[JackSpratts]

I Know What You Downloaded From Freenet
Thomas C Greene

Exclusive The Freenet Project (http://freenetproject.org/) has been around since 2000. It was designed as a stealthy P2P network (some have called it a "darknet") that distributes its content so broadly that it's impossible to censor.

There are a number of security features in Freenet that other P2P networks lack. Because data that the network's various nodes exchange is encrypted, it's difficult, though not impossible, for an outside observer to know what's being passed between two nodes. It is also nearly impossible to identify the author of a Freesite, or to identify the person responsible for inserting content into the network, unless they wish to be known. Most importantly, it's nearly impossible for an outside attacker to determine whether a given node is requesting the data being sent to it, or is merely relaying it to another node.

These layers of obscurity and limited anonymity are what enable Freenet participants to exchange information freely. Content that is illegal, whether rightly or wrongly, flows freely through the network, cached on thousands of computers worldwide.

Who knows where that stuff came from?

Each participant necessarily operates a Freenet node, which caches encrypted data that has either been requested by that node's owner, or requested by other Freenet nodes. That is, one's node will cache data that it is merely proxying for others. Caching enables the broad distribution of content that makes Freenet impossible to censor. It also introduces doubt about the origin of any data found in a given node's cache. It helps to provide deniability.

Of course, anyone can find out what data is in their cache by decrypting it. If one applies the correct Content Hash Key (CHK), the data will be revealed. But because it's encrypted, one can avoid knowing what's in their cache simply by neglecting to run a list of CHKs against it - hence deniability in case a forensic examiner should locate illegal files in one's Freenet cache. It is, or rather, ought to be, impossible to determine whether the owner of a particular machine requested the files in his cache, or if his node merely proxied and cached them for others.

Obviously, this works only so long as cached data that the node's owner has requested, and cached data that his node has proxied, are indistinguishable. Unfortunately, The Register has discovered that this is not the case for large files.

Behavioral differences

Let there be a file of, say, 700 MB - maybe a movie, maybe warez, and possibly illegal, that you wish to have. Your node will download portions of this "splitfile" from numerous other nodes, where they are distributed. To enable you to recover quickly from interruptions during the download, your node will cache all of the chunks it receives. Thus when you re-start the download after an interruption, you will download only those portions of the file that you haven't already received. When the download is complete, the various chunks will be decrypted and assembled, and the file will be saved in your ~/freenet-downloads directory.

If you destroy the file but leave your cache intact, you can request it again, and the file will appear almost instantly. And there's the problem.

Freenet distributes files in a way that tends to select for frequently-requested, or "popular" data. This is partly because the other nodes that one's requests pass through will also cache parts of any files one requests.

We tested this, and found that a 50 MB file took six hours to download the first time we tried. After we eliminated the contents of our own local cache, we requested the file again, and it took only two hours and 20 minutes. Clearly, our "neighborhood" nodes had been caching a good deal of it while we downloaded it the first time. That behavior is by design, and it's nothing to be concerned about. The difference in download times between files never downloaded before and ones cached nearby is not revealing, because anyone else nearby might have initiated the request.

However, it is quite easy to distinguish between a large file cached in nearby nodes and one cached locally. And that is a very big deal.

As we noted earlier, a large splitfile will be cached locally to enable quick recovery from download interruptions. The problem is, the entire file will be cached. This means that, when a file is downloaded once, so long as the local cache remains intact, it can be reconstructed wholly from the local cache in minutes, even when the computer is disconnected from the internet. And this holds even when the browser cache is eliminated as a factor.

We tested this by downloading the same 50 MB file and removing it from our ~/ freenet-downloads directory, while leaving the local Freenet cache intact. On our second attempt, it "downloaded" in one minute, nine seconds.

We ran the test again after disconnecting our computer from the internet, with the Freenet application still running, and it "downloaded" in one minute, fifty seconds.

So, it took six hours initially; two hours, twenty minutes with neighboring nodes caching it thanks to our request; and less than two minutes with our local cache intact, even when disconnected from the net.

The difference in download time between a splitfile cached locally (seconds) and one cached nearby (hours) is so great that we can safely dismiss the possibility that any part of it is coming from nearby nodes, even under the best possible network conditions. It's absolutely clear that the entire file is being rebuilt from the local cache. Forensically speaking, that information is golden.

The attack

Exploiting that information would be trivial. Only a bit of statistical data, of the sort that any government agency in the world could easily afford to obtain, will be needed.

Here's what we need to know: how many chunks of a splitfile will appear on a node that only relays file requests after x amount of uptime. That's it. We already know that for nodes requesting a splitfile, the answer is 100% of the chunks in the amount of uptime needed to fetch them. By running several nodes and observing them, we can easily determine how long it will take to cache, by relaying alone, an entire file of x size.

Since Freenet logs uptime, a forensic examiner can easily learn how long your node has been alive, even if there have been interruptions. So it is quite possible to estimate how many intact files, of what size, that your node ought to have cached without your participation. If he finds many more files, or many larger files, than predicted, and they are illegal, you are in trouble.

Using a tool called FUQID (http://www.freenethelp.org/html/Fuqid.html), which queues Freenet file requests, one could easily run a list of forbidden CHKs against a disk image. If the number/size of whole files containing naughty stuff is significantly higher than predicted, you are in trouble.

A forensic attack can be made more damning if the examiner has statistical information about the density of certain types of files on the network overall, which, again, running several test nodes will reveal. If the density of intact naughty files in your cache doesn't mimic the density of such files on the network, you are in trouble.

You might be smart enough to disable your browser cache and its downloads history, and smart enough to wipe properly or encrypt dangerous files you've downloaded, but your Freenet cache, over which you have little control, will still tell on you.

The fix

We ran these observations by Freenet founder Ian Clarke. He agreed that the caching behavior does reveal far too many clues. But the next major revision is expected to eliminate the problem. Sometime later this year, it is hoped, the Freeenet developers will release a version that employs premix routing.

According to current plans, requests will be relayed through at least three nodes before any caching is performed. The three nodes nearest the one making the request will therefore not be able to determine what has been requested. The requesting node will cache downloads temporarily, although the mechanism by which locally cached data will be purged or randomized once the download is complete is not clear to us. Perhaps it has yet to be established.

In a forthcoming article, we will consider Freenet more generally, and offer suggestions for using it with greater safety, such as it is.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05..._so_anonymous/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The New Face of File Sharing?

Wayne Rosso, who built a career of attacking the music industry, wants to help it solve its 'peer- to-peer' troubles
Jon Healey

For years, Wayne Rosso has been the face of evil to the major record companies.

Now, his beefy, half-shaven mug is the labels' newest sign of hope.

Rosso is the driving force behind Mashboxx, a company that wants to help the labels wring some cash out of the world's most popular file-sharing networks. Those networks have been hotbeds of music piracy, but Mashboxx would turn bootlegged tunes into legal downloads that users could sample, buy and share.

On the surface, the 56-year-old Rosso seems an unlikely choice to help the music industry turn its "peer-to-peer" problems into profit.

Before founding Mashboxx last year, Rosso was the wisecracking president of two companies whose file-sharing software helped fuel online piracy: Grokster and Optisoft, the creator of Blubster. He was the Clown Prince of Peer-to-Peer, a widely quoted quip-meister who pilloried the music industry daily as being dimwitted, shortsighted, slow-footed and, well, evil.

"I would lay awake at night thinking of the most incendiary things I could possibly say and hurl these Molotov cocktails out there, knowing that the media would grasp on it and it would spread," he said.

Long before he was cashing Grokster's paychecks, however, Rosso was playing for the other team. He spent more than 20 years as an entertainment industry publicist, touting the likes of the Bee Gees and New Kids on the Block.

And even when he was promoting Grokster and Blubster, Rosso was working behind the scenes to convert the major record companies from antagonists into allies. Eventually, he found a taker: Andrew Lack, the former television executive whom Sony Corp. brought in to lead its music division.

"Andy Lack looked at this problem with a fresh pair of eyes," said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. "He looked at it without emotion. He looked for a solution…. And Wayne seemed to be a solution."

So now Rosso has come full circle, in a sense.

Mashboxx is what many label executives have pined for: a program that lets people dip into the vast pool of bootlegs online to sample songs but not make free copies of them. In particular, it uses song-recognition technology to block unauthorized downloads, a technique that the labels want all file-sharing companies to adopt.

"His leadership is significant," said Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, a group that has been the target of many of Rosso's jibes. "He's made this kind of critical leap, and that is to say we in the P2P space ought to find a way to compensate the property owner."

Mashboxx, based in Rosso's home city of Virginia Beach, Va., has not struck deals yet with all the major music companies, nor does it have a firm date for launching its software. And there is no telling whether it can lure users from Grokster, Kazaa and other file-sharing programs that let users amass huge collections of digital music and movies for free.

"Whether it can survive economically is just totally up in the air," said Lawrence Kenswil, a top online music executive at Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group. "Nobody knows."

Another important variable is the Supreme Court's pending ruling on the lawsuit by major music and movie companies against Grokster and StreamCast Networks Inc., another file-sharing company. If the court rules that Grokster is not liable for its users' piracy, some observers say, Mashboxx could find it even harder to build an audience.

That's because many people are likely to misinterpret such a ruling, thinking it would mean that downloading copyrighted works was legal too. And Mashboxx is counting on the specter of liability to motivate people to switch to its software.

Still, the major labels and other entertainment industry heavyweights have to make peace somehow with the estimated 60 million people using file-sharing networks in the United States. And after six years of relentless legal and technological attacks by the entertainment industry, many executives in the file-sharing business say they are eager to become partners rather than pariahs.

Those forces have led a growing number of companies to try to marry file sharing and commerce. They all face stiff competition, not only from the many sources of illegal downloads online, but also from established legal outlets such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store.

Rosso "has been, for better or worse, in the middle of many of the major peer-to-peer controversies, I think always with an eye toward making a business out of it," said Larry Miller, chief executive of Or Music, an independent label in New York. "And if he's able to do that with Mashboxx, all the credit to him."

