[JackSpratts]

Backlash In Suits Over File Sharing

Bay area music fans speak out over crackdown.
Sam Diaz and Marian Liu

Record industry lawsuits, filed Monday in an effort to curb sharing of copyrighted music over the Internet, instead may have sparked a backlash among music lovers -- many of whom aren't even downloaders.

The suits prompted discussions in homes and classrooms throughout the Bay Area, where teenagers are a large portion of the people logging to peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and Kazaa.

And the Recording Industry Association of America said that one target of its nationwide legal assault, a New York woman, had already settled her case for $2,000 Tuesday, and other defendants were discussing similar deals. Meanwhile, a Marin County man sued the trade group on behalf of all California residents, saying its ``amnesty'' program is misleading.

A day after the music industry filed 261 federal suits against individuals across the country, fear sent some music downloaders running to delete music files from their computers, and outrage prompted others to defiantly swap even more songs.

Gene Brunak, a teacher at Mission San Jose High School in Fremont, said he talked to his journalism class Tuesday about the lawsuits. ``There was a hush in the room. Everyone put their heads down.''

Some teens said they realized that downloading music is wrong and can understand why the recording industry would want it to stop.

``If I was working in the entertainment business, I would be upset too,'' said Grace Wang, 14, a freshman at Mission San Jose. ``But it's like drugs: you know it's bad, but people do it anyway.''

Other young people, such as Angel Gutierrez, 20, of San Jose, said they will continue to download music and are not afraid of the recording industry group.

``There are too many people,'' Gutierrez said. ``They can't sue every single person doing it.''

But the initial blitz of music-piracy cases, which ultimately might reach into the thousands, attracted a lot of attention and resulted in one early settlement.

Sylvia Torres of New York, whose 12-year-old daughter Brianna Lahara had more than 1,000 copyrighted music tracks on the family's computer, agreed Tuesday to pay $2,000 to settle the suit a day after the case was filed.

``We understand now that file-sharing the music was illegal,'' Torres said in a statement issued by the RIAA. ``You can be sure Brianna won't be doing it any more.''

Recording industry group spokesman Jonathan Lemy said several people had contacted the group Tuesday to discuss settlements. The group's Web site, www.riaa. com, was busy for most of the day and inaccessible at times because of the number of people trying to access it, according to Keynote Systems of San Mateo, which tracks Web site traffic.

The industry site is also home to the Clean Slate amnesty form, which users can fill out, have notarized and send in with a copy of a photo ID to protect themselves from future suits.

Users must agree to delete all illegal files and promise to never again share copyrighted music. In return, the recording industry group has said it will not share the information it obtains from users.

But Eric Parke, a Marin County mortgage executive, sees the form as promising anything but amnesty and sued Tuesday to halt the amnesty program.

``They're not really providing amnesty,'' said Parke's attorney, Ira P. Rothken. ``When you read the legal document closely and get past the headlines, there's no protection from lawsuits. There's no release of all claims.''

Under subpoena, the recording industry group could be forced to release the names of admitted copyright violators, and anyone who signed the forms would be unprotected, Rothken said.

It could be weeks until the motion for an injunction is heard by a judge, Rothken said.

Although interest was high, opinions among local parents were split.

San Jose mother Tammy Willyard said she told her kids to stop using the file-sharing services out of fear of being sued. She admitted not knowing how downloading works and whether her kids were doing it. And she said she was not alone.

``You know, I'll bet a lot of parents don't know,'' she said. ``Parents are so busy and kids are pretty much left on their own.''

But Rubin Wang, a computer programmer from Fremont, said parents are obligated to know what their children are doing online.

``You need to educate teenagers on good and bad,'' he said. ``The bottom line is not Internet access, but watching your children and teaching them.''

The RIAA, recognizing that the file-swapping services do have legitimate uses, is not asking people to uninstall the software. The group just wants people to stop sharing music illegally.

But some small bands said Tuesday that such sharing helps them gain exposure. Now, they're worried that downloaders will stay away and won't ever have a chance to hear their music.

``When it comes to smaller bands, online is better for exposure,'' said Matthew Fazzi, 18, a guitarist with Tragedy Andy, a San Jose pop Indie rock band. ``People rarely pay $10 to $20 if they don't know what you sound like.''

He said he has downloaded music in the past but won't do it anymore because he doesn't want to get sued. Instead, he and others will go back to the ``root of piracy: borrowing a record from a friend and burning it that way.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...printstory.jsp


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The Sounds Of Silence
Record industry pulls plug on illegal file sharers
Katie Maslanka

When Allie, a sophomore in the School of Humanities and Sciences, received a message from the Office of Public Safety last Friday afternoon, she had no idea what warranted the unexpected call.

“I immediately thought that something went wrong at home,” she said. “So I called home and was panicking.”

Allie soon found out that she was being judicially referred for sharing more than 400 files over the Internet. And she’s not alone: since Thursday, a total of 12 students on campus have been judicially referred for illegally sharing copyrighted files after the college received a warning from the Recording Industry Association of America on Sept. 4.

In addition to the referral, the students had their ResNet connections disabled and were required to delete the shared files from their computers.

The consequences on the Ithaca College campus are just part of a larger crackdown by RIAA in an attempt to stop widespread file sharing on peer-to- peer networks like Kazaa, Limewire or Gnutella. The association announced Monday that it had filed 261 lawsuits against users who were sharing an average of 1,000 songs each.

Since file sharing is a violation of college policy, students have been judicially referred before, but never such a large number in such a short amount of time, said David Weil, director of web, systems and departmental services in Information Technology Services.

In previous years, complaints about file sharing only occurred about once every other week, he said.

This is the first time RIAA has contacted the college, and the association is taking what Nancy Pringle, vice president and college counsel, calls a “more lenient” approach than it could. Rather than suing the students for fines that could potentially reach up to $150,000 per file shared, she said, the recording industry is allowing the college to deal with them judicially.

Rachel, a sophomore who was contacted by the college on Thursday about her file sharing, said she was relieved that she hadn’t been sued by RIAA.

“I’m just glad that all that’s happening is I’m being judicially referred and that the recording industry isn’t using me to make an example,” she said.

However, according to a letter sent by the RIAA to Weil, the recording industry still reserves the right to sue students who are illegally sharing files even if the college takes judicial action against them.

Weil said that by judicially referring students, the college is merely performing its responsibility to prove a pattern of action in response to RIAA’s notifications.

“The college really has little choice as to how we respond to these,” he said. “We’re not trying to make life difficult for anyone. We have legal requirements in these cases.”

Failure to react to RIAA’s warnings could result in the college being held liable for any other copyright infringement that occurs on campus.

Several colleges, including Boston College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Los Angeles, have received subpoenas from RIAA demanding the identities of students sharing files on their campus networks.

Ithaca College has not yet received a subpoena, but Weil said such a move could be likely.

“We are definitely on the RIAA’s radar,” he said. “I would not be at all surprised if we got a subpoena at some point.”

While Pringle is uncertain as to whether the RIAA plans to subpoena the college, she said it would respond accordingly and release the requested information if a subpoena was received.

Both Pringle and Weil said that currently the most important matter is to educate students about the risks and consequences of file sharing.

“[The recording industry’s] not fooling around,” Pringle said. “They’re really trying to send a very loud message here, which is ‘Stop doing this.’”

Weil said that while more than half of the students he contacts about file sharing know that it is illegal, there is still a percentage of people who do not realize the possible consequences of sharing songs over the Internet.

