[JackSpratts]

File-Sharing War Won't Go Away; It'll Just Go Abroad

Good day and compliments.

I am making this contact on behalf of my sister, Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, wife of the late chief of the armed forces of my country, killed in a mysterious spray- painting accident, hoping that you understand our predicament?

Our family recently came into possession of the global digital distribution rights to Best of Bread, of which contains the hit Baby I'm-a Want You. Also found in our library is many Van Halen recordings with David Lee Roth, which are better than the Hagar ones.

We ask you come to our Web site, WholeLottaMP3.com, and download these tracks and many others for pennies. Awaiting with interest your response, which will save our family from torture and death.

Prince Isa Ahmed

Nigerian spam of the future.

Last week, the Grokster case came before the U.S. Supreme Court, highlighting the entertainment industry's battle against unauthorized file-sharing over the Internet.

But even if the music and movie industries stop Grokster and other file-sharing software — which lets users exchange songs and video over the Internet for free — they seem to be fighting a futile war. Every time the content holders knock out one threat, another pops up, over and over again.

You can see it in some of the Web sites that are in the news lately, such as AllofMP3.com and Grouper. Entertainment industry lawyers are playing an eternal game of Whac-A-Mole.

"These issues are not going to go away," says lawyer Andrew Bridges, who has defended file-sharing companies.

Eventually, some entity that's untouchable by U.S. courts is going to hook a server to the Internet, load the hard drive with copyrighted songs ripped from CDs and sell the songs worldwide for a few cents each. Maybe it will be the second act for the Nigerian e-mail scamsters.

In fact, that scenario is only a baby step away from what's already happening. With oodles of cheap bandwidth available on transcontinental fiber, a server halfway around the world is as good these days as one next door. You get a glimpse of what that means from AllofMP3.com, based in Russia.

That site has been giving the music industry fits by cleverly exploiting a loophole in Russian copyright law to sell music to Americans for one-tenth what you'd pay on iTunes.

In late-March, Russian officials decided they had no legal right to shut down AllofMP3. So it's up and running for the foreseeable future.

Here's how the site works: AllofMP3 either buys a license to distribute digital works only in Russia or perhaps just buys CDs and rips them to its server. It's hard to tell from the language in the site's legal disclaimer, but the latter seems more likely. AllofMP3 sells music by artists, such as the Beatles, who have so far refused to let any Web site sell downloads of their music.

Either way, it seems that buying music from AllofMP3 is a bit like buying designer watches from a guy with a card table on a New York street corner. No telling where the goods came from, and don't bother asking.

Users pay by the file size — usually less than 10 cents a song. But here's the key: There's a step in the process where you click a button to encode a copy of the song, and then you download the copy.

It seems that under Russian law, if a user comes to the site and essentially makes his or her own copy, the site does not violate Russian copyright laws. It's comparable to saying that if you go to the library and photocopy a book chapter at 5 cents a page, the library has done nothing wrong.

But not many people are going to photocopy a chapter at a library. Millions of people can and will painlessly download vast quantities of music from a Web site with low prices and a surface coating of legitimacy.

Maybe Russia will close its loophole sometime. But the next AllofMP3-type site could pop up in Uzbekistan or North Korea or just about anywhere.

"When you have transfers across borders, you have a substantive law problem," says Bridges of law firm Winston & Strawn. "You also have a problem figuring out who to sue."

The music industry's challenges won't come just from overseas, either. Grouper is based in Silicon Valley. It just unveiled software that lets up to 30 people, who could be anywhere, connect their computers over the Internet. Then they can all share each other's files, including music.

This means you can listen to any music stored on any of those 30 computers. Grouper blocks downloads — you stream in the songs, but the file remains on the host computer — because it wants to "keep Grouper out of legal hot water," CEO Josh Felser says.

But by letting 30 people share music anytime, Grouper is pushing the bounds of "fair use" in ways copyright law never anticipated. The company is worried enough that it's been ducking the Recording Industry Association of America like a rabbit hiding from a circling hawk.

"We don't want to give them a call," Felser says.

What, then, can the content holders do to make sure they get paid for what they create?

Bridges uses a parking analogy. People don't want to park illegally, he notes, but they do when they can't find a legit spot, or when parking seems ridiculously expensive.

The best way to fight illegal parking is to provide accessible, fairly priced parking, then back up the effort by educating people about why it's better to park legally and by strategically cracking down on egregious scofflaws.

Same with music or movies, Bridges says. The industry needs to make it more attractive for people to buy music legally than risk doing it illegally and back that up with education and enforcement. So far, he argues, that's not happening.

Unless that changes, when Prince Ahmed comes around offering Guitar Man at a wickedly deep discount, it's a good bet consumers are going to go for it.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...-sharing_x.htm


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Suit Seeks To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Groove Networks

The $120 million acquisition of Beverly-based Groove Networks Inc. by Microsoft Corp. may be delayed by a lawsuit claiming the deal's terms don't include compensation for some Groove employees who hold preferred and common stock.

Microsoft said it would acquire Groove and hire founder Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes software, as chief technical officer, in an all-cash offer announced March 10. He would report to Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Groove makes software that enables file sharing over the Internet.

Former Groove employee Michael Matthews, who sued Groove and its directors and seeks to block the deal, claimed Microsoft and Ozzie "seek to eliminate the interest of junior preferred and common stockholders for no consideration," according to the suit filed March 25 in a Delaware court.
http://www.ecnnews.com/cgi-bin/04/s/...pl?fn-glance05


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This Week in Flags and File Sharing

Content copyright protection played big in the courts this week. The Supreme Court got a dose of file-sharing arguments, while the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals received more briefs on the broadcast flag.

The flag briefs were sought by the Court two weeks ago to determine if the petitioners had a right to challenge the technology that ostensibly prevents mass distribution of digital TV content over the Internet. The petitioners-- the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and several library associations--claim the FCC doesn't have the authority to impose the broadcast flag.

In their brief filed March 29, the petitioners argued they had legal standing to bring the lawsuit because several of their individual members would suffer material harm under the broadcast flag regime.

"The North Carolina State University Library... currently assists its faculty in making clips of broadcast television shows such as Univision's 'El Show De Christina' available for distance-learning students," the filing states. "Because the Internet is used to make the clips available, however, the flag will prevent this educationally beneficial activity."

That may or may not be the case, depending on whether Univision flags the program. The flag itself is merely a bitstream that can be inserted into over-the-air content at a creator's behest. Come July 1, all digital over-the-air TV receivers sold in the United States must be able to detect the flag and limit what content gets spit out to-- either analog outputs or other flag-compliant devices.

(While the flag is intended to circumvent Internet distribution, the analog output provision represents a hole through which a reasonably tech-savvy individual could record HD content and convert it back to HD with little degradation.)

There has been little indication of exactly what content will and won't be flagged--i.e., some or all high-definition programming. However, TV Technology engineering consultants have noted that stations may not be keen on hiring someone to oversee an "on/off" switch on the flag bitstream. Consequently, it's conceivable that news programs will be flagged, which the petitioners cite as a big boot on the back of First Amendment discourse.

Even if only some news content were flagged, for example, Vanderbilt University would be looking at replacing equipment in the $100,000 recording facilities of its Television News Archive, according to the brief. The archive provides licensed news clips to more than 140 subscribers via the Internet.

"The flag would foreclose on this type of use for broadcast news programs," the filing stated.

Only one member among the petitioners could be driven out of business by the flag. Jack Kelliher, president of pcHDTV in Sandy, Utah, makes a $170 Linux-based HDTV card. Making it flag-compliant would boost the price to between $350 and $400, Kelliher said.