Thick around the waist and a little shorter than average, Rosso has both the drive and the figure of a bulldog, although he prefers to describe himself as a sweet Italian sausage. He has been married and divorced twice and says he has two Italian greyhounds in lieu of having a third wife or children.

Rosso, born and raised in the Virginia Tidewater region, graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in English. He promoted rock concerts in Atlanta and filled retailers' orders for records and tapes in Los Angeles before gravitating to music industry PR.

Later, in New York, Rosso proved particularly skilled at getting his clients mentioned in the tabloid gossip columns.

"He had very good contacts at the columns, so if you had a party or an event and you wanted it mentioned, he could get it mentioned," said Paula Batson, a longtime music industry executive. "He was also passionate about the artists he was representing. He was very tenacious."

Rosso's route to Mashboxx started in the mid-1990s, when he joined a start-up independent music company in New York. While the company was just getting off the ground, Rosso said, it bought a fledgling online music company called SonicNet.

"Nobody knew what it was, what it was good for, but at the time it was the No. 1 music destination on the Web, for whatever that meant," he said.

After a couple more mergers, Rosso was unemployed again, and he ended up working for a series of ill-fated companies that were trying to transform the music industry with digital technologies — including one, CantaMetrix, whose song-recognition technology helped weed bootlegged files out of file-sharing networks. Then, in September 2002, Rosso went to work for Grokster founder Daniel Rung of Palm Springs.

"Long story short, the owner of Grokster was looking for someone to run the company and to sort of front it, and I got friendly with him," Rosso said. "He was a very nice guy, and he asked me to do it. So I did it."

Grokster had already been sued by the major record companies, music publishers and Hollywood studios, which accused the company of contributing to and profiting from piracy. Rosso and Rung said that one of Rosso's main duties was to try to make peace with the copyright owners and obtain licenses to distribute their wares online.

"We agreed that this just couldn't go on forever," Rosso said of the unauthorized downloading. "These people have to be paid for their content. It was just a question of how and how much."

Rosso said he tried to woo executives at four of the major record companies — Universal, Warner Music Group, BMG and EMI.

"Nobody really wanted to talk to us," he said. "They all felt that they were going to win this lawsuit. And the prevailing attitude was, 'We're not going to reward pirates.' "

Ted Cohen, senior vice president of digital development and distribution at EMI, remembers things differently.

"We've always been willing to sit down and talk about legal alternatives," Cohen said. What was missing in those days, he said, was a good business plan for an authorized file-sharing service.

Rosso spent most of his time defending file sharing against the entertainment industry's attacks, including accusations that it promoted child pornography and identity theft. He blasted the industry for refusing to cut deals with the file-sharing networks, and he called on Congress to force copyright holders to license their works to Grokster and its ilk. And he denounced the labels' efforts to force song-recognition technology onto the file-sharing business, saying such things as, "We cannot filter."

Where Rung was so averse to publicity that he used a pseudonym in news releases, Rosso relished the spotlight. He mixed a we-will-bury-you brashness with self-deprecating humor, slamming himself and his foes while insisting that it was nothing personal.

He shot poison-tipped verbal arrows at the music industry and the major labels' trade group, the Recording Industry Assn. of America, from a bottomless quiver and soon was a fixture in the press and at industry conferences.

For example, in an interview on CNBC two years ago, Rosso said, "The music companies are living in the 20th century. They're out of their minds, and they're going to go down in flames if they don't get with the program fast."

He was glib too, someone who always sounded like he was looking for angles to play. When CBS News' Lesley Stahl asked Rosso in 2003 whether he would sell Grokster to a movie studio, he replied, "Sure. Call me."

"It was all marketing," Rosso said. "We realized that every time Grokster was mentioned in the media, good or bad, downloads would shoot up, would spike. And, ergo, more users."

And the more users Grokster attracted, the more money it made. Like other peer-to-peer programs, Grokster enabled people to copy files from one another's computers for free. Its revenue came mainly from two sources: advertisers whose messages popped up on the computer screens of Grokster users, and software companies that paid to have their programs bundled with the Grokster software.

"What was the RIAA going to do? Sue us again? We were already being sued. And they were kind enough to keep delivering up PR softballs the size of grapefruits. A blind man could have hit them out of the ballpark."

Actually, the labels did sue Rosso and Rung again. The pair were involved in Puretunes, a short-lived downloadable music store that sold songs in bulk at a deep discount. The labels claimed that the Madrid-based store was unlicensed and infringing, and Rosso, Rung and other principals agreed in October to pay them $500,000 to settle the case.

Rosso left Grokster in mid2003 to join Optisoft, which was founded by a youthful Spanish software developer named Pablo Soto. Rosso's idea, he said, was to pitch a new, more controlled type of file-sharing network to major recording artists as a way to distribute music to their fans.

"I wrote Pablo a memo at the time saying that the peer-to-peer business was just a dead-end street the way it was, and that it just couldn't go on. No matter what I was saying in public, I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way that a P2P was going to keep going on like it was."

Rosso also had started courting Andrew Lack, who had taken over at Sony Music in January 2003. Early the next year, Rosso said, Lack floated an idea for authorized file sharing while the two were chatting in Lack's Madison Avenue office.

"He said, 'I want to start a sampling service. I need somebody to, you know, to work with me on it.' "

Rosso went back to Soto, who had previously agreed to work with Sony, then changed his mind. So Rosso told Lack that he would come up with the technology himself. He left Optisoft and started rounding up investors to fund the company and engineers to build its software.

A key piece of technology is coming from Snocap Inc., a San Francisco-based company led by Shawn Fanning and Ali Aydar, two veterans of the pioneering Napster file-sharing service. When a Mashboxx user tries to download a hit song from someone on one of the major filesharing networks, Snocap's song- recognition software will intervene and deliver an authorized, copy-protected version.

Mashboxx is still negotiating with labels and music publishers over what its users will be able to download for free — for example, songs that are altered with brief voice-overs. In most cases, a permanent, high-quality copy that can be burned to a CD will carry the same charge it does at a typical downloadable-music store.

Kenswil of Universal Music Group said Mashboxx would fall short of the music industry's "holy grail," which would be converting an established file-sharing program that already has millions of users. One leading file-sharing company, iMesh, is trying to do just that, although it has been delayed by technical difficulties.

One of Rosso's goals is to persuade other file-sharing networks to run their own branded versions of Mashboxx. Rung of Grokster declined to comment on any deals he may have in the works but said, "We think something similar to that, maybe not quite the same specific details, might be very interesting to Grokster."

Rosso said that he was skeptical about Lack's idea initially but that he now liked Mashboxx's chances.

"The day we open, we'll be the largest source of authorized music in the world," said Rosso, ever the pitchman.

This is the same kind of buzz-building he used to do for clients such as Harry Connick Jr. and Crosby, Stills & Nash. It's something he's adept at, even if he's not exactly nostalgic for his days as a publicist.

"I knew the day that David Crosby almost vomited on me that my days as a press agent were numbered," Rosso said of a particularly memorable incident from 1984. "Some people would say it's a shame that he missed."
http://www.latimes.com/business/cust...business-enter


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Record Labels Find a Way To Work with P2P

Of course, the record companies did manage to sue Shawn Fanning's first company, Napster, out of existence. And many record company executives now privately acknowledge that if they had tried to work with Napster in 2000, then the P2P situation might not have got to the level it later did.

The news last week that a major record company, SonyBMG, is in advanced talks to offer its content on peer-to-peer services caused major ripples through the music and Internet industries.

The news was even more controversial for most long-time industry watchers because it was reported that not only did SonyBMG senior executives propose the move to work with their previous bete noire technology, but that they have chosen to do so with what the record companies and their trade bodies, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), will see as two rather unlikely players.

Pop Rivals

The first is Wayne Rosso, the ex-CEO of P2P service Grokster and mouthpiece for trade association P2P United. Rosso, an ex-music industry PR of 30 years' standing, has spent the last two years railing against the record industry for trying to sue P2P companies out of existence.

Of course, the record companies did manage to sue Shawn Fanning's first company, Napster , out of existence. And many record company executives now privately acknowledge that if they had tried to work with Napster in 2000, then the P2P situation might not have got to the level it later did.

That's why this is a surprise, but perhaps not a shock, that the record companies are willing to work with Fanning's new company Snocap . This is especially true since many pundits see Snocap's new audio fingerprinting technology as a solution to one of the key obstacles copyright owners have with P2P distribution.

This is why the proposal coordinated by Rosso, under a new P2P service dubbed Mashboxx, might work. It would enable SonyBMG -- home to Destiny's Child and Britney Spears -- to offer its copyrighted content on a P2P network for the first time.

It's worth noting that SonyBMG content has been available for some time for free on numerous P2P networks, as have other record companies'. But with the combined weight of legal action from music trade bodies in the U.S. and Europe against consumers who use these networks illegally, alongside heavy spoofing of P2P networks with false music files by record companies, numbers have begun to fall on some services.

Hence this is a good time to launch Mashboxx, a desktop file-sharing client based on the Ares decentralized P2P network, with plug-ins to other networks including Fast Track and Gnutella.

None of the parties involved -- Rosso, Snocap, Grokster or SonyBMG -- will comment on the details of Mashboxx. But NMA has learned a formal announcement is expected in the US in the second week of December.

Previous Entry

Mashboxx won't be the first attempt at a legal P2P network. The first in the UK was launched by music download service Wippit. Ironically, Wippit founder Paul Myers says that his company took down its P2P service last month, after nearly three years, due to the costs of running both a centralized and decentralized network.

This was because record companies, in particular the majors, were reluctant to license content for exchange on a P2P basis. This has meant that most of the mainstream music content on Wippit is only available from a fixed server. Wippit hopes to relaunch the service soon.

"In the past, record companies could only see P2P as meaning 'pirate-to-pirate,'" says Myers.

But he's heartened that record companies are finally "getting it." He says, "It's fantastic that a record company has got behind the best distribution system that's ever been handed on a plate to the record industry."

At Playlouder MSP, an ISP-based P2P offer, MD Paul Hitchman is also supportive, describing it as "good news." He says, "It indicates that they are finally looking at ways of monetizing and legitimizing P2P."