When Michael, a freshman in the School in the Humanities and Sciences, discovered that his ResNet connection had been disabled on Monday because of the issue, he had no idea that Kazaa was running on his computer.

“It was just something I had thrown on while I was at home,” he said.

Allie, who lost her ResNet connection on Friday, said she was shocked that she was getting in trouble for file sharing.

“I don’t know anyone on this campus who doesn’t file share and doesn’t download music,” she said.

Rachel voiced a similar complaint.

“I was like, ‘Damn, I can’t believe I got caught,’” she said. She added, “It’s kind of irritating. I know friends who have so many more files downloaded, so many who file share who weren’t questioned.”
http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articl...e_sounds_o.htm


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RIAA: One Down, 260 To Go
Fred "zAmboni" Locklear

While the RIAA would like to lump all P2P file sharers into the 18-30 year- old single/loner/hacker/cracker/pr0n monger/movie & music pirate demographic, the typical P2P user can come from all walks of life. The RIAA wants to scare people into thinking no-one is immune from prosecution...and that is the problem with the "gotta subpoena and sue them all" strategy...their lawsuits could be aimed at anyone. That person could be a 12-year old living in subsidized housing, a 71-year old grandfather, or maybe a 50 and 21-year old father-son combo.

Hoping to halt the quickly growing PR nightmare, the RIAA has quickly settled with the parents of the 12-year old girl for $2000. That is a far cry from the $150,000 per song they were seeking for "pirating" songs such as "If You're Happy and You Know It", and the theme from the TV show "Family Matters." Sensing a good time to strike while the coals are hot, Wayne Rosso, the president of Grokster, decided to join in the fun offering to pay the family's $2000 fine from his own pocket.

But Rosso plans to step in and pay the fine. "I'm trying to contact the mother to offer to pay the $2,000 for her out of my own pocket. I'm disgusted by the RIAA and its extortion tactics," he told vnunet.com.

"I thought that the two Joes, McCarthy and Stalin, were dead. But little did I know that they're both alive and well and running the RIAA."

Of course, if Rosso and other P2P top brass wants to step in and pay fines, the RIAA may start hiking up the settlement cost. It looks like people in Congress are taking notice, and it isn't doing the RIAA any good when it looks like the schoolyard bully is beating others up and taking the lunch, rent, and Christmas present money over downloading children's songs. With this backdrop, I wonder how the politicians will feel now that the recording industry is trying to equate P2P with Peer-2-Porn? Will they see through another RIAA attempt to protect their money pool?

On a side note, I was a bit disappointed last night with a file trading discussion segment on the Lehrer NewsHour. It could have been an interesting discussion between music industry insiders on opposite sides of the file sharing debate. On one side was John Flansburgh from TMBG, and on the other was Chuck Cannon, a Nashville songwriter. Cannon seemed to be content with the current music industry regime, and Flansburgh brought up good points, but never followed through with them. Those who are familiar with the debate would have understood his points, but he failed to educate those who are new to the situation. Here is a typical exchange:

JOHN FLANSBURGH ...And there are a lot of organizations intercepting paychecks besides fans. I think it might actually be too late for...

CHUCK CANNON: Such as?

JOHN FLANSBURGH: Record companies...

Flansburgh didn't expand on his thought. He could have quite easily laid out a simple business model where the money saved in distribution and overhead costs with online music services could be funneled back into the pockets of artists and songwriters. Instead of educating, he decided on the quick sound bite.

Addendum: Forgot this other tidbit. If you are thinking of signing up for the rumored RIAA amnesty program, you may want to think again. Many sources pointed out it may shield you against an RIAA sponsored lawsuit, but it may not give you immunity against other lawsuits coming third parties such as the singers and songwriters. In fact, these third parties may attempt to subpoena all this amnesty information from the RIAA in the same way the RIAA did previously with ISPs.
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1063226543.html


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Broadband Behavior: I Want My Info Now!
Jonathan Miller

Tenure online has a profound impact on behavior. The longer you’re online, the more your behavior changes, the more you adapt, the more likely you are to be in an always-on environment and the more likely that will accelerate the change in your behavior. According to a UCLA study that AOL participated in, 50% of online users in the United States have been online for four years or more; 27% six years or more. That is a line of demarcation. Behavior starts to really change after four years. Our research says that tenure and an always-on environment go hand in hand. The environment mirrors the tenure effect, and they both affect user behavior.

At AOL we did research with over 25,000 consumers to develop a picture of the always-on lifestyle, what it
means for our consumers. First of all, always-on users just plain use the Internet a whole lot more. 43% of broadband subscribers have multiple sessions a day, versus 19% of narrow band users. They spend twice as much time online. This year at AOL, for the first time, 52% of our users said they consider the Internet a necessity, a must-have part of their lives.

Broadband users communicate more online. There are 88% more e-mail sessions among broadband users than narrow band users, and almost 40% more instant messaging. A broadband household is three times more likely to have a PDA than the average U.S. household. Again, all of the forms of communication and staying connected accelerate with tenure and accelerate in an always-on environment.

Broadband users also consume more media. Almost half—48%—of broadband households listen to Internet music or radio daily. At AOL, our highly-tenured members (four years plus), are four times more likely to download music; 55% watch video clips every day. The role of online content is important, and growing.

There is an impact on TV. 40% of our highly-tenured members watch six hours a week less television than narrow band users. That’s a big number; and as the tenure increases, and the always-on environment grows, that will have ramifications for the television industry. It won’t end the television industry, but it will begin to have a meaningful effect on TV usage and viewing patterns.

There is a significant difference between how narrow band and broadband users allot time on the computer. Narrow band use is batched. A narrow band user tends to say, "Okay, I have a couple of things I’ve got to do today. I’ve got to get a movie time, go to the yellow pages to find the nearest dry cleaner, write an e-mail." So they batch those activities. They go online, do their tasks all at once, and then go offline.

But because with broadband the Internet is always there, users in the always-on environment go to it more often, and use it just to grab quick bits of information. Maybe they just want to know a movie time, or look something up in the yellow pages. They do it when they want; they don’t batch the online tasks, because they don’t have to.

In the always-on environment, not surprisingly, we’re beginning to see newspaper usage go down. In fact, the most important reason broadband users cite for going online is the ability to get information quickly. They just want to get it right away, right there. They are three times more likely to look for news and 25% more likely to look for entertainment information than the average Internet user.

Very importantly, 73% of broadband users call the Internet a better source of information than newspapers or television. The Internet is their preferred source for getting information. That’s a big number.
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comm...d=1005_0_3_0_C


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Apple Sells 10m Tunes On The Net
BBC

Music fans have snapped up more than 10 million songs from Apple's iTunes music store in four months. Apple said the 10 millionth song bought from its online store for 99 cents (66 pence) was Complicated by Avril Lavigne. The success of the iTunes music venture contrasts with other industry-backed, subscription-based music services. It comes as the record industry steps up legal action against people accused of illegally sharing music online.

The iTunes store is widely seen as one of the most consumer friendly methods of buying music online. It has become hugely popular since it was launched in May, partly due to the few restrictions on what people could do with the music they downloaded.

"Legally selling 10 million songs online in just four months is a historic milestone for the music industry, musicians and music lovers everywhere," said Apple boss Steve Jobs. Backed by the five major record labels, Apple offers 200,000 songs at 99 cents. At the moment the service is only available to Mac users in the US, but a Windows version is due by the end of the year. The iTunes store offers music fans a legal way to download songs over the internet, at a time when the record labels are trying to stop the millions of tunes shared without permission online. The music industry blames a slump in CD sales on online file-sharing services. It is now taking legal action against individuals accused of downloading pirated music.

