Quotes Of The Week
"I don't think that, you know, we have made any particular crusade of the 'Howard Stern Show' or you." –Michael Powell, FCC chairman
"Yeah, OK, Michael, that's why I've received the largest fines in history." – Howard Stern
"Why would a consumer want to buy something that has more restrictions and less functionality for more money than current solutions?" – Charlie Demerjian
"We felt those municipal and cooperative power companies are a terrific market because many of those areas are underserved by D.S.L. and cable." – Bill Grealis
"The current system of copyright can be antiquated and user unfriendly, and its enforcement can be discriminatory." – Hillary Rosen
"This web app is a beautiful machine. Over the next 2-3 years I will try to make more beautiful machines. I'd really like to make a better living, but that's secondary." - Lucas Gonze
"The internet is our saviour. Without it, we wouldn't be what we are today. It's really turned the business around. [Musicians] can make money through the Web. They're not living in million-pound mansions. But they are earning a living." - Lucy Jordache, manager of the Rock band Marillion
"Aren't there any terrorists out there?" - Pufferbelly toy store owner Stephanie Cox
File Sharers Win More Protection
Katie Dean
Alleged file sharers must be given a notice explaining their legal rights before their internet service provider hands over any personal information to the music labels, a Pennsylvania judge ruled, making it still harder for the music industry to use the courts to intimidate people suspected of piracy.
Privacy advocates called the Oct. 12 order by U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe a positive step in protecting the privacy and due process rights of accused copyright infringers.
The Recording Industry Association of America has filed thousands of so-called "John Doe" lawsuits, where the industry's trade association sues people based on their internet protocol addresses without knowing their names. The RIAA must first obtain an order from a judge to subpoena the internet service providers for the name of the defendant. With Rufe's order, now ISPs in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania must provide a detailed notice to their customer advising them of their rights, before they hand over their customers' names to the music companies' lawyers.
"It's another step in the evolution of protections for people who are accused by the record labels of file sharing, but may have a defense and may want to protect their anonymity," said Wendy Seltzer, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. "It puts some procedural safeguards into the process."
"We have always encouraged ISPs to inform their subscribers of pending subpoenas. This action by the court is consistent with that," Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, wrote in an e-mail. "Additionally, it should be noted that nothing in the court's directive absolves an illegal file sharer from liability under the copyright laws."
The order includes clear-cut information on how to challenge the subpoena if the defendant chooses and a list of attorneys who can help defendants weigh their legal options.
"To maintain a lawsuit against you in the District Court in Philadelphia, the record companies must establish jurisdiction over you in Pennsylvania," the notice reads. "If you do not live or work in Pennsylvania, or visit the state regularly, you may be able to challenge the Pennsylvania court's jurisdiction over you."
Paul Levy, an attorney with Public Citizen, which also filed a friend-of-the court brief, said that such information is important to convey to defendants because it is very likely that some of the ISP customers live in other states, even though their ISP is located in Pennsylvania.
"(The judge has) treated each defendant as an individual, so each can make their own individual decision about what's best for them in first responding to the subpoena and then the lawsuit," Levy said. "We are certainly going to be urging judges in other parts of the country to grant similar notices."
Meanwhile, the RIAA sued another 750 "John Doe" defendants on Thursday, including 25 who are accused of using university networks to share copyright music. The 13 schools targeted include Grinnell College, Hamilton College, Indiana State University, Iowa University and the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, among others.
The music labels also filed an additional 213 lawsuits against named defendants who had been identified during the legal process. Those defendants either refused or ignored the music companies offers to settle the case before proceeding, according to a RIAA statement.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0...w=wn_tophead_3
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Expert Witness Embarrassed On The Stand In Cooper Copyright Case
Abby Dinham
An expert witness in the copyright infringement case against retired police officer Stephen Cooper, was embarrassed on the stand yesterday when the defence counsel showed images of the professor's own Web site linking to copyright material.
Professor Leon Sterling, the witness for the Universal Music party, was clearly uncomfortable when lawyer for the defence, Quentin Cregan, asked Sterling to visit his own Web site using a laptop that was projected onto a large screen in the court room.
Sterling was then lost for words when he clicked on a link to one of his students Web sites – from the University of Melbourne – that featured a copyright 'Dilbert' cartoon and a link to the Web site for the peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa.
The owner and distributor of Kazaa, Sharman Networks, is also awaiting trial for copyright infringement charges.
Sterling responded to the discovery by stating that the student was in the wrong and would be reprimanded.