But he's less certain whether the early model proposed by Mashboxx actually plays to the strengths of P2P technology. "It's not about making P2P into another kind of download shop," he says. "It has to be about general access to music that you pay for on a subscription basis."

Hitchman also qualifies the idea of P2P as the most efficient form of distribution for music, and believes it's more about record companies finally realizing that they have to move with the times. "P2P is the most popular form of music consumption online. Why not go with the consumers?"

This is, of course, why SonyBMG CEO Andrew Lack, a former TV executive who can perhaps go against the grain internally, was said to be keen to get conversations off the ground. Those conversations have now extended to other majors, including EMI, where again the top executives are said to be looking at this closely.

If the proposed plan does come to fruition, Myers is confident there's plenty of scope for success. "There are millions of fans out there that could be turned into consumers," he says.

"How many would they need? If there really are 100m people downloading illegally now and they convert 1% of those to paying consumers, then that's still very good."
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/story...d=02100000FK59


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Microsoft And The Groove Networks Acquisition
Chris Harris-Jones

Microsoft's acquisition of Groove Networks in March was hardly a big surprise given its investment history. However, this software operates on a distinctly different model to all the collaboration tools already available from Microsoft. Chris Harris- Jones looks at the impact of this acquisition on Microsoft's collaboration offerings.

Acquisition time again

Microsoft has been an investor in Groove Networks since 2001 when it put $50 million into the company, so this acquisition was not a huge surprise. Microsoft's collaboration offering should be bolstered by this acquisition, although it has struggled to pull together a coherent story across its multiple technology offerings in this space. The impending release of Office Communicator 2005 (which was known by its code name of 'Istanbul') this summer will add further functionality to Microsoft's collaboration offering, and possibly further confusion as well, as the product set relating to collaboration functionality continues to grow.

The Groove client delivers a comprehensive set of collaboration functions that overlap significantly with the functionality available from Microsoft. However, Microsoft exclusively follows a model of centralisation, whereas the Groove software is based on decentralisation. The acquisition fills this gap in Microsoft's collaboration tools by incorporating decentralised collaboration tools that are IT infrastructure agnostic, and offer offline and cross-organisational capabilities.

Two different architectures

This acquisition means that you will now be able to get two fundamentally different types of collaboration software from the same organisation. Microsoft has traditionally focused on the conventional model of centralisation - all content is stored and managed at one centralised point. Where this needs to be distributed, there are facilities available for replication, but this is a replication for convenience rather than the principal operating mode.

However, Groove Networks operates on a totally decentralised basis founded on the model of peer-to-peer (P2P) computing. All the information for a collaborative project is held remotely on local devices and is replicated when others are attached to the network - a similar model to the ill-fated Napster music-sharing website. This model means that it is very easy for every user to work locally _ in either a connected or disconnected mode. When users have been working remotely, upon reconnection, all the relevant information is synchronised.

The arguments for and against the centralised and decentralised models are as old as the operating models themselves. The obvious argument in favour of the centralised model is that it is much easier to control - or at least it is much easier to give a semblance of control. Consequently, auditors, compliance officers and many managers are much happier with this centralised model. Even if it is not totally accurate, at least it is a single set of content that can be designed _ the 'official' version. However, remote workers have a tendency to make copies of files for use outside the office - a practice which is increasingly easy with the ubiquity, increasing size and rapidly falling cost of memory sticks.

Conversely, a system that operates a pure P2P model may be far more convenient for some users - typically for those regularly on the move or where collaboration projects are spread over multiple sites and organisations. The biggest problem is that there is no single centralised copy of the information that can be made secure from system failure or accidents, and produced as necessary for auditing purposes.

Mix and match

The Groove Networks software is more often operated in a mixed mode, which captures the benefits of a P2P environment as well as the security of centralised content. This means that it can overcome many of the standard P2P objections while delivering greater flexibility than a purely centralised system, by maintaining a centralised node on the network that automatically receives all changed content. While this will not get over the problem of the rogue memory stick - at least it means that remote workers have a simple automated mechanism for ensuring that their remote devices are kept up to date without having to manually transfer files.

Deploying both centralised and decentralised approaches in conjunction can deliver considerable benefits to workers on the move and contribute to greater efficiency.
http://www.ovum.com/go/content/c,56058


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peerflix Introduces Social Networking to Peer-to-Peer DVD Trading Service; New ''My Friends'' Feature Provides Unrestricted DVD Trades With Friends and Family
Press Release

Peerflix, an online peer-to-peer service that allows members to legally trade DVDs, today announced the launch of "My Friends," a new set of website features allowing members to easily share their personal DVD library with friends and family, no matter how far apart they live. The new "My Friends" functions allow Peerflix members to create a private network of social contacts who can view all titles in their DVD collections. Peerflix's peer-to-peer trading platform allows users to leverage that information by requesting a DVD exchange with a "friend" with one simple click.

"Members can invite friends and family to join them on the site, whether they are existing Peerflix members or not," said Billy McNair, co-

founder of Peerflix. "'My Friends' effectively gives members the ability to recreate their social network on Peerflix." To add a new connection, members must simply enter their friend's name and email address. The system will ensure that the friend is linked to the member's account once they join the site or accept the invitation.

Another benefit of the new features is to allow members and their contacts to share their "DVDs I Have" and "DVDs I Want" lists. "By sharing their lists, members can find out which movies their friends have already watched, how well they liked them, and which ones they want to see next," said Danny Robinson, co-founder of Peerflix. "What differentiates Peerflix's take on this community exchange is that we enable members to actually do something useful with this information. For example, they can request that friends mail their DVDs to them with one click."

"My Friends" also allows unrestricted trades between friends. Peerflix uses "Peerbux" as the internal currency that balances the trades within the network by assigning relative values to each title. This ensures that users contributing new releases and hot titles to the network get recognized accordingly and can receive DVDs of equal value in return. "Our members have told us that they'd be willing to generously trade their DVDs with friends and family without getting Peerbux in return -- what are friends for after all?" said McNair. "We've added the capability to do just that, so our members can trade with friends and family even if they do not have Peerbux in their account."

For a limited time only, each time a new Peerflix member joins the service from a current member's invitation and fully activates their account, the original member will receive one free Peerbux in their account.

About Peerflix

Peerflix, headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, is an online peer-to-peer service that allows members to legally trade DVDs with each other. Started in 2004, the Peerflix service is an easy way for anyone to get the most out of their DVD collections. With Peerflix, members can maintain a dynamic and updated library of DVD titles, in a cost effective manner. While still in its "beta" phase, Peerflix has already grown to become the leading online destination for DVD owners to trade their DVDs. The Peerflix service is currently available in both the United States and Canada. For more information, please visit www.peerflix.com
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Television’s Future: Anytime, Anywhere

Television is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50, according to an analysis published last week in the Chicago Tribune. According to reporter Maureen Ryan, digital video recorders and video-on-demand will soon allow viewers to access shows whenever they want; technology will let people take TV anywhere; the Internet may become TV’s secondary (or primary) home; and advertising will undergo radical changes.

The article outlines six ways in which television will change our lives. The first grows from “timeshifting,” referring to viewers’ ability to watch TV and other media at their own pace. The next is “placeshifting,” the freedom to watch on an airplane, in a car, over a cell phone or on a hand-held gaming device.

Satellite radio firms are exploring ways to get programming into the cars of 5 million customers. A report by the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan predicts that by 2011, 3 million cars will have satellite TV, and 36 million will have some video capability.

In April, Sprint began offering real-time feeds of the Fox News Channel. Verizon also is beginning to offer TV programming for an extra $15 per month.

Another major trend is video on demand. The goal is to go beyond DVDs and make every show available immediately after its broadcast for a small fee.

At this point, not many TV shows are available online, since media companies are wary of illegal file sharing. But this spring, the BBC plans to let a limited number of viewers use new “peer-to-peer” technology to download selected programs from its archives. Once the copyright issues have been settled, more shows will be available online. According to Ryan, that’s why phone companies and cable firms are competing over who will provide online services.

The fourth big change involves the computer-TV connection. The TV equivalent of an IPod hasn’t emerged, but giants like Sony and Microsoft want to provide the tools enabling consumers to access TV, music, and movies. Smaller companies already have introduced technology that allows people to take TV on the road or send programs from a PC to a TV.

According to Advertising Age, five years from now, only half of all advertising dollars will go to network television, down from 70 percent. The game is clearly changing. To deal with viewers who fast-forward through ads, more now feature large logos that stay on the screen longer. In the future, consumers will be able to watch a sponsored show and click buttons to get coupons or more information. Networks may start charging cable and satellite providers to carry their content, while the shows themselves will contain more product placement.

There will be even more choices. Technology will soon allow viewers to access literally millions of channels — “on demand, anytime, anywhere.” The catch is that it won’t all be free.
http://www.vermontguardian.com/dailies/0904/0511.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nokia Sets Out Specs for Mobile TV

"Operators and service providers want to know how the interoperability of terminals from different vendors can be ensured," said Richard Sharp, a Nokia spokesman. "By making this interface specification public, we are emphasizing our commitment to open standards and interoperability as a means to enable positive market development."

Nokia Corp. will release technical details about its mobile TV system to help service providers offer customers the possibility of watching television on their handsets, with commercial TV services expected to begin in 2006.

The air interface specifications, for mobile TV based on Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld, or DVB-H, will provide information on how mobile TV terminals interconnect with the network end of the service, the Finnish company said Tuesday.

The technology has been piloted in several countries, including Finland where Nokia last month joined major TV companies and mobile service providers to enable 500 test users in the Helsinki region to watch international television broadcasts and tune in to radio programs on their phones.

"Operators and service providers want to know how the interoperability of terminals from different vendors can be ensured," said Richard Sharp, a Nokia spokesman.

"By making this interface specification public, we are emphasizing our commitment to open standards and interoperability as a means to enable positive market development."

The Nokia mobile TV service, which includes terminals, servers and network components, is based on open standards approved by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, the company said.

DVB-H is a new technology that enables broadcast transmission of several television, radio and video channels to mobile devices.

In earlier research, Nokia said people like to watch mobile TV in cars and public places, such as cafes. Watching TV on handsets was also common at home and in workplaces, with test users mostly interested in news, weather, sports, current affairs and entertainment.