Other companies are trying to replicate the success of Apple's iTunes, moving away from subscription-based services. These have failed to attract music fans as they are seen as too complicated and expensive. One service, BuyMusic.com, is selling music downloads for 79 cents per song and $7.95 per album. In Europe, Virgin has just joined other companies in launching its own service, reselling licensed music from the British technology company OD2 for as little as 60 pence a track. OD2 has a catalogue of over 200,000 songs and is the only European firm to have permission from each of the five major music labels to resell digital downloads.

Apple is seeking to capitalise on the appeal of its music service by announcing new versions of its digital music player, the iPod. The new model comes with a 40GB hard drive at a cost of US$499 (£399). which can hold as many as 10,000 songs. Apple also sells a 10GB iPod for $299 (£249) and a 20GB one for $399 (£299).

"The iPod and the iTunes Music Store offer music lovers an unbeatable combination that our competitors can't even come close to," said Mr Jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/3092542.stm


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"I don't want to get sued, but I don't want to support an industry that wants to sue me either," said Robert Vitro, a Columbia University student. "I'll just go back to primitive methods, like borrowing CDs from my buddies and burning a copy or two."

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Deepest Musical Note Detected In Outer Space

Who knew: big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers revealed yesterday.

"The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech," said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard piano keyboard. This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.

The sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies some 250 million light- years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.

Fabian and his colleagues used NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory to investigate X-rays coming from the cluster's heart. Researchers presumed that a supermassive black hole, with perhaps 2.5 billion times the mass of our sun, lay there, and the activity around the center bolstered this assumption.

Black holes are powerful matter-sucking drains in space, and astronomers believe most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, may contain black holes at their centers. Black holes have not been directly observed, because their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it.

So researchers have concentrated on what happens around the edges of black holes, just before matter is pulled in. When scientists trained the Chandra observatory on the centre of Perseus last year, they saw concentric ripples in the cosmic gas that fills the space between the galaxies in the cluster. "We're dealing with enormous scales here," Fabian said. "The size of these ripples is 30,000 light- years."

Fabian said the ripples were caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure of the jumble of galaxies packed together in the cluster. As the black hole pulls material in, he said, it also creates jets of material shooting out above and below it, and it is these powerful jets that create the pressure that creates the sound waves.

To scientists, he said, pressure ripples equate to sound waves. By calculating how far apart the ripples were, and how fast sound might travel there, the team of researchers determined the musical note of the sound. Fabian said the notion of singing black holes might well be extrapolated to other galaxies, but not necessarily to the Milky Way.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1975063


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AT&T Bundles More DSL
Press Release

AT&T today introduced its new residential digital subscriber line (DSL) high speed Internet service in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland. The four new states join New York as part of a nationwide rollout of DSL service that can be packaged as part of an AT&T local and long distance communications bundle.

AT&T intends to eventually offer the new DSL service in all states in which it provides bundled local and long distance residential services. AT&T now provides local phone service to more than 3.1 million consumers in 13 states and expects to expand its footprint by testing or marketing its bundled local and long distance services in 35 states by year-end.

AT&T initially launched its new DSL offer in New York in late July and has had tremendous interest from consumers interested in packaging high-speed Internet access with their other AT&T services. "We've been delighted with the results so far in New York and are excited to deliver the same benefits to customers in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland," said Ray Solnik, vice president of strategic markets, AT&T Consumer. "Families considering adding DSL to their AT&T communications bundle for those back-to-school projects now have an attractive and economical choice."

The new offer, which utilizes a nationwide data network provided by Covad Communications, enables consumers to bundle AT&T's DSL service with other AT&T local and long distance services. The ability to bundle AT&T DSL service is based on a process called line splitting, which involves AT&T "splitting" the loop it buys from the Bells to offer AT&T local, long distance and DSL service on the same line. Line splitting for large volumes of customers is an innovative process that gives consumers more choice for high-speed Internet access.

Consumers can choose the standard AT&T DSL plan for the price of a dial-up Internet connection--$19.95 a month for the first three months--and $39.95 a month thereafter. Or, consumers can choose the preferred AT&T DSL plan and enjoy even faster premium speeds. Consumers who choose the preferred plan get a $20 discount off of the regular price for the first three months. The preferred plan is available for $49.95 a month thereafter.
http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=40026


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Doesn’t Add Up

Krugman is a favorite regular read. His latest is a favorite among favorites.
Lawrence Lessig

Apparently, the FERC has now settled with “energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis.” Through various price manipulations, those companies cost Californians $8.9 billion — not including the extraordinarily high prices we now face because of long-term contracts signed at the height of the crisis.

The FERC has now imposed a $1 million fine on the energy companies. As Krugman calculates, though they imposed costs of at least $250 on each Californian by their games, they’re required to pay 3 cents.

$1 million for $9 billion in real harm.

Let’s put this in some perspective.

Jesse Jordan (the RPI student who ran a search engine and was sued by the RIAA) was, the RIAA claims, liable for $15,000,000 in damages. When you add up the damages claimed against all four of these students (who again had built search engines), the RIAA was asking, on some estimates, for $100 billion dollars. That’s because, under our law as interpreted by the RIAA, downloading one song makes you liable for $150,000. Or, on the RIAA’s view of the law, cheaper to defraud Californian’s of $9 billion than download 10 songs from a p2p server.

“Oh,” you say, “but that’s unfair. You’re comparing actual fines imposed to the maximum fines that could be imposed.”

Ok, so let’s compare actual to actual.

In January, 2000, MP3.com launched a service called my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would sign into an account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then wherever you were — at work, or at home — you could get access to that music once you signed into your account. The system was therefore a kind of music-lockbox.

No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But that opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the my.mp3.com service was to give users access to their own content, and as a byproduct, by seeing the content you already owned, discover the kind of content the users liked.

To make this system function, however, MP3.COM needed to copy 50,000 CDs to a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who uploaded the music, but that would have taken a great deal of time, and would have produced a product of question-able quality.) It therefore purchased 50,000 CD from a store, and started the process of making copies of those CDs. Again, it would not serve the content from those copies to anyone except those who authenticated that they had a copy of the CD they wanted to access. So while this was 50,000 copies, it was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers something they had already bought.

Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels, headed by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com settled with four of the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found MP3.com to have been guilty of willful infringement with respect to the fifth. The judge imposed a fine against MP3.com of $118,000,000. MP3.com then settled with the remaining plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over $54 million.

So defraud Californians of $9 billion, pay $1 million. But develop a new technology to make it easier for people to get access to music that they have presumptively purchased: pay more than $54 million.

Such are the values of our time.
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001451.shtml


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Smiling Mouse Smells Like A Rat
Dwayne Fatherree

For some reason unknown to me, my daughters love watching Tom and Jerry cartoons. I guess the image of a little mouse smiling innocently before whacking the cat in the head with a 10-pound sledge hammer is riveting entertainment for children.

Even at their young ages, they know what is going to happen.

The giggles start before the weapon of choice is even shown on the screen.

That’s why the newly announced amnesty for file traders makes me smirk a little. The Recording Industry Association of America is smiling, offering a reassuring piece of mind to users who will admit they have downloaded or shared music files in the past.

Of course, those users have to provide a copy of a photo identification, sign a notarized form promising to delete any music files they may have downloaded and pledge not to do anything so nefarious ever again. In exchange, the RIAA mouse promises not to add lumps to the user’s noggin with its legal ball-peen hammer.