"Our targeted market would not respond well to a $350 card," he said.

Internet redistribution of digital content was also the subject of oral arguments Tuesday in the Supreme Court in MGM v. Grokster. The movie mogul plaintiffs in the case claim that the file-sharing geek defendants are liable for copyright infringement.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found otherwise two years ago in a ruling that essentially upheld the mother of all content decisions--the Betamax opinion (Sony v. Universal City Studios). In Betamax, the Supreme Court in 1984 found that selling copying equipment did not contribute to infringement. The ruling allowed VCRs into the market.

Jim Burger, an attorney with Dow Lohnes and Albertson in Washington, D.C. who attended Tuesday's presentation, said Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter expressed substantial concern that a ruling against Grokster could stifle innovation--just as a ruling against Betamax could have done. Burger is counsel of record on an amicus brief filed on behalf of Intel, urging the court to uphold Betamax and have the petitioners file instead on the grounds of inducement. Under inducement, the petitioners would have to demonstrate that Grokster instructed users on how to download copyrighted material or otherwise encouraged them to do so. Napster, the predominant file-sharing network five years ago, was vulnerable to charges of inducement because it maintained centralized servers. Grokster does not.

At least one content guy is coming down in support of Grokster. HDNet founder and all-around entrepreneur Mark Cuban owns and/or co-owns a network, a couple of production companies, a movie library, a theater chain, a theatrical distribution business and a basketball team, is not afraid of file-sharing. In fact, he's financing the defense.

"If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote in his blog. "It won't be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios won't sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business."

The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion by June or July.
http://www.tvtechnology.com/dailynews/one.php?id=2870


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File Sharing Online: Good Or Bad For The Local Musician?
Shawn MaComber

Major record labels are scared to death of you.

Well, not you, exactly. The fear stems more from your computer, the cable modem line snaking out of it, and the virtually unlimited, free access to the product they put out that becomes instantly available online.

In recent months the release dates of records by superstars such as Snoop Dog, Eminem, and Destiny’s Child have all been pushed up after copies of their records leaked online.

It is clear that major labels are not be happy about downloading, none of them are going out of business tomorrow because of it either.

But how do independent acts in the local trenches feel about downloading? Most are, after all, on a considerably tighter budget than Snoop Dog or Destiny’s Child. They can’t afford to lose sales.

By the same token, electronic dissemination of music breaks down many of the distribution barriers standing before unsigned or unknown bands.

Brian Serven of local hardcore outfit Backstabbers, Inc. said downloading can only help an independent band like his out on the road.

“For us and other underground bands, the important thing is that our music is heard and the energy is reciprocated when we play,” Serven said. “If we go to San Diego and play a show and no one knows us, it’s rough. But if one kid buys our disc and burns it for 20 friends and we go to San Diego and play for 21 kids who love it, it’s so worth it. A bigger, more energetic crowd also helps with selling other merchandise. Kids that come to see you play usually want some sort of trophy, so other records and t-shirts, pins and patches do really well on the road.”

As both a musician in the much-beloved avant garde progabilly band Dreadnaught and the owner of a local label, Red Fez Records, Bob Lord has a unique point of view on downloading that encompasses both ends of the “music business.”

“I see the digital dispersal of music as a positive development in the industry,” Lord said, but added that caveats remained.

“It really cuts to the heart of the issue in a lot of ways: when the playing field is evened out, the stuff left standing is real and not necessarily what some major label has made real by investing truckloads of cash,” Lord explained. “On the other hand, the downside is that the casual trading of music does make it harder for smaller labels to benefit financially in the short term. The music gets out there, which is, of course, the goal. But without a financial upside it becomes more and more difficult to actually get it out there in the first place.”

Marty England of local folk-rock stalwarts Pondering Judd has mixed feelings about downloading, but said people shouldn’t shed too many crocodile tears for the wailing major labels

“A big reason the record industry is suffering right now isn’t because of free music sharing, but instead falls into the fact they’re not into artist development anymore,” England said. “There are few great catalogs of records from the past twenty years simply because artists aren’t given a chance to screw up. Nobody wants to touch someone who has been dumped by a major label. In addition to being a musician, you now have to be an actress or actor as well.

“Our society today is not built on risk takers,” he continued. “It’s a risk to purchase a record by an artist you don’t recognize, or someone you’re not told is good. It’s all about money.”

Aside from that, England said mp3s are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, his band has sold records online in more than 50 countries, which he attributes to listeners being able to sample songs for free before plunking down their hard earned euros, dollars, pesos, whatever. But when fans aren’t conscientious, when their “sense of entitlement” overwhelms them, it can hurt the band’s bottom line.

“Ultimately, I think the free sharing of music hurts independent artists more than it helps,” England said. “I’ve come across web sites in Italy and Russia that have our entire albums posted for free download. We use a great deal of our record sales to record the next CD. People signed to major labels are not hurt by free music sharing simply because they make their money in touring and merchandising.”

Major labels can afford to attempt to combat downloading by throwing heaps of money into CD encryption technology and adding special features to their releases. So if you’ve ever wondered why as of late major music releases have come with a cornucopia of bonus features — DVDs, CD-ROM features, discount concert tickets, free T-shirts— wrack your tired brain no more. It’s not that the record companies have suddenly fallen in love with you. It’s that they desperately want to stay on your payroll.

This adds another layer of merchandising on top of the music, raising the bar to an unattainable level for independent acts. How many locals bands do you know that can afford to add a free DVD and posters to their latest self-produced effort? Nevertheless, Seacoast musicians are ambivalent about the additions by saying, for the most part, these marketing schemes have nothing to do with their musical missions.

“Major labels adding bells and whistles to stem the tide of downloading is a little like trying to apply a tourniquet to Niagra Falls,” Lord said. “Ain’t gonna happen. Short-term, maybe, but long-term is another story: The paradigm has shifted already and it’s only a matter of time. For people like me who still love to open up a big old Roger Dean/Yes gatefold it is kind of bittersweet, but I think making it easier to get the music you want is a good thing, pure and simple.”

Serven said the business of playing in Backstabbers, Inc. is quite far removed from playing in, say, Aerosmith. The ledger is balanced in a completely different way, and royalties don’t play such a big role.

“Most punk/hardcore bands will take a percentage of discs to sell on their own when their CD is released and make their money that way,” he said. “Then we purchase CDs at cost from the label when we run out. So we don’t get royalties or anything like that— the day to day record store sales don’t count for us at all. Mostly, for us, success is gauged by the idea of people actually hearing our music.”

Pondering Judd’s England said he mourned the influence of this marketing outside of the music and only expected it to get worse.

“I think interactive CDs are great, but it’s certainly not a prerequisite for me when it comes to purchasing records,” he said. “I think the industry shift to interactive media speaks to our inability to appreciate music at its core. We are a visual society, and MTV certainly has contributed to the downfall of music as a joy-of-listening art form. It’s the same reason that many of these awards shows are all about big dance numbers and costume changes instead of actually having the artists perform music. If you put an acoustic guitar or piano in front of most of these folks, they’d be lost. It’s all about being able to satisfy multiple markets instead of just being good at playing music.”

Backstabbers’ Serven said he understands the quandary before music buyers.

“I think that if someone was standing at a record store with a BSI disc in one hand, and let’s say an Iron Maiden disc in another, that is almost the same price but Iron Maiden has additional videos, posters, stickers and web-links, it’s a tough call,” he said. “You really do wonder which has more value. I know that I’ve made decisions on which CD to buy based on how many tracks there are.

