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Old 11-09-03, 09:15 PM   #3
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Study: Two-Thirds Of Digital Music Files Come From File-Sharing Services

Two-thirds of all digital music files come from file-sharing services, while the rest are copied from CDs, a research firm said.

Among the most popular services for sharing tunes are Kazaa, which accounts for 21 percent of downloads, and WinMX, 5 percent, The NPD Group said in a survey based on information gathered from 40,000 households with PCs.

NPD also found that 64 percent of the households with Internet access had at least one digital music file on their computers, 56 percent had more than 50 files and 8 percent had more than a thousand.

"NPD's most recent information shows that a majority of people have a very basic experience with digital music; however, there clearly are a small percentage of users who have taken advantage of file sharing services to compile massive libraries." Russ Crupnick, vice president of the Port Washington, N.Y., research firm, said in a statement. "The RIAA's focus on those sharing the most files makes sense, because this group provides the most egregious example of one of the music industry's most pressing business issues - copyright infringement."

The Recording Industry Association of America this week filed 261 lawsuits against file sharers in federal courts across the nation, accusing them of breaking copyright laws by downloading music files. The suits were the result of subpoenas the RIAA had sent to Internet service providers, universities and other organizations asking for the identities of some 1,600 people. Some of the defendants in the suits were as young as 12 years old.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20030911S0014


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Grandfather Caught In Music Fight
BBC

A grandfather has said he was wrongly accused of illegally downloading music online at the start of a legal campaign by the US music industry.

Durwood Pickle, 71, of Texas, said his teenage grandchildren used his computer during visits to his home.

"I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible," he said.

Mr Pickle was among 261 individuals accused of sharing music files on the internet without permission.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed lawsuits in federal courts across the US on behalf of major record companies Universal, BMG, EMI, Sony and Warner Brothers.

HAVE YOUR SAY

It is the public and the artists that should be suing the RIAA and its members for anti-competitive, monopolistic practices
Martin, UK

It warns those found guilty that they face fines of up to $150,000 (£100,000) per song swapped. Critics have accused the RIAA of being heavy-
handed.

Yale University professor Timothy Davis, who was also named in the lawsuits, said he would stop sharing music files immediately.

He said he had downloaded about 500 songs before his internet provider notified him about the music industry's interest in his activities.

There are presently no plans to launch US-style legal actions internationally or in Europe
IFPI spokesman

Another defendant, Lisa Schamis of New York, said her internet provider warned her two months ago that record industry lawyers had asked for her name and address.

She said she had no idea she might be sued but acknowledged downloading "lots" of music over file-sharing networks.

RIAA president Cary Sherman said he hoped the legal action would prompt parents to pay more attention to potentially illegal activities by their children.

"We expect people to say 'It isn't me, it was my kid,' but someone has to take responsibility," Sherman said.

The music industry says file-sharing is a violation of copyright laws and blames the practice for a drop in CD sales worldwide.

The film industry also says it is being hit by online piracy but it has not yet announced it will be taking similar action.

But media analysts believe it is only a matter of time.

"There's no question other industries will do the same," said Latika Sharma, head of IT law practice at London-based law firm Landwell.

The global music industry trade body, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said it will focus its efforts outside the US on education.

"There are presently no plans to launch US-style legal actions internationally or in Europe," a spokesman for the IFPI said.

He added: "But uploading copyrighted music is illegal, and for a good reason, and legal action against uploaders cannot be ruled out in the future."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...nt/3092854.stm


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Can Rip-Proof CDs Save The Music Biz?

Coming soon: The untouchable compact disc
Bridget Finn

Can anything save the music business?

Since 1999, CD unit sales have plunged 26 percent -- a decline of $2 billion -- thanks in part to file-sharing services and other forms of digital piracy. The record labels'
frustration is so acute that the Recording Industry Association of America has begun suing hundreds of consumers who have exchanged music on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa, Morpheus, and Gnutella.

But what technology giveth, can it taketh away?

The industry hopes so: This month the first copy-protected CDs are expected to start showing up on music-store shelves in the United States. And that's great news for the one or more lucky companies whose music-locking tech will be adopted. Even by modest estimates, licensing fees will amount to more than $100 million annually.

The big winner could be Macrovision, a major provider of copy protection to Hollywood. With revenues of $102 million in 2002, the company, based in Santa Clara, California, commands a near monopoly on video and DVD copy protection, providing the system used in more than 2.1 billion DVDs and 85 million DVD players.

Dueling firms

Macrovision also built the antipiracy technology used to protect 150 million music CDs sold in Europe and Japan.

"Our DVD business is in the $40 million- to $50 million-a-year range, but the CD market is twice as big," says Macrovision CEO Bill Krepick.

The technology for the U.S. market is expected to be a better version of the trouble-prone systems introduced in Europe and Japan, which generated complaints when they failed to play on many car stereos and PCs.

Macrovision's technology, called CDS-300, hides the original audio tracks but makes pre-compressed music files available for limited downloads to PCs. The company's main competitor is Phoenix-based SunnComm, a 25-person upstart that already has a contract to supply copy-protection technology to BMG, the fifth- largest record label. SunnComm's MediaMax CD-3 also restricts the original audio files, but does so on the user's PC, rather than the disc, by installing a kind of software lock.

Krepick argues that Macrovision's experience and size give it an advantage.

"We're not a garage operation," he says.

But Bill Whitmore, SunnComm's chief operating officer, points out that CDS-300 has been plagued by delays.

"Nobody's seen Macrovision's new technology work," he says.

Looking for sales

No need to fight, boys: Analysts like Sterling Auty of J.P. Morgan say the labels may well hedge their bets, relying on several vendors to provide copy-protection technology.

But even if everyone's system works flawlessly, will the new CDs improve sales? Don't bet on it.

In Germany and Japan, where the labels began selling copy-protected CDs in 2000, sales have continued to decline.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/0...ave/index.html


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Review: The Archos AV320 MediaBox
Richard Menta 8/26/03

This milestone portable fully achieved its purpose of liberating digital video files from PCs (despite having a few flaws like a small screen). A year later Archos has released its successor, the AV320, and this portable is even better.

The Archos AV320 is a notable improvement over the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. The key is a significantly larger 3.8" display that takes up most of the AV320's sizable faceplate. The Archos Jukebox Multimedia, released at a time when color LCD displays were much more expensive, utilized a 1.5" display to keep its price reasonable. It was a very good display for its small size, but we still wanted a larger screen.

The display is not the only area where the Archos AV320 makes improvements. You can see both significant and subtle progress in the evolution of this new breed of portable, one whose niche Archos still has mostly to itself. (RCA has a unit coming out in the fall and rumors are that a video iPod is in the works. Sharp and Panasonic have units in the Japanese markets, but they use low capacity SD cards instead of a hard drive for storage so they don't really fit in this class).

As of this writing the Archos AV320 sells for a healthy $600, a price that includes the digital video recorder module.

The most important element to the Archos AV320 is its ability to record video on the fly from a VCR or DVD. The Archos Jukebox Multimedia was also designed with this in mind, but Archos has yet to release the video record accessory for that player.

Other features of the unit include modules to read various flash memory cards and an FM radio that connects to the AV320 via a cabled remote control.

Fire up the AV320 and the screen lights up brightly, then in a couple of seconds the best display we have ever seen on any media portable appears. The body of the Archos AV320 is 90% display -- that is a big plus. Nine clear icons come alive to navigate the user between recording and playback duties, as well as through various setup controls.

Next, we switched to video and played "Ice Age." What we saw in the first few minutes was impressive. The video quality was excellent, better than what we expected and an improvement over the Archos Jukebox Multimedia. Of course, the better the video quality the higher the file size, but the Archos has an ample 20GB worth of memory.

We loaded the supplied drivers into our test computer and the unit was recognized immediately. Archos keeps file transfers straight and simple. The user's PC sees the unit as another hard drive. Simply drag and drop files into the proper folder and you are done. Make sure it is the right folder, though. We dragged a video file into the music folder just to see what would happen and when we powered the unit back on it did not appear on the AV320's menu.

The unit plays compressed AVI files or those later converted to comply with MPEG-4 Simple Profile (there are two implementations of MPEG-4: Simple Profile (SP) and Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). Like the Jukebox Multimedia, the AV320 can't play the latter). There are also several flavors of AVI files that will need to be converted using a video translator like Virtual Dub before the unit will play them. For those who have tons of files in the MPG format, you are out of luck unless you can convert them to AVI.

The unit comes with the Archos Jukebox Multimedia MP4SP program which incorporates Virtual Dub to handle the conversions. When we first loaded the program it directed us to the Virtual Dub site to download that freeware program. MP4SP also prompted us to download DiVX, which did not exist on our test computer. Adding all the needed programs was an uneventful procedure.

Those who trade movie files online today will find that most of the files they download will have to go through the conversion process, a time consuming job.

To play the Archos AV320 on a TV set, simply use the composite video/audio cable that comes with the unit. As long as your TV or VCR has video/audio inputs, you should have no problem playing your files. There are three cables; one for video and two for the left and right audio channels. Stereo TVs will take all three while Mono sets will only accept one of the audio cables.

Once the player was attached and the TV was set to AUX, we were ready to start. For those who wonder why the TV is not put on channel 3, like it is when used with a VCR, it is because the Archos puts through a straight video feed as opposed to a VCR that transmits its picture via a RF (Radio Frequency) signal.

The AV320 comes with all the cables needed to connect to a video source such as a VCR or DVD. Most television sets don't have output jacks, so to record your favorite TV shows, you just need to use the VCR tuner.

Once we had all the connections made, we toggled to the Archos' VideoCorder icon and hit enter to begin the recording process. This menu is only accessible when there is a signal feeding through the unit. Once in, we immediately saw the signal come up on the AV320's screen, a baseball game between L.A. and St. Louis. We hit record and the player did just that. Even though connecting the player to the source was a fuss, recording was effortless.