Let’s look more closely at this one. If users admit to file trading and have their data as part of this huge permanent record, the RIAA will have all the documents it needs to start batch filing civil actions if the amnesty seekers ever download again. I haven’t seen the notarized forms yet, but I can bet they are worded in such a way as to cover undiscovered or unimplemented technologies as well as the current file trading systems. Also, it is doubtful that any of the true music pirates -- the ones reproducing discs and selling them for profit -- will buy into this. What will happen is the general populace will be defenseless against the legal actions of a corporate lobbying group, while the true criminals continue to prance away, copying and selling music illegally.

Someone needs to stop the madness. The RIAA is acting more and more like an enforcement arm of the federal government at best, like mob protection men at the worst. Even if the organization has the right and power to guarantee amnesty for illegal file traders (which I doubt it does), the only thing that can come of a database such as the one being compiled is further encroachment on the already challenged rights to consumers’ personal use of music.

If I were to start collecting data from online users without their knowledge, compile it and use it to extort money from them, I would be a criminal. The RIAA has managed to do the same thing, except it was aided and abetted by legislators, courts and even the White House.

Current anti-piracy laws were designed to fight music pirates, not music consumers. The logical resolution of this battle, in the eyes of the RIAA, at least, will be the elimination of any consumer fair use rights. I don’t know that for fact, but all of the actions taken so far certainly point in that direction. The only option for the consumers who want to be able to use music they purchase is to stand up to the whims of the music lobby now. Take my advice. Just say no to the smiling mouse. Your bump-free skull will thank me later.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/p...309080309/1001


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Free Data Recovery Software for Hard Drives and Digital Storage Media From Germany Is Now Conquering the US Market as Well Press Release

The two free data recovery programs from PC Inspector, a business division of CONVAR Deutschland GmbH, have already been downloaded over 500,000 times by customers from the USA during the last 3 months. Both free programs allow the recovery of deleted or damaged files on hard drives and digital storage media such as are used in digital cameras.

With PC Inspector, Convar has succeeded in integrating years of experience in the professional data recovery sector into a user-friendly program for the end user. The European Convar Group became known in the USA at the end of 2001 as over 400 disk drives from the destroyed WTC were processed at the Germany location with the "blue laser scanning" reconstruction process developed by Convar. The free data recovery programs, PC Inspector smart recovery, and, PC Inspector File Recovery, are available in the Internet at www.pcinspector.de. http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...lease_id=57304


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Fear May Not Spur CD Sales
Joanna Glasner

A barrage of copyright-infringement lawsuits from the recording industry may have succeeded this week in striking fear in the hearts of heavy file sharers.

But opponents of the Recording Industry Association of America's approach say its heavy-handed tactics are unlikely to prove effective over the long run. Rather than give up on file trading, they say, fans probably will either seek more-anonymous ways to swap music or collect tracks from artists not affiliated with the RIAA.

"For the 60 million Americans who are using file-trading services right now, even if they get scared away briefly, I don't think it will be long before they find a less-traceable way of exchanging music," said Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which offers legal aid to people targeted in RIAA suits.

Seltzer's comments come on the heels of a Monday announcement by the trade group, which represents the largest music labels, that it has filed suits against 261 people it claims illegally distributed music files using peer-to-peer networks. The suits, filed in courts around the country, targeted traders who had on average posted more than 1,000 songs to file-trading networks.

The RIAA blames file traders for contributing to declines in U.S. sales of new CDs over the past three years. While industry-sanctioned download sites, such as iTunes and BuyMusic.com, may be picking up some sales, they have not attracted anything close to the volume of users on free file-trading networks like Kazaa.

But as the industry's courtroom offensive takes shape, some music industry analysts and file-trading fans question whether the strategy will do much to further the RIAA's goal of boosting legitimate music sales.

"If you're trying to instill fear, you may have success. But if you're trying to increase CD sales by getting people to stop sharing music, I don't think it will have any effect at all," said Brian Zisk, technologies director for the Future of Music Coalition.

Zisk believes some of the blame for falling CD sales lies not with file sharing but with the growth in popularity of other entertainments products, like DVDs, video games and even cell phones. As people spend more money on these items, they have fewer dollars left for CDs.

Michael Goodman, a Yankee Group analyst, said the recording industry's legal campaign appears to be having an effect on file traders, but is also stirring a consumer backlash.

According to Goodman, early indications show that the RIAA's crackdown has resulted in a decline in peer-to- peer file trading. In mid-June, simultaneous users for Fastrack (the network that supports Kazaa and Grokster) averaged about 4.5 million per day at its peak. By late August, the number had dropped to about 3.5 million users. While vacations may have been a factor, the majority of this decline is likely because of the threat of a lawsuit from the RIAA, he wrote.

Notably, however, the decline in CD sales accelerated during the period of reduced peer-to-peer file trading. On June 15, the day the RIAA launched a subpoena campaign against file traders, CD sales were down 6.1 percent year to date. In the seven weeks since launching the subpoena campaign, the decline in CD sales has accelerated 54 percent.

"Although a seven-week period is not conclusive, it should give the recording industry pause," he wrote.

And while CD sales are down, traffic to the Boycott-RIAA website is up. The site, which asks people to buy music from artists not affiliated with the RIAA, saw a surge in visitors following the RIAA's latest announcement, said the site's founder, Bill Evans.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60350,00.html


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New RIAA Amnesty Forms

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File-Swapping Lawsuits: Are You Next?
John Borland

The Recording Industry Association of America sued 261 alleged file swappers Monday, launching a legal campaign against ordinary Internet users that could ultimately result in thousands of additional lawsuits.

But are you at risk?

If you or a family member have used Kazaa or any other file-swapping application recently and have left your computer open to the Net, the answer is possibly--although the odds of being singled out among an estimated 60 million people using peer-to-peer software remain small. If you've kept thousands of songs in the file you're sharing with other file swappers, then the odds are a little better, though still slim.

Here's a quick look at how the RIAA has done its investigations and what kind of information it has used to find people and file Monday's lawsuits.

Step one: Finding file-traders isn't hard. Anybody who opens a shared folder on Kazaa, Morpheus or any other file-swapping network is susceptible to potentially prying eyes.

In the most recent wave of investigations, the RIAA has used automated tools that look for a relatively short list of files. When it finds a person sharing one or more of those files, it downloads all or many of them for verification purposes. A complete list of these target files is not available, but a sampling of files cited in the early lawsuits includes the following artists and songs:

• Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy"
• Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"
• Eagles, "Hotel California"
• George Michael, "Kissing A Fool"
• Paula Abdul, "Knocked Out"
• Green Day, "Minority"
• UB40, "Red Red Wine"
• Ludacris "Area Codes"
• Marvin Gaye, "Sexual Healing"
• Avril Lavigne, "Complicated"

This is far from a complete list, but if you've downloaded and shared any of those songs recently, you may be at greater risk of finding your way onto the RIAA's list.

Step two: The RIAA uses features within Kazaa, Grokster and some other software programs to list all the files available within a person's shared folder and takes screenshots
of that information. As filed in court, that provides a record of what in some cases has been thousands of songs shared at once.

Step three: The RIAA's software records the Internet address associated with a computer that is sharing one of the copyrighted songs the organization is investigating. Some file-swapping programs try to hide this by using mechanisms such as proxy servers, but most downloads still expose this information.