Non-profit national organisation for Internet users, Electronic Frontiers Australia, (EFA) said it's "standing by" its initial statement on the case, maintaining the case may have "major implications for freedom of speech on the internet".
EFA board member, Dale Clapperton, told ZDNet Australia yesterday that "hyperlinking" – the practice of providing a link to another Web site – does not infringe on copyright legislation.
"That is all he was doing in this case, he was only providing links to other sites," said Clapperton.
According to Clapperton, hyperlinking "as a concept" does not incriminate the author of the Web site providing the link, as he said "you don’t have any control over what the other Web site does".
Clapperton also responded to comments made by general manager of the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) Michael Speck on the stand earlier this week, contending that "links were a natural extension of the Web site".
"Trying to argue that you're publishing something when all you're doing is linking to it is ridiculous," he said.
The EFA condemned the raids on Cooper's premises in October 2003 as "heavy-handed tactics". Clapperton stated at the time that "the use of an Anton Piller order [civil search warrant order] against Mr Cooper and his ISP smacks of intimidation and is an unreasonable and unwarranted action".
Clapperton also added the implication of Cooper's internet service provider, Com-Cen, in the proceedings goes against the amendments made to the Copyright Act last year, which he said "were designed to prevent this very type of claim against Internet Service Providers".
"Holding Internet publishers and hosting companies legally liable for the content of other sites that they link to threatens to chill the speech of all Internet users. This case should be of major concern to all Australian Internet users," he said.
The Cooper trial continues today.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9164756,00.htm
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Pay-O-La
New York State Attorney General Reportedly Targeting Record Labels
Jeff Leeds
Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, has recently taken on a procession of corporate powers from Wall Street analysts to mutual funds to insurance brokers. Now he is casting his eyes on the music industry, particularly its practices for influencing what songs are heard on the public airwaves.
According to several people involved, investigators in Mr. Spitzer's office have served subpoenas on the four major record corporations - the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group and the Warner Music Group - seeking copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing their ties to independent middlemen who pitch new songs to radio programmers in New York State.
The inquiry encompasses all the major radio formats and is not aiming at any individual record promoter, these people said. Mr. Spitzer and representatives for the record companies declined to comment.
The major record labels have paid middlemen for decades, though the practice has long been derided as a way to skirt a federal statute - known as the payola law - outlawing bribes to radio broadcasters.
Broadcasters are prohibited from taking cash or anything of value in exchange for playing a specific song, unless they disclose the transaction to listeners. But in a practice that is common in the industry, independent promoters pay radio stations annual fees - often exceeding $100,000 - not, they say, to play specific songs, but to obtain advance copies of the stations' playlists. The promoters then bill record labels for each new song that is played; the total tab costs the record industry tens of millions of dollars each year.
The new scrutiny comes at an inconvenient time for the major record companies, which have been pressing federal and state law enforcement officials to shut pirate CD manufacturers and the unimpeded flow of copyrighted music online.
The statute involved is a federal one and the case would not seem to fit neatly into Mr. Spitzer's jurisdiction, but state attorneys general typically have wide latitude to investigate issues involving consumers and businesses in their states.
In this instance, Mr. Spitzer might proceed on the ground that broadcasters' dealings with middlemen severely limit the opportunities available to those artists who cannot afford to hire them.
These promoters flourished throughout the 1980's and most of the 1990's, but their influence began to weaken after Congress deregulated the radio industry in 1996, allowing for an extensive consolidation that tilted the balance of power to a handful of newly created broadcasting mammoths.
With their newfound power, some big chains, including Clear Channel Communications, at first tried to tap a bigger share of the labels' promotional dollars, and designated specific independent promoters to be the exclusive representatives for particular stations.
Promotion prices continued to rise, but at the same time the consultants had less influence over airplay, record executives say.
In 2002, the industry's lobbying organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, called on the government to strengthen anti-payola laws and examine questionable practices, including independent promotion. (Association officials are considering whether to provide new comments and information to the Federal Communications Commission as part of that agency's review of radio promotion, people in the music industry have said.)
Cox Radio, and later Clear Channel, said they would not renew their contracts with any promoters.
Since the big companies severed their ties to the practice, record labels - suffering from piracy and other financial woes - have sharply scaled back payments to the middlemen, and by some estimates pay them as little as $30 million annually.
One promoter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Spitzer's investigators "are not going to find anything; they're 20 years too late."
But questionable practices persist in a variety of markets and music formats.