“But if someone went to a record store with the mind to buy a BSI disc, that’s a rare occasion that would put favor in our hands,” he continued. “And those are the kinds of occasions we’re putting our faith in.”
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll...S1403/50401106


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Sentivist To Get Dynamic Shielding Capabilities
Tan Ee Sze

NFR Security will be incorporating the ability to discover new applications on the network and to dynamically shield the system from attacks, in the next version of its Sentivist intrusion detection and intrusion prevention offerings scheduled for release in July.

NFR Security will be incorporating the ability to discover new applications on the network and to dynamically shield the system from attacks, in the next version of its
Sentivist intrusion detection and intrusion prevention offerings scheduled for release in July. The company will also be releasing multi-gigabit capable offerings during the same time frame.

Discussing the NFR technology roadmap during a recent visit to Singapore, president and chief executive officer Andre Yee pointed out the changes in the enterprise drive security exposure. “In most organisations, changes that occur in the network fly under the radar of the security administrator. For example, someone brings in P2P tool like Kazaa or any file sharing application and starts using it, and often the security administrator is the last person to know. If he is not aware of it, he cannot address it.”

Which is why NFR will be incorporating the open source vulnerability scanner Nessus in its Sentivist offerings, so that the intrusion detection system (IDS)/intrusion prevention system (IPS) will be able to adapt its tuning parameters based on the data vulnerability and network services information that it receives.

For example, if someone decides to take an FTP server and use it as an Apache server, the Nessus scan will discover the presence of the new server. The system will then update the signature packages to make sure it is dynamically shielded from attacks.

Yee also observed that while the promise of IDS/IPS technology is compelling, with its ability to protect systems against the likes of worms and distributed denial of service attacks, adoption rates are relatively low.

One reason for this is that IDS/IPS has traditionally been “high touch, high maintenance” technology. “It takes effort to deploy, tune and maintain the system, and in the attempt to solve a security problem, enterprises are saddled with a management problem.”

NFR is aiming to change this by making the Sentivist family easy to use. One way of doing this is to have default configurations that cover 80 per cent of the use scenarios, and a point-and-click interface to tune the IDS/IPS.

Another challenge, which NFR is aiming to address, is the management of sensors deployed in disparate locations. “We want to provide a central point of control and management, so that software can be updated and refreshed and new signatures pushed out through a single point,” said Yee.

To address the issue of false positives, NFR also bundles OS (operating system) fingerprinting technology and the IDS/ IPS in a single box. What this means is that the traffic can be correlated with the operating system running on the target host. If, say, the system sees a Windows-based attack heading towards a Linux server, it can suppress the alert.

Yee believes that the IDS and IPS markets in this region is currently under-served. “A lot of organisations recognise the need for IDS/IPS technology,” he said.

The company intends to increase its focus here, and to make strategic investments in training and technology support here. “We see this market as being important to us from a revenue standpoint,” said Yee. NFR Security is at www.nfrsecurity.com.
http://computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage...d=3&issueid=38


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ILN News Letter

RIAA Sues Seven In South Carolina

The RIAA has named seven people from across South Carolina in a new round of lawsuits that accuse them of illegal downloads of songs and recordings on the Internet. The federal lawsuits, which usually collect between $3,000 and$4,000 per violator, are part of a national crackdown by the industry against downloading copyright music from artists.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...596359,00.html

MSFT Balks At EU Demands To Share Open-Source Software Info

Microsoft says it is willing to meet European demands that it offer more-flexible licensing terms for certain computer code. However, the company continues to balk at sharing information that will allow open-source software to flourish, one of the chief goals of the long-running antitrust case. The European antitrust authority has demanded that Microsoft share with rivals the computer codes they need to write. software that can communicate well with Microsoft's ubiquitous products.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...497595,00.html

China Blocks Posting On Pope

China's web portals have blocked prayers, blessings and other comment on the death of Pope John Paul II from being posted on the Internet. While popular portals such asSina.com and Sohu.com's on-line discussion forums were flooded with messages about the pope Saturday, no messages could be seen Monday.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050405/323/ffoiw.html

Social Security Numbers Are Widely Available On Net

The Washington Post runs an article about how easy it is to access others' social security numbers on the Internet. Although Social Security numbers are one of the most powerful pieces of personal information an identity thief can possess, they remain widely available and inexpensive despite public outcry and the threat of a congressional crackdown after breaches at large information brokers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2005Apr3.html

NY Unveils Modem Hijacking Bill

New York State lawmakers have unveiled a bill that is believed to be the first in the nation to target modem hijacking, a practice in which thieves tap into people's computer modems to make international phone calls. If passed, the law would allow telephone companies and the state attorney general to bring lawsuits against modem hijackers and their accomplices.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...l/11310169.htm

Appeals Court Upholds Ruling On Tenn Child Porn Law

A Tennessee state appeals court has upheld a Knox County judge's ruling that a portion of a state child porn law is unconstitutional. Judge Richard Baumgartner ruled last year that the law would let juries convict defendants for possessing pornographic materials not involving minors.
http://www.volunteertv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3147874

ACLU Ponders Suit Over Utah Porn Law

The ACLU of Utah is considering a lawsuit against the state's new Internet porn law, while the law's sponsor is working to spread the legislation to other states. Rep. John Dougall said last Friday he has a meeting scheduled with state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff this week to talk about how to get other states on board. The ACLU of Utah says the law is not the least restrictive means and the mandatory rating scheme violates the First Amendment and "is riddled with constitutional infirmities."
http://acluutahchallenge.notlong.com/


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The Battle Against Free Music Downloads Continues
Tim Somers

The recording industry claims to have lost 25% of it's revenues since computer, so called thieves, have been using peer-to-peer file- sharing networks to obtain free music downloads.
MusicHoncho.com press release

Movie and record producers alike are saying file-sharing networks that permit its users the ability to make copies from other network member's computers are infringing on the copyright laws and costing billions of dollars in lost revenue.

The recording industry claims to have lost 25% of it's revenues since computer, so called thieves, have been using peer-to-peer file-sharing networks to obtain free music downloads.

The two latest file-sharing companies to be targeted by these copyright lawsuits are Grokster Ltd, known for its Grokster file-sharing software and StreamCast Networks Inc. from which the Morpheus free music downloading software is distributed.

Unlike Napster, Grokster and Morpheus put a spin on the popular file-sharing phenomenon. Instead of indexing the shared files like Napster did, these file-sharing products enables it's network members to build their own indexes - thus allowing others within the network to download free music and movie files.

While some musicians are protesting they are being cheated by these illegal free music downloads - others are speaking out backing how music, movies, pictures and copy are being shared over the Internet.

Some music lovers actually use the file-sharing networks to check out an artists latest release before paying up to $18 for a CD that may only have one good song on it. You still will have those that will never make a purchase and continue to take advantage of the free music download networks.

Many file-sharing network users have said that using these networks is good for the music industry. File-sharing can bring listeners to smaller, independent bands that they may not otherwise hear on radio or in the mainstream.

With the likes of Apple's iTunes store many have turned their backs on file-sharing networks paying 99 cents per song - Apple claims to sell more than 1 millions songs everyday. Although iTunes is limited still, thus giving file sharing networks a void to fill the unlimited access to music and movies that may otherwise not be able from iTunes.

In late 2003 record companies started suing individuals that were downloading free music. With file-sharing networks like Grokster and Morpheus it will be much harder for the recording industry to track down files that are uploaded by individual users.

With the Supreme Court now involved they are expected to make some type of ruling in June 2005 on what if any action should be taken against the makers of file-sharing network software.

The wrong decision could discourage the future development of products like the iPod or other file-sharing software programs that could be used for legal purposes.