Step four: According to information filed as part of a related lawsuit, the RIAA also has the ability to do a more sophisticated analysis of the files that have been downloaded. The group checks the artist's name, title, and any "metadata" information attached to the files, looking for information that may indicate what piece of software has been used to create the file or any other. Some files swapped widely on the Net include messages from the original person who created the MP3 file, such as "Created by Grip" or "Finally the Real Full CD delivered fresh for everyone on Grokster and Kazaa to Enjoy!"

The RIAA has also analyzed in detail some files' contents. The trade group has databases of digital fingerprints, or "hashes," that identify songs that were swapped online in Napster's heyday. Investigators check these fingerprints against those found in a new suspected file swapper's folder, looking for matches. A match means the file has almost certainly been downloaded from the Net, likely from a stream of copies dating back to the original Napster file.

Step five: The RIAA files a subpoena request with a federal court. The subpoena allows the group to go to an Internet service provider and request the name and address of the subscriber who's associated with the Net address that was used to swap files. A few Internet service providers (ISPs) have fought back against these requests, but most have been forced to comply with the RIAA's request.

Many ISPs notify their subscribers when a subpoena comes in that targets their information. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has set up a database that allows people to see whether their online screen name has been the target of one of these subpoenas.

The RIAA said it has filed more than 1,500 of these subpoenas to date.

Step six: Once the identity of the ISP subscriber has been exposed, the RIAA puts together all the information gleaned through the earlier technical investigation and files a lawsuit. In earlier cases, it has accepted settlement agreements that range between $12,000 and $17,000. In this case, it has accepted some settlement agreements for as little as $3,000.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5073004.html


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Artists Blast Record Companies Over Lawsuits Against Downloaders
Joel Selvin, Neva Chonin

Recording artists across the board think the music industry should find a way to work with the Internet instead of suing people who have downloaded music.

"They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir.

"They should turn their attention to new models."

"This is not rocket science," said David Draiman of Disturbed, a hard-rock band with a platinum debut album on the charts. "Instead of spending all this money litigating against kids who are the people they're trying to sell things to in the first place, they have to learn how to effectively use the Internet."

After three consecutive years of double-digit sales losses, and having lost a court battle against file-sharing Web sites such as Kazaa and Morpheus, the Recording Industry Association of America -- the industry's lobbying arm -- trained its sights on ordinary fans who have downloaded music. On Monday, the RIAA filed suits against 261 civilians with more than 1,000 music files each on their computers, accusing them of copyright violations. The industry hopes the suits, which seek as much as $150,000 per violation, will deter computer users from engaging in what the record industry considers illegal file- swapping.

This unprecedented move brings home the industry's battle against Web downloads, which the record business blames for billion-dollar losses since the 1999 emergence of Napster, the South Bay startup the RIAA sued out of existence. The suits are expected to settle for as little as $3,000 each, but the news was greeted with derision by the very people the RIAA said they moved to protect, the musicians themselves.

"Lawsuits on 12-year-old kids for downloading music, duping a mother into paying a $2,000 settlement for her kid?" said rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy. "Those scare tactics are pure Gestapo."

"File sharing is a reality, and it would seem that the labels would do well to learn how to incorporate it into their business models somehow," said genre- busting DJ Moby in a post on his Web site. "Record companies suing 12-year-old girls for file sharing is kind of like horse-and-buggy operators suing Henry Ford."

Artists are feeling the downturn in sales, too. "My record royalties have dropped 80 percent since 1999," said Steve Miller, whose greatest hits album has been a perennial best-seller since its 1978 release. "To me, it's one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me because people act like it's OK. "

Recording artists have watched their record royalties erode over the past few years ("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist Sammy Hagar), but, in fact, few musicians earn the bulk of their income from record sales.

"Bruce Springsteen probably earned more in 10 nights at Meadowlands last month than in his entire recording career," said rocker Huey Lewis.

Many artists painted the record industry as a bloated, overstuffed giant with too many mouths to feed and too many middlemen to pay, selling an overpriced, often mediocre product.

"They have all these abnormal practices that keep driving the price up," said Gregg Rollie, founding member of Santana and Journey. "People think musicians make all that money, but it's not true. We make the smallest amount."

The RIAA did not initiate these lawsuits to defend artists' rights, the musicians say, but to protect corporate profits.

"For the artists, my ass," said Draiman. "I didn't ask them to protect me, and I don't want their protection."

Artists also see the opportunities for promotion the Internet offers. Most acts maintain Web sites, and virtually every one features some free downloads. Country Joe McDonald said he posts more than 50 tracks available for free downloads on his site, countryjoe.com.

"Who doesn't want to get paid for their work?" said Wayne Coyne of the indie-rock band Flaming Lips. "But I think it works to musicians' benefit for people to be able to occasionally listen to their music and, if they really like it, go out and buy it."

Many of the musicians pointed to the iTunes Store recently opened by Apple Computers that sells individual songs for 99 cents apiece to downloaders. As diverse a cross-section as Disturbed's Draiman, the Dead's Weir, Moby and the Flaming Lips' Coyne all endorsed the officially licensed site -- run, significantly, by a computer company, not a record label.

"Apple has the right idea with the I-store," said Disturbed's Draiman. "You'd think these conglomerates like AOL Time Warner would have easy ways of doing the same thing, with these mergers between record labels and Internet service providers."

Many other factors along with the Internet are having an impact on the industry's financial slump: the poor economy in general, computer CD burners, the high retail price, and mundane, uninteresting music.

"I don't know that there's any one factor behind the industry," said Coyne. "Maybe it's downloading, or maybe people just didn't feel like buying so many records. So Metallica makes $10 million instead of $20 million, who cares? To me, the sympathy is unwarranted. Some of this is just the hazard of doing business. It's the nature of the world. At the end of the day, it's just rock and roll. It isn't that big of a deal."

All agree that the Internet is here to stay and that downloading files will be an increasingly important delivery system for music, regardless of the music industry's lawsuits. "The focus of the industry needs to shift from Soundscan numbers to downloads," said Draiman. "It's the way of the future. You can smell it coming. Stop fighting it, because you can't."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...11/MN12066.DTL


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Will File Traders Face The Music?
John Borland and Declan McCullagh

Charles Dumond of San Mateo, Calif., learned that he was targeted in a landmark series of recording industry piracy lawsuits only when reporters started calling his home on Monday.

One of 261 people named by the Recording Industry Association of America in an unprecedented wave of lawsuits aimed at alleged "egregious" file traders, an angry Dumont said the accusations had taken him wholly by surprise.

"Personally, I have not done this," Dumond said in a brief phone conversation Monday night. "There may be other family members who do this. But the (Internet service provider) bill is in my name."

Dumond's experience was likely repeated hundreds of times in the last 24 hours, as lawsuit targets heard about the actions filed against them from reporters long before they saw legal documents or talked to an attorney.

Many of the lawsuit targets will likely end up settling with the RIAA in the largest copyright enforcement operation ever mounted against ordinary Internet users. But as details emerge, casting some of the defendants as parents of Kazaa-loving children or otherwise unwitting owners of file-swapping computers, some RIAA suits may turn out to be more complicated than they appear.

The suits themselves are simple. Filed in near-identical form in courthouses around the country, they are bare-bones copyright infringement claims, each listing a short number of works that each defendant allegedly offered to the public through file-swapping services such as Kazaa. Investigators downloaded and verified the authenticity of each of these allegedly infringing files, RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a conference call, as he announced the lawsuits.

Each suit contains a name and an address that has been provided by the alleged file swapper's ISP as part of an unusual subpoena process the Digital Millennium Copyright Act authorized. The RIAA has issued more than 1,500 subpoenas for alleged file swappers' personal information but has not said why it sued just 261 people of the larger pool of potential defendants.

