing. (The discs, of course, do not bend.)
The printer, which includes software for creating the labels, will be shipped with the CD attachment starting in March. People who now own the Photo 960 printer or who buy one before the CD kit is included will be able to obtain the parts and software at no charge from Epson by contacting the company through its Web site,
www.epsonstore.com.
There is a catch. Parker Plaisted, Epson's product manager for photo imaging, said the system works only with special inkjet-printable discs, which tend to be more expensive than ordinary discs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30prin.html
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What’ll it be, Bub?
Movies or Music Files? A Jukebox Does Double Duty
J.D. Biersdorfer
First there was audio and then there was video. As television followed radio, the personal jukebox, once a mere music player, has progressed from spinning out MP3 tunes to playing video clips. The Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20 comes with a color liquid crystal display screen right on the front to display digital photographs and play video clips in the MPEG-4 format.
The Multimedia Jukebox 20, which has a built-in microphone and ports for stereo inputs, can both play and record MP3 files. Its rechargeable battery can play up to seven hours of music between charges. Its color screen, which measures 237 by 234 pixels, can display photographs in the JPEG and BMP formats. The unit can also be connected to a television set for viewing the stored pictures on the big screen.
The jukebox, which works with most Windows and Macintosh systems, is 4.3 inches high by 3.1 inches wide and is about 1 inch thick. It has a suggested price of $390 and can be bought in stores or at
www.archos.com. The jukebox has a 20-gigabyte hard drive, enough for 5,000 MP3 songs or up to 40 hours of video - which should be enough to keep one entertained through even the longest waits in the airport or doctor's office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/te...ts/30vide.html
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Kewl, 2
Follow Me Audio
Jim Dalrymple
Difusi Corp. on Thursday announced a new line of products the company will produce in time for Macworld Conference & Expo in New York this coming July. Difusi, best known to Mac users as the company that makes Speaker Grilles for various Mac systems, is developing a technology codenamed FMA or Follow Me Audio.
Difusi is making an audio appliance that utilizes the Bluetooth wireless spectrum to distribute digitally encoded audio streams to a decoding application. Difusi President Michael Wright says the company's appliance has been developed to accept audio streams from a variety of Bluetooth compliant devices such as cell phones, personal computers, MP3 players and others.
Difusi has been developing its proprietary audio code to include a separate encode/decode or I/O that will communicate back to the Bluetooth enabled device and offer a variety of sound level, peer-to-peer control features and enhancements that enable devices to transmit audio over a range of multiple speakers that can be added to the application.
Wright explained how the system would work with a portable MP3 player. "To illustrate the features, picture walking into a room with an MP3 player and hearing your music playback without wires while the audio follows you room to room, fading out from one set of speakers and fading in seamlessly to another, that are set to receive and decode the audio stream," Wright said.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0301/30.difusi.php
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In Japan
Music file-sharing on Internet illegal, court rules
TOKYO — The Tokyo District Court said in an interim ruling Wednesday that an online music file-sharing service by MMO Japan Ltd has violated the Copyright Law, supporting the Japanese music industry's stance.
The decision follows the court's April 2002 injunction, which banned the Tokyo-based company's Internet file-swapping service in favor of the defendants — the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and 19 member labels.
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content...at=2&id=247605
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Australia
What’s left of copyright?
Lynne Spender
The battle lines are being drawn between copyright and copyleft proponents—but what are they fighting about?
Behind the seemingly rational, if slow, changes to copyright law to accommodate new technologies, tensions are now beginning to run high. At issue is the copyright owners’ right to control their works in the digital environment and the public’s right to have access to them.
In the copyright corner are the big publishing and production companies that are increasingly using watermarking, encryption, and other forms of security like embedded zoning systems in DVDs to restrict access to digital works and prevent piracy. In the copyleft corner are creators who want people to have free access to their work and users who are concerned that technological security measures will seriously damage the free flow of ideas. They point out that new technologies are undermining copyright law’s fair dealing provisions that have previously allowed access to copyright works for purposes such as research and study, criticism, and review.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ent...0271643,00.htm
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Embrace file-sharing, or die
A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can't be wrong.
Editor's note: John Snyder is president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee. On Thursday night, he submitted the following paper to NARAS.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Snyder and Ben Snyder
Feb. 1, 2003 | The following was written in response to a discussion by the board of governors of the New York chapter of National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) regarding the position NARAS should take with respect to a new public relations campaign proposed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) condemning those who download music from the Internet.