Nokia, based in Espoo just outside the Finnish capital, is the world's largest mobile phone maker with sales in 130 countries and 55,500 employees.
http://www.newsfactor.com/news//stor...d=023002LYSN4V


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Virtual World With Peer-To-Peer Style
John Borland

For a virtual world, it starts out very bare: Just an empty blue space, with a picture of a cat in a "Star Trek" costume at its center.

But that confused-looking cat is an avatar--a digital representation of a real person (in this case a reporter)--and the empty blue space is an early "node" in Solipsis, an experiment with building a peer-to-peer virtual world, released late last month by researchers at France Telecom.

Still in the very early stages of development, the Solipsis project aims to draw together the technological lessons of "massively multiplayer" games like Sony's "EverQuest" and file-swapping networks like Kazaa or eDonkey. Developers are hoping to construct a sprawling virtual world that runs on its inhabitants' own linked computers, rather than relying on powerful central servers like those that run Web sites or EverQuest's fantasy adventures.

What's the advantage in that? It sets Internet dwellers free--both in the "free beer" and "free speech" senses, according to the developers.

"In a closed system, the world is bounded by the imagination of the people working in the company that owns the world," said Joaquin Keller, one of the developers at France Telecom, the French telecommunications giant, working on the project. "If your system is open, a lot of ideas will flourish. It's like the difference between one Web site and the whole Web."

Solipsis and similar peer-to-peer and open-source projects are aiming at nothing less than a radical transformation of the way that games are developed, and even of the way people communicate and manipulate information online.

Inspired by science fiction novels like Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," which told of a sophisticated online virtual world called the "Metaverse," these developers want to make digital environments as complicated and rich as the real world. People might meet in a digital representation of their own rooms, or of the Taj Mahal, rather than simply exchanging e-mails, for example.

Increasingly, this vision is being blended with the grassroots peer-to-peer and open-source movements, which aims at distributing computing power and creativity as widely, and as close to the individual user, as possible.

Most big online virtual worlds, such as "EverQuest" or "Star Wars Galaxies," are hosted on big central servers. That's partly because the computing requirements of keeping track of a world's consistency--where people are, which dragons have been killed, which houses have burned down--are high.

Keller and a growing number of developers have something else in mind. In their vision, each inhabitant's computer is responsible only for keeping track of what's in its own little corner of the world. In that model, visiting someone else online might mean a literal visit to their space, which has its own look, rules and feel.

That anarchic model, without a central authority or even purpose, could be even more overwhelmingly immersive than today's "addictive" online games, some predict.

"If you had a bunch of P2P worlds, it occurs to me that you might just lose people," said Edward Castronova, an Indiana University professor whose upcoming book "Synthetic Worlds" examines the issues around online games. "People won't show up on scorecards in a game, won't be in our economy anymore, we won't know where they are. They might be producing valuable things, and having a rich and productive social and economic life, but all in the virtual worlds."

Not exactly the "Matrix," yet
To be sure, a peer-to-peer virtual world with the three-dimensional visuals and rich environment demanded by today's game players is far away.

Graphics production alone makes the project a difficult one. Big worlds such as "EverQuest" can cost tens of millions of dollars to produce, with much of that money going to art and design.

Solipsis is utterly rudimentary in this regard. Two-dimensional images, each representing a person or a "bot," float inside the blue space of each individual computer's node. A separate chat room allows visitors to a node to interact. Graphics production and features like voice chat in future versions are being called for by developers.

A few other projects, such as the Open Source Metaverse Project, are a little further along. That effort aims to let developers create their own 3D worlds, which can be hyperlinked together to provide bridges for server-hopping visitors. That project is drawing on modeling technology from the developers of the "Quake" video game.

'Second Life'
However, even some larger commercial projects are moving in the grassroots direction, and they could show a path to the future.

Take "Second Life," the virtual world created by Linden Labs. Rather than offer a traditional game environment like "EverQuest," it provides a growing world in which inhabitants can build their own homes, create their own "in-game" games, run businesses or do pretty much anything else that strikes their fancy.

"Second Life" has 28,000 people online today, and some inhabitants are already making more than $100,000 a year in real-world money by selling digital wares constructed inside the world or running full-fledged role-playing games.

"Second Life" is built on a distributed model, in which numerous servers are connected together, each one representing about 16 acres of land in the digital world. Those patches of digital space are seamlessly connected together to create the world as experienced by visitors.

Today, all of those servers are run by Linden Labs, but the world was built to ultimately support a peer-to-peer model, where players might add their own 16-acre plot into the world from their own computer, said Linden Labs' chief executive officer, Philip Rosedale. For security reasons--including the fact that a real currency is traded inside the world--the company hasn't taken that step yet, however.

"Interesting virtual worlds are ultimately going to be so huge that they couldn't possibly take the centralized approach," Rosedale said. "But pragmatically, we run all the servers today, since it gives you reliability."

Some analysts say it's exactly that fear of giving way to the total anarchy of user-created content that may keep commercial ventures from going all the way to peer to peer. User-created environments will naturally be rough around the edges, and they might infringe on copyrights here and there and even be dangerous, after all.

But they'll never fail to be interesting, backers say. And that's the point.

"P2P virtual worlds are not for the faint of heart," said Crosbie Fitch, a developer who has written on the subject for several years. "But where would you rather play? In an expensive Utopia indistinguishable from an online creche? Or a collection of interactive universes that make the Web look like a quaint old tool, like Gopher does to Web surfers today? "
http://news.com.com/A+virtual+world+...3-5698499.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wurld Media today announced that they have hired Mark A. Fowler as CFO and, after a rigorous selection process, appointed WR Hambrecht + Co as financial advisors. The new financial team brings the experience necessary to support Wurld Media’s rapid growth.
Press Release

Mark A. Fowler, CPA and MBA, brings his capital raising and financial operations expertise to Wurld Media’s management team. Mr. Fowler has been involved in multiple private placement transactions, and has participated in raising more than $200 million over his 20-year senior financial management career. In addition, he has successfully guided two companies through the Initial Public Offering (IPO) process: musicmaker.com, and Bioreliance, Inc. Mr. Fowler most recently was the chief financial officer and vice president of MetriGenix Corporation, a global provider of low-to-medium density, multi- dimensional micro array biochips.

"Wurld Media’s diverse and innovative product offerings put them in a unique position for success," said Mark A. Fowler, recently appointed CFO of Wurld Media. "Products such as Peer Impact and LX Systems have virtually limitless growth potential, and my background in technology, e-commerce and the music industry will complement Wurld Media’s growth objectives."

Wurld Media has also engaged WR Hambrecht + Co as its financial advisor. Best known for its OpenIPO(R) auctions and Internet-based technology, WR Hambrecht + Co provides Wurld Media with a firm commitment from one of the most innovative financial services firms in the industry.

About WR Hambrecht + Co

WR Hambrecht + Co ( http://www.wrhambrecht.com/ ) is an investment bank committed to using technology and auction processes to provide open and fair access to financial markets for all its clients. The firm’s impartial Internet-based auctions, which allow the market to determine pricing and allocation, have dramatically changed the financial services landscape. WR Hambrecht + Co provides underwriting and advisory services for technology and emerging growth companies, as well as equity research, sales and trading, full-service and online brokerage and private equity offerings for institutions and individuals. WR Hambrecht + Co is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Boston, Chicago, London, New York and Philadelphia.

About Wurld Media, Inc.

Wurld Media is the company behind several unique and innovative technology products, including BuyersPort Networks, LX Systems, Grow Hope and Peer Impact. Wurld Media has quickly become a leader in e-commerce with its technologies being implemented by such diverse organizations as the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the United States Army. Founded in 1999, Wurld Media is a privately held company based in Saratoga Springs, New York. For more information about Wurld Media or its products and services, please visit http://www.wurldmedia.com/ .
http://www.mysan.de/article102185.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DSL Subscribers On The Rise
Marguerite Reardon

Major U.S. telephone companies are closing in on the cable companies' dominance of the broadband market, as subscription rates on DSL outpaced those in cable for the first quarter of 2005.

Cable companies and phone companies both reported record growth in subscriptions. But large telephone companies added 1.4 million DSL subscribers during the first quarter, while cable companies added 1.2 million lines, according to market researcher Leichtman Research. Currently, about 35.9 million households subscribe to the top 20 telephone and cable companies in the U.S.

Since broadband was first made available, in the late 1990s, telephone companies have lagged behind cable companies in terms of subscribers. But the gap is closing.

In 2004, cable led the market with 59 percent of total subscribers, compared with 62 percent in 2003, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. Meanwhile, phone companies have been gaining market share. In 2003, DSL accounted for 39 percent of the broadband market, up from 36 percent the previous year. Cable operators' share of the broadband market is expected to shrink to around 50 percent in the next three to four years, as the phone companies continue their push with DSL and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services, said Jim Penhune, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.

Experts attribute most of the recent jump in DSL subscriptions to more aggressive pricing plans from the telephone companies. For example, several phone companies have been offering start-up discounts and tiers of service, with lower prices for lower download speeds.

"We think it's a combination of our pricing and the services we offer," said Bobby Henson, a spokeswoman for Verizon, which added 385,000 subscribers in the first quarter. "Cable has traditionally focused on speed, whereas we focus on speed, pricing and content, which we believe equates to a better value."

Last month, Verizon started offering DSL download speeds of 3mbps for $29.95, the same price as its 1.5mbps service. It also is providing an integrated wireless router to customers who sign a one-year contract so more than one computer can share the connection at home.

On average, DSL service ranges in price from $20 to $30 a month before discounts. Prices on cable broadband typically start around $30 to $40 a month and can go as high as $65 a month. For the most part, cable operators have competed with the phone companies on speed rather than price.

Time Warner has raised its download speeds to 5mbps and 8mbps. Prices vary depending on the market, but a 5mbps service can cost $35 to $40 in a bundle that also includes cable television and Internet phone service. The 8mbps service costs about $64.95 as part of this "triple play" bundle.