In the late 1990's, the Justice Department began a broad investigation of payola that eventually encompassed dozens of Latin and urban- music radio stations across the nation. It won convictions against two top executives at Fonovisa, the biggest independent record label in the Spanish-language market, and a top radio executive. No cases have been brought in the urban-music category. Unlike the promoters in the rock and pop fields who receive payments as stations add a song to their playlist, many urban-music consultants receive initial lump sums to finance the marketing of a new single, and distribute the money as they see fit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/bu...tml?oref=login
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Howard Stern Criticizes FCC Chairman
AP
Shock jock Howard Stern made a surprise call to a radio station during an interview of the Federal Communications Commission head, claiming the chairman only got his job because his father is Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Stern called in to KGO-AM radio in San Francisco during a live interview Tuesday with FCC Chairman Michael Powell. After claiming Powell consistently avoids him, Stern began to question his credentials.
"How did you get your job? It is apparent to most of us in broadcasting that your father got you your job, and you kind of sit there and you're the judge, you're the arbiter, you're the one who tells us what we can and can't say on the air," Stern said. "And yet I really don't even think you're qualified to be the head of the commission."
Powell, a Republican, was appointed to the commission by President Clinton in 1997 and became chairman when President Bush (news - web sites) took office in 2001. Powell denied Stern's charge and listed his qualifications, saying he is an attorney and was chief of staff of the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s Antitrust Division.
"I think it's a cheap shot to say just because my father is famous, I don't belong in my position," Powell said.
Stern, who battled for years with the FCC and conservative critics over his salacious show's content, is moving his show to Sirius satellite radio when his contract with Infinity Broadcasting Corp. expires in 2006.
Stern's show was dropped by media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications in April after the FCC proposed a $495,000 fine against it for comments made by Stern. Clear Channel reached a record $1.75 million settlement with the FCC in June to settle complaints against Stern and other radio personalities.
"I don't think that, you know, we have made any particular crusade of the 'Howard Stern Show' or you," Powell said during the 20-minute interview.
"Yeah, OK, Michael," Stern replied. "That's why I've received the largest fines in history."
After Stern was off the air, Powell said Stern's argument was that there should be no limits on what he is able to do on the radio. "If there are going to be limits, someone's going to have to define them and someone is going to have to enforce them."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ople_stern_fcc
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Online Music Site Settles Copyright Suit
Alex Veiga
The operators of a Spanish-based Web site that sold music downloads have agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by several recording companies.
Sakfield Holding Company S.L., which ran Puretunes.com, agreed to pay the record companies $10 million, the Recording Industry Association of America said Monday.
Four individuals identified in court documents as the site's operators - Daniel Rung, Michael Rung, Matthew Rung and Wayne Rosso - also agreed to pay a combined $500,000.
Under the terms of the settlement, which were approved Monday by U.S. District Court Royce C. Lamberth, Sakfield and Puretunes' operators agreed not to engage in any activity that would violate music company copyrights.
"Puretunes.com duped consumers by claiming it was a legitimate online music retailer when, in fact, it was no such thing," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement.
Puretunes went off-line in mid-June 2003, less than two months after its launch. A month later, the top five recording companies and their labels sued Sakfield.
The suit alleged the company unlawfully copied and distributed thousands of songs from artists such as U2, Elvis Presley and Britney Spears through the Web site. Puretunes charged users for access to the music files, misleading consumers into believing they were buying music from a licensed online retailer, the companies claimed.
When Puretunes launched, Sakfield claimed it had obtained licenses from Spanish trade associations representing publishers and musicians, enough to comply with Spanish copyright laws.
But the record companies asserted that no such loophole in Spanish law exists and that Sakfield was liable.
Calls to Sakfield attorney Ralph Lotkin were not immediately returned Monday. Phone numbers for the Rungs were not listed.
Rosso, the former head of the Grokster online file-sharing service and an outspoken defender of the industry, said the company's operators acted properly.
"The owners of Puretunes, of which I never was, would never have launched a service without the proper licenses in place," Rosso said. "Once they found out that the licenses were not in order as they were led to believe by their attorneys, they immediately shut it down."
He declined to elaborate on details of the settlement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct25.html
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Lexmark Loss Good for Consumers
Katie Dean
Until earlier this week, some electronics companies were wielding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- a law that tries to curtail piracy of music and movies -- as a shield to protect their businesses from competition. But a couple of recent court rulings are taking away that protection.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court said printer maker Lexmark cannot prevent Static Control Components from manufacturing printer toner cartridges that operate with its printers. Lexmark had sued the competitor, arguing that Static Control had no right under the DMCA to circumvent electronics that prevented Lexmark printers from using anything other than Lexmark ink cartridges.