Since Grokster and Morpheus do not monitor or have any knowledge of who or what is being downloaded, a federal judge in Los Angeles and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the copyright infringement charges against both these file-sharing networks.

Based on the 1984 ruling of the Supreme Court that stated the use of Sony Betamax, which allowed users to make copies at home of copyrighted TV programs, was legal.

The recording industries angle last week was that the approach companies like Grokster and Morpheus are making by advertising their software will provide access to free copies of copyrighted materials should allow them to be sued and shut down.

While the jury may be out on this one for sometime - file sharing networks and free music downloads will continue with most users not really worrying about getting sued, since most do not download free music in excess of a few files per month.
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view...e.php?rID=4755


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Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology -- Dark Horse or White Knight? Counterpoint: Its Positive Impact on the Public Sector
Press release

What: Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology's negative reputation is rooted in individuals downloading 'bootleg' entertainment from the Internet, but the technology should not be villainized. P2P is also being used to solve critical IT challenges in the public sector, improving access to public information and enhancing the cost effective delivery of vital community services.

P2P is emerging as one of the few feasible technologies available to achieve the depth and breadth of information sharing needed in today's world to further scientific research, streamline government operations and provide people with the information they need to improve their lives.

P2P is the next frontier, providing the massive scalability needed in the public and private sectors. If the Supreme Court rules that software makers are liable for every way in which their product is used, the use of P2P architecture employed for the benefit and welfare of humanity will be curtailed.

Who: Josh Knauer, Director of Advanced Development and authority on P2P, MAYA Design (www.maya.com).

Josh Knauer is a leading technology expert available for commentary on how P2P technology can be used for the common good as it supports the mission of non-profits, community organizations and government agencies. A pioneer in this arena since 1991, he has championed the advancement, development and adoption of the Internet for the empowerment of users in the public sector. He was a nationally recognized commentator on the implications of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. Josh's positions in favor of free speech and fair use of the Internet were widely quoted in national media including CNN, Salon, and Wired Magazine. His opinions on Internet advancement have appeared on Fox News, Time and Entrepreneur. Josh is able to discuss these issues and the following three success stories that demonstrate the technology's effectiveness at the city, county and national levels in light of the U.S. Supreme Court hearings this week.

Just in the last two years, MAYA has received in excess of $22 million from federal and local government agencies to address these issues.

Why: Consider the current applications of P2P which support human services, environmental health and neighborhood information systems efforts in the public sector:

-- Human Services - Allegheny County, Pa., (Pittsburgh) has revolutionized its referral and statistical analysis process within the County's Dept. of Human Services, thanks to a community-based GIS system created by MAYA Design. The system gives professionals a central, comprehensive repository of shared data about community resources derived from DHS data, United Way data and other agencies throughout Western Pennsylvania. Professionals can share, rate and comment on information in real-time in the "Information Commons."

-- Environmental Health - Using P2P, the Heinz Foundation, with the Carnegie Library System and MAYA Design, created a groundbreaking research tool that enables users to query EPA data on toxic release events, study a map of local health problem incidences, and display an unlimited number of other health indicators. The core of the technology fuses data from a vast array of disparate databases into the "Information Commons."

-- Community Information System - P2P technology has been employed to help Pittsburgh's urban revitalization efforts. MAYA Design, working with the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and local community agencies created the Community Information System, which offers a unique way to understand the forces affecting local neighborhoods such as mover migration, crime statistics, abandoned properties and more.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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No Lack Of Contradictions In MGM-Grokster
Brooks Boliek

A few days after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the MGM v. Grokster P2P file-sharing case, I drove up the California coast with my family on our version of the California Adventure. It was much more interesting than the one the Walt Disney Co. has manufactured in Anaheim. As we wound north on the Pacific Coast Highway, when I wasn't white-knuckling it around the switch backs, or gasping over the beauty of the craggy shore, I found myself thinking about the case.

This is one of those arguments where I can't make up my mind. Sometimes I think it depends on who I talked to last. If it's one of the entertainment industry types, whether a songwriter or a studio suit I believe them. If it's someone in the technology arena, whether it's a software designer or one of the consumer electronics suits, I believe them.

Being wishy-washy isn't one of those traits for which I'm known. But in this instance I feel like, well, the state of California. I never knew the world-famous California state of mind was actually schizophrenia. Somewhere between L.A. and San Francisco the state seems to turn from anti-Grokster to pro- Grokster as the state changes from the entertainment capitol into the tech Mecca of Silicon Valley.

The whole case is fraught with the same kinds of contradictions. They really are two sides of the same coin.

While the entertainment industry is built on a series of technological inventions to manufacture and deliver content, it has fought fiercely to maintain its hegemony over newer technical innovations.

Peer-to-peer networks, on the other hand, are a technological invention that depends on the content as its driving force. It's an incredibly efficient means to deliver content, whether it's a group of college professors trading papers or kids downloading songs. No matter what you can't hold back technology.

The music industry couldn't stop the player piano. The movie industry couldn't stop the VCR, though it tried to, fighting its case all the way to the landmark 1984 Supreme Court decision that is sure to weigh heavily on the court's thinking about Grokster.

At the same time, It's hard for me to see the P2P technology as anything but the Internet version of an illicit pawn shop whose owner is fencing items he knows are stolen. Does that mean that all pawn shops as a business should be made illegal?

Pawn shops provide a valuable service. They provide the needy with ready cash, while they can provide the discriminating shopper with cheap goods. That doesn't mean they aren't seedy, but just by opening their doors they aren't illegal.

MPAA chief Dan Glickman told me he liked what he heard at the court last week.

"All through the court's questioning, the base word was balance," he said. "They were worried about technology, but they were also worried about illegal activity."

I don't envy the Supreme Court. The justices have a balancing act that's at least as daunting as those old-time jugglers who spun plates on poles. How they keep all the plates spinning will have ramifications that are likely to last far longer than the high court's 1984 ruling in the Betamax case that determined that even though VCRs had the potential to be used for copyright- infringing purposes, the technology also had "substantial non- infringing uses" to offer consumers.

But no matter what the court decides, I can't help but keep thinking it might be irrelevant. In the back of my mind I keep replaying the words of Mike Weiss, CEO of StreamCast Networks, the parent company of Grokster.

"No matter what decision the court makes, the technology doesn't stop," Weiss said. "There are 130 million copies of Morpheus (P2P software) already downloaded, and they will continue to work no matter what."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr..._id=1000865922


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P2P Web Hosting Could Solve Bandwidth and Security Problems

This article takes a look at some uses P2P could be put to in the web hosting industry as a defense of innovation and as a creative stab at solving some common problems web hosts face.

While the RIAA may be wrong on a lot of points and their intention to illegalize peer to peer may be ill-founded but they are correct that P2P is used in large part for music, movie, and software swapping.

In other words, P2P file sharing has yet to be tapped into and utilized as a fully-fledged technology. Part of this is perhaps history. Products, whether it is news, music, soda pop, or hosting a web site traditionally features the product flowing from a central source to many consumers. Corporate America, like the RIAA, doesn’t take kindly to giving up the ‘control’ that this model provides over the product. However, there is one industry that has taken a peer to peer business model and made it massively profitable and it’s not even legal; spamming. Spammers can’t be stopped and they sell incredible amounts of goods. MCI was said to have made $5 billion a year hosting spammers (SendSafe) through resale hosting. Has there ever been a more virile proof of concept? Why not take the concept that viruses, music swappers and zombie PC spammers use and put it to good use? Why not fight virus and spam with their own weapons? Why not use P2P web hosting?
http://www.warp2search.net/modules.p...icle&sid=22781


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P2P Web Hosting Could Solve Bandwidth and Security Problems

Currently, the RIAA is suing Grokster and trying to convince the Supreme Court that Peer to Peer or P2P file sharing is a technology that has little or no legitimate uses and is almost exclusively used as a method to illegally trade music and movie files. The RIAA is complaining that P2P is severely damaging the music industry and thus this technology should be stopped. Despite the fact that the music industry reacted in the exact same way with the invention of the radio they continue to see the glass as half empty rather than trying to realize the tremendous potential P2P technology presents.