The idea of bundling services and adding greater-value services is becoming increasingly important. Cable companies already offer high speed Internet access and television services. Many, including Time Warner and Cablevision, also have added voice service.

"The way we have been growing the business is by delivering better value at higher speeds with more robust content," said Keith Cocozza, spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "And when the products are bundled, (customers) can see even more value in our offering. In some markets where competition has been fierce we’ve offered discounted promotions."

Meanwhile, phone companies also are trying to add a triple-play bundle that includes voice, video and data. Verizon is building out its FTTP network, called Fios, which will deliver telephony, high speed Internet and TV service. SBC Communications also is upgrading its network by putting more fiber closer to customers. Although it is falling short of running fiber to individual homes, it nonetheless plans to offer the triple play of services over its network.

"In the long run, the race won’t be between DSL and cable," said Penhune. "It will be between the phone companies and the cable operators."
http://news.com.com/DSL+subscribers+...3-5705360.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Surfing for dollars

Impoverished Ethiopia Launches Broadband Internet Service

Impoverished Ethiopia launched the first phase of an ambitious three-year plan to wire the entire country for Internet access with the inauguration of broadband service in the capital.

While not cheap and available only to about 100,000 people in Addis Ababa, officials said they hoped to soon reduce fees and expand the service as part of the project to harness information communication technology to fight the crushing poverty that afflicts most of its population of 70 million. "ICT generates incomes through learning, improve productivity, and promote good governance and democracy," said infrastructure minister Kassu Ilalla who presided at the launch. "Unfortunately, over 85 percent of the population leaves in rural areas where access to telecom services is almost non-existent and this shouldn't continue any more," he said, adding that broadband was the most efficient way to provide internet connectivity. Last month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced plans for universal Internet access in the country by 2008, calling it "a vital and essential tool for fighting poverty, for beating poverty that kills and ensuring our survival." Before Thursday, Ethiopia had just 30,000 Internet connections but under the nationwide web access plan intends to expand that to 500,000 by October. The Horn of Africa country is one of the poorest nations in the world with an average per capital income of less than 100 dollars (78 euros) per year and is largely dependent on foreign assistance.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050505/323/fi640.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Majority Of U.S. Fiber Still "Dark"
ILN News Letter

The WSJ reports that despite a surge in Internet usage, there is still a significant fiber glut. Today, researchers estimate that about 85% of the fiber lines in the ground in the U.S. still are "dark," or inactive. Even the fiber that is being used isn't close to having its full capacity exploited. In fact, less than 5% of the total transmission capacity of all the fiber lines is being put to use -- about the same amount as in 2001.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...831034,00.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Microsoft Launches “Thought Thieves” Film Competition
Jordan Running

Microsoft has launched a new contest in the U.K. in which you can win £2,000 by making a short film about how intellectual property theft effects society. The name of the competition? ”Thought Thieves!” (Okay, I admit I added the exclamation point myself.) The winner will be honored at a ceremony in London. I hope the finalists wind up on BitTorrent.

P.S. Does the neon logo give anybody else a Deep Throat kind of vibe?
http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000647042925


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Defending Their Copyright With Your Taxes
Catherine Everett

The conviction of four self-proclaimed Robin Hoods for conspiracy to defraud last week has raised some serious questions over just how much public resource should be diverted into helping software companies protect their wares when they don't use all the security technology currently designed for just this purpose.

The gang members, collectively known as DrinkorDie, who were arrested between December 2001 and January 2002, were sentenced at the Old Bailey last week for their part in a global software counterfeiting ring. Three of the four, Alex Bell, Mark Vent, and Andrew Eardley worked or were previously employed as IT managers while the fourth, Steven Dowd, was unemployed. Sentences ranged from 18 months to two years, with Eardley's sentence suspended for two years.

The gang was charged with conspiracy to defraud after being arrested by the UK National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which acted on information coming from US investigations including Operations Blossom and Buccaneer in 2001.

DrinkorDie formed part of a so-called "warez" group — from the plural of software — which operate by allegedly disseminating pirated copies of computer software, games, movies and music on the Internet. According to the US Justice Department, warez members distribute material to "select clientele" over secure servers, and those files eventually end up on an Internet Relay Chat network or a peer-to-peer file-sharing service.

The latest major US operation against warez groups, termed "Operation Fastlink," began last year and consisted of 120 searches in 27 US states and 10 other countries with US authorities estimating that the seized copyright material was worth $50 million.

But despite the apparent success of such investigations some experts have questioned whether so much public sector time and money should be spent what could be seen as essentially copyright infringement.

Peter Sommer, a security specialist called as an expert witness for the defence in the DrinkorDie case, claims the group should never have been prosecuted under charges of conspiracy. "The main concern that I have is the colossal expenditure of the UK investigating trial, which stems from the way the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided to charge this. Because the CPS decided to go with conspiracy charges rather than charging individuals substantively under copyright or trademark law, it increased costs by several million pounds," he says.

While Sommer acknowledges that the crimes committed were not victimless, he argues that the corporate victims weren't exactly defenceless but rather large companies that are, in the main, not even based in the UK.

"While they do have a problem, there are various remedies in terms of the civil courts and how they sell and distribute software. When there's scarce funding available, in my view, protecting companies is lower down the scale than protecting children abused by online paedophile rings," says Sommer.

Other experts have also questioned whether the ponderous judicial system can really keep pace with the changing activities and trends amongst the hacking fraternity. "Trends are shifting and because crackers do this for academic pleasure, they're going to want to move onto what's trendy. Warez groups are starting to die out, and although there's still quite a lot of activity on the Web, it's mainly between hackers and so is a limited market," says Neil Hare Brown, senior security advisor at security incident response company, QCC Information Security.

Crackers' have started looking for challenges elsewhere, argues Hare-Brown. While some have simply refocused their energies on working within the open source community in a more benevolent fashion, others have started concentrating on the games market, which so far has received less attention from law enforcement agencies than the commercial applications world.

"There's already an illegal burgeoning in the games market, with a good number of recent cracks on disk protection. The market is now saturated and it's easy to distribute illegal software in markets like that. People are just ripping stuff off DVDs and putting it on peer-to-peer networks," says Hare Brown.

But another problem indicates Sommer, who works as a research fellow at the London School of Economics, is that the lack of structure of warez groups means that members simply reappear elsewhere under different guises if they come under scrutiny.

"I suspect that many of the people that were in DrinkorDie are now doing other things. The US produced affinity charts trying to marry individuals to groups and it got very complex because a lot of them had different roles in different groups," he explains.

This lack of central structure means that it is very difficult to pursue a decapitation strategy or to round up ring leaders and "makes it a different type of case to investigate than drugs cartels", where there is an obvious hierarchy.

As a result, from a software publisher's point of view, Sommer believes, "going down the legal route is not the most effective means of protecting intellectual property. Mechanisms such as online registration may be rarer, but they're more effective because you can connect a software release to a real computer".

But Shona Jago, communications director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at anti-piracy group the Business Software Alliance (BSA), claims it was necessary to make an example of the DrinkorDie members to try and prevent such cases happening again.

"This group did a lot of damage while it was operating and other groups are still doing damage. I think there's a deterrent value in showing that the law can act against this type of criminal activity. It's important that people understand that this type of activity is against the law and they can get caught," she says.

The BSA claims that while DrinkorDie may have been shut down as a result of co-ordinated global law enforcement actions, other warez groups are still active and continuing to cause harm. Jago was unable to provide figures on how much money software vendors had lost as a result of DrinkorDie's illegal pursuits but cited a study undertaken by IDC and commissioned by the BSA to indicate the knock-on effects of piracy on the wider economy.

The report found that 29 percent of software in the UK is not licensed properly, and that if 10 percent of this software was properly licensed paid for, the industry could generate a further £10 billion towards the UK's gross domestic product, provide £2.5 billion more in tax revenues and create 40,000 extra jobs, all within a three year period.

But some security experts claim it is high time that software vendors started becoming more proactive in protecting their software by using readily available technological mechanisms to safeguard it.

Hare Brown said: "It's not rocket science. It's about software companies making up their minds. They either want evidence to show that this software should be on that PC or they want a wide as possible distribution of their software and so are prepared to turn a blind eye. So the question is why haven't they put more stringent mechanisms in place to license their software before?"

Even five years ago, before online license registration was possible, suppliers could have requested that customers register their applications over the telephone, for example.

The fear was, however, that they would simply go to rivals rather than bother "so the software companies made it simple to use and asked customers to just click and agree. But now they don't want people stealing their software so they're gradually tightening down and it's also easier to do now there's the Internet", explains Hare Brown

There are already mechanisms in existence that could be used to stop software piracy from the outset such as digital watermarking or authentication, he argues.

"There's been a lot of research work funded by the European Union to come up with better mechanisms to prevent software piracy. It's put a lot of money into it, but it always takes time before the software community gets together and decides to adopt any particular form of copyright prevention technology," says Hare Brown.

The BSA's response to such logic is that, while its members have been exploring such options for some time, there is no one-size-fits-all-approach and different software markets require different IP protection solutions. "In terms of technical solutions, it's something that the industry has been looking at since piracy began. But it's a question of balancing intellectual property protection against not holding back the legitimate needs of users," says the BSA's Jago.

Self-proclaimed anti-piracy groups such as the BSA argue there is "no silver bullet" for solving these problems as at the end of the day it comes down to individual ethics.

"The DrinkorDie group were hobbyists who were more or less competing among themselves as to who could crack code the quickest, but the problem is one of IP protection. In some cases, it's taken years and a huge investment to develop this software and if it's cracked and made available to anyone who wants to download it, it can be used for counterfeit purposes to sell on," says Jago.
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/...9198084,00.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crackdown on Piracy Hits Barrier

Federal prosecutors are reluctant to go after typical downloaders of music and movies.
Lorenza Muñoz and Jon Healey

Like a stern father figure, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales warned Los Angeles high school students last month about the perils of illegally downloading music or movies.

"There are consequences," he said. "It is unlawful."

Backing up the threat is another matter. While federal prosecutors have made fighting piracy

a top priority, to date they have been reluctant to go after the group the entertainment industry most wants targeted: people who illegally download from hugely popular online file- sharing networks.