And in August, a U.S. appeals court shot down a similar attempt by garage door manufacturer Chamberlain Group to use the DMCA to stop Skylink Technologies from manufacturing a universal garage door opener.
Critics of the DMCA and consumer groups had argued that the law presented a danger because it would prevent competition and force consumers to pay artificially higher prices. But the recent rulings are narrowing the scope of the DMCA, preventing companies from using it to shut out competition.
"We should make clear that in the future companies like Lexmark cannot use the DMCA in conjunction with copyright law to create monopolies of manufactured goods for themselves just by tweaking the facts of this case," wrote (.pdf) Judge Gilbert Merritt of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. "Congress did not intend to allow the DMCA to be used offensively in this manner, but rather only sought to reach those who circumvented protective measures 'for the purpose' of pirating works protected by the copyright statute."
A U.S. District Court in Kentucky had issued a preliminary injunction barring Static Control from selling its toner cartridge chips, but Tuesday's ruling by the panel lifts the injunction and sends the case back to the lower court for review.
Lexmark officials were still reviewing the case Wednesday but issued a statement saying that "Lexmark will continue to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights in this litigation and in any other instance where Lexmark believes that its intellectual property rights are violated."
Dave Djavaherian, counsel to Skylink in the Chamberlain case, called Merritt's concurring opinion "perhaps the most direct and strong statement on consumer harms" associated with the interpretation of the DMCA by plaintiffs like Lexmark and Chamberlain.
"The court expressed its concern that Lexmark's true interest was protecting the aftermarket for supplies for its printers, not protecting against (copyright) infringement," Djavaherian said.
"The court ruled in favor of competition," said Kenneth DeGraff, policy advocate for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. "In general we've been skeptical of (the quality of) third-party cartridges but we support their right to exist in the marketplace."
Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, said the decision helps rein in an overly broad and poorly written law.
"More and more we're going to see consumer products that have some sort of software in them -- from cars to vacuum cleaners to stereos," Schultz said. "This ruling says that the manufacturer of the product can't use the DMCA to stop other companies from offering competing replacement and component parts."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65494,00.html
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Shiver Me Timbers! Brazil Full of PC Pirates
Brazil should end the year at the top of the list of countries with the highest rate of pirated personal computers in its market, outranking China for the first time, according to a study released on Thursday.
The number of non-brand computers sold in Brazil using black market or illegal components should rise to 74.5 percent this year, up from 70 percent in 2003 and 59 percent in 1999, the study by market research group IDC showed.
China, on the other hand, has been trimming its black market for PCs so that they accounted for 73 percent of computers sold last year, down from 85 percent in 1999. IDC did not give a projection for China in 2004, but did say Brazil would dash ahead of it in the ranking.
The pirated PCs use computer components that have been doctored or illegally imported into Brazil. They are then assembled in the South American country by unregistered companies that can outsell their formal competitors by not charging taxes.
Formal computer makers charge on average 3,080 reais, or about $1,074 for a mid-range PC. The black market version costs about 1,000 reais less, IDC said.
Last year alone, the pirate PC market cost the Brazilian government 1.5 billion reais in tax revenue, the research group added.
The United States has repeatedly urged Brazil to crack down on black market goods, threatening to suspend trade benefits if it does not adequately address the problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/techn...il-piracy.html
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The Rise And Fall (?) Of P2P Music Downloading
Eric J. Sinrod
Is peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet file-sharing dying on the vine in the face of lawsuits filed by members of the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA)? Or is P2P alive and well, operating off below the radar screen?
A recent study titled "Is P2P Dying or Just Hiding?," conducted by Professors Thomas Karagiannis and Michalis Faloutos of the University of California at Riverside, and Professors Andre Broido, Nevil Brownlee and kc claffy of the University of California at San Diego, concludes that P2P activity in fact has not decreased, notwithstanding threats of copyright lawsuits and fines. Indeed, the study advises that "P2P traffic represents a significant amount of Internet traffic and is likely to continue to grow in the future."
The study begins by noting that the media recently has reported a supposed sharp decline in P2P traffic over the course of the last year. To drive this point home, the media apparently has reported that the P2P user population has dropped by one- half over this time period. The media is said to have attributed this decline to copyright infringement lawsuits filed by RIAA members.