The AV320 plays and records both in the American NTSC standard and the British PAL standard. There is a menu in the record screen that allows you to select the proper standard and to adjust the recording quality. Another interesting feature we did not expect since it was not mentioned in any of the literature was a programmable record timer.

The recordings came out very well. They were less sharp than the "Ice Age" recording that came with the player, but the color was excellent and the resolution was satisfactory.

Since the Archos allows users to make good quality recordings of TV programs and DVDs, you will start to see more such programming reach the Net as the mediabox niche grows. The Archos player records via analog methods (a cable to a DVD or VCR), so it is unaffected by any Digital Rights management protections added to DVDs. If you can view it on your television, the Archos can record it.

In our opinion, file trading is not the threat the entertainment conglomerates make it out to be. Yes music sales are down and that allows the record companies to blame it all on file trading, but DVD sales are up. Way up. Every major movie release has made it on the Net, usually well before the DVD comes out. Did DVD sales go down? No. Did they stay the same? No. Did they go up? Yes, by 61 percent.

But our protests and logic mean little if Disney takes you to court. You lose the moment you have to shell out for that first session with the lawyer, so our advice is to be cautious with the files you create and remember, Micky Mouse is not a nice guy in real life.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2...320review.html


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How One Telecommunications Giant Reconnected After 9/11 Destruction
Dennis Mendyk

The telecom company's cables were crushed and submerged in water after 7 World Trade Center crashed. Verizon's phone cables were crushed and submerged in water after 7 World Trade Center crashed. Finally, its rehabilitation work is just about complete. By the end of this year, more than 1,000 customer-service staffers at Verizon Communications in New York City will face one of the toughest mornings of their lives. They'll return to work for the first time to 140 West St., the building that stands across the street from where the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001. The building may still be erect, but it has taken two years to make it habitable after sustaining severe damage from the towers' collapse—a catastrophic event that took out a vital nerve center in Verizon's network in Lower Manhattan.

That 140 West remained structurally intact is testament to its bunker-like construction. Its next-door neighbor, 7 World Trade Center, fell right against it. Steel beams crashed through an underground vault that held all of the wiring at 140 West, virtually destroying the building's links to Verizon's network. Cables were crushed or submerged in floodwaters. Verizon executives and workers had to wear moon-suits to enter the building. "Words can't describe what was going on," Paul LaCouture, Verizon's Network Services Group president, would say nine months later.

Today, Verizon continues to retool its network in Lower Manhattan. While the physical restoration of switches, underground cables and other network equipment at 140 West was finished more than a year ago, Verizon still has some 600 technicians working on what it calls "de-hubbing"—off-loading some of the network traffic handled at 140 West to other switching offices in Manhattan. That work is expected to be finished sometime next year.

The World Trade Center events tested Verizon to an extent unimaginable on Sept. 10, 2001. Yet, less than a week after the twin towers fell, Verizon supplied the New York Stock Exchange with enough telecom service to reopen for business.

The damage inflicted by the falling towers caused a complete failure at 140 West—200,000 voice lines, 150,000 business lines, and the equivalent of about 4 million data circuits went out of commission. The worst damage occurred underground. Verizon inspectors found about 300 of the 500 underground cables that fed into 140 West were damaged or rendered inoperable because of water damage from broken mains at Ground Zero. The steel beam that crashed through the underground vault cut off a key connection point between 140 West and Verizon's local network. The air compressor system in 140 West that kept those conduits clear was badly damaged. Overtaxed power generators eventually gave out.

Verizon deployed 1,600 technicians to rig up a replacement network. The upper floors of 140 West had to be cleaned up enough to get some of the network equipment running again. Emergency power had to be reestablished. New cables were run out the building's windows and down to the street. Those cables then had to be spliced, wire by wire, to undamaged conduits a few blocks away from the destruction.

But, Verizon also had to keep the aboveground conduits clear. "We built an entirely new air compressor system from scratch," says Joe DeMauro, a Verizon regional president responsible for the outside wiring plant in Lower Manhattan.

All told, about 3,000 field technicians and managers were involved in the restoration work in Lower Manhattan.
http://www.geek.com/geekcom/vibrantm...eekvibrant.htm


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DRM This!

A Korean company by the name of Axxen Technology has released a PC component whose sole purpose is to enable all cassette tape functionality controllable from your desktop. The hardware, called PlusDeck, fits into a spare 5 1/4" bay and allows for a single cassette tape to be inserted and played.

It can be used to record in analog from other sources within your PC, whether it be a website or music authoring software.

The main features of the kit is the ability to record music onto the cassette tape from any digital source and record audio from a cassette and convert it into MP3 format. The aim is to provide the ability to still record information to and from what is now seen as quite an old format. The website points to the fact that many people still have tape players in their hi-fi and cars or have old tapes containing music they wish to save and this provides an easy solution to converting that data into a current format.
http://www.plusdeck.com/english/index.asp

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/20...0909021661.htm

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Graffiti Artist Sues game Maker For Using Vandalism Without Permission

New Filing – Grand Theft Auto

US SD New York 03CV-5147


Christopher Ellis
v.
Rockstar Games, Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.


Graffiti artist Christopher Ellis filed suit against two software companies for allegedly using without permission his artwork in the video game, “Grand Theft Auto III”.
In the suit, Ellis asserts that Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive Software copied, used, and distributed his artwork, “Daze” in the videogame that is played on Playstation2 and other medians.
The suit says that Ellis has gained an international reputation for his work, which has been reproduced in books, magazines, and film.
Causes of Action: Copyright infringement.
Filing Counsel: Carl I. Kaminsky.
http://www.entlawdigest.com/story.cfm?storyID=2862


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Big TVs, MP3 Players Most Popular Electronic Gear
Jack Kapica

Large-screen television sets and MP3 players were the most popular electronic products sold in 2002, and will continue to dominate sales in 2003, industry figures show.

The Consumer Electronics Association, a U.S. industry group representing more than 1,000 corporate members with annual sales of $85-billion (U.S.), also said in its yearly report that despite the poor economic climate, total sales of consumer products are expected to reach $95-billion in 2003.

The figure is up slightly from 2002, when it was $93.9-billion.

The report covers such items as video, audio, mobile, home information, blank media, accessories, electronic gaming and home-security products. This year the CEA added personal digital assistants to the mobile electronics section.

After large-screen TV sets and MP3 players, highest sales in 2002 were in aftermarket autosound, mobile video and navigation, digital cameras, blank media, accessories and batteries, and electronic gaming hardware and software.

"Despite deflation, which puts downward pressure on revenue growth, the strong up-and-coming categories such as LCD TVs, plasma TVs and digital still cameras will continue to grow … over the next five years, even as some sectors continue to shrink due to convergence and bundling," CEA director of analysis Sean Wargo said.

In percentage terms, sales of LCD TVs are expected to more than double in sales from 2002 to 2003 (212.3 per cent), while plasma screen TVs will go up 76.3 per cent. Sales of MP3 players will rise 9.8 per cent, wireless phones by 0.8 per cent and personal computers by 0.5 per cent.

Last year, plasma TV sales grew by 344 per cent, followed by MP3 players (105 per cent), digital still cameras (41.7 per cent) and LCD TVs (36.6 per cent).
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...gy/?mainhub=GT


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Ultra-Wideband: Multimedia Unplugged

Very short low-power pulses can move a DVD's worth of bits around the home in seconds
Steve Stroh

Part 2 of this special report deals with a new mode of very high- speed, low-power networking called Ultrawideband.

A funny thing happened to ultrawideband wireless technology on its way from the laboratory to market. It changed from a unique carrierless radio system into something far less exotic.

When the technology is finally standardized, it will be a carrier-based system most likely incorporating frequency hopping and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). Its purpose, however, will remain unchanged: to replace almost every data cable in your home, even the ones going in and out of your television set, a job that requires moving hundreds of megabits of data per second. That's faster than all but the speediest of wired networks. The speed is achieved, however, over distances of only 10 meters or so.

But it's the speed that has so many companies excited. Such heavyweights as Hewlett-Packard, Infineon, Intel, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, and Texas Instruments all want a piece of the impending action. They formed the MultiBand OFDM Alliance in June and have come to dominate the IEEE's ultrawideband (UWB) task group that's writing a UWB standard.

Ultrawideband's new clothes have two tailors. The first is the growing recognition of the technology's commercial potential. The other involves the surprising limitations placed on it by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC, Washington, D.C.) in February 2002, which made the carrierless approach less attractive.[see [see "FCC (Finally) See Little Noise From UWB"]Now the large companies are vigorously promoting a technical approach different from the ones developed earlier by the smaller companies that started the commercial UWB movement.

Despite this change, UWB promises to revolutionize home media networking, taking over such tasks as downloading images from a digital camera to a computer, distributing HDTV signals from a receiver to multiple TV sets around the house, connecting printers to computers, and potentially replacing any electronic signal (not power) cable on the premises [see figure].

The advantages of UWB are several. For one thing, it works well in crowded and noisy radio environments. Before the FCC put limits on the spectrum that a UWB signal could occupy, developers thought in terms of spectra that began somewhere in the vicinity of 100 MHz and stretched up to several gigahertz. Such a broad signal is quite resistant to interference because any interfering signal is likely to affect only a small portion of the desired signal. Also, if some frequency components of the signal have trouble penetrating the walls of a building, the theory goes, the majority will probably get through.

As far as causing interference is concerned, the pulses are at such low power levels that any equipment along their path cannot hear them. In fact, their power must be less than the level permitted for the incidental electronic noise generated, for example, by appliances or the switching power supplies in computers.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY.../sep03/uw.html


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EU Software Patent Opponents Turn Up Lobbying

Free and open software proponents rally against proposal
Paul Meller

Opponents of a proposed European law on software patents have overhauled their lobbying efforts in a last ditch attempt to turn lawmakers' opinions in their favor.