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to step in and fund Grokster’s legal battle. In his blog he wrote;
"If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote. "It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them."

This article takes a look at some uses P2P could be put to in the web hosting industry as a defense of innovation and as a creative stab at solving some common problems web hosts face.

While the RIAA may be wrong on a lot of points and their intention to illegalize peer to peer may be ill-founded but they are correct that P2P is used in large part for music, movie, and software swapping.

In other words, P2P file sharing has yet to be tapped into and utilized as a fully- fledged technology. Part of this is perhaps history. Products, whether it is news, music, soda pop, or hosting a web site traditionally features the product flowing from a central source to many consumers. Corporate America, like the RIAA, doesn’t take kindly to giving up the ‘control’ that this model provides over the product. However, there is one industry that has taken a peer to peer business model and made it massively profitable and it’s not even legal; spamming. Spammers can’t be stopped and they sell incredible amounts of goods. MCI was said to have made $5 billion a year hosting spammers (SendSafe) through resale hosting. Has there ever been a more virile proof of concept?
Why not take the concept that viruses, music swappers and zombie PC spammers use and put it to good use? Why not fight virus and spam with their own weapons? Why not use P2P web hosting?

Although there are multiple issues to confront in terms of serving up a site with a P2P model the advantages are speed and ubiquitous availability.

While a static web site could easily be served through a P2P model, and quite effectively at that, a dynamic data base driven page simply can’t exist without reproducing databases on supernodes which raises very large security issues not to mention the feasibility of recreating databases. Even login DBs can hold quite a lot of data as well as being quite sensitive.

At the very least though a P2P model could be used much like a browser’s image cache with the most common pages and images being distributed around a network of users of the site.

Here again a problem occurs in the issue of version management. Suppose peers checked with the central server to see if they had the latest version before sending out a file. A situation might occur where many peers were checking so often with the server to see if they were correct or not it would end up having the same effect as a DDoS attack. A sports ticker tracking the score of an ongoing game for example might cause a web host to use more bandwidth answering peer questions about versions and updating versions than simply serving up the new score for the game itself.

On the other hand, when a lovely model goes on the Howard Stern show and causes Google and Yahoo searches for her images to go up 2,000% it could keep a host from crashing horribly to have a peer network help serve up the same 5 image files.

The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance may be a first step towards P2P hosting in terms of security. The FSA is a first-of-its-kind industry initiative aimed at helping network operators share Internet attack information automatically. The Fingerprint Sharing Alliance marks the first time companies are able to share detailed attack profiles in real-time and block attacks closer to the source. This global alliance marks a significant step forward in the fight against Internet attacks and major infrastructure threats that cross network boundaries, continents and oceans.

Global telecommunications companies participating in the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance include British Telecom, MCI and NTT Communications.
And leading carriers, network providers, hosting companies and educational institutions joining the Alliance include among others; Asia Netcom, Cisco Systems, EarthLink, Rackspace, The Planet, University of Pennsylvania and XO Communications.

It’s great that web hosts are sharing security information but it’s not particularly helpful during a DDoS or Denial of Service attack.

Net security and legal expert Ben Edelman described a recent DDoS attack in his website after he posted an article on spamming, “Globat was not particularly responsive in informing me of the problem -- my site was down for one and a half business days before they told me what was going on, and they only told me when I reached out to a personal contact who happened to work there. Then again, they're a $10/month company -- not exactly premium service. I was happy with them otherwise, and for most folks I think they provide an extraordinary value.”

This is not to criticize Globat as Yahoo and Google have been taken offline and even the website for industry giant Microsoft was taken down by troubled teen Jeffrey Lee Parson’s Blaster B virus. If Microsoft is at the mercy of a teen hacker and neither Yahoo or Google can completely defend themselves then who can be expected to be able to? This highlights the obvious need for a higher level of overall security on the internet. i.e. a need for innovation.

What if, when the DDoS attack hit Edelman’s site, Globat had been able to switch on a P2P mode emergency system and distribute the files to other web hosting providers and allow them to send the files out in response to requests for the site?
No one may have even noticed Ben’s site was being attacked. Then, with P2P, the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance or ‘File Sharing Alliance’ could share attack vector information and shut down the offending zombies.

How do you fight a million zombie computers barraging a site? With a million servers of course!

This is perhaps an oversimplification in that database driven pages, and ecommerce sites would not be easily transferred on a P2P network although for a static site like Edelman’s this would have been ideal.

For a more dynamic site a P2P backup plan would only allow a limited amount of a site to be displayed but it’s a lot easier for a web host to explain to a customer why functionality is limited than to explain why a site is down completely.
A P2P technique could even be used offensively to combat spammers and hackers. The FSA could combine to knock spammers out by sharing spam source information and then spamming the spammers with mail that looks like responses to their ads or at the very least combining to lock them out of the internet.

Of course, all this is predicated on a high level of cooperation among web hosts, or rather, a large peer sharing network.

Press releases work much like a P2P form of news sharing so why shouldn’t smaller web hosts ban together to create advertising cooperatives? Web hosts or the web sites they host could also use P2P file sharing for cross site or even cross host advertising. Again, by cooperating, multiple web sites could form advertising cooperatives and share ads. While a single point of access could be developed for the advertising to make it easy for those who want to advertise to send their ads out to as wide a distribution as possible it could work from a many to many P2P model as well. When an advertiser wanted to change an add they could access their ad campaign with whatever site or host they are working through and then P2P could be used to distribute their ads through the ad sharing network. Of course, P2P would only be a small part of such a complicated project.

These are only a couple of ideas to incorporate P2P in web hosting but if the Supreme Court is wise they’ll see that P2P is more than just a music swapper.
http://hostsearch.com/news/globatcom_news_2895.asp


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Satellite Radio Takes Off, Altering the Airwaves
Lorne Manly

Just a blink after the newly emergent titans of radio - Clear Channel Communications, Infinity Broadcasting and the like - were being accused of scrubbing diversity from radio and drowning listeners in wall-to-wall commercials, the new medium of satellite radio is fast emerging as an alternative. And broadcasters are fighting back.

The announcement on Friday by XM Satellite Radio - the bigger of the two satellite radio companies - that it added more than 540,000 subscribers from January through March pushed the industry's customer total past five million after fewer than three and a half years of operation. Analysts call that remarkable growth for companies charging more than $100 annually for a product that has been free for 80 years.

Total subscribers at XM and its competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio, will probably surpass eight million by the end of year, making satellite radio one of the fastest-growing technologies ever - faster, for example, than cellphones.

To keep that growth soaring, XM and Sirius are furiously signing up carmakers to offer satellite radio as a factory-installed option and are paying tens of millions of dollars for exclusive programming. On Sunday, XM began offering every locally broadcast regular-season and playoff Major League Baseball game to a national audience, having acquired the rights in a deal that could be worth up to $650 million over 11 years. And Howard Stern is getting $500 million over five years to leave Infinity and join Sirius next January. Each company offers 120 or more channels of music, news, sports and talk.