An attack is mounted against these reports in the study, as the study states that measurements of P2P traffic are "problematic." The study first points out that measurement methodologies usually are not disclosed. Next, the study argues that measurements usually are limited to a small set of two or three traditional file sharing networks; such limited sampling measurements are said to be improperly extrapolated to P2P file-sharing networking as a whole.
The study is quick to explain that current file-sharing networks, which include private P2P networks, afford a number of options to users. Perhaps even more significant, the study states that a growing number of P2P networks "intentionally camouflage their traffic." More recent versions of P2P protocols are said to have the flexibility of using any port number, which is different than earlier P2P traffic, which could be "easily classified due to its use of well-defined port numbers."
The study goes on to develop a framework and heuristics to measure hidden P2P traffic. It also estimates the percentage of P2P traffic with respect to non-specified ports for eight separate P2P protocols.
The results "shed doubt on the claim that P2P traffic is declining." The results show that "P2P traffic volume has not dropped since 2003." The authors conclude that "P2P is here to stay," given that "P2P traffic is at least comparable to last year's levels, if it hasn't increased." With respect to the latter point, the study notes that another study has revealed that P2P traffic actually has increased over the same time period.
Thus, while lawsuits by the RIAA probably have chilled flagrant P2P activities, it appears that covert P2P file sharing continues at least somewhat unabated. Plainly, without the legal actions by the RIAA, P2P file sharing would be more rampant, but these actions have not served as a P2P-buster.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...7-sinrod_x.htm
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A Billion Served
RIAA Files 750 New File-Trading Lawsuits
Grant Gross
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Thursday announced it has filed 750 new lawsuits against alleged file-traders using peer-to-peer software.
The 750 new lawsuits were against "John Doe" defendants not yet identified by the RIAA. In addition to those new lawsuits, the RIAA filed another 213 lawsuits against named defendants who declined or ignored RIAA efforts to settle their cases.
Among the 750 new lawsuits were 25 peer-to-peer users on 13 university campuses. The lawsuits were filed against users of P2P software such as Kazaa, Grokster and LimeWire.
The new round of RIAA lawsuits follow 762 lawsuits filed Sept. 30. The RIAA has filed more than 6,200 lawsuits against alleged file traders since September 2003.
RIAA estimates that 58 million music tracks have been downloaded from a licensed music service in the first half of 2004. "In order for legitimate services to continue their growth, we cannot ignore those who take and distribute music illegally," Cary Sherman, RIAA's president, said in a statement. "There must be consequences to breaking the law or illegal downloading will cripple the music community's ability to support itself now or invest in the future."
Lawsuits against named defendants were filed in federal district courts in California, Illinois, Arizona, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan and Washington.
http://www.nwfusion.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi
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Radio Operators OK Rules On Net Over Power Lines
Jim Hu
Amateur radio operators expressed cautious optimism about new rules for the transmission of broadband Internet access over power lines.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), which has been the loudest critic against broadband over power lines, or BPL, on Friday said recent decisions on the technology by the Federal Communications Commission were a step in the right direction. Ham radio operators have complained that BPL services disrupt their own signals as well as those of public safety organizations.
In trying to address this issue, the FCC on Thursday outlined rules to prevent power-line access from disrupting important signals. These rules include barring BPL from certain frequencies commonly used by airplanes and excluding services from zones near Coast Guard and radio astronomy stations.
BPL providers must provide a public database of complaints from organizations whose signals were corrupted.
"We'll remain concerned about pollution interference," said ARRL spokesman Alan Pitts. "But the glass is both half-full and half-empty."
Thursday's decisions highlight the FCC's push to someday make BPL a broadband alternative to DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable modem technology, which are controlled by the Baby Bells and the cable industry, respectively. Energy companies such as Cinergy and Progress Energy have launched or tested BPL services in their areas of coverage. Internet service providers such as EarthLink and AT&T have joined some of these tests.
For now, BPL remains more fantasy than reality. The FCC has batted around the idea for many years, and other companies such as Nortel Networks have failed in trying to launch BPL services. Energy companies will have to shift their mentality as well, because the business of delivering broadband service is different than reading meters.
"Not only are (energy companies) deploying new technology, they're getting into a new business," said Yankee Group analyst Patrick Mahoney.
BPL technology provider Current Communications Group, which powers a joint venture with Cinergy in Cincinnati, lauded the FCC rules, which aim to both encourage the development of BPL and address technology concerns.
"I think the rules are a very good balance between giving protection to licensed radio systems while not restricting BPL technology," said Jay Birnbaum, a Current Communications spokesman.