Next Wednesday the Green Party in the European Parliament, which agrees with opponents such as the open source and free software communities, will host a conference on the draft law, which is scheduled to be voted on at the next plenary session of the European Parliament towards the end of this month.

Unlike previous such events, the list of speakers at the half-day event come from the academic mainstream, and also include consumer representatives.

Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium and the inventor of the Web, is expected to give a virtual address and then participate in an online debate with conference attendees.

Dr. Alan Mycroft from Cambridge University will present a petition signed by fellow scientists urging lawmakers to re-think their supportive views about the draft law before they vote.

Dr. Luc Soete, Founder of Merit at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, will present a letter co-signed by fellow economists also urging European Parliamentarians to change the position they appear set to take at the plenary vote.

Jim Murray, head of the Europe-wide consumer group BEUC, will explain to delegates that the directive as it stands is too unclear to pass as law. "I doubt a few amendments by the European Parliament will fix that," he said Thursday.

As a consumer representative he will argue why it is in the interests of European citizens that European Parliamentarians should take more time to understand the complex issues at stake before voting on the text.

The conference will also hear from representatives of local government in Europe who have already opted for open source structures for their office software needs. Jens Mülhaus, a member of the City Council of Munich, Germany, will outline why his organization prefers a computer software environment that isn't dominated by a few large patent-owning corporations.

Previous attempts by the open source and free software communities to steer European lawmakers away from supporting the draft law are widely seen to have failed, according to public affairs and lobbying experts in Brussels.

"Up until now the lobbying effort against this software patent law has been a shambles," said one expert with no direct involvement in the debate, who asked not to be named. He added, "They have been totally outgunned by the slick lobbying of corporations like IBM and Microsoft. At last the opponents appear to be getting their act together, and now the fight appears to be more balanced."

Previous lobbying efforts used Richard Stallman, the uncompromising, evangelical figurehead of the free software movement as their ace when trying to win over members of the European Parliament (MEPs) bewildered by the complexity of the subject.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...patents_1.html


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File-Sharing Firms Await Suits' Outcome
Jon Healey and P.J. Huffstutter

The companies behind Kazaa, Grokster and other file-sharing networks weren't named in the 261 copyright-infringement lawsuits filed this week by the major record labels, yet their livelihood depends on how the public responds.

Like television networks, the companies whose software makes file sharing possible survive on advertising and other revenue tied to the size of their audience. The labels hope to shrink the audience by making people afraid to share songs, depleting the virtual inventory that makes the networks appealing to millions of music lovers — and profitable to their operators.

Recording Industry Assn. of America President Cary Sherman has said the labels plan to sue thousands of people, with new claims coming "on a regular basis until people get the message." Legal experts say it won't be easy for the labels to have much effect by going to court against individuals, given that more than 60 million people share files online in the United States alone.

In fact, the biggest blow the labels have been able to strike has been in saddling three of the most popular file-sharing companies with large legal fees, by suing Grokster Ltd., StreamCast Networks Inc. and Sharman Networks Ltd. The record companies, which were joined by movie studios in the suits, lost preliminary battles with Grokster and StreamCast but are continuing those fights on appeal. The Sharman case is pending.

The recording industry "just can't accept the fact that they lost, and they still think that they didn't lose. So obviously, there's a certain parallel to the California recall election," said Grokster President Wayne Rosso. "By attacking users for uploading, they're trying to attack our network."

Monday's lawsuits targeted users of Grokster, Kazaa, IMesh, Gnutella and Blubster. Sharman's Kazaa is the most popular file-sharing network by far; it attracted a total of 12.6 million people in the U.S. in July, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

The privately held file-sharing companies don't release their earnings. Executives at two of the companies estimated that a popular network can generate $100,000 to $300,000 in revenue a month and that Sharman probably collects several million dollars per month. Executives at Sharman declined to comment.

The file-sharing companies' advertiser-supported business model should be familiar to the media giants suing them. They also are tapping into new sources of revenue, selling advertisement-free versions of their software and taking a percentage of their partners' sales of products and services.

Unlike broadcasters, file-sharing companies don't have to pay for the programming that attracts people to their networks. Instead, that programming — in the form of digital movies, songs, photographs and games — is supplied by the users themselves. Users also cover the cost of distributing those files, further cutting the networks' expenses.

Practically every business that advertises online now uses file-sharing networks as well, "everyone from auto insurance to debt to credit cards to mortgages, right across the spectrum," said Robert Regular of Cydoor Technologies Inc., which sells advertising space on Kazaa and Grokster. The main holdouts are "top tier" brands such as Coca-Cola, he said, adding, "These brands usually do not want to attach themselves or participate in anything until it's extremely proven."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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One Voice on Piracy

The five major labels cast competition aside to fight illegal downloads
Jeff Leeds

Warner Music Group Chairman Roger Ames wouldn't budge. The industry veteran refused last summer to join an effort by his four major competitors to sue illegal downloaders who were crushing the industry's bottom line.

Ames insisted that before the labels unleashed their attorneys and risked a potential public relations backlash, they needed to provide consumers with an alternative, a place where the pirates could legally download songs from all five major record companies.

"We made it clear to everyone that we weren't prepared to go forward with lawsuits until there were attractive and comprehensive online services up and running," said David Johnson, Warner Music's general counsel.

Warner Music's cooperation was crucial.

"If there had been division among the major record companies, it would've given license for a lot of other people to take contrarian views," said Hilary Rosen, who was then the industry's top lobbyist as head of the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

In the end, Ames' resistance forced the labels to put aside their cutthroat rivalries and agree for the first time to sell songs from all the companies on two label-owned online services.

"People realized this wasn't 'Let's see if we can sweet-talk Roger into this over a beer," said one executive familiar with the contentious, yearlong negotiations that on Monday led to the filing of 261 lawsuits against a nationwide assortment of alleged pirates.

As the effort to enlist Warner Music's support illustrates, the decision to take legal action did not come easily or quickly. The deliberations among the fiercely competitive big five record companies were plagued by distrust and conflicting agendas, which is often the case when they are forced to confront industrywide issues.

The fact that agreement ultimately was reached, however, is testament to the shared miseries and desperation of the record companies owned by AOL Time Warner Inc., Vivendi Universal, Sony Corp., Bertelsmann and EMI Group.

Last year alone, piracy was blamed for siphoning about $10 billion from global music sales. Even before this week's lawsuits, the labels had coalesced to combat illegal downloading by taking legal action against a variety of file-sharing networks but failed to put a dent in the pirate population.

Hauling individual downloaders into court seemed the only option left to the labels, which had been feuding with one another over Internet strategies as the problems they jointly faced only worsened.

Bertelsmann, for example, had outraged its competitors in 2000 by providing financial support to ailing Napster Inc., the pioneering online service that allowed music fans to obtain free songs with a click of the mouse. The purchase came at a time when the German company's BMG music division had joined the industry's lawsuits against the file-swapping network.

Some labels also questioned Warner Music's resolve to fix the problem, fearing that parent AOL Time Warner would soft-pedal any anti-piracy litigation that could threaten its America Online unit.

Last summer, several labels resisted Ames' demand that they "cross-license" their music for sale on two separate sites financed by the five companies. Some thought there was no time to waste on tangled talks. Wary of giving the slightest edge to a competitor, they could not even agree on how the music would be made available and at what price. In all, it took six months for the labels to reach an agreement.

Litigators for record conglomerates had kicked around the idea of suing individuals for years, at least since Napster popularized file swapping in 1999, sources said. But the attorneys hadn't pushed the idea, fearing a public relations disaster.

But by last summer, the piracy crisis had become so severe that lawyers for the major record companies believed their bosses would finally pull the trigger.

Universal executives, who had discussed the plan internally, favored litigation against individual downloaders from the outset.

"No one relished the idea," said Universal Music President Zach Horowitz. But, he said, "artists and songwriters were losing their livelihoods. Retail stores were closing. Employees at music companies were being laid off. The message wasn't getting across that the underlying behavior was illegal and wrong."

Top executives from the other music giants, including Sony Music and EMI, chewed over the potential backlash against the industry that probably would follow the litigation but also decided to sign on.

"The PR issues are always there in the front of people's minds. But you either let that run the agenda, or you get your best PR in place and then deal" with any bad publicity, said David Munns, chief executive of EMI's North American division. "Basically, people realized we didn't have a choice."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Piracy Gets Mixed Reviews in Industry

File sharing is seen as a burden and a boon
Alex Pham and P.J. Huffstutter

By going to court, the major record labels are showing a united front against music piracy. But the bootlegging of songs online isn't universally reviled by the thousands of people who make their living in the $14-billion U.S. recording industry.

To the chief executive of a rap music label, every pirated song means less money in his pocket. To the bass player in an independent band, however, file-sharing networks provide far more exposure than traditional outlets, such as radio. And to the musician who tours with acts such as Beck and Sheryl Crow, the popularity of Kazaa, Morpheus and other online networks ought to persuade the record labels to embrace the Net to reach customers.

A sampling of what rank and file members of the industry had to say:

*

Ariana Murray

Bass player for Earlimart, an independent band

Los Angeles

People today have new expectations about being able to browse music before they buy. If people are downloading our music, we look at it as a positive thing. For us, it just seems to be a promotional tool. If anything, it's helping us at this point.

Maybe my opinion will change when our record sales start to have a more direct effect on our personal incomes.

At this point, I like the fact that people can listen before they buy the product. Not everyone has the disposable income to go out and buy everything.

I still believe that if a band is really good — if you're writing great songs and you work real hard and tour like crazy — people will buy your record and that's going to help your income.

We put a lot of art into our work. Our record is an enhanced CD with videos on it. That's not something you can download, at least not yet. So we hope that's an incentive for people to own the record.