The subject of digital rights, and the position NARAS should take with respect to it, is near and dear to me. I've read a great deal about it. If I may, I would like to offer a few thoughts:
I. Intellectual Property
Irrespective of what we think should be done, it is still currently illegal to download copyrighted music that you didn't buy. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. The statistic discussed in the December meeting that there were 3 billion downloads the previous month shows that the law is going to have to be changed, unless you take the position that downloaded music is stealing and thereby criminalize the society. But how can 50 million people (over 200 million worldwide) be wrong? How do we reconcile the reality of downloaded music with the idea of intellectual property?
Intellectual property has not always been defined and protected as it is today. Thomas Jefferson wrote about the philosophical considerations:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
The above quote appeared in John Perry Barlow's excellent essay, "The Economy of Ideas," published first in the March 1994 issue of Wired magazine. Barlow writes:
"If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?
"Since we don't have a solution to what is a profoundly new kind of challenge, and are apparently unable to delay the galloping digitization of everything not obstinately physical, we are sailing into the future on a sinking ship.
"This vessel, the accumulated canon of copyright and patent law, was developed to convey forms and methods of expression entirely different from the vaporous cargo it is now being asked to carry. It is leaking as much from within as from without.
"Legal efforts to keep the old boat floating are taking three forms: a frenzy of deck chair rearrangement, stern warnings to the passengers that if she goes down, they will face harsh criminal penalties, and serene, glassy-eyed denial.
"Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted, or expanded to contain digitized expression any more than real estate law might be revised to cover the allocation of broadcasting spectrum..."
The entire concept of intellectual property needs to be reexamined, and ways of protecting it need to reconsidered. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry has, by legislative crook and judicial hook, obtained a 20-year copyright extension. The Supreme Court recently upheld the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)" that extended the life of existing copyrights an additional 20 years. This, in the face of Justice Steven G. Breyer's estimation that only 2 percent of works copyrighted between 1923 and 1942 are available to the general public. The Supreme Court case pitted the public against Disney, whose early Mickey Mouse cartoons were to enter into the public domain in 2003, and for whom Congress drafted the legislation in the first place.
This is a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself. So, instead of creating new content and allowing long-standing laws to work, the entertainment business frantically seeks to manipulate the process to its own ends. And it does this with the obsequiousness of penurious politicians and a supinely acquiescent Supreme Court. That is the best the establishment has to offer, and it has nothing to do with progress or the good of the society.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ing_manifesto/
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Ain’t making it up
Carriers Face 'Britney' Dilemma
It's a dilemma facing all of today's mobile operators: How do you handle the charging and billing process if a customer downloads a video clip, or some other content, that crashes half way through or is incomplete when played back?
This headache is so common, it seems, that is has been given its very own term. "It's known in the business as the 'Half of Britney' problem," according to John Aalbers, director of next-generation solutions business at mediation and settlement company Intec Telecom Systems plc.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=27599
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One small step for a teleporter, a giant leap for teleportation.
Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber
Kenneth Chang
Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.
Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.
The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.
"The central issue is to move to telecom fibers and telecom wavelengths and telecom technology," said Dr. Nicolas Gisin, a physics professor at the University of Geneva and the senior author of an article today in the journal Nature. "This then allows us to go the long distance."
The experiments are a primitive realization of the transporter in the "Star Trek" television series that beams people from starship to planet. In coming years, it may be possible to use teleportation to imprint the exact quantum configuration of one atom to another. But teleporting something from the everyday world like a person that contains more than a trillion trillion atoms is highly unlikely, if not impossible.
Even with the light particles, photons, about one in a thousand were received at the other side.
"You're not very sure to arrive," a researcher, Dr. Hugo Zbinden, said about human teleportation.
Still, the experiments show that scientists can overcome a seemingly insurmountable conceptual barrier, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The principle states that the location and velocity of a particle cannot both be precisely measured at the same time. That would seem to make it impossible to teleport anything, even single particles, because without knowing their exact specifications they cannot be copied somewhere else.
Devised in 1993 by scientists led by Dr. Charles H. Bennett of the I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., quantum teleportation produces pairs of "entangled" light particles that can be thought of as a pair of encoding and decoding rings. A message is combined with the encoding light particle. That combination goes to the recipient, who uses the decoding photon to decipher the message. Because no one else has the decoding photon, no one else can decipher the message.
Other encoding techniques using quantum cryptography are simpler, and a more immediate use for teleportation would be as a repeater. Photons almost all peter out after traveling about 50 miles through optical fiber. Teleportation would enable the creation of copies every 50 miles or so, letting the message be sent across an unlimited distance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/science/30TELE.html
Top 10 downloads,
Music
Source:Bigchampange
Until next week,
-
js.
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