Ham radio operators are waiting to get their hands on a more detailed report on the rules before giving a confident thumbs up. Until then, enthusiasts can only hope their concerns were solved.
"The devil is in the details," said ARRL's Pitts.
http://news.com.com/Radio+operators+...3-5412115.html
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How it works
Plugging Into the Net, Through the Humble Wall Outlet
Tom McNichol
HIGH-speed Internet access usually comes to homes through one of two wires: a telephone line for D.S.L. subscribers, or a coaxial cable for cable modem users. But an emerging technology known as broadband over power lines, or B.P.L., may soon offer a third wire into homes, channeling high-speed data through a somewhat improbable conduit: an ordinary electrical outlet.
B.P.L. is the ultimate in plug-and-play. Users plug a small power line modem into any wall outlet and then connect the modem to a computer with a U.S.B. or Ethernet cable, or through a wireless Wi-Fi connection. The appeal of B.P.L. is that most of the wiring for the network is in place. Although data must be carefully routed over the electric grid to prevent interference and signal degradation, there is no need to dig up streets or rewire homes.
Two weeks ago the Federal Communications Commission adopted rule changes to encourage the technology in the hope of making broadband more widely available and fostering greater competition among high-speed Internet providers.
Internet service over power lines is probably a year or more away from becoming widely available, but the F.C.C.'s ruling is expected to spur investment in B.P.L. by utilities.
"Three or four years ago, the technology was not ready for prime time, but now we know it is," said Jay Birnbaum, vice president and general counsel for Current Communications of Germantown, Md., which makes B.P.L. equipment. "And we've gotten the cost down, so it's competitive with other broadband services."
The idea of using electric power lines to send data is not new; companies have been working on it for a decade. The major technical challenge has been how to send bursts of radio frequency energy over power lines without interfering with other radio signals, particularly ham radio and public safety frequencies.
The recent F.C.C. ruling establishes frequency bands that B.P.L. signals must avoid to protect aeronautical and Coast Guard communications, and sets up a publicly available database for resolving claims of harmful interference from private radio operators.
B.P.L. has been tested in small field trials for several years, involving about 5,000 customers in 18 states. Cinergy, a power company in the Midwest, recently began offering B.P.L. to homes in the Cincinnati area for $30 to $50 a month, depending on connection speed. The company says it hopes to have B.P.L. equipment in more than 50,000 homes by the end of the year.
Cinergy is also marketing B.P.L. to smaller municipal and cooperative power companies, particularly in rural areas.
"We felt those municipal and cooperative power companies are a terrific market because many of those areas are underserved by D.S.L. and cable," said Bill Grealis, a Cinergy executive vice president.
Adding a data channel to the power lines also has potential benefits for the utilities themselves. By reserving a sliver of the B.P.L. data channel for themselves, power companies can use the network to identify problems and accomplish troubleshooting remotely, rather than sending out a crew.
Down the road, utilities could install Internet-enabled meters and switches to offer automated meter reading, power demand management and time-of-day pricing.
"Our main interest in B.P.L. is using it to better manage our utility," said Bob Dobkin, a spokesman for Pepco, which is based in Washington. Pepco has a pilot B.P.L. program in about 500 homes in Potomac, Md. "It enables you to identify problems without having to send someone out."
While B.P.L. holds promise, there are unanswered questions about the technology. One F.C.C. commissioner, Michael J. Copps, dissented in part with the commission's recent action, saying the agency had failed to address issues such as whether electricity customers pay higher monthly bills to subsidize their utility's foray into broadband.
"We're great on technology, but not so good on working out the rules of the road," Mr. Copps said. "Nearly all of the industrialized nations except the U.S. have national plans for broadband. We don't have any comprehensive strategy."
Mr. Copps and others note that the United States has lately become a broadband laggard; it ranks 13th in the world in broadband penetration, behind countries such as Japan, Korea, Denmark and Iceland. Many believe one main reason is cost. While Americans typically pay $40 to $50 monthly for a D.S.L. or cable modem connection, the Japanese, for example, pay $10 to $15 a month for even faster connections.
American broadband consumers, in short, get less bit for the buck.
Will B.P.L. bring down the cost of broadband?
Mr. Grealis of Cinergy will say only that the cost of a B.P.L. connection will be competitive with D.S.L., cable and wireless. It remains to be seen whether the third wire into the home turns out to be a cheaper alternative or more like the third gas station on a corner, battling the competition at remarkably similar prices.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/te...ts/28howw.html
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New Supercomputer Claimed To Be World's Fastest
Matthew Fordahl
The builders of a new NASA supercomputer claim the 10,240-processor machine is the fastest in the world - an exciting prospect for researchers even if the speed title has yet to be officially bestowed.