My reservations about downloading is really an aesthetic one. Imagine if Pink Floyd's "The Wall" came out now. There's this whole idea of concept records, the idea of a record that has a beginning, a middle and an end. There are some records that should be listened to that way. If people download individual tracks, they miss out on the artistry that goes into making the whole.

*

Tha Realest

Songwriter/rapper

Chief Executive of 2 Real Entertainment, a rap label

I've been writing songs since I was in a talent show in fourth grade. That was back in '84 or '85. It was a way to have a conversation with people in the streets, a way to reach out with words. And it got me paid.

I don't download music at all, but bootlegging's been around forever. I know a lot of the kids don't understand it. They don't understand that whole publishing thing. That's what you eat off of, because you don't make huge money when you sign up with the labels. It's the other things that help you get paid. It's the clothing lines and the producing and the publishing. It's the songwriting and the licensing you get from that.

The kids don't see that. I have college kids come up to me all the time, saying, "Hey! I've got this hot bootleg mix CD with your music on it." What he doesn't figure out is he's taking food off my table. They sell the tapes for $10 a pop.

At first, I got mad. Now, I roll with it and use the tapes as a promotional avenue. I go down to the studio once or twice a month, and knock out three to four songs that will just be for these mix tapes. One of these mix tapes might get the word of mouth going, and that's good for me.

*

Marc Weinstein

Co-owner, Amoeba Music stores, Berkeley

For our business, it's been as equally helpful as hurtful. If people [who use file-sharing services] are listening to things they otherwise wouldn't listen to, it's great for us.

People who are into music need a way to discover artists, because the radio isn't a very good way to do that. File sharing can be helpful in educating the public.

I'm 46 years old. People [from] my generation have been alienated from the music world. Nothing is played on the radio for us. We have no way of finding out what's new and cool. NPR maybe breaks about one or two interesting things a year that percolate through my generation. But there are so few examples of that.

Stealing — I'm certainly not a proponent of that. Everyone loses out, especially the artists.

But the music industry long ago should have developed a system to help listeners learn about music so they can look up artists and hear what they sound like. Then they can go out and buy what they're interested in.

As far as Amoeba goes, we're doing OK, because people come here to find the unusual stuff, the broad catalog.

It's the chain stores that are hurt by this. People who listen to pop are more likely to shop at chain stores, and they're more likely to take it off the Internet. No one wants to spend $20 to get one song.

*

Roger Joseph Manning Jr.

Band member, co-founder of Jellyfish and TV Eyes

Session and tour musician for Beck, Blink 182, Sheryl Crow

Woodland Hills

The world of recorded media is changing at lightning speeds, and nobody knows what to do about it.

I am on the fence right now about this whole thing. I see where it can be a powerful tool for promoting small and medium artists. On the other hand, all the artists are being ripped off to a degree.

But it's the medium-sized bands and smaller acts that suffer the most from piracy. That scene relies incredibly on sharing and word of mouth.

It's not the Limp Bizkits and the Metallicas. Sure, they can argue losses on paper. So what does that mean? They can't buy their sixth Mercedes?

I make a lot of my living through session work. Many of the bands that I work with are so big that piracy doesn't affect them. The multi-platinum acts still hire me. I don't see them hurting.

But I'm painfully aware and sad about the current state of the business.

We've all been living with the old design where bands sign up with record labels, and musicians end up losing control. In my opinion, that model has ripped off more from musicians [than piracy].

Why not try something else? What have I got to lose by jumping in and experimenting with doing a selected release on a few Web sites?

There has to be some kind of alternative that omits the recording labels so the artist becomes the salesman for his wares. And the Internet could be the vehicle by which he can do that.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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Suits Could Clarify File-Sharing Rules

A slew of cases expected to be filed by the music industry will test how copyright law applies to individuals online.
Joseph Menn

On this there has been virtually no dispute: People who share copyrighted music online with strangers are breaking the law.

Several federal judges have held as much in cases against file-sharing networks such as those of Napster Inc., MP3.com Inc. and Grokster Ltd. Even the most ardent defenders of peer-to-peer networks acknowledge that many users run roughshod over copyright rules.

But that conventional wisdom has never been tested in a case pitting copyright holders against individual file sharers.

That could change as early as this week. The recording industry is poised to sue potentially hundreds of people who offer free music online — an unprecedented action expected to ripple across the music business and the community of 60 million people in the United States who use file-sharing networks.

At the very least, the lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Assn. of America probably would provide a much clearer guide to just what's allowed as lawyers tease out previously unheard defenses and argue over the nuances of copyright law. At most, the suits could upend conventional wisdom about online piracy.

"Permissible aspects of file sharing exist, and we need a rule book," said Glenn Peterson, a Sacramento lawyer representing an alleged file sharer whose identity and address have been sought in a subpoena by the RIAA. "I have teenage kids. I want to be able to say, 'You can do A, B and C, and you can't do D, E and F.' "

In 2001, a judge shut down the pioneering Napster service. (The brand later was bought by Roxio Inc., which is working to launch a version of Napster by the end of the year that will pay the record labels and music publishers for their wares.) The record labels this year lost a case seeking the same fate for the Morpheus and Grokster services, which don't keep control of what their users do. Morpheus is distributed by StreamCast Networks Inc.

But because those rulings involved the file-sharing networks themselves, not individual users, "it isn't clear to me that the courts have really confronted directly the question of whether the things that some people do with peer-to-peer are or are not acceptable," said Peter Jaszi, a copyright specialist at American University's Washington College of Law.

Simply figuring out whom to name as an individual defendant takes a fair amount of sleuthing. The RIAA spent the summer using more than 1,000 subpoenas to force Internet service providers to reveal the names and addresses of customers suspected of distributing free music.

Music collections are easy to find online. Once the RIAA identifies a particularly large stash on a PC, it tracks down the machine's Internet protocol, or IP, address — essentially its location on the Internet. Then it tries to get Internet access providers to match that IP address with a name.

But some caution that the name attached to an IP address isn't necessarily the right name; the user who downloaded music could be another person in the same household — or even a hacker thousands of miles away.

An IP address is "not DNA, and it's not a fingerprint," said Joseph Singleton, a lawyer at the Beverly Hills firm Vorzimer, Masserman & Chapman who has been contacted by two people whose information was subpoenaed by the RIAA.

RIAA attorney Matt Oppenheim said that if evidence in a case shows someone else in a particular home was using the suspect computer improperly, a suit will be amended to add that person as a defendant. And he pointed out that the law doesn't exempt minors.

Legal experts expect many of those sued to settle quickly. Yet there also is a good chance that advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation will pick out certain individuals who tell a convincing story and subsidize their defense.

For those who fight the suits, a key goal will be to show that enough of the facts are in dispute that they deserve to have their cases go before juries. Given that half the Internet users in the United States have used a file-sharing network, the odds are high that a jury member would know someone who has downloaded music improperly. Those jurors could be sympathetic, and multiple trials could stretch the record industry's resources.

"If everyone fights it, they lose," Singleton said. "The federal courts will shut down."

Spontaneous mass support could conceivably erupt as well. One of the four college students sued by the RIAA this year for running a small peer-to-peer network asked for donations through a Web site and recouped all of his $12,000 settlement costs.

Juries might also consider something they are not supposed to under copyright law: intent. One anticipated defense is that any file sharing was accidental.

Most of the major peer-to-peer networks allow users to indicate whether they wish to open up files on their computers for others to copy. (The RIAA is going after people who they believe both offered and copied files because the law is slightly different in each instance.)

Some file swappers have told the networks that they didn't want to share music — but didn't realize that when they downloaded a file, the new music was still placed in a folder that could be accessed by others.

"I know of a couple of cases where somebody has opted out" of automatic sharing but "didn't appreciate that" second mechanism, Peterson said.

Oppenheim, the RIAA lawyer, said a jury would not forgive such ignorance.

"The first response is, you must have your head in the sand. We've done everything humanly possible to get the word out, sending millions of instant messages" to logged- on users of Kazaa, offered by Sharman Networks Ltd., and other such services, he said. "The second response is it's irrelevant as a matter of law."

True, but a surprising amount of digital copyright law is still unsettled, including whether "ripping" a song from a purchased CD is legal. Some defendants probably will say they downloaded only music they already owned on CD. For them, downloading arguably had the same effect as ripping.

The U.S. Supreme Court, when it legalized the videocassette recorder by a 5-4 vote, ruled that what it called "time-shifting" — that is, taping a show now to watch later — is fine. The law on "space-shifting," which includes ripping and arguably downloading copies, is less clear.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco authorized sale of the Rio portable MP3 player in 1999 and made comments favorable to space-shifting, implying that moving a purchased song from one format to another is permissible. (The Rio is now sold by Tokyo's D&M Holdings Inc.)

Yet when Universal Music Group sued MP3.com, a federal court in New York held that the Internet firm wasn't entitled to copy CDs and then play the songs online for people who had purchased the same CDs.

MP3.com's defense was based on the concept of "fair use," which permits such activities as critics quoting passages of a book. The Copyright Act lists four factors that must be weighed in determining when an act qualifies as fair use: the purpose of the copying, including whether it is commercial or educational; the nature of the work; the amount of the work that is copied; and the effect of the copying on the market for the work.

In part because MP3.com was, like Napster, trying to make money, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that it flunked all four tests.

Nonetheless, individuals who try a fair-use defense have a chance of winning on the first and fourth tests, some experts believe. Theoretically, they could fight to a draw. "Nobody's really sure how far it goes," said Tyler Ochoa, a copyright professor at Santa Clara University's law school.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology


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In "Tone Deaf to a Moral Dilemma?" (Sept. 2) an important view held by many musicians and file sharers alike was not mentioned: Record companies have been made obsolete by technology. This is to the benefit of the consumer. The only valuable service that record companies ever had to offer was distribution of music. To raise the demand for this service they took on the secondary "service" of promotions.