"No U.S. attorney wants to be the guy who put a UCLA sophomore in jail for downloading Britney Spears," said George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former federal high-tech crimes specialist.

Downloading is one of the most popular ways to watch movies and hear music among the world's youth. Studio executives believe making examples of some of them could put the fear of God into would-be pirates.

Instead, prosecutors and the FBI have focused mainly on sophisticated "warez" groups that copy and distribute software, movies and music. Such groups are important pieces of the piracy distribution chain but have little in common with the masses who use file-sharing software.

When asked in an interview about going after downloaders, Gonzales was circumspect.

"Obviously, these are very complicated cases," he said. "Sometimes the laws are not, I think, as flexible as they might be to help us prosecute these kinds of cases."

The new Family Entertainment and Copyright Act makes it illegal to offer online even one movie, song or software program before its official release, making it easier to prosecute some cases. Though the law does not make downloading of copyrighted files a crime, many people who do such downloading also offer pirated material on their hard drives for others to copy. Still, Gonzales said, the new law was not aimed at people who make available a single bootlegged movie or song.

Prosecutors have neither the resources nor the stomach to go after that kind of lawbreaker, current and former Justice Department officials said. As with most federal crimes, the department prefers targeting bigger fish. Still, officials won't rule out going after anyone who pirates copyrighted works should the right case come along.

Studios, labels and their allies in Congress believe that with a stronger copyright law it's time to stop pulling punches with individuals who use Kazaa, BitTorrent or other popular file- sharing programs to pirate copyrighted works. They believe a highly publicized prosecution of a small-time infringer — the average Kazaa user, for example — would be a powerful deterrent.

"Knowing that the government of the United States has this tool available is so powerful," said Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America. "It is an extremely meaningful step and we hope they use that authority. We hope this will not be some illusion on the books."

As it stands now, the worst that confronts people who share music or movies online are civil lawsuits filed by the MPAA or the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

Observers say federal prosecutors are walking a fine line.

"I think there's this delicate dance. They're trying to crack down on piracy without ending up the unpaid enforcement arm of the RIAA or the MPAA," said attorney Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for civil liberties in cyberspace.

Hilary Rosen, former chief executive of the RIAA, said difficulty gathering evidence was one reason prosecutors were reluctant to go after individual downloaders. Although it is easy to see who is offering copyrighted works for downloading on a file-sharing network, legal experts say it is virtually impossible to observe someone downloading a copyrighted file from another person's computer.

Even if you could overcome the difficulties, Kerr said, prosecutors worry that they could not win over a jury.

"The gap here is [that] it's socially acceptable to download files, but it can also be a crime," Kerr said.

For years, music and movie lobbyists fought to get the Justice Department to make piracy a priority of any kind. Former MPAA President Jack Valenti recalled unsuccessfully lobbying former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, who was preoccupied with other law enforcement issues.

"They had a lot of crisis issues then," he said. "The digital era had not hit us yet. It's been in the last five or six years that the avalanche has come in a torrential way."

In Reno's defense, Bruce A. Lehman, the Clinton administration's assistant secretary of Commerce in charge of intellectual property issues, said the current Justice Department was doing more than its predecessors because copyright owners had asked it to do more.

"Our view at the time was that piracy in the United States was not a huge, big problem," Lehman said. "We didn't feel that it was seriously economically damaging to the copyright-based industries. And our focus was much, much more on international piracy."

The shift came under former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, an amateur singer and songwriter, who took a broad philosophical approach to protecting copyrights, patents and other intellectual property. Creativity and innovation not only are key elements of a society's productivity but they also determine whether a country leads or follows, Ashcroft said in an interview last year. Protecting intellectual property, he said, is critical for the U.S. to remain a place of unique opportunity and inordinate prosperity.

But the 9/11 attacks pushed piracy to the back burner, said David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publishers' Assn. and a former top Ashcroft aide.

"We became all about terrorism, 24 hours a day," he said.

Slowly, piracy resurfaced as a priority. Valenti said he was encouraged after a 40-minute pitch to Ashcroft and his staff in the fall of 2003. During the meeting, Valenti rolled off statistics, making the case that intellectual property was America's only export with a surplus balance of trade, creating jobs at twice the rate of the U.S. economy.

Ashcroft, recalled Valenti, was impressed. "He realized this was an opportunity for the Justice Department to make a mark," Valenti said.

By early 2004, Israelite approached Ashcroft about fully reigniting the piracy initiative. Israelite said there was a realization that, as manufacturing jobs went overseas, the U.S. economy had become more reliant on intellectual property as an economic engine.

"We were increasingly dependent on that and at the same time seeing an increase in the theft of intellectual property here and abroad," Israelite said. "It had reached a crisis point."

Ashcroft agreed and formed a task force. Israelite spent six months listening to federal prosecutors, heads of movie studios, recording industry officials and software companies.

While Israelite pledged more enforcement from the Justice Department, Hollywood promised to increase its efforts to go after pirates by filing civil suits and launching education efforts. Now, the department has 18 specialized units nationwide that work only on copyright cases.

The department's task force "sent a message to a very large community of enforcers that intellectual property matters, and the behavioral consequences within the organization are enormous," said RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol.

Now, with a tougher copyright act enacted, the industry is expecting even more from the Justice Department.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood), a frequent studio ally, said the problem was severe enough to command the department's attention.

"If there was an elaborate white-collar scheme on a national and international basis to steal valuable property that, in the total context of things, cost an industry billions of dollars annually, I think everyone would expect the Justice Department and the FBI to prioritize finding and exposing and apprehending the people involved in it," Berman said.

Industry and government officials, however, are struggling to sell the idea that piracy equals theft to a young, tech- savvy generation that views illegal downloading as no big deal.

Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act could help change that mind-set. According to a survey his firm conducted in 2003, more than two-thirds of the 12- to 22-year-olds interviewed said they would stop illegal downloading if they thought there was a serious threat of jail or a fine, Bernoff said.

The new law, he said, "might put a little bit of teeth into the scare now."

John Barrett, an analyst at market research firm Parks Associates in Dallas, is more skeptical. At a recent conference in Universal City, he asked a panel of college students about file sharing and piracy. With so many of their friends illegally downloading, the students said, they were confident they would never be punished.

"There wasn't a kid on that group," he said, "that had the least bit of fear."
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...ck=2&cset=true


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Perpendicular Recording: Why It Matters
Jun Naruse

While the hard-drive industry has been using longitudinal recording successfully for five decades, it is now within two product generations of reaching its practical limit.

For about the past decade, scientists and engineers have pondered the potential effects of a natural phenomenon called superparamagnetism and postulated when its presence might interfere with the progress of the hard-disk drive, or HDD, industry.

Since the first commercial hard drive was introduced, in 1956, the industry has grown storage capacity exponentially by decreasing the size of the magnetic grains that make up data bits. In effect, the smaller the magnetic grain, the smaller the bit, the more data that can be stored on a disk. With longitudinal recording, we are getting close to the point where data integrity will be harmed if we continue to shrink the magnetic grains. This is due to the superparamagnetic effect.

Superparamagnetism occurs when the microscopic magnetic grains on the disk become so tiny that random thermal vibrations at room temperature cause them to lose their ability to hold their magnetic orientations. What results are "flipped bits"–-bits whose magnetic north and south poles suddenly and spontaneously reverse–-that corrupt data, rendering it and the storage device unreliable.

Today, the hard-drive industry’s ability to push out the superparamagnetic limit is more critical than ever as capacity requirements continue to grow dramatically. This is due, in large part, to the increasing use of hard drives in consumer electronic devices and the desire to pack more and more storage capacity on smaller devices. The superparamagnetic effect on current magnetic recording technologies will make that growth impossible within one-to-two years.

The superparamagnetic barrier is drawing nearer, forcing the industry to slow the historically rapid pace of growth in disk drive capacity.
Thanks to renewed interest in a magnetic recording method first demonstrated more than 100 years ago, there's confidence in the storage industry that the natural effects of superparamagnetism can be further stalled. That method is called perpendicular recording, which, when fully realized over the next five-to-seven years, is expected to enable a tenfold increase in storage capacity over today's technology. This would, for example, enable production of a 60GB 1-inch microdrive--a higher-capacity version of the microdrives used in MP3 players, personal media players, digital cameras, PDAs and other handheld devices.

To help understand how perpendicular recording works, think of the bits as small bar magnets.

In conventional longitudinal recording, the magnets representing the bits are lined up end-to-end along circular tracks in the plane of the disk. If you consider the highest-density bit pattern of alternating 1s and 0s, then the adjacent magnets end up head-to-head (north pole-to-north pole) and tail-to-tail (south pole-to-south pole). In this scenario, they want to repel each other, making them unstable against thermal fluctuations.

In perpendicular recording, the tiny magnets are standing up and down. Adjacent alternating bits stand with north pole next to south pole; thus, they want to attract each other, are more stable and can be packed more closely. This is the key to making the bits smaller without superparamagnetism causing them to lose their memory.

Earlier this year, Hitachi demonstrated a perpendicular recording-data density of 230 Gigabits per square inch–-twice that of today's density on longitudinal recording--which by 2007 could result in a 20GB microdrive.

Though it departs from the current method of recording, perpendicular recording is technically the closest alternative to longitudinal recording, enabling the industry to capitalize on current knowledge while delaying the superparamagnetic effect.

The superparamagnetic barrier is drawing nearer, forcing the industry to slow the historically rapid pace of growth in disk drive capacity-–a pace that, at its peak over the past decade, doubled capacity every 12 months. Using perpendicular recording, the effects of superparamagnetism can be further forestalled, which would create opportunities for continued growth in real density at a rate of about 40 percent each year.

Perpendicular magnetic recording represents an important opportunity for companies in the hard drive industry to continue to grow capacities at a reasonable pace. Such growth is needed to satisfy the burgeoning information requirements of society: A 2003 University of California at Berkeley study estimates that more than 4 million terabytes of information were produced and stored magnetically in 2002–-more than double the 1.7 million terabytes produced and stored in 2000. There are no signs that the requirements for hard-disk storage is ebbing.