But those addresses lead only to a single name on an ISP account. Many of those are likely to be sole account holders. Some, such as Dumond, will have an account several family members use. Others may use company computers or even be linked to wireless access points that serve the public without maintaining records of who is logged in at any particular time.

Mark Lemley, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, predicts that the RIAA will encounter problems if it sued someone who shared his or her Internet connection through a Wi-Fi wireless network. "Opening a computer to a Wi-Fi network...is definitely not an act of direct infringement, so the RIAA would need to find the people who actually did the uploading," he said.

In general, the RIAA's lawsuits against alleged file swappers are believed to stand a reasonable chance of succeeding. Every court that's considered the topic has concluded that illegal copyright infringing is omnipresent on peer-to-peer networks. But legal experts still caution that there are plenty of ways the RIAA's phalanx of attorneys could slip up.

First, the alleged copyright infringer could have a valid "fair use" defense for file sharing. The defendant might have "wanted to analyze a certain song for a music theory class but (was) unable to find a copy anywhere else," said Megan Gray, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who specializes in intellectual property cases.

Furthermore, Gray said, the file trader might be liable for damages but so impoverished that there's no way the RIAA member companies can collect. Finally, a minor child could have been the person trading files, and whether a parent is liable for a child's actions varies state by state, she said.

Dumond, the San Mateo resident, declined to give more information about his family or his own personal situation, criticizing the process that has made him a public figure without warning. "I am not a Kazaa user. I don't share music files on the Internet," he said. "Also, I received no letters prior to this, nothing from the RIAA, nothing from my ISP, nothing from anyone, which I think is inappropriate."

Another way an alleged file trader might succeed in defending a lawsuit is by relying on the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), which could provide some form of legal immunization for peer-to-peer users. Napster unsuccessfully invoked the AHRA when the music industry sued it into oblivion, but courts might be more sympathetic to individual users, some legal experts believe.

The law says no lawsuit may be brought that alleges copyright infringement based on the "noncommercial use by a consumer of such a (digital audio recording device) or medium for making digital musical recordings." The latest generation of multimedia PCs that are equipped with CD and DVD burners may qualify as a digital audio recording device, the thinking goes, which would mean the AHRA applies.

Jessica Litman, a law professor at Wayne State University who testified before Congress when the AHRA was being debated, said it's "an argument I'd expect to see made, and it's possible that it will succeed.

"It's absolutely clear from the legislative history that Congress' attempt at the time was to protect all noncommercial forms of music copying, period. Consumers were exempt from making noncommercial copies of digital or analog music recordings...The argument hasn't been made since (Napster), but there hasn't been a consumer in front of the court. With a consumer in front of the court, the argument becomes significantly more compelling."

Like Dumond, Lynette Neuman, a Concord, Calif., resident also named by the RIAA lawsuits said she was given no warning before reporters contacted her. She also declined to divulge any information about her own situation.

Many RIAA lawsuit targets are still waiting to see what they are accused of before deciding whether to fight or settle.

"What I don't know is exactly what I'm supposed to have done," Dumond said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5073312.html


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WARNING: THIS PAGE LISTS PORNOGRAPHIC LYRICS FROM SONY MUSIC RECORDINGS

In the Sunday, September 7 issue of the New York Times, Andrew Lack, the President of Sony Music, and Mitch Glazier, an RIAA Vice President, are quoted heaping blame on filesharing software for spreading pornography. This charge is so thinly supported and blatantly hypocritical that it hardly needs comment, but if it can make it into the paper of record, it demands a response. That the major labels are even willing to try this strategy indicates that they are desperately flailing for allies of any kind. Unfortunately for them, liberals won't fall for it and conservatives probably hate Eminem just as much as Jenna Jameson. But the only pro-filesharing view expressed in the Times article (other than the reporter's own jabs) is an obviously self-interest comment from a Kazaa lobbyist. Since a public voice was missing, Downhill Battle has issued a quick press release response and has created this web page which has examples of pornographic lyrics from Sony Music recordings (...did you know that Sony distributes this smut in family-friendly, teen-unsupervised malls from coast to coast?!?!).

Sony Music and the RIAA say they want warnings on filesharing software like the un-enforced (and rather enticing) warning stickers on CDs. It should be noted, however, that if the record companies actually believed this line, they would have called for labeling on all web browsers, email, and chat programs-- but that would sound a little too ridiculous. In fact, most filesharing software already has mature content filters, but what the major record labels are really working for is legislation that would require parental approval before kids can use filesharing software; they want to create as many stigmas and barriers as possible. And how do you think record companies would feel about requiring parental permission before kids could enter CD stores where they sell their own pornographic recordings? Probably not quite as supportive.



Of course the other irony of record labels criticizing porn, which the Times article points out, is that the pornography industry and the music industry are actually united in their efforts to ban filesharing. Both realize that filesharing threatens their coercive business model: music fans have no allegiance to the corrupt major label system and porn companies know that you can't even try to guilt trip porn fans into paying for movies. So they're both pinning their hopes on lawsuits and scare tactics, while everyone else will just be relieved when the two industries crumble.

According to Andrew Lack, "P2P stands for piracy to pornography." Here then are selections of pornographic lyrics from two fairly recent Sony Music releases which pay the salary of this new anti-porn crusader. Of course there are many, many, many more examples of Sony Music and RIAA releases with pornographic and violently sexist content, we just got bored of looking them up. If you'd like to suggest some particularly choice nuggets to be added to this page, please email us at: sonyporn@downhillbattle.org.




PORNOGRAPHIC LYRICS FROM THE HYPOCRITES AT SONY MUSIC:


From Sony Music's 2001 hit single "Oochie Wally" featuring Nas and Bravehearts:

"then that ass gettin tossed / fuck a hustler book, penthouse or blacktale / I got bitches sendin my niggas flicks in jail"

"Little young thing go around my dick with your tongue ring / Deep throat my nine inch,"

"Fuck my whole crew, you know how we do / you got that good pussy I can share with my peoples"

"I'll fuck a big boned or slim chick / Beat that pussy up real quick then send home the bitch"

From last fall's Sony Music release "Man vs. Machine" by Xzibit:

From the song Break Yourself:

"In the street make a nigga sleep six feet deep / Fuck piece bare back doggystyle"

"Fuck y'all, y'all homosexual / Hangin on my dick like testicle"

From Choke Me, Spank Me (Pull My Hair):

“She act like she ain't gon' survive the night without my dick all up in her ass, so quick, so fast / I see her twin towers and I'm ready to crash”

“I don't want to love, you / I just want to fuck, you / You should bring your friends, through I'll fuck you and them, too”

“I know it's hard to talk with all this dick in your mouth”



...................

We don't mean to single out Nas and Xzibit, we actually like some of their less misogynistic songs. We've posted these lyrics to show the hypocrisy of Sony Music's anti-porn statements.
http://www.nindy.com/sonyporn.html


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RIAA Sued For Amnesty Offer
Stefanie Olsen

A day after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a slew of lawsuits against alleged illegal song swappers, it became the target of legal action over its own "amnesty" program.

California resident Eric Parke, on behalf of the general public of the state, filed a suit Tuesday against the trade association because of its amnesty, or "Clean Slate," program, a provisional shield it introduced Monday that allows people to avoid legal action by stepping forward and forfeiting any illegally traded songs. The suit, filed in the Marin Superior Court of California, charges that the RIAA's program is a deceptive and fraudulent business practice.

It is "designed to induce members of the general public...to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA and others with actionable admissions of wrongdoing under penalty of perjury while (receiving)...no legally binding release of claims...in return," according to the complaint.