Clearly the former service is no longer needed, and the only people who ever benefited from the secondary service were the record companies themselves and the few musicians ("performers" is a more apt description for some) who were fortunate enough to be chosen to be advertised.

In the transition between these distribution methods it is unfortunate that record company employees will have to spend some time finding new jobs. Though I'm sure it will turn out all right for them. Most of us have survived such periods. To impede such wonderful technological progress for the sake of paying people to do a job that is no longer of any use would be a shame.

Brentt Newman

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...nes-technology

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10.7M New DSL Subs

LONDON -- DSL - the world's most popular broadband technology - added another 10.7 million subscribers in the first half of 2003 according to new figures prepared for the international DSL Forum by London analyst firm, Point Topic. This brings the total number of subscribers to 46.7 million. North America added 1.2 million new subscriber s in the six month period, with Japan (at 8.257 million) being the only country overall with more connections than the USA's 7.575 million.

Additionally, the USA's growth rate for the six months was the third largest globally; only Japan and China grew by more subscribers. Western Europe showed the greatest growth for the first two quarters, where 12.8 million homes and businesses are now using broadband DSL, second only to Asia-Pacific at 17.8 million subscribers.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=39908


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


P2P Billing Arrives
Jo Maitland

LONDON -- Bridgewater Systems Corp., a provider of IP service fulfillment and billing software, believes Internet users are going to swap music files no matter what, leaving service providers with no choice but to manage and, more importantly, profit from P2P traffic (see Bridgewater Manages P2P Traffic ).

With this in mind, privately funded Bridgewater, based in Ottawa, has teamed up with Ellacoya Networks Inc. to enable service providers to manage peer-to-peer traffic and bill for it (see Ellacoya, Bridgewater Demo Provisioning ).

”There’s little point in doing all the tiered services and bandwidth management if you don’t integrate with billing and back-office systems,” says Matt Burke, spokesman for Ellacoya.

At the Broadband World Forum tradeshow in London this week, the two companies are demonstrating how broadband subscribers can use self-service Web portals to order changes to their broadband services, such as increasing bandwidth on demand and adding or modifying services. The demonstration shows on-demand access to a premium streaming service, premium peer-to- peer, and an Xbox-only gaming service.

According to Bridgewater, once a user requests changes, billing is initiated, required network element changes are effected, and the service is activated in real-time.

"The influx of peer-to-peer, gaming applications, and other premium services is an indication that subscribers are taking advantage of their broadband connections not for just higher speed but for value-added services and content distribution," says Ron Sege, president and CEO of Ellacoya Networks. “The Ellacoya/ Bridgewater deal saves the provider significant operational expenses by automating the provisioning of both the network and back-office systems. It brings the whole thing under control.”

Keeping P2P traffic in check is a worrying problem for service providers as more and more users sign up to file-sharing networks, undeterred by the record and movie industries' latest efforts to contain them.

Just this week the Record Industry of Amercia Association (RIAA), on behalf of several major record labels, filed separate lawsuits against 126 individuals in federal courts across the U.S. The suits target users with libraries of 1,000 or more songs, which they share with other users on networks including KaZaA and Grokster among others.

”Some people have been scared off by the RIAA’s actions, but there are still millions out there sharing files, and the record companies can’t get them all… The sensible thing for carriers to do is accept the situation and work with it,” says Mark Denton, Bridgewater product manager.

Bridgewater’s customers include Bell Mobility in Canada, Covad Communications Inc. (OTC: COVD - message board), ICG Communications Inc. (Nasdaq/ Frankfurt: ICGX - message board), and TeliaSonera International Carrier (TIC) among others. It claims to have more customers in Europe, although it's unable to name them due to non-disclosure agreements. The same goes for Ellacoya's customers on the continent. “European providers are more into on-demand services because they went through the regulatory process before the U.S., so there’s more competition there,” says Ellacoya’s Sege. "They have to implement new services to compete."

Bridgewater is also working with Allot Communications and is said to be in talks with P-Cube Inc., both of which provide P2P management platforms.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=39879


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Big Media Lack Creativity

The low-risk, bureaucratic way to run a media company is to focus on products similar to those that have already succeeded...you need only look at television, music and films today to see that this is exactly what happens.
John Kay

Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric, invented a process by which you could record sounds and play them back, over and over again. The modern media business was born. And now, after dabbling successfully in aero engines, medical equipment and financial services, GE is returning to these roots. Through Universal Studios, Jeff Immelt and his colleagues are now promoters of Eminem and producers of Seabiscuit.

The prospect of media industries inevitably being dominated by large international conglomerates has long excited investment bankers and depressed creative people. But, more recently, it has seemed to be yesterday's idea rather than today's. Time Warner, whose appetite for acquisitions was always greater than its capacity to finance or absorb them, made a deal too far and gave away half the company in exchange for AOL. AOL has now cheekily announced that its brand is tarnished by association with the struggling AOL Time Warner. And two European adventures in America have come to grief. Thomas Middelhoff was fired from Bertelsmann, Jean-Marie Messier from Vivendi Universal, and the empires they built are being dismantled.

Although other media giants are in better shape, their experience does not offer strong support for the inevitable consolidation of the industry. News Corporation and Viacom are the creations of business geniuses with an exceptional eye for undervalued assets and the evolution of their industries. But with Rupert Murdoch aged 72 and Sumner Redstone 80, the direction of these businesses is bound to change. Michael Eisner's vision for Disney is that you make money for Disney's shareholders - and chief executive - by exploiting the existing repertoire far more exhaustively than anyone had imagined possible.

The argument for vertical integration is that delivery needs content and vice versa. This is why the AOL Time Warner deal was, briefly, thought to be a marriage made in heaven. Content does need delivery - but it does not need to own it; the FT needs the newspaper delivery boy's bicycle but does not need to buy it. The notion that Disney required the ABC network for distribution was ludicrous. And there are good arguments for keeping these businesses apart. The newspaper round will be more efficient if one bicycle carries several titles - and there will never be much rapport between a rap artist and a telephone company.

Perhaps horizontal integration is required by technological convergence, as new media blur boundaries between print, film and music. But assembling disparate groups of people with past success in established production and distribution systems is not necessarily the best way to exploit these opportunities. Music publishers have been more concerned to defend their existing businesses against the internet than to exploit it. New thinking comes most often from new companies.

Some people emphasise the opportunities for cross-selling in a multi-media business. Warner Bros can use AOL to promote Harry Potter films on the internet. But you do not need common ownership for this. The originator of the Potter phenomenon is Bloomsbury, the independent book publisher, and subsidiary rights are licensed to many different companies. Books with television tie-ins are today's fashion but it is only fortuitous if the network and the publisher are part of the same corporation.

Media conglomerates are the product of the ambitions of those who run them rather than the imperatives of the market. Media businesses depend on talented, often difficult, individuals and their well founded suspicion of multinationals is an obstacle to the success of such businesses. The low-risk, bureaucratic way to run a media company is to focus on products similar to those that have already succeeded. And you need only look at television, music and films today to see that this is exactly what happens.

Current bestsellers, for instance, tend to be diet guides, courtroom thrillers and sporting biographies. I counted three genuinely original works among them: The Life of Pi; The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency; and Schott's Miscellany. Each was brought to market by a small, independent, specialist publisher.
http://www.mediareform.net/news.php?id=1110


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Music Industry Could Have Turned Customer Complaints to Gold
Erika Morphy

The Internet is a powerful medium to harness consumer discontent, says Gartner analyst Adam Sarner. "It's one thing if customers complain to the company about a problem. It's another if they complain to each other and the attention becomes more and more public."

When the Recording Industry Association of America made its dual announcements Monday -- that is, saying it would pursue lawsuits against some 260 music file-sharers while at the same time offering amnesty to anyone it had not yet targeted -- critics bemoaned the association's tactics and lack of foresight.

"This movement of getting music off of the Internet has been long in coming," Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jason Schultz told CRMDaily.com. "The music industry knew this is what customers wanted -- yet they didn't respond."

There is certainly some truth in Schultz's observations, as well as a lesson for other industries on the perils of ignoring consumer complaints.

Perfect Storm

"The music companies had a wealth of data that told them that these business and distribution models [would be] the growing trend," Gartner research analyst Adam Sarner told CRMDaily. "Customers became angry at the perception that the music industry didn't care about what they wanted but just wanted to make a fast buck."

The end result, as we all know, was something of a perfect storm in the annuals of customer complaints. In droves, consumers developed and flocked to their own exchanges when the music industry failed to respond. To be sure, there are other issues involved -- such as the legalities and moralities of downloading something that is the creation of someone else, who therefore does not get paid. That is not the point in this particular discussion, though.

The point is that the music industry did not respond when it should have, choosing instead to ignore or dismiss the warning signs, Sarner said. "The handwriting was on the wall years ago."

Harnessing the Complaints

Increasingly, companies are learning that it can be dangerous to dismiss customer griping. The Internet has become a powerful medium to harness this discontent, Sarner said. "It's one thing if customers complain to the company about a problem. It's another if they complain to each other and the attention becomes more and more public."

He said that message boards in particular are prime resources for companies to see what their customers are saying about them - - both good and bad -- and to translate that data into solutions for problems or, better yet, improved products or services.

"There is a wealth of consumer data out there that is free or next to it," he said. To be sure, not all of it is completely constructive (see, for example, aolsucks.org) but by shifting through it, there are valuable nuggets to be found (complaints.com).
http://www.crmdaily.com/perl/story/22250.html


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Beatles Suing Apple
Jim Dalrymple

Apple Computer Inc. is being sued by Apple Corps. The parent company for music legends, The Beatles, has begun legal proceedings against Apple Computer, citing breach of contract for the suit, according to Fox News.

Apparently when Apple Computer first started, The Beatles sued them for the use of the corporate name. In addition to a hefty cash settlement, Apple agreed to only use the corporate name for computer products and not enter the music markeplace.