Though satellite radio is still an unprofitable blip in the radio universe, it is pushing commercial radio to change its sound. Broadcasters are cutting commercials, adding hundreds of songs to once-rigid playlists, introducing new formats and beefing up their Internet offerings. A long-awaited move to digital radio could give existing stations as many as five signals each, with which they could introduce their own subscription services - but with a local flavor that satellite is hard pressed to match.

"At the end of the day, people want to hear what's going on in their local market," said Joel Hollander, chairman and chief executive of Infinity Broadcasting, owned by Viacom and the country's second-largest broadcaster behind Clear Channel. "People are emotionally involved with local radio."

That emotional connection - to music, personalities, information - has always translated into strong feelings about radio. Twenty-seven years ago, in "Radio, Radio," the singer Elvis Costello ranted about the medium's programming choices, singing that "the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools, tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel."

But such criticism pales beside the complaining unleashed by Washington's deregulation of radio, beginning in 1996. The loosening of ownership restrictions set off a frenzy of acquisitions, transforming what was essentially a mom-and-pop business into an industry dominated by a handful of giant broadcasters.

To satisfy Wall Street, station owners cut costs by combining station operations in a given market and pumping up the number of advertisements per hour; meanwhile, programming formats became narrower and more uniform. All these moves nearly doubled the industry's revenue in five years, but they also gave satellite radio its opening.

"In many cases, radio almost killed the golden goose by getting it to lay too many eggs," said Sean Butson, an analyst with Legg Mason. "If you're going to have a third of an hour of commercials, you're going to turn a lot of people off, and they're going to look for an alternative." (Legg Mason owns stock in XM.)

Founded in the early 1990's, XM and Sirius endured tough financial times while waiting for the Federal Communications Commission to divide up the satellite bandwidth and while preparing to launch their satellites. XM finally began offering its subscription service in late 2001, Sirius in mid-2002.

Car owners - the companies' prime targets - have clamored for the service once they have been introduced to it.

Joseph O'Neal of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., is a self-proclaimed Elvishead who laments that his local stations do not play enough of the King. So Mr. O'Neal, a 44-year- old drywall contractor, is a zealous convert to Sirius, the home of Elvis Radio.

Mr. O'Neal installed the service in his truck in January. Between Elvis, blues and Sirius's six country music channels, he said, "I haven't listened to regular radio since - not once."

That kind of devotion was eye-opening for Mel Karmazin, a longtime radio executive hired last year as chief executive of Sirius after he stepped down as president and chief operating officer of Viacom. "The thing that surprised me the most was the passion the subscribers had for the product," Mr. Karmazin said.

Both companies offer stations devoted to the most popular songs, but it is their national reach and dual revenue streams - subscriptions and advertising sales on nonmusic channels - that allow them to offer niche programming. Genres that receive little exposure on commercial radio, like bluegrass, reggae or talk devoted to African-American affairs, get their own channels on satellite services. Individual ratings matter little; listener satisfaction counts for much more, because it determines how long subscribers will keep paying $12.95 a month.

Indeed, formats ignored by commercial radio or relegated to its wee hours have emerged as some of the most popular.

For instance, XM Comedy, a channel that features the often raunchy stylings of Chris Rock and others, is among the company's 10 most-listened-to.

"Comedy - who knew?" said Hugh Panero, XM's chief executive.

A glimpse of how these channels are programmed highlights the differences between satellite and commercial radio. Even satellite radio executives say that tales of corporate automatons determining every record played on local radio are overblown, but a level of autonomy exists at XM and Sirius that would rarely be tolerated by broadcasters.

Michael Marrone, who programs the Loft, XM's channel focusing on singer-songwriters, finds it difficult to define precisely why Elton John's "Your Song" makes the cut while Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville" does not. "I'd rather lose an arm than play it again," he said of "Margaritaville," chatting in a control room in the company's Washington headquarters. (He quickly added that he likes and plays many other tracks by Mr. Buffett.)

Ultimately, Mr. Marrone's tastes determine his selections. He also enjoys inserting connective tissue between songs. Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" segues into a Grateful Dead song because Mr. Henley sings about "a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac."

"Ninety-five percent of the audience won't get it," Mr. Marrone said. "The other 5 percent will never change the channel."

Steven Van Zandt, who plays in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and is in the cast of "The Sopranos," programs two music channels for Sirius. He supplies a slightly more detailed explanation of his programming philosophy. On "Underground Garage," which borrows the name and concept of Mr. Van Zandt's syndicated show on commercial radio, the idea is to juxtapose tracks and styles from 50 years of guitar-driven rock 'n' roll, never playing two songs of the same genre (like punk) in a row. A recent morning, Iggy Pop coexisted nicely with the Monkees, the Mooney Suzuki and the Byrds.

"In the end, I don't pretend," Mr. Van Zandt said. "It's my opinion. And it's good to be the king."

Satellite radio has ridden that unconventional thinking to its current size, and both XM and Sirius expect to begin making money in the next two years. How big the market can become remains debatable. By 2010, analysts estimate, subscriber levels will hover anywhere from 30 million to 45 million. Some think the totals could eventually rival or surpass the 90 million people who pay for cable and satellite television.

Still, satellite radio is also unlikely to inflict fatal damage on commercial radio, which has about 230 million listeners, according to Arbitron, the radio ratings provider. Profit margins for stations in big markets can surpass 50 percent.

But commercial radio has begun to change. Radio stations in the Top 10 markets played, on average, 11 minutes of commercials an hour during daytime broadcasts in February, down from 11.7 in October, when Leland Westerfield, a media analyst at Harris Nesbitt, began tracking spots.

Strict formats have also loosened a bit. Infinity, like a number of radio chains, has changed some of its stations to the "Jack" format, a Canadian import that broadens the play list across rock genres. Instead of 300 or so songs, these stations' program directors are allowed more leeway in choosing from more than 1,200 songs.

Commercial radio, which also is combating the growth of digital music players like iPods, is making investments in technologies like Internet and digital radio as well as podcasts, audio programs that can be downloaded to computers or portable devices.

But satellite radio is rushing to innovate, too. It is planning, for example, video services that would beam cartoons and music videos to children and teenagers watching television in the back seats of cars.

All this technological and corporate ferment promises that the battle between commercial and satellite radio will only intensify.

"This book won't be written for another 10 years," Mr. Hollander of Infinity said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/na...satellite.html


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Web Radio Contest

hello space traveler

so you are a DJ ? you think you got the best mixing technique? why not mess with other DJ's around the globe? why should you take part at the lounge in a mix contest? should we talk about the prizes or about your fame first? let's start with a teaser of the prizes: airplay on lounge-radio.com, portrait on hopez.com, some lounge cd's, some rare records, and an interview by soulage.de (a german online lounge mag). doesn't that sound nice? we got enough and good prizes for the first 3 places! well, we show off your mixes and your name to the lounge scene worldwide if you win.

for more information and all the details use the following link to our forum : http://www.c-o-e.de/hopezcom/showthread.php?t=1150


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Collectors

Canned Goods as Silent Caviar: Rescuing a Film on Nitrate Stock
Gregory Crouch

Even perfectly scripted Hollywood love stories can, literally, turn toxic with time.

What happened leading up to the scheduling of Tuesday night's showing of the long-lost silent film "Beyond the Rocks," starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, arguably the silver screen's first male sex symbol, is a case in point.

Film fanatics, historians and Swanson herself had feared the only motion picture to feature two of the biggest stars of the 1920's - a romantic melodrama in which love triumphs over money - was gone forever.