Project Columbia, named for the space shuttle that was destroyed in early 2003, was built in less than 120 days at NASA's Ames Research Center. The cluster of 20 computers working as one will be used to speed up spacecraft design, environmental prediction and other research.
At the $50 million machine's public unveiling Tuesday, the science shared the stage with claims of record-setting performance from system-builder Silicon Graphics Inc., processor-provider Intel Corp. and NASA.
It's been a sore issue for the U.S. technology industry since June 2002, when a system built outside the United States topped a list of supercomputers compiled by an independent group that verifies performance claims. Japan's Earth Simulator has led the race ever since.
That could change next month, when the Top500 Project releases its twice-yearly rankings at a supercomputer conference in Pittsburgh.
Using just 16 of Project Columbia's 20 installed systems, the computer achieved a sustained performance of 42.7 trillion calculations per second, or teraflops.
"If you could do one calculation per second by hand, it would take you a million years to do what this machine does in a single second," said G. Scott Hubbard, Ames' director.
By comparison, Earth Simulator's sustained performance is 35.86 teraflops.
The competition for the top spot will be fierce. Last month, IBM announced the results of its Blue Gene supercomputer, which claimed its sustained performance was 36.01 teraflops. Because the machine is not yet finished, it could still come up on top.
An IBM spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
There may also be some improvement for Project Columbia. Its numbers were achieved using only four-fifths of its processors. Officials declined to comment on what the sustained performance might be when all 10,240 Itanium 2 processors are deployed.
But NASA officials, while touting Project Columbia's performance, said the system - even if it's not officially the fastest - will have a major impact on scientific and engineering research around the nation. Such work has already started, they added.
On Tuesday, an experiment was being run to determine if the extra computing horsepower could be harnessed quickly to respond to a simulated space shuttle problem.
Previously, it took as long as three months to run the calculations, Hubbard said.
The new supercomputer also is being used to process global climate data from satellites to improve hurricane landfall forecasts. It also will help design space vehicles, model the behavior of interplanetary radiation and the help find life beyond Earth.
"We're going to have an impact that will be nationwide, if not worldwide, on weather, engineering design, on astronomy, on earth science, and we're going to see enormous, incredible results," Hubbard said.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...0021175.htm?1c
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Newest iPod From Apple Holds Photos and Music
John Markoff
Apple Computer introduced on Tuesday its next generation iPod music player, which has the ability to display digital images as well as play songs.
The new iPod Photo, priced at $499 and $599, will be able to store up to 25,000 wallet-size digital images and display them on a television via a cable. It comes with 40-gigabyte or 60-gigabyte disk storage, capable of storing up to 15,000 songs.
At a news conference held in a theater here, Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, demonstrated how the iPod Photo, which will be available in Apple stores this week, could create slide shows and set them to music. The slogan Mr. Jobs chose for the new device was "all of your songs and photos in your pocket."
In focusing on still pictures, Mr. Jobs showed he was moving in a direction different from competitors in the consumer electronics industry, which have been adding video capabilities to hand-held devices. Mr. Jobs disagreed that video was a must-have feature in new devices. "Our competitors are saying it's video," he said, "but they're too big to fit in your pocket."
Apple also introduced a special $349 black edition of the iPod, which has the signatures of members of the rock band U2. The company said it would begin selling a complete collection of U2's music for $149 next month from the iTunes Internet music store. Mr. Jobs was joined on stage at the event by Bono and The Edge, two members of U2.
Although there are a growing number of competitors in the digital music business, Mr. Jobs seemed confident that Apple can continue to dominate the market. The company sold two million iPods during the most recent quarter.
"The iPod has become a cultural phenomenon," Mr. Jobs said.
Mr. Jobs also deflected questions about the incompatibility of protected-format songs sold by iTunes and its online music competitors like RealNetworks, Microsoft and Sony.
Apple's competitors have been talking about the consumer's ability to choose, he said, but they are actually unhappy with the choice that consumers are making.
Apple got a strong endorsement from Bono, who said the band would cooperate with Apple on a variety of future projects.