Years later, The Beatles sued and won another lawsuit when Apple shipped computers that allowed music to be played through attachable speakers. That lawsuit charged breach of a trademark agreement since Apple had agreed to steer clear of the music business. Fox News estimates Apple has paid US$50 million in the lost suits so far.

The latest round of legal proceedings surround Apple's popular MP3 player, the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, which just sold its 10 millionth song online.

"When it first happened with the iPod, we said, "What could they be thinking?" said a Beatles legal insider, who agreed that posters announcing the iPod from "AppleMusic" were among the most egregious violations. "They knew we had the agreement, and that we'd won a lot of money from them already."

An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...esoveripoditms


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Music Services Hit a High Note

Consumers appear ready to make the switch from free to fee.
Jonny Evans

The digital music download industry has turned a corner, with Apple Computer selling its 10 millionth song and RealNetworks announcing that its Rhapsody service achieved an average of 500,000 streaming song downloads per day in August.

RealNetworks streamed over 16 million on-demand tunes through its newly acquired Rhapsody service in August. The service is available only to Windows users.

"In the past five months, the service has more than doubled the number of songs streamed to customers each month," the company says. Rhapsody offers a subscription-based service that lets members listen to songs on demand using their computer.

Sean Ryan, RealNetworks' vice president of music services, says, "The consumer market is finally ready for music services that deliver a better-than-free experience. August's numbers prove what we've been saying for months: Legal music services have unquestionably caught the ears of music fans."

Apple launched the world's first consumer-friendly digital music distribution service, ITunes Music Store, on April 28. On its launch, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs called the service "downloads done right," and criticized existing services for failing to capture consumer need.

The company sold its 10 millionth track--Avril Lavigne's "Complicated"--through the service on September 3. "Legally selling 10 million songs online in just four months is a historic milestone for the music industry, musicians, and music lovers everywhere," Jobs said at the time.

Artists and analysts agree that digital music delivery is the likely future for much music sales. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin says, "It's clear Apple has delivered a working and successful platform for music fans to discover artists and purchase both albums and single songs instantly with ease. We embrace these efforts enthusiastically and see them as the future of our business."

With so much at stake, competition in all territories is intensifying, and major online media properties are taking position to reap the benefits of the emerging industry. Microsoft has teamed up with the OD2 service (cofounded by musician Peter Gabriel) to deliver music downloads to Windows users in Europe. Tiscali and Virgin have also joined up with OD2 to offer the same.

Roxio is still preparing to relaunch its recently acquired Napster brand, RealNetworks plans to upgrade its Rhapsody service, and Sony has launched its own. Even controversial Internet entrepreneur Scott Blum has joined the feeding frenzy with BuyMusic.com.

Many existing services use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 service, which is not currently supported on Macs but is going through ratification as an Internet standard. Microsoft plans to release Windows Media 9 for Mac OS X this autumn.

Copyright Concerns

The Recording Industry Association of America, meanwhile, is continuing its attempts to end music piracy, which emerged to fill the vacuum left by the established music industry's signal failure to exploit new technologies as they emerged in the 1990s.

In its retrospective attempt to control online music distribution, the RIAA has begun legal actions against individual file traders. Most recently, the RIAA took $2000 in settlement from the mother of a 12-year old girl for alleged file piracy.

Critics say the RIAA's strategy could become a PR disaster for the music business, and consider it unlikely to revamp CD sales. Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff told Associated Press: "Many of these individuals have fallen out of the habit of buying CDs. They think CDs are too expensive; they only want a couple of tracks on the CD."
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112426,00.asp


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Bullying, Balls, Reflectoporn And Some Work For Charidee...

Anybody who watched 'The Curse of FriendsReunited' on Channel 5 this week will have been
reminded of two things. First, that Channel 5 is the source of some of the UK's most trite television programming (as if you needed reminding), and second, that the school bully really wasn't a very nice person.

A number of victims spoke out about their experiences at the hands of a bully, and in some instances those bullies are still continuing to persecute their victims, including teachers, even years after leaving school - posting defamatory remarks on the FriendsReunited message boards and in their personal details.

But bullies aren't just a product of the British school system. They're everywhere. Take the Recording Industry Association of America for example, which this week took about five years' worth of dinner money from a 12-year-old girl.

The already unpopular RIAA excelled itself by launching legal action against Brianna Lahara who had downloaded some copyrighted material from the internet. One UK tabloid newspaper even suggested the poor innocent girl had been downloading nothing more controversial than some nursery rhymes - which as the average 12-year-old will agree is a preposterous suggestion. (Unless Eminem now does 'parental advisory' style nursery rhymes...)

Brianna, who lives with her mother in a housing project in New York City, was named along with 260 other offenders in the RIAA's first raft of suits against file-sharers.

However, little Brianna's mother, who clearly has more compassion than the RIAA, decided to protect her daughter from a harrowing courtroom experience and made an out of court settlement to the tune of $2,000 - which effectively means Brianna will be without pocket money until some time in mid-2028.

However, the plight of poor hard-up Brianna and her (now) even more hard-up mother has not gone unnoticed and a group of peer-to-peer advocates called P2P United has said it will pay the fine on Brianna's behalf. Good on them. While the Round-Up would never condone file- sharing of illegally downloaded material, major corporations bullying children with threats of legal action would still rank as a slightly less acceptable practice. (To read more about the arguments for file-sharing, read this.)

The latest salvo from the RIAA has also seen it indulge in a little mud-slinging - accusing peer- to-peer networks of distributing illegal pornography and arguing in favour of closing them down on grounds of good taste (and not at all on grounds of revenue), which is very magnanimous of them.

Well somebody call the cops. The Round-Up thinks our boys in blue really ought to know about all this illegal pornography being traded.

'Why...' the Round-Up hears you cry '...because they will want to make some arrests?'

Sadly no. It's just that if there's porn to be had then it appears the police will more than likely want to get involved. A police investigation is currently underway in Scotland looking into how some unsavoury material found its way onto the computers of officers in the Lothian and Borders police force.

In total four police officers and one civilian worker are being investigated but the long arm (and hairy palm) of the law is also reaching out to a number of other police stations who are also being investigated in the ongoing case.

A police spokeswoman told the BBC: "There is an internal inquiry into the misuse of computers by a number of members of staff. A report will be sent to the Deputy Chief Constable. We are fastidious about the integrity of our IT system and we are determined it will not be abused." Which is good to know.

And while we're on this seedy subject, there is a new craze doing the rounds on eBay currently, called rather imaginatively 'Reflectoporn'. The basic idea is that users put articles up for sale, such as chrome kettles, which have highly reflective surfaces. Alongside the article listing they include a picture which appears normal on first glance but on closer inspection reveals the naked seller, with nothing to protect their modesty than a camera to their face as they photograph their lot, complete with reflection of themselves in the buff.
http://silicon.com/roundup/500027-500001/1/5986.html


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RIAA's Tumultuous Week: Lawsuits and Headlines
Roy Mark

Even by the litigious standards of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it was a tumultuous week. Already engaged in a three-year legal war against peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for serving as conduits for alleged music piracy, the principal trade group of the major music labels flooded courtrooms from coast to coast with 261 civil copyright infringement lawsuits against individual file swappers.

The RIAA also announced an amnesty program for those who voluntarily identify themselves and pledge to stop illegally sharing music on the Internet. In exchange for signing the pledge, the RIAA said it would not sue file sharers who have not yet been identified in any RIAA investigations.

And that was just on Monday.

By Tuesday, the RIAA was awash in national headlines, both supportive and derisive, for its individual lawsuits against file swappers. To bolster its anti-piracy campaign and to defend its use of the controversial subpoena provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to obtain the names cited in the individual lawsuits, RIAA President Cary Sherman dropped by a Senate committee hearing to explain his group's actions.

Sherman didn't miss the opportunity to bolster the RIAA's campaign against piracy on the P2P networks, laying the blame for the slump in CD sales directly at the feet of music pirates using the file-swapping networks. But the hearing primarily became a platform for Alan Morris, EVP of Sharman Networks, owner and operator of Kazaa, who claimed the music labels were mounting a "vile and reprehensible" smear campaign against P2P providers.

Morris told the Senate Judiciary Committee that allegations of "strong linkage" between file-swapping networks and the distribution of child pornography simply were not true. He said the "vast majority" of the child pornography problem stems from Web sites accessed by browser software and claimed the music labels were perpetuating the rumors as part of their efforts to discredit P2P networks.

Sure enough, Sherman worked in a reference to P2P networks and the distribution of child pornography in his testimony.

In a separate announcement, the RIAA touted its first settlement in the individual lawsuits with a New York woman agreeing to pay $2,000 for the copyrighted songs distributed over Kazaa by her 12-year-old daughter. The settlement was reached with Sylvia Torres, mother of Brianna Lahara, who had offered more than 1,000 copyrighted song tracks on the family's personal computer.

By the end of Tuesday, a Novato, Calif., man slapped an injunctive action against the RIAA's amnesty program, claiming it is a deceptive business practice. Eric Parke, a 37- year-old mortgage broker, said in a lawsuit filed in Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael that the amnesty offer is "hollow and deceptive" and provides "no real legally binding assurance" that those who sign the amnesty offer will not be sued at some later date by copyright owners.

The heat didn't fade on Wednesday when P2P United, a file-swapping trade group that includes Grokster and StreamCast Networks, said it has offered to pay Lahara's $2,000 settlement and described the RIAA actions as a "sorry episode." Online media retailer MusicRebellion.com also said it they would give $2,000 in free music to Lahara.

The Terre Haute, Ind.-based company quickly added that it has "no intention of ever donating to file swappers again, but hopes that online music fans, who might otherwise be unaware of a legal alternative, will now recognize the vast availability" of legal downloads available on the Web.