"This lawsuit seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading and fraudulent business practices," the suit reads.

The RIAA responded to the suit with a maxim: "No good deed goes unpunished, apparently."

"It's also unfortunate that a lawyer would try to prevent others from getting the assurances they want that they will not be sued," an RIAA representative wrote in an e-mail.

The complaint is the first legal retaliation to the RIAA's lawsuit campaign against individual file swappers. The trade group filed 261 lawsuits against computer users it said were exclusively "egregious" file swappers, marking the first time copyright laws have been used on a mass scale against individual Net users. The barrage of lawsuits signaled a turning point in the industry's three-year fight against online song-trading services such as Kazaa and the now-defunct Napster and one of the most controversial moments in the recording industry's digital history.

On Tuesday, the RIAA settled its first case with Brianna Lahara, a 12-year-old New York resident. The recording industry agreed to drop its case against the preteen in exchange for $2,000, a sum considerably lower than previous settlement arrangements. Legal actions by the RIAA had been taken on a sporadic basis against operators of pirate servers or sites, but ordinary computer users have never before been at serious risk of liability for widespread behavior.

After long years of avoiding direct conflict with file swappers who might also be music buyers, industry executives said they have lost patience. Monday's lawsuits are just the first wave of what the group said ultimately could be "thousands more" lawsuits filed over the next few months.

Under the RIAA's "Clean Slate" program, file swappers must destroy any copies of copyrighted works they have downloaded from services such as Kazaa and sign a notarized affidavit pledging never to trade copyrighted works online again.

But Ira Rothken, legal counsel for Parke, said after reviewing the RIAA's legal documents that the trade group provides no real amnesty for such file swappers. With the legalese, the trade group does not agree to destroy data or promise to protect users from further suits, Rothken said.

"The legal documents only give one thing to people in return: that the RIAA won't cooperate," Rothken said. "The RIAA's legal document does not even prevent RIAA members from suing."

The suit asks the court to enjoin the RIAA from falsely advertising its program.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5073972.html


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The BBC's Lessons For America
Lawrence Lessig

Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, announced last month that the broadcaster would make the contents of its vast archive available to the public so long as any re- use of that content was for non-commercial purposes. (Commercial re-users will have to strike their own deal.) The BBC Creative Archive would enable the British to cultivate this national resource - for which they have already paid - for educational, critical or comedic purposes. The very structure will also make it much more likely that commercial creators will be able to identify content valuable to them, and then license that content from the BBC. The idea is a brilliant response to the extraordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies, in light of the BBC's founding mission - as Lord Reith put it - to “inform, educate and entertain”.

It also required a bit of creative thinking. For the natural intuition of content owners is control. The very idea of giving up perfect control over how and whether content is re- used is treason among insiders. But as the BBC understands, it does not live in Disney World. And in the course of its internal review an obvious question has become increasingly pressing: if the BBC could make its archive available cheaply, what reason is there for keeping it from the people who have already paid for it? Moreover, such access would increase the BBC’s chances of selling content commercially and make it more likely that the technology to cultivate this content (computers) will be more eagerly bought.

On the other side of the Atlantic there is little evidence of similarly creative thought. Instead, the US government remains captured by the extremists. The very same week that the Creative Archive was born in Britain, it was exercising its power to kill a planned meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo), the United Nations’ intellectual property agency, to consider “open and collaborative projects to create public goods”. The examples that had led Wipo to call for that meeting included the internet and World Wide Web (whose protocols are in the public domain); a consortium of biomedical researchers and companies exploring single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); and the Global Positioning System, which Ronald Reagan had set free for any use, commercial or non-commercial, in the United States in the early 1980s. It also included the phenomenon of free and open source software (F/ OSS). It was this last category that excited the opposition of Microsoft.

While there are many commercial developers who build and rely upon F/OSS (IBM and Apple to name two), Microsoft is not one of them. For it, F/OOS is instead a competitor. And it therefore launched a lobbying campaign to get the US to have the meeting cancelled.

There is no surprise in Microsoft's behaviour. Nor is there anything wrong with a business lobbying the government to behave in a way that benefits it, even if it harms everyone else.

But what was surprising was the US government's reasoning for the meeting’s withdrawal. Lois Boland, director of international relations for the US Patent and Trademark Office, explained “that open-source software runs counter to the mission of Wipo, which is to promote intellectual-property rights”. As she further explained: “To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of Wipo.”

These statements are astonishing for a number of reasons. First, they are just flat wrong. Neither “free” nor “open source” software is in the public domain. Both depend fundamentally upon strong intellectual property rights, and supporters of both are eager that Wipo facilitate easy enforcement of their rights in any jurisdiction.

Second, who said Wipo's sole purpose was to maximise intellectual property rights? Is Wipo against generic drugs? Is it a failure of Wipo's objectives that patents do not run for 100 years? As every serious economist since Adam Smith has taught, good intellectual property policy is not the same as maximal intellectual property rights. And as every serious policymaker should therefore understand, Wipo's objective should be good policy, not maximal rights.

But third, and most troubling, why would it be “contrary to the goals of Wipo” for intellectual property rights holders to “disclaim or waive” their rights? Property is all about individuals having the right to choose what they do with their property rights. Does Bill Gates undermine private property generally when he gives $20 billion to do good in the world? The last time I wrote about the United States Patent and Trademark Office on these pages, it was to praise the apparent scepticism of the Office's new boss. I was quickly scolded by the USPTO press office. The only problem with the patent system in the US, I was told, was that patents were not issued fast enough.

Ms Boland's comments confirm that the US administration remains captured by a simplistic and fundamentally misguided idea: that if some control is good, then more control must be better. That idea is simply wrong. And if the BBC survives the pressures now bearing upon it from the intellectual property extremists, perhaps its Creative Archive will help the US think more creatively as well.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...1012571727085#


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Music Piracy Suits Could Bring Backlash
AP

The recording industry has taken its piracy fight directly to music fans, suing more than 200 people this week alone. Now comes the hard part: Persuading the very people it has threatened with legal action to revisit music stores or sample legal downloading services.

That might prove difficult, some observers say, because the industry's lawsuit campaign could spark a consumer backlash spurred by the discontent many music fans already feel over soaring CD prices and the shrinking number of retailers offering varied music titles.

"The real hope here is that people will return to the record store," said Eric Garland, CEO of BigCampagne LLC, which tracks peer-to-peer Internet trends. "The biggest question is whether singling out a handful of copyright infringers will invigorate business or drive file-sharing further underground, further out of reach."

Jason Rich, of Watervliet, New York, said the record companies' campaign prompted him to stop downloading music from file-sharing networks, but he called the issue "disconcerting."

"I think it's kind of silly to go after individuals," said Rich, 26. "There are so many Web sites out there, people don't know necessarily they're doing anything wrong."

Some of the music fans caught in the piracy net cast by the recording industry took steps Tuesday toward settling the copyright infringement lawsuits levied against them for sharing song files over the Internet.

The industry sued 261 people on Monday and has promised to sue hundreds more in coming weeks as it strives to stamp out music piracy it blames for a three-year slump in CD sales.

The Recording Industry Association of America settled the first of the suits Tuesday for $2,000 -- with the mother of a 12-year-old defendant, Brianna LaHara of New York. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs using Kazaa.

RIAA Vice President Matt Oppenheim said he was not surprised to see young and old alike caught in the industry's snare.