Industry analysts have predicted that hard drives for consumer electronics will account for 40 percent of all hard drive shipments by 2008, up from 9 percent in 2003 and 15 percent in 2004. More than ever, consumers are holding their entertainment and personal data in digital formats and have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for storing music, photos, videos and other personal documents. In the next five to 10 years, the average household will have 10 to 20 hard drives in various applications--a situation that will require the successful adoption of perpendicular recording. Companies that research and produce their own hard drive technologies will be better positioned to do this when the industry demands it.

Confidence for the future
Fifty years ago, when the first 5MB drive was introduced, few if any observers could have predicted the current state of the industry. They would likely not have believed that a read/write head could fly 100mph over a spinning platter at a distance that is less than 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. Or that hard drives the size of matchbooks would be capable of storing entire music libraries. This all would have been in the realm of science fiction.

Yet they would likely understand the scientific concepts and physical laws that have made these advances possible. While there has been a great deal of invention, the basic science--like Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen's discovery of magnetic recording more than 100 years ago--has remained relatively constant.

Such constancy gives rise to confidence across the industry that the challenge of superparamagnetism will be met. Perpendicular recording is most likely the first technology bridge in this realm, but it is by no means the last.
http://news.com.com/Perpendicular+re...3-5703823.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What's Ahead For Net, Digital Entertainment

The Internet and digital technology are changing entertainment at lightning speed. The coming years will scramble concepts of music-making, movies, TV networks and advertising. Last week, USA TODAY's Kevin Maney assembled a panel of some of the industry's most influential players to talk about what's ahead. The discussion took place in San Francisco in front of about 200 members of Silicon Valley's Churchill Club. Maney moderated. Following are excerpts.

Topic: Anyone can create media

Q: Blogs are taking off because now, anyone can create and publish text for the world to see. The same is happening in other media — it's becoming easier to make music, videos and even movies. How will that play out?

Chuck D: The fact that somebody in the Ukraine could just wake up and fall into their (home) studio and make some kind of material and submit it to a situation that can be heard worldwide — that, to me, is incredible. It's almost like a new radio. So that's what really had me understand that the music could run parallel with this new technology and create all kinds of new possibilities.

Q: In that world, how will people find the "good" music or movies?

Chuck D: A lot of people like to play basketball. I could do a different thing with a basketball than maybe Patrick Ewing or Michael Jordan. It doesn't interfere with the NBA. Eventually, the cream does rise to the top.

There's a lot of confusion in the middle part of picking and trying to find what is what. But as that becomes more solidified, then you'll see somebody finding an artist or a filmmaker or a blog writer from the middle-of-wherever in the world.

Ross: Right now, maybe people can figure out how to do basic photo sharing, but they don't know how to do recipe sharing. They don't know how to do anything else that's really interesting to them right now.

We're looking at a way to take all these different types of media, not just movies, not just animation, but anything that people like to do — and figure out how to let people manage that and share that simply and easily. For all the talk about blogs and all, to me, it's still just a buzzword. I don't think that people really know how to do a lot of this stuff.

Topic: Exploring effects of entertainment's 'long tail'

Q: What does the "long tail" mean for entertainment and media?

Ross: Companies can form around these little niche markets where they can sell this out-of-print book and make a killing just because there were enough people out there that were looking for it and couldn't find it for the last 10 years.

McNamee: The people in the middle have tried to be arbiters of what we could be entertained by.

They've been the determinants of what's a hit, what's not a hit. The great thing about the long tail is the consumers get to decide for themselves. They don't need somebody in the middle.

At the margin, what I think you'll see is a more direct relationship between content creators, artists of one kind or another and their fans.

The thing that's truly amazing about blogs is how many of them have seven, eight, 10,000 serious readers a day, which exceeds the average reader of the average column in the average local newspaper.

What's been wrong is that capital, the money, has always been tied to distribution. The reason my firm exists is to change that, to put the capital with the content, with the creative people.

You still have to get this into people's hands. But it needs to have a model that's less based on picking what people should watch and more based on giving them what they want.

Ramsay: We've discovered exactly the same thing in video.

We can measure it. There's maybe only a hundred people who watch bass fishing or speed knitting or whatever. So they watch it, and it's important to them.

What we've found is that the viewing patterns of people who watch live television — and are therefore restricted to prime time whenever they're home — are dramatically different than the viewing patterns of people who have the choice of just picking whatever they want.

Given the choice, people will migrate towards a much greater variety, and the deal is you've got to make everything available to everybody so that they're not restricted. And if you do, the market for that more esoteric, more specialized stuff is just as big as the market of the mainstream stuff.

Chuck D: If you're looking for that fourth Sam Cooke song on an album that's been out-of-print, then everybody sort of relied on file sharing for that.

But then the (record) companies came in and started to say, well, this is thiefdom. So there are brilliant possibilities, but the smoke settling and the dust clearing is a five-year picture.

Topic: Overwhelming choice

Q: If so much entertainment is available online and so much can be stored on hard disks on TiVo machines or personal computers, how will consumers react to that?

Ramsay: There's a lot of anxiety in the industry around just having infinite amounts of storage, where you can store everything and have your own server. It's ironic, because on the consumer side, what we hear is people get storage anxiety.

It's like, "I've got too much on this thing, I'll never be able to watch it." And they get worried about that. Well, why don't they erase something? No, they don't want to do that. You've got two sort of conflicting things there.

McNamee: We don't want to look at everything in real time. We just want to have a ton of stuff on some storage thing somewhere so that when the urge hits us, we can be entertained.

Often described as "Hollywood's Napster," BitTorrent is peer-to- peer software that allows people to share video files and even whole movies over the Internet. The same can be done using Kazaa, Gnutella or eDonkey, but BitTorrent has raced ahead in popularity.

If any of you is an entrepreneur, I'll tell you what I want — I want TiVo for BitTorrent. I want a thing that gives me full automation so I never have to think about it, and every high-quality Cary Grant movie gets automatically downloaded on the hard drive without any intervention by me. Nobody has done that, and it's stupid that they've never done it.

Ramsay: Search becomes a problem. The search tools that you use to find information, like Google and so on, don't generally work in video.

When Yahoo put up their video capability, I looked up (the TV show) 24. I had to go through about two pages before I actually got to the TV program.

There's going to be a growing need for entertainment-oriented search technology and for personalization and recommendations — if you like this, you're going to like that. It's not about a hundred channels or 500 channels anymore; it's about 15 million.

Hendra: Advertising agencies will be able to embed advertising within search so that we can target messages based on what people are actually searching for and their preferences as we get into a more personalized experience.

It's just the early days. There's a ton more that's going to come.

Topic: Changes in music

Q: The music industry is struggling mightily with how to handle the digital era. Can you talk about that?

Chuck D: The artist Prince — he calls himself Prince again — said it's best to be on top of technology or else it will be on top of you. Technology has always ruled the roost, but the companies who are intermediaries are never first to admit it. They always thought that they ruled the roost.

I got involved with the digital online world because I wanted to be able to go peer-to- peer. I wanted to be able to go directly to the public without having somebody judge my art. It's just opened up so many wonderful things. In 1998, I saw that having a PublicEnemy.com allowed me to go to many fans, not just in this country but throughout the world.

McNamee: Technology has transformed not just music, but it is gradually transforming every segment of media by making media mobile. Mobility has changed the demographics of consumption dramatically.

It used to be when you had to go to a movie theater to watch a movie or to your living room to listen to music or watch TV, that distribution could control the experience. It could control the time, place and price of your entertainment. Mobility has created time for people who previously couldn't buy or couldn't really enjoy media. It has given fans above the age of 25 — who still get minimum attention from the industry — it's given them the economic upper hand.

Ross: What the record companies are missing and the movie industry is missing, is that this is a way of life for kids. As kids grew up, (media) was always available to them. They're used to getting it on demand. They're used to going to the computer, and it's right there for them.

It's never been about oh, I don't want to pay X dollars for the CD. It's never been about undermining the record industry. It's always just been about the fact that I know the song is right there on the computer. I know I could download it.

I just can't comprehend the fact that it's there, and yet I'm supposed to go to the store and get it, because that's not the way that anything else works for us on the computer.

Q: Just curious: How do you find and buy music now?

Chuck D: For me, I have offline, online and midline. Midline is that you can order through the Web. Online means that you can go to places such as TheOrchard.com, which is an online retail shop which gets into all online retail outlets such as the Wal-Marts and the Rhapsodies and the iTunes.

Ross: On the Stanford network, there's a program that searches the network for any type of media and downloads it instantly, peer-to-peer. Of course, I only download — whatever the law is, that's only what I do. But that's how I find it. Or just through friends.

It's amazing how much content is not produced in a big warehouse but is produced by JibJab or one of these little media companies and makes the rounds on the Internet just through friends.

Topic: Video following music

Q: What do you see happening next in video and television?

Ramsay: The video world is lagging behind the music world in terms of this revolution that's occurring. It's actually evolving in very similar ways, but it's several years behind because of the technology. Obviously, video takes up a lot more bandwidth, and it's harder to distribute.

But there's no question in my mind that over the next few years, we're going to see a massive shift toward getting access to video content via broadband. You're going to see the same kinds of friction-free, self-publishing dynamic starting to happen. It's already happening. You can get on the Internet, and you can publish your video; you can make it available to anybody.

And it won't be too long before you'll be able to do that and charge for it. All the things that occur today in music are going to occur in video.

McNamee: There's a start-up called Akimbo that's about to ship a product. Its initial programming will be soccer from Europe.

It'll have things from India and from other cultures that have never been available because they don't have large-enough audiences to go on satellite or cable, but they have a plenty large-enough, and certainly devoted-enough, audience to go over the Internet.

Ramsay: Foreign programming is an interesting test case, because it fits into that same model that (Blake) was talking about a bit earlier, which is, if it's too awkward to get somewhere else and it's available on the Internet, I'm just going to download it.

If that gets to be really easy, you're going to see a flood of illegal downloading that could parallel what's been going on in music, led by foreign-language programming, because you just can't get it elsewhere.

Hendra: The networks are starting to try to figure out what they're going to do with all their content to fit the new world. They've got to figure out how to make money off it in a different way. It's going to take some people who have grown up on the computer and the Internet to change it inside those big companies.