In turn, the RIAA released a survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates between Sept. 4-6 that the RIAA claims showed an "overwhelming majority of music consumers" support the industry's decision to gather evidence and take legal action "against individual computer users who are illegally sharing substantial amounts of copyrighted music online."

The survey question, asked of 803 consumers age 10 and over, was: "When you hear that the recording industry is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits against individual computer users who are illegally sharing substantial amounts of copyrighted music online, would you say that you are supportive and understanding of the recording industry's decision to take these actions, or unsupportive and negative about what the recording industry's decision to take these actions?"

According to the RIAA, 52 percent said they were supportive and understanding of the industry's actions, while 21 percent said they were unsupportive and negative.

Things quieted at the end of the week, but more headlines are in store next week when Verizon on Tuesday goes into a Washington, D.C. federal appeals court in hopes of overturning a January lower court decision that has forced Internet service providers to turn over names of alleged copyright infringers to the RIAA.

In a case ultimately headed to the Supreme Court, Verizon is questioning the constitutionality of the subpoena power provision of the DMCA. The 1998 act allows copyright holders to issue subpoenas that have not been reviewed by a judge and requires no notice to, or opportunity to be heard by, the alleged infringer. Unlike a usual subpoena, which requires some underlying claim of a crime, under the DMCA a subpoena can be issued by a court clerk who only checks to make sure the subpoena form is properly filled out.

The RIAA has used the January court victory to issue more 1,500 subpoenas. Those subpoenas led to the 261 civil lawsuits being filed by the RIAA.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3076461


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Scientology Loss Keeps Hyperlinks Legal
Matt Hines

The Church of Scientology has lost a courtroom battle to compel a Dutch writer and her Internet service provider to remove postings from a Web site, in a ruling that keeps hyperlinks to copyrighted material legal.

On Friday, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague, Netherlands, denied the Scientologists' latest appeal in an online copyright dispute that dates back to 1995. The Church of Scientology has repeatedly pursued legal action in the Netherlands against the writer, Karin Spaink, and her local ISP, Xs4all, over documents first posted in 1995 on the Web site of another customer of the company.

In denying the appeal, the court also overturned two previous rulings that lower courts had handed down. One of these decided that ISPs should be held accountable for any illegal or copyrighted materials posted by their subscribers and that ISPs should take down hyperlinks to such materials. An Xs4all representative cited the overruling of that decision as the larger of the two victories.

"I think this establishes an important freedom of speech precedence for the Internet and ISPs in particular," said Edith Mastenbroek, an Xs4all spokeswoman. "Any laws set to control how ISPs interact with copyright laws must be made crystal clear."

Representatives for the Church of Scientology could not immediately be reached for comment.

The disagreement began in 1995, when, according to Xs4all, a representative for the Church of Scientology showed up at its office with a legal official and attempted to take possession of the company's servers. The religious group took issue with the publication of some of its church documents on a Web site hosted by the ISP.

Spaink subsequently became involved, when she heard of the dispute and posted the same documents to her own site hosted by Xs4all.

The Church of Scientology then filed a copyright lawsuit, demanding that the published materials be removed from the sites in question. The church also contended that the ISP should be held accountable for its subscribers' activities in regards to copyrights.

But a District Court of Amsterdam judge ruled in favor of Xs4all and its 1996 subscribers, saying the posted documents were legal, based on individuals' rights to quote from copyrighted material.

In a second lawsuit decided in 1999, the Amsterdam courts again ruled in favor of the ISP, citing the right to freedom of speech. However, in that ruling, the judge said that ISPs should be held accountable for posted materials that might violate existing laws and copyrights.

That 1999 decision also made reference to hyperlinks to materials that might infringe on copyrights. The ruling said that if a provider was made aware of illegal publishing of copyrighted materials, or hyperlinks to copyrighted information, it should take action and remove the Web site or links.

Friday's appellate ruling quashed that decision as well.

Xs4all representatives said they were particularly happy with the ruling, as it relates to hyperlinks.

"After all, a hyperlink is merely a road marker on the Internet, and it can therefore never be unlawful," the company said in a statement.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5072581.html


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Deep Has New Forum For Recording Industry Battle
Richard A. D'Errico

Johnny Deep, creator of file-swapping software Madster, has started a new business, Internet Defense Inc., to help Internet users defend their rights.

Deep has been in and out of court for more than two years battling the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and numerous record labels over his file-swapping software.

The fight cost him his businesses--BuddyUSA, which made the file-sharing software, and AbovePeer, an Internet service provider--both of which filed for bankruptcy. Deep has filed for personal bankruptcy as well, saying he is $770,000 in debt.

Deep plans to charge $4.95 a month to be a subscriber to Internet Defense. Deep said he will be writing and publishing information to help people who use instant messaging and related services "protect their privacy and their right to due process."

His daughter, Madeline, started her own site earlier this year, musicpundit.com, that allows people to comment on music industry news.

Deep said there are other organizations, such as Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, with the same target audience. Electronic Frontier filed a friend-of-the- court brief in support of Madster.

When the RIAA announced in June plans to increase lawsuits against users who illegally offer copyrighted music over peer-to-peer networks, Electronic Frontier put out a tip sheet on how not to get sued by the RIAA.

Deep said the RIAA effort points to the need for his Web site--he can relate his personal experience in courtrooms and his development of an instant messaging service.

He plans to debut his site sometime this month.

The RIAA could not be reached for comment on Deep's new venture.
http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany...08/story5.html


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Within a Lilliputian Player, a Hefty Archive That Travels
J. D. Biersdorfer

IT seems so simple: You push the Play button and you get an earful of Missy Elliott, Daniel Barenboim or whatever your musical whim. Unlike portable cassette or CD players, svelte digital audio jukeboxes like the silvery Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen or that sassy little white Apple iPod do not require swapping tapes or discs. Your entire digital music collection is on the device in the form of computer-encoded files in MP3, AAC, WMA or any of the other formats belonging to the alphabet soup of digital audio.

You may have thousands of songs in your pocket, but do you really know where they live? Or what really goes on inside the jukebox as you scroll up your playlist or search frantically for that one song you positively must hear right this instant?

At the heart of it all, beneath that stylish exterior, spins a hard drive like the one found inside your desktop PC. This hard drive is where the songs (which the record industry hopes you have encoded from your personal compact discs or downloaded legally from the Internet) live.

Hard drives, which have been around since the mid-1950's, used to be fragile monsters up to 24 inches in diameter. The basic design of a hard drive has not changed much: motorized spinning platters coated with magnetic material store and retrieve information using an electromagnetic head that moves over them.

But like cars and cellphones, hard drives have gotten smaller and more efficient over the decades. By 2000 they were down to 2.5 inches in diameter, small enough to fit inside a portable digital audio player like Creative's original Nomad Jukebox, which could hold 6 gigabytes on a device slightly larger than a portable CD player.

Three years later, Creative's players have gotten even bigger on the inside, with the 2.5-inch diameter hard drives now holding 20, 30 or even 60 gigabytes of song files. (At about 3 megabytes for an average three-minute pop song, a 20-gigabyte jukebox could hold about 5,000 to 6,000 songs.)

So how do these newer hard drives manage to pack even more songs into your pocket? "The magnetic materials, the chemical compounds coated onto the disk, are finer and finer molecular shapes," explained William Ball, a senior product specialist for portable audio at Creative. "Basically, we're just storing pluses and minuses, electronic charges, in smaller areas."

The hard drive is not the only part of a digital audio player, as the players also provide a small display screen so you can see your music collection listed, controls on the front for navigating through songs and a connection port - usually a high-speed FireWire or U.S.B. 2.0 connection - to transfer a CD's worth from computer to player in 10 seconds or so. Most players have a rechargeable lithium-ion battery to provide at least eight hours of power for music on the go.

The songs are kept in a library, a specialized database used by the device to store and organize the music, and each song has its own code assigned by the player's music- management software. When you tap the Play button to hear a song, the song file's location is read from the database and loaded from the hard drive into a buffer - at least eight megabytes of solid-state memory that prevents skips or other problems that may occur if the jukebox is jostled.

Once the selected song has been loaded into the memory, a digital signal processor decodes the digitally compressed music files back into analog signals and applies any volume, equalization or other sound preferences the listener may have assigned. The music then flows through the headphones or speakers and into any available ears.

Although other jukebox players contain drives as small as 1.8 inches, Creative has gone even smaller. The company's new MuVo2 player, which is about 2.5 inches on a side, uses a 1-inch hard drive. It can currently hold only 1.5 gigabytes of songs, but that is sure to change. "You can expect 10- and 20-gig miniature drives," said Mr. Ball, who predicts that such players will arrive within the next few years.

So, although science may never know the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, at least it has vastly improved the number of Beatles tunes that can fit on the surface of a hard drive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/te...ts/11howw.html


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Court Rules Universities Need Not Provide Backup Tapes
BNA

An Australian court has denied a request by Sony Music that it order a trio of Australian universities to provide backup tapes which might provide information on file sharing students. The court noted that no request for the backup tapes was ever made during the initial discovery process.

Decision at
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/c.../2003/929.html

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RIAA To Engage With The Silver Surfers

Operation Short Vision Memory Loss
Charlie Demerjian

IT HAS BECOME CLEAR that the RIAA is losing ground in the file sharing wars. They tried to play nice (actually, no they didn't), tried to offer a superior product (actually, for years they offered no product), and tried to appeal to people's decency (actually, they called everyone thieves from day one). To fend off users legal rights, they have tried to employ a variety of technological methods which seem to have stymied those without permanent markers for the better part of 20 minutes. All is not well in lawsuit central, the California edition, not the Utah one.

The latest tact has been to throw out a large amount of lawsuits out whenever the press starts flagging, or worse yet, questioning their viability. Nothing like big numbers and scare tactics to get headlines, especially when most media outlets are owned by companies that also own a large record label. The synergies are incredible.