"Does anyone know of a print anywhere of 'Beyond the Rocks,' the film Rudy Valentino made with me in 1921?" Swanson asked in her 1980 autobiography, "Swanson on Swanson," lamenting its disappearance. "That, after all, was supposed to be the great virtue of pictures - that they would last forever."

Just another Hollywood illusion, as it turns out.

Silent movies like "Beyond the Rocks" were recorded on flammable nitrate film that can dissolve and emit toxic gases. Some studies indicate that about 80 percent of all silent films made in the United States have either been destroyed or have disintegrated into potential health hazards.

That is why archivists at the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam donned gas masks and protective garments before sifting through an eccentric Dutch collector's donation of 2,000 or so rusty film canisters, which ultimately yielded "Beyond the Rocks," a 1922 release.

"Since we were the first ones to open these cans, we didn't know what was really in there," said Elif Rongen-Kaynakci, a Filmmuseum archivist. "That's why we had to wear gas masks."

Decked out in their protective gear, she and her colleagues watched in delight as snippets of pent-up glamour flickered before them: Swanson in lavish beaded gowns and and a fortune in jewelry; Valentino once again oozing his legendary sex appeal as the other man in a classic love triangle.

"He is very charming, nobody can deny this," Ms. Rongen-Kaynakci said with a giggle. "Seeing him move in the film, he's charming, he's sweet, he's just great."

Over a three-year period, the Filmmuseum's archivists waded through a virtual hazardous waste site of decaying film before they discovered all seven reels of "Beyond the Rocks." Researchers say they believe that the 80-minute film they have reconstructed is nearly complete, based on comparisons with the script, with only about seven minutes missing. The Filmmuseum restored its sepia tint, stabilized some images, repaired scratches and tears as best it could.

Ms. Swanson plays Theodora Fitzgerald, a young woman who marries a rich, older man for the sake of her family, which has fallen on hard times. However, fate (in the form of the screenwriter Elinor Glyn) throws her into the arms of Valentino as the English aristocrat Lord Hector Bracondale.

He plucks her from two perilous situations - an overturned boat and a tumble down a mountainside - before pursuing her to the ends of the earth, which in those days were filmed in the Rocky Mountains and greater Los Angeles area.

Milestone Film and Video Company, a New Jersey distributor, hopes to rerelease "Beyond the Rocks" this fall at film festivals and in theaters around the United States.

The film was not a huge success at its premiere in 1922. The New York Times panned it as a tale of two clotheshorses. But its discovery is considered significant today because so many silent films have vanished.

"Outright destruction, neglect and basic deterioration" is to blame, lamented Patrick Loughney, curator of motion pictures at the George Eastman House in Rochester, one of the largest film archives in the United States. In the 1920's, many studios considered movies products that could be discarded once they had earned money.

Mr. Loughney applauded the discovery of "Beyond the Rocks" because it gives "context to one of the least understood eras of American film history."

As the director Martin Scorsese says in a videotaped introduction to Tuesday night's showing, it was one of the first movies to feature two major stars. "That alone makes the discovery of 'Beyond the Rocks' a noteworthy event," he says.

The film's unlikely savior was the collector Joop van Liempd, himself something of a legendary figure in his home city of Haarlem.

Van Liempd was a loner who has remained as much of a mystery to curators as many of the crumbling films he collected. By the time of his death in 2000 at the age of 87, he had amassed an enormous collection of film canisters that, fearing for their safety, he spread out over at least five locations, friends said.

But few of the canisters were labeled and many, archivists say, had never been opened. Some were, surprisingly given their flammability, stored next to a gas heater, museum officials said.

Jan van den Brink, a Filmmuseum curator, now suspects that van Liempd might never have seen "Beyond the Rocks," at least not the copy in his collection.

"With 2,000 cans of film, you can't see them all," Mr. van den Brink said. "It would have taken a lifetime."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/movies/05rudy.html


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New Monk-Coltrane Performance Discovered
Carl Hartman

The discovery of a previously unknown recording by jazz masters Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane was announced Tuesday by the Library of Congress as it revealed this year's additions to its National Recording Registry.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words from the moon, speeches by President Wilson and Gen. Douglas MacArthur and songs by Al Jolson, Muddy Waters and Nirvana are among 50 recordings being set aside for special preservation.

There's plenty of music, from Victor Herbert's "Gypsy Love Song" of 1898, through Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" in 1939, to Nirvana's 1991 album "Nevermind." Performances must be 10 years old to qualify. This is the third group of recordings to be added to the registry.

The newly discovered performance by pianist Monk and saxophonist Coltrane at Carnegie Hall was never commercially recorded, the library said. The collaboration is not one of the 50 recordings being added to the registry.

News broadcasts being inducted include Wilson's speech of Nov. 11, 1923, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. It is the earliest surviving recording of a regular news broadcast.

Other inductees include an NBC broadcast of Charles Lindbergh's arrival and reception in Washington after his solo flight to Paris in 1927; an Edward R. Murrow broadcast from a London rooftop during the Battle of Britain in 1940, and MacArthur's "Old soldiers never die" speech in 1951 after President Truman recalled him from duty in the Korean War.

Jolson is heard singing George Gershwin and Irving Caesar's song "Swanee" - Gershwin's first hit. Waters contributes "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" from 1954. The library sponsored archivist Alan Lomax's 1941 expedition to Mississippi, where he originally recorded Waters.

Classical recordings include Sergei Rachmaninoff playing his Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1929; a 1939 Boston Symphony performance of Sergey Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," and a 1958 performance of Handel's "Messiah" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Inductees from the rock era include James Brown's 1965 "Live at the Apollo," the Beach Boys' 1966 "Pet Sounds," 1971's "The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East" and Public Enemy's 1989 "Fear of a Black Planet."

One of the odder selections is a collections of sounds made by Asian elephants. Some of the elephant sounds are infrasonic - inaudible to the human ear - but were nevertheless recorded by Katharine Payne of Cornell University in 1984.

Outer space buffs can listen to Armstrong's famous "one small step for man" speech from the moon in 1969 - and follow that up with John Williams' soundtrack to the 1977 movie "Star Wars."
http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/n...celebrity_heds


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Court: Man Can Disparage Company on Web
David Kravets

A man can disparage a hair-restoration company on a Web site using the company's name without violating copyright law, an appeals court ruled Monday.

Bosley Medical Institute in Seattle sued former client Michael Kremer after he created a Web site in 2000 in a "bald-faced effort to get even" with the company, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Kremer, who had been unhappy with the outcome of his hair restoration, used the company's name in the Web site address, www.bosleymedical.com. The company claimed his use of the name was trademark infringement.

But the appeals court disagreed, saying the Web site was not created to make a profit or to confuse Bosley's customers and potential clients. There were no links on the site to other hair-restoration providers, the court noted.

Kremer's attorney, Paul Levy, said the decision "is an important victory for free speech on the Internet. It makes clear that consumers can use a trade name for a company they want to criticize."

The appeals court, however, reinstated part of the lawsuit in which Bosley alleged that Kremer is violating a so-called cybersquatting law by allegedly attempting to sell the site to Bosley in exchange for removing the disparaging material.

Bosley's attorneys did not return phone calls seeking comment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...rss_technology


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Feds Complete Internet Traffic Report
Ted Bridis

Talk about turning in your homework late: The government just finished a report on Internet traffic that Congress requested seven years ago.

Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 law. Passed almost at the dawn of what became the Internet boom, the law required the Commerce Department to seek a study about Web addresses and trademarks by the National Research Council and wrap up the report within nine months.

The council published its findings Thursday - two presidential administrations later and years after the implosion of what had been a bustling Internet economy.