"We know that there are a lot of young people who are using these services and we totally expected that we would end up targeting them," Oppenheim said. "As we have said from the beginning ... there is no free pass to engage in music piracy just because you haven't come of age. We're not surprised and we're not deterred."

Consumers already think so little of the music companies, that the lawsuits likely won't make much difference, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research, Inc.

"The industry has been backed into a corner, and their image is so bad, the lawsuits are not going to be much of a problem," he said.

The industry opted to target individuals earlier this year, figuring music fans who prefer to get their music online now are beginning to have viable options to do so legally through for-pay music download services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store and Buy.com's BuyMusic.com.

But while iTunes has sold more than 10 million song downloads since its April launch, no service has emerged for the large majority of computer users on the Window platform.

There are signs some people have stopped file-sharing since June, when the RIAA announced its lawsuit campaign, and also have moved to other file-swapping networks perceived to be safer than the market leader, Kazaa.

Traffic on the FastTrack network, the conduit for Kazaa and Grokster users, declined over the summer and climbed again last month, as has the number of people using less popular file-sharing software like eDonkey, Garland said.

At the same time, a decline in CD sales worsened. Between June 15 and August 3, the decline in CD sales accelerated 54 percent. And as of August 3, CD sales were down 9.4 percent over the same period in 2002, according to the Yankee Group.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne...ap/index.html#





Apple Customer Resells iTunes Song
Evan Hansen

A customer of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store said he has successfully resold a he song purchased through the service, ending a weeklong exercise he hoped would highlight the legal and technical nuances of emerging digital music services.

George Hotelling, a Web developer in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Tuesday reported the details of the transfer on his Web log.

In an interview Wednesday, Hotelling said he was able to give the song to a friend, Keith Elder, a Web developer in Ypsilanti, Mich., whom he met through an Internet discussion group. In order to close the deal, Hotelling said he had to transfer control of his entire iTunes Music Store account to Elder. He said he intends to demand 50 cents from Elder for the account, which included one song, the Devin Vasquez remake of Frankie Smith's song "Double Dutch Bus," which he'd originally purchased for 99 cents.

"For the average user, I'd definitely say this was extremely difficult," he said. "I guess you could say we're both extreme geeks."

An Apple representative declined to comment on the transfer.

Hotelling last week put the song up for sale on eBay as a way to highlight resale rights for digital music services, but eBay pulled the auction, saying it violated its listing policies.

Under the "first sale" doctrine, the owner of a lawful copy of a work is allowed to sell it without the permission of the copyright owner. But a recent study of the first sale doctrine from the U.S. Copyright Office suggested that the doctrine does not apply to digital goods, because such transfers imply making a copy of the work--something that's not explicitly addressed in the doctrine.

Hotelling said he transferred a copy of the song to Elder and then deleted it from his own computer. He said didn't know if the transfer violated Apple's terms of service, or whether it might be construed as piracy.

Apple has so far refused to directly answer the question of whether the iTunes Music Store's terms of service allow songs or accounts to be transferred. Queried by a reporter about the issue recently, an Apple executive downplayed questions over the download resale policy, saying technical, if not legal, barriers would largely prevent such transfers from taking place.

"Apple's position is that it is impractical, though perhaps within someone's rights, to sell music purchased online," said Peter Lowe, Apple's director of marketing for applications and services.

Hotelling said he accomplished the transfer by changing his account credit card to a prepaid card he purchased at a 7-Eleven store. After spending most of the money on the card, he gave Elder his iTunes account information and password.

"Not that I didn't trust him, but I wanted to show how this could be done by someone selling a song to a complete stranger," he said, regarding the use of the prepaid card.

Hotelling said he paid $29.95 for the card, including a $9.95 service fee and a minimum $20 balance. He said he used the card to donate $19 to online legal activist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, effectively losing $1 dollar when the card wouldn't allow him to expend its full value.

Hotelling said he believes digital music services that develop techniques for easily reselling and transferring songs as gifts could have a competitive advantage over those of rivals.

Outside of the digital music arena, Hotelling said he's concerned about end user license agreements from some software companies that contractually limit the first sale doctrine, for example, PC makers who preinstall Microsoft's Windows operating system but require the software to be removed before the computer can be resold.

Although Hotelling lost money on the deal, he said it was worth it to make an important point about digital resale rights.

"It was a success," he said. "I was able to transfer the song, I documented it, and Apple even said it was probably legal. I think the biggest success was raising the issue in a lot of people's minds."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5074086.html


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'Amnesty' for Music File Sharing Is a Sham
Fred von Lohmann

No one can hold a candle to the music industry when it comes to squandering an opportunity. Having gotten everyone's attention by threatening to sue 60 million American file-sharers, flooding Internet service providers with more than 1,500 subpoenas and on Monday suing hundreds of individual file-sharers (or their parents) in federal court, the Recording Industry Assn. of America has blown it again.

Here's what the RIAA has proposed as its "solution" to file-sharing: an "amnesty" for file-sharers. Just delete the MP3s you've downloaded, shred those CD-R copies, confess your guilt and, in return, the most change-resistant companies in the nation will give you nothing. Oh, the RIAA promises not to assist copyright owners in suing you. But its major-label members reserve the right to go after you, as do thousands of music publishers and artists like Metallica.

In other words, once you have come forward, you are more vulnerable to a lawsuit, not less. This is more "sham-nesty" than "amnesty." What a waste.

Rather than trying to sue Americans into submission, imagine a real solution for the problem. What if the labels legitimized music swapping by offering a real amnesty for all file-sharing, past, present and future, in exchange for say, $5 a month from each person who steps forward?

The average American household spends less than $100 on prerecorded music annually. Assuming that many people will continue buying at least some CDs (a recent survey by Forrester Research found that half of all file-sharers continue to buy as many or more CDs as they did before catching the downloading bug), $60 per year for file sharing seems reasonable.

And such a plan would surely be more popular than the use-restricted and limited-inventory "authorized" alternatives. After all, the explosive growth of file-sharing is the strongest demand signal the record business has ever seen. The industry should embrace the opportunity instead of continuing to thrash around like dinosaurs sinking in hot tar.

Rather than asking music fans to brand themselves as thieves, the music industry could be welcoming them back into the fold as customers. Five bucks a month doesn't sound like much, but it would be pure profit for the labels. No CDs to ship, no online retailers to cut in on the deal, no payola to radio conglomerates, no percentage to Kazaa or anyone else.

Best of all, it's an evergreen revenue stream — money that would just keep coming during good times and bad.

It has been done before. This is essentially how songwriters brought broadcast radio in from the copyright cold. Radio stations step up, pay blanket fees and in return get to play whatever music they like. Today, the performing-rights societies like ASCAP and BMI collect the money and pay out millions annually to their artists.

It's easy to predict the industry's excuses: "We don't have all the rights." "Antitrust law prevents us from acting together." "What about my cut of the CD?"

Puh-leeze. You tell us your industry's on the brink of extinction: It's time to do something daring, not suicidal.

The labels can create a new business model that will serve as an example to other copyright owners. After all, it's no more radical than their threatening millions of Americans — customers — with ruinous litigation. What court or regulator is going to get in the way of a new approach that turns fans back into customers? Especially if the labels decide to offer a piece of the pie to artists — the only group with a credible claim to victimhood, even if most of their victimization has come at the labels' hands.

There are only two possible outcomes here: Either the music companies stop whining and woo the 60 million potential customers who have voted with their PCs for file- sharing, or some new companies will. There's no place in the world for companies that are bent on holding back the future.

Let's see a real amnesty, one that displays respect instead of spite for customers.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...1,804028.story