A few months ago, they announced over 700 lawsuits, and that tided them over for a while. Numbers show that since that announcement, file sharing is down substantially, and record sales are, err, down substantially also. Probably just a blip, sales declines of late have nothing to do with overpriced CDs, bad music offerings, and alienated users, it must be those filthy pirates.

Well, in the weeks following the initial lawsuits, the file sharing ecosystem let out a collective yawn, and went back to doing what they were before. The RIAA leapt into action, this time with a new tactic, targeted subpoenas. From the headlines garnered in the latest round of 261 lawsuits, they have gone after specific demographic segments that are at high risk to pirate music. The first demographic was the evil 'Under thirteen girls who live with a single parent in government subsidized housing and are honor students at catholic school'. (See here) Others evildoers in this group of gangsters and organized criminals are the over 70 demographic (See here), and the ivy league professor gang.

In all, a very effective tactic at headline grabbing, nothing like suing a 12- year-old girl to strike fear in the hearts of those set on illegal activity. Quake mortals! The next round will start in a few weeks, most likely about six. Other specific groups will be targeted, just like the last round. While the RIAA is keeping the groups targeted close to the vest, we have it on good authority that 'Operation Paraplegic' and 'Operation Low-Vision' are already under way.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11493


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Music Lobby Frightens Congress With P2P Kiddie-Porn Nightmares
Thomas C Greene

The RIAA's vendetta against file sharing is entering a new phase, applying the taint of child pornography to foul the waters. Not content to sue twelve-year-old children, the music industry is now marshaling its flacks on Capitol Hill to stigmatize P2P technology as a vehicle of kiddie porn.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings earlier this week to expose the problem. Our children are encountering the most appalling images of child rape when they search for music files, a number of witnesses claimed.

General Accounting Office (GAO) Information Management Issues Director Linda Koontz had done some hands-on research.

"In one search, using 12 keywords known to be associated with child pornography on the Internet, GAO identified 1,286 titles and file names, determining that 543 (about 42 per cent) were associated with child pornography images. Of the remaining, 34 per cent were classified as adult pornography and 24 per cent as nonpornographic," she said.

Of course it's unlikely that children would accidentally search for music using keywords known to be associated with KP, but Koontz was prepared for that objection and brought along some research using more innocent keyword searches. Here the torrent of KP by which our children are being swept away seemed to slow to a trickle.

"Searches on innocuous keywords likely to be used by juveniles (such as names of cartoon characters or celebrities) produced a high proportion of pornographic images: in our searches, the retrieved images included adult pornography (34 per cent), cartoon pornography (14 per cent), child erotica (seven per cent), and child pornography (one per cent), Koontz admitted.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota has had some experience prosecuting pedos who've used P2P services. He implied that the KP available on KaZaA and other services is actually worse than that found elsewhere.

"The images of child pornography available on peer-to-peer networks are some of the worst seen by law enforcement to date. Included in the images seized by police in the cases being prosecuted by my office, are still photographs of very young children engaged in sexual acts with other children and adults and video clips lasting several minutes of children being subjected to unspeakable acts of sexual violence," Spota claimed.

How this is worse than the same vile material found elsewhere on the Internet in vastly greater quantities was not explained.

Later, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Chairman Robbie Calloway asserted that there is a direct connection between the availability of KP images and the likelihood that children will be assaulted in the real world.

A pedo "can convince himself that his behavior is normal, and eventually he will need more and increasingly explicit child pornography to satisfy his cravings. When mere visual stimulation no longer satisfies him, he will often progress to sexually molesting live children," he explained.

Next, Sharman Networks Executive Veep Alan Morris did his best to counter the demonization of KaZaA as a tool for dangerous perverts by pointing out that there are far safer ways to trade KP.

"Pedophiles quickly realized, when P2P first appeared, that it was a foolhardy way to pursue their warped ends. To make their collections publicly available on P2P is counter to their cloak of secrecy. Law enforcement agencies quickly picked them off and so they retreated back to their sordid encrypted sites, newsgroups and the like," Morris said.

When it came time for Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) President Cary Sherman to speak, he spent the bulk of his time whining about a "drastic decline in record sales" brought about by "the astronomical rate of music piracy on the Internet."

After mentioning kiddie porn briefly in passing, he then launched an attack against telecomms behemoth Verizon, which has not been quite as cooperative with the RIAA as Sherman would wish, having moved to protect the privacy of its subscribers from the music-lobby's 'John Doe' subpoenas.

He then recapitulated the RIAA's excellent arguments and Verizon's spurious arguments in this dispute at considerable length, and detailed exhaustively the various provisions of the DMCA that Verizon is supposedly violating, as if giving court testimony in that particular dispute.

Sherman concluded that "the DMCA information subpoena represents a fair and balanced process that includes important and meaningful safeguards to protect the privacy of individuals" and protect the music cartel's revenues, as if this had been the hearing's topic.

And of course it always was the topic. It's clear from Sherman's tirade that the day's exercise was purely an attack against P2P technology for its presumed negative effects on the music cartel's profits, not on children. The specter of child rape may have hung over the proceedings like a revolting stench, but it was nothing more than an atmospheric effect. If Sherman has the slightest concern for the welfare of children, he certainly knows how to hide it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32762.html


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Activity on Song-Swapping Networks Steady
Sue Zeidler

Activity on file-sharing networks has not missed a beat this week despite the record industry's high- profile lawsuits against individual song-swappers, industry trackers and executives said on Thursday.

"There's no mass exodus, that's safe to say. Ironically, usage this week and this month is up," said Eric Garland, a spokesman for BigChampagne, a research firm that tracks peer-to-peer networks that enable file-swapping between different computers.

"We've been looking at dramatic increases on the FastTrack Network. The number of people using these file sharing services in the first 10 days of September is up more than 20 percent from the August average," he said.

FastTrack is the network used by the popular Kazaa and Grokster peer-to-peer networks. The average amount of simultaneous users on more popular services topped 4 million this week, versus 3.3 million in August, he said.

The Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against 261 people on Monday for allegedly pirating songs online and plans to file many more to curb activity on the networks, which it blames for a drop in CD sales.

"On the face of it, this is the opposite of what the RIAA intended," Garland said.

The RIAA shrugged aside the data. "We don't put much stock into many of these estimates. Clearly our enforcement efforts have stimulated conversation among parents, children and many others about the illegality of distributing copyrighted music online and its consequences," said an RIAA spokesman.

"The objective here is to create an environment where legitimate online services can grow and thrive," he said.

Garland said he expects some people will be scared by potential exposure and increased parental pressure.

"But what we're hearing from users is they enjoy safety in numbers," he said, adding, "there's a perception that suing even a few thousand means the odds of getting sued are like the odds of getting struck by lightning," he said.

"If it starts to taper off in October and November, then you can clearly say something is deterring activity. But at the moment, these services are very popular with the back-to-school rush," he said.

Greg Bildson, chief technology officer for LimeWire, said traffic on the Gnutella network, the underlying network that LimeWire, BearShare, Morpheus tap into, has not been affected.

Peer-to-peer officials said people would likely improve ways to conceal their identities to avoid lawsuits.

"If you're smart, and most file-sharers are, you can insulate yourself," said Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, which is involved in a suit of its own against the industry.

Rosso said the lawsuits only wasted money, alienated music fans and will have less of a shock value in the future.

"The next time, the suits won't get this kind of media coverage. They're a desperate and dying industry," he said.

The RIAA released a survey this week showing a slim majority supported its move to target individuals. The survey of just over 800 people was completed on Sept. 6, two days before the suits were filed but after the industry announced its intentions in June.

Some industry watchers argue music companies would get better results by spending money on more heavily promoting legal alternatives such as Apple Computer Inc's Itunes and RealNetworks Inc's Rhapsody service and others.

"The suits are a step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of problems like the fact that more and more people are burning and sharing CDs with friends," said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=3430812


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UK, OZ Unlikely To Sue P2P File Sharers After US Backlash
Yinka Adegoke

The UK and international music trade bodies have said they're unlikely to follow US colleagues in suing individuals for copyright infringement, following early signs of a media backlash in the US.

This week the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) fulfilled long- running threats to sue heavy users of file-sharing services who exchanged copyrighted material for free, and served notice to 261 individuals, including young children and some pensioners. There have already been accusations of heavy-handedness from some sections of the US media.

Plans for similar actions here are described as unlikely by the British Phonographic Industry and the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), but they refused to completely rule them out.

Allen Dixon, general counsel and executive director at IFPI, said the RIAA's action was 'entirely understandable' after several months of warnings to P2P providers, ISPs and users, but that the US market was a special case. 'At the moment we haven't any plans to bring these kind of actions as we're concentrating on educating users,' he said.

Andrew Yates director-general at the BPI, took a similar stand: 'It's a huge problem but we need to promote the legal services in the UK.'

However, some observers believe the industry is simply holding back until the implementation of the European Copyright Directive later year. This is believed to give the record companies more latitude to take legal action against offenders.

Ian Brown, director of the Federal Institute for Policy Research, said European citizens will be next in line if the directive comes into force as written.

'It's unlikely the music industry, which has been lobbying to get the powers to sue anyone thought to infringe intellectual rights, will get those powers and then not do anything with them,' he said.
http://www.newmediazero.com/nma/story.asp?id=243960

ARIA: We Won't Sue

AUSTRALIAN record companies will not follow US leads and sue music file sharers.

The Recording Industry Association of America took court action against 261 Internet music file sharers yesterday.

It also announced an amnesty program for file sharers to confess to sharing music illegally.

Late yesterday, the Australian Recording Industry Association said it would not follow suit.

That decision comes amid research figures that show 3.4 million Australians illegally downloaded music over a recent six-month period. Last year, music sales fell by 8.9 per cent, from $629 million to $573 million.
Nui Te Koha
http://entertainment.news.com.au/com...55Enbv,00.html












Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.


Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17325 September 6th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17374 August 30th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17325 August 23rd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17265 August 16th





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