"Time got extended," said Charles Brownstein, director of the research council's computer science and telecommunications board.

In the intervening period, Google emerged to dominate the Web, technology executives made and lost billions, lawyers shut down Napster over music piracy, high-speed Internet connections soared and the number of Web addresses climbed from 2.2 million to more than 65 million. The job of commerce secretary, the top U.S. official responsible for overseeing the study, turned over three times.

"This was eagerly awaited 6 1/2 years ago," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., who ordered the study in 1998 as chairman of the House Science Committee.

"Technology has marched on. The National Academy of Sciences just wasted one million of the taxpayers' dollars. I guess they get an 'F' on this one," said Sensenbrenner, now chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The National Research Council is part of the National Academy of Sciences, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.

Leading experts, including several who participated, defended the 283 pages of conclusions as significant and relevant. But some acknowledged so much time had passed - especially given the blistering pace of the Internet - that few people still eagerly awaited the report.

"To be honest, most people forgot it was ever going to happen," said Michael A. Froomkin, an Internet law professor at the University of Miami who reviewed two early drafts since 2001. "When it started, it seemed important; then it faded completely from sight."

Added Steven Crocker, a respected Internet pioneer: "It shouldn't have taken that long."

The council concluded that the Internet's behind-the- scenes address scheme, called its domain name system, is remarkably robust and suitable to meet the Web's future needs. The report urged minor technical improvements to secure the system from hackers and prevent outages from natural disasters, such as moving some of the Internet's 13 key traffic- directing computers outside Washington and Los Angeles.

It also recommended those traffic-directing computers continue to be operated by volunteers, organizations and corporations around the world rather than governments. And it advocated dozens of new Internet address suffixes - similar to ".com" and ".net" - be introduced each year to allow for new Web sites and e-mail addresses.

Brownstein said the government report was delayed substantially as the authors noticed dramatic changes in the same issues they were studying. These included improvements to Internet search engines, better protections for safeguarding Web trademarks and questions about the role for governments and the United Nations in the Internet. He also said the U.S. government did not open its wallet as promised to pay for the study until 2001.

"I don't think there was any sense by the people on this committee that it would take this long," said Paul Vixie, another leading technologist who reviewed a confidential draft of the report two years ago. "But the Internet will do that to you."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...stom wire.htm


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Cell Phone Songs Prompt Control Questions
Bruce Meyerson

It's been the great "Whodunit?" of two big technology shows: Who put the gag in Motorola Corp.'s mouth just as it was going to unveil a new cell phone featuring the iTunes music download service from Apple Computer Inc.?

Motorola initially said it acted alone, then quickly pointed to Apple, citing the computer company's long practice of never unveiling new products until they're actually available to buy.

Many industry players, however, suspect that a wireless service provider intervened, essentially telling Motorola that, `I'll be darned if I'll sell your phones to my customers if it means they can buy songs through Apple and Motorola without giving me a piece of the pie.'

Or, some surmise, perhaps a wireless carrier who planned to offer the iTunes phone balked at the last minute?

This mystery, which played prominently this month at both the CeBit show in Germany where the phone was to be unveiled and then the CTIA Wireless show in New Orleans, drives right to the heart of an uneasy dynamic simmering in the cellular industry.

The rush is on to deliver music and video to mobile phones, with wireless providers and device makers jockeying for position to grab their share of the payday, all parties mindful of the surprising billions being spent on musical ringtones.

At the same time, the media companies who produce the entertainment, which also includes video games, are approaching cautiously, determined to avert any Napster-like, file-sharing bonanza among cell phone users.

In fact, Motorola also plays a role in a second drama involving these choppy uncharted waters.

Earlier this year, a class-action lawsuit was filed in three states involving a Motorola phone sold by Verizon Wireless. The v710 handset was equipped with a short-range wireless technology called Bluetooth and was configured to work with cordless headsets. Only one problem: Its file-transfer capabilities had been disabled.

The suit insinuates that Verizon Wireless is obliging subscribers to use its cell network if they wish, for example, to send a photo taken on a camera phone to a computer or another cell phone.

Verizon charges extra for such transmissions, while a direct Bluetooth transfer would cost nothing.

Verizon says the Bluetooth function was not disabled to prevent picture transfers but rather to satisfy the demands of media companies who don't want their content shared with non-paying customers.

"I know why we all loved Napster. It was free. When it comes to the cell phone I have to abide by the rules of the content houses," said Jim Straight, vice president for wireless data and Internet services at Verizon Wireless. He said the mobile media market is so new that it will take time before all the technologies and content relationships fall into place in a secure, smooth-running manner.

"Customers get frustrated because they don't see what they want day one. That's understandable. Unfortunately, we have bad guys out there who want to do other things" such as illegal file-sharing.

Verizon's explanation jibes with statements by several producers and aggregators of mobile entertainment.

Walt Disney Co., for one, won't allow its wireless partners to deliver any of its ringtones, video games and other content to phones with Bluetooth or infrared, another technology for direct connections between devices, until the industry adopts a more secure format to prevent unauthorized sharing and copying.

The early obstacles have blocked many mass-media properties from getting onto cell phones. Buongiorno Vitaminic of Italy, a top mobile content distributor, says it sells 750,000 ringtones per month through one European carrier. Only one-tenth of them are "truetone" snippets taken from full-length songs because copyright issues have limited the selection. The rest are recorded specifically for phones without the legal hassles.

A new standard for locking content or requiring payment to use copied files, developed by the Open Mobile Alliance industry consortium, is expected later this year.

That might clear the way for more mobile content, and more potential friction among wireless carriers, device makers and media companies - and with their customers.

Larry Shapiro, general manager of North American mobile content for Walt Disney Internet Group, says consumers understand that they're buying wireless entertainment for a specific device so they're not rankled by limitations on other uses.

"That's like saying, `If i have an XBox video game, why can't I play it on my PC?' You buy a game to play on your XBox, and you buy a game to play on your cell phone," said Shapiro.

But in practice, ringtones and video games aren't terribly fertile ground for copying and sharing anyway.

Unlike the Windows-dominated computer world, there are hundreds of customized operating systems for cell phones, many designed for the unique physical characteristics of a specific handset.

That means, at least for now, every ringtone needs to be customized to play on different devices and the custom content for one phone likely won't run optimally on another phone, if at all, particularly when it comes to video games.

However, this deterrent may not carry over to what all expect will be the next big thing in cell phones. That's music, a product where consumers may not be as accepting of limitations on whether they can play a song on a portable music player or computer just because they bought it with a phone.

"We feel strongly that music, unlike ringtones, is something you want to carry with you and have a strong sense of ownership about," said Charles Grimsdale, president of international business operations for Loudeye Corp.

The Seattle-based provider of technology for secure distribution of digital media recently teamed with Nokia Corp. to create a complete platform for a mobile music store, including a full catalog of songs, which wireless carriers can license to launch a download service under their own brands.

Eventually, even if consumers don't revolt, the carrier-controlled approach to selling mobile entertainment may meet resistance from media companies, who don't want their content lost among dozens of other brands deep in a cell phone's menus.

Ultimately, while its unclear whether it was in fact a wireless operator who blocked the debut of Motorola's iTunes phone, it's hard to imagine that consumers won't find ways to bypass the carriers.

Despite the recent setback, Motorola introduced last week a new cell phone equipped with the high-speed technology being deployed by Verizon and Sprint Corp. The E725, Motorola said, will enable quick wireless music downloads, storing up to 2 gigabytes worth on a removable memory card.

In other words, it's another phone with capabilities not unlike the mysteriously unappearing iTunes phone.
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