Topic: Next-generation advertising

Q: If people have total control over their entertainment, how does advertising fit in?

Hendra: It isn't going to happen at 3 o'clock on Friday; everything's suddenly going to be a new paradigm. But I do think the next three to five years, we're going to see a massive restructuring. What's got to take place is big changes on the advertisers' side. They have to decide that they're going to join this transformational process, and they're going to change the way that they do things in terms of marketing and advertising.

Q: Is it hard to bring the advertisers around?

Hendra: There's still a whole generation of marketers and brand managers who grew up on mass media, and that has to change. It doesn't mean the 30- second TV spot will die. I don't even think that's the right question. We're still, even right now, able to use 30-second TV to drive people to that interactive experience. At the same time, we have to figure out — we're going to have these very picky and demanding audiences of one or 200 or 1,000. That takes a whole new set of skills to be able to target people that way.

Ramsay: In (the TiVo) experience, when you offer advertising to people, it's their choice. You say, here's something you might be interested in. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to.

I'm surprised at just how many people go there. You sort of have this notion that people will ignore advertising almost unilaterally, but they don't. And I think it opens up opportunities to do a lot of interactive, more personal ads, more targeted ads and more direct-response ads.

Topic: The state of the industry

Q: What else do you have to say about where the industry is going?

Ramsay: Entertainment is getting better. People have more choice. They don't have to watch stuff they don't want to watch. They don't have to listen to things they don't like. We're just at the beginning of that.

Ross: We can sit up here and talk about digital seismic earthquakes and everything, but the fact is that my grandfather still struggles with e-mail. People still hate computers and can barely figure out what we're talking about.

I want to see my grandfather blog about the war or make a movie about his experiences in his life before it's too late. People are missing that boat. We're designing (technology) for the young males and the hard-core-technology demographic.

As far as what's next for Firefox, it's about making every last bit of the Internet experience simpler until my mom is not yelling for me from the other room.

McNamee: Most major media companies define their technology strategy in terms of digital-rights management. Their view of the world is about controlling access to what they own. The next 10 years are about exactly the opposite. It's about the creative people and their fans getting together. Whatever it is you like, it will be increasingly available. It's time to give customers what they want.

It's now our job and the industry's job to actually do it. The old business models are brain-dead, and the body will die soon.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ble-usat_x.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gloves Off In Dutch Anti-Piracy Punch-Up
Jan Libbenga

Five Dutch ISPs will launch a "procedure on the merits" action against Dutch anti- piracy organisation Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands (BREIN). As reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...racy_lawsuits/) yesterday, BREIN intends to sue the ISPs next month to obtain the identity of 42 individuals suspected of illegally swapping copyrighted music. The ISPs believe a normal summary proceeding or kort geding will not allow a full investigation of the merits or otherwise of BREIN's case. A procedure on the merits demands such investigation.

Former Kazaa lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm will now defend the providers in the full proceedings on the merits, which is expected to take months if not longer. The ISPs say they are in no hurry to proceed with a preliminary injunction. Obviously, BREIN disagrees, and says that the movie and music industry is losing money every day as a result of illegal file swapping.

Meanwhile, Dutch maverick weblog Geen Stijl (No Style) has started a campaign against BREIN. Geen Stijl urges its readers to fill out a form asking BREIN if they have any personal data on them. Under article 35 of the Dutch privacy law BREIN is obliged to reply within four weeks. Geen Stijl hopes the protest will create "administrative mayhem" at BREIN, but BREIN has already said it will send out a standard reply and will charge individuals who demand more detailed information.

The weblog also argues that BREIN is a privately-owned company (linked closely to music rights society Buma/Stemra) and that private companies in the Netherlands are not allowed to actively collect personal data and link these to an IP address.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05...ps_fight_back/


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Direct Infringement on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Niels Schaumann - William Mitchell College of Law

William Mitchell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9

Abstract:
In 2001, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a trial court decision that some 75 million Americans were infringing copyright by exchanging music files in the MP3 format via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network known as Napster. The breathtaking sweep of this holding - that almost one quarter of the population of the United States was engaging in illegal (and likely criminal) activity - was reason enough to give the case a second look. But most of the scholarly attention lavished on the Napster case focused on Napster's secondary liability for providing the technology of infringement. There has been little analysis of the primary infringement committed by Napster's users.

Indeed, the alleged primary infringement of P2P users seems to be an example of a phenomenon one sometimes encounters in the common law: A case finds liability, with little or no analysis. A later case also finds liability, with no independent analysis, citing the first case. A third case does the same, citing the first two cases. Before long, the principle of liability is declared to be well-settled, despite an almost complete lack of reasoning supporting the principle. The so-called RAM copy doctrine, discussed below, is a good example of this phenomenon. Direct P2P infringement seems destined to be another: While Napster, the first of the P2P cases, at least briefly discusses the basis for the direct liability of Napster's users, later cases have done little more than mention that P2P users infringe copyright, as if it were self-evident.

In this article, I will analyze the activities of P2P users to determine more precisely which, if any, of their actions infringe copyright. I suggest that one reason courts do not delve more deeply into the question of direct infringement is that in fully-litigated cases, the alleged direct infringers are not before the courts; their rights are being adjudicated in absentia. Moreover, the actual defendants in these cases - the alleged secondary infringers - are poor proxies for the users of P2P networks and have no incentive to promote clear judicial analysis, because clear analysis will result in secondary liability. Yet it is important from a policy standpoint to be clear about which activities infringe and which do not.

Part II of this Article will describe the process of copyright lawmaking and the recent evolution of copyright law in response to technology. This discussion will include a brief description of conventional and P2P network technology. A copyright analysis of user activities on P2P networks follows in Part III, which argues that the nature of copyright legislation requires courts to be especially careful and precise in determining the contours of infringing noncommercial conduct by members of the public. The analysis in Part III will lead to the conclusion that copying by P2P users does not infringe copyright, but distribution does. In Part IV, I address some strategic considerations affecting copyright enforcement and P2P networks, and I will argue that the rights of consumers to use copyrighted works are gravely threatened by the current of litigation against secondary infringers. Finally, I propose the reinvigoration of Sony as a way to preserve the public benefit of P2P technology.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=703882


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Correspondence

Jack,

I remember that you monitor P2P developments, and I was wondering if you had already talked about my essay covering peer to peer theory in its social and political aspects?

Here is a bunch of links, followed by encouraging kudo's.

I just created a Foundation for P2P Alternatives,

Michel Bauwens


a PDF version here at http://www.networkcultures.org/weblo.../P2P_essay.pdf ;

a Wiki version is already available at http://noosphere.cc/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.P2pEvolution.

an earlier draft version for the 'integral discourse community' is located at http://207.44.196.94/~wilber/bauwens2.html

However, it's always best to ask me for the latest version by email attachment, since I tinker with the essay almost daily.

A weekly newsletter, Pluralities/Integration, monitoring P2P developments is also available from the same author, free by email request. See the archive at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

The foundation website-in-progress is at http://p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Main_Page ; a mailing list for the site's development is available at p2pf@yahoogroups.com.



George Dafermos, at http://radio.weblogs.com/0117128/

"Michel Bauwens is the author of the most visionary piece on peer-to-peer I've ever read, published his much-awaited new essay on P2P, entitled P2P and Human Evolution: p2p as the premise of a new mode of civilization. As expected, his excellent and path-breaking treatise is all-encompassing, critically exploring P2P in all its possible manifestations and linkages, that is, with respect to its political, social, economic, spiritual, cultural, and technological implications. It is at the intersections of all these spheres and their interactions that P2P holds the potential to emerge as the basis of the new civilisation premised on self-realisation, autonomy, creation, eros, and sharing. It's either that or a return to barbarism, writes Bauwens. Read on and marvel at the mental syntheses that this essay invokes."


Peer to Peer weblog / Unmediated at http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000653037158/

"Michel Bauwens has written a phenomenal essay entitled P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework. It's long and much of it goes far over my head, but reads like a P2P manifesto" Bauwens even concludes by calling it a guide to an active participation in the transformation of our world, into something better, more participative, more free, more creative. Really quite fascinating."


Integral Foresight Institute, Chris Stewart

"What Michael Bauwens has achieved in a very short space fullfills the same function as the Communist Manifesto once did: a call for a worldwide movement for social and political change, firmly rooted in the objective and subjective changes of contempary society, and articulated as a practical and insightful model of human value and power relations that is ahead of its time. If we listen more carefully to Bauwens than we ever did Marx, however, it just might lead to a smooth evolution for humanity rather than revolution, or at worst, destruction. Bauwens has traced out real contours of hope for Western civilization. His presentation of a P2P perspective includes a clear theory of human power and value relations, a practical appreciation of its relationship to the current orthodoxy, and an inspiring vision for viable, sustainable, and desirable futures. Just as Bauwens notes the limited social acceptance of Marx at the time of his writing, it may well be that in years to come Bauwens's articulate and deeply considered insights will not only be as profoundly influential and valuable but, crucially, a lot more workable."


P2P and Integral Theory – Generation Sit weblog

"I rarely encounter essays addressing Integral Theory in the context of emerging technology. But if there's one thing out there worth reading, this essay is one of them -- P2P and Human Evolution: Placing Peer to Peer Theory in an Integral Framework (via IntegralWorld). This very long essay describes P2P in detail, covering the interior and exterior aspects, and its incompatibilities with Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory. There are a lot of heady stuff for me to digest in this essay. And I'm still not done reading it."


John Heron, Participatory Spirituality pioneer, author of Sacred Science

"What I appreciate is your clarity with regard to the following: your basic definition of p2p; the way you trace this definition, and any compromises and departures from it, within its many manifestations; and toward the end of your account, forms co-existence and of possible political strategies. All of this is very valuable food for thought and action. You make a most effective and persuasive case for the widespread significance of the p2p phenomenon, in diverse fields, and with due regard for the underlying epistemological shifts involved. This work is indeed a major achievement of scholarship, insight, moral vision and political imagination."


Letters to the WiR are welcome. You may send yours to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com – Jack.