"It's kind of extraordinary that it wasn't a music company that cracked the problem of piracy," he said, referring to Apple. He noted that music industry executives still refer to themselves as record industry executives when "we don't even make records anymore."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/te...ple.html?8hpib
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Interview with Lucas Gonze of Webjay
Richard MacManus
Welcome to the first in a very special series of Web 2.0 interviews I'm conducting on Read/Write Web. My goal is to interview at least half a dozen people in the Web community who are building or shaping Web 2.0 - i.e. the Web as Platform.
My first guest is Lucas Gonze, creator of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) web application Webjay. Lucas was an early developer of P2P applications and back in 2000 he created a peer-to-peer start-up called World OS. Although it subsequently "morphed into a dot-bomb" (in his own words!), it sowed the seeds for his current project Webjay - a P2P music-sharing website that has had plenty of coverage in The New York Times and other media publications.
It was an absolute pleasure to conduct this email interview with Lucas - I learned a lot about P2P and the "decentralization of taste". So in the immortal words of The Velvet Underground: settle back, pull up your cushions (whatever else you have with you). Here we go...
About World OS
Richard: The World OS website is no longer on the air, but from what I could gather on the Wayback Machine archive of it, you were developing a P2P and decentralized network product called Goa. Can you give me an overview of what you were attempting to build and why - in semi- layman's terms if possible ;-)
Lucas: WorldOS was the company, Goa was the product. WorldOS was similar enough in both goals and technology to Jxta, which it preceded by about a year, that I'd leave the details to documentation on Jxta. In brief this was infrastructure for P2P applications.
Richard: What kind of "P2P applications" was World OS aiming for - music? business files? any and everything? What were the main types of files being distributed (or you wanted to distribute) via World OS and who was your target user?
Lucas: Business files. The idea was that this was a P2P toolkit in the shape of a J2EE component. It was in Java, the interface was almost exactly like a servlet, there was authentication, things like that.
Internet as Platform
Richard: There has been a lot of talk recently about the "Internet as Platform", meaning decentralized web services and the "network effects" that come of that. The lock-in strategy to gain users is based on data and content services, rather than software or operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows. Google, Amazon and Flickr are some notable examples of this theory. Was World OS trying to do a similar thing? I'm interested in why you chose the name "WorldOS"...
Lucas: Google, Amazon and Flickr are only elements of a larger thing with a coherent identity if you zoom way out. At that scale, the internet should, assuming the viewpoint is correct, exist within something like the Gaia hypothesis. The internet OS idea is a Gaia hypothesis for the internet.
The world OS idea is a Gaia hypothesis for all information processing entities, not just computers. For example, traffic conditions probably have an impact on internet weather, and so I prefer a view of information ecology that incorporates real world systems like rush hour traffic.
The operating environment at internet scale is a different kind of animal than an operating system. You don't build it, you observe it, and you don't write to an API, you try to take advantage of your observations. So my software was not ever intended to build an internet OS but rather to work well in the context of the existing internet OS.
Richard: How did World OS fit into this Gaia system?
Lucas: Goa was intended to be radically flexible and lightweight, which seemed to me to be the defining characteristics of successful software in that environment.
How Goa Worked
Richard: Napster was a centralized database P2P service. I admit I have a scratchy knowledge of P2P systems, but didn't decentralized file lists such as Gnutella win out in the end? BitTorrent is the P2P system that I hear most about these days (given I don't specifically follow P2P technologies). Where did World OS fit into all this?
Lucas: WorldOS routed via flooding, which is like Gnutella. However it used preferential flooding, meaning that it used reputation to learn the most likely paths over time.
Richard: Can you give me an example of how this worked in practice?
Lucas: I only have a hypothetical example, since we never managed to sell the software.
Let's say you have a hundred people in an office and one of them, Michael, wants to get a spreadsheet that his group is working on. The first time he does this his query is sent by flooding. He has two co- workers, Jesse and Brian. Jesse's desktop has a lot of spare capacity, Brian's laptop does not, so during the first flood it is Jesse's machine that returns the query. The next time Michael wants to get a file, Jesse's machine will be tried first, so that the extra cost of sending a message to Brian's machine will be saved.
How Webjay Works
Richard: This question leads on from the previous... You've said on the Webjay website that you don't consider Webjay to be a file sharing network. It seems like a very grey area. I guess I think of it as a link- sharing network that just happens to have media files on the end of each link. But then every time I click on a Webjay link, the media files - mostly songs - are automatically downloaded to my computer (to the 'My Music' folder on my Windows PC). So essentially I'm downloading files, whether I mean to or not. So I'm confused :-) Where does WebJay fit into the 'P2P system ecosystem', in your opinion?
Lucas: Webjay decentralizes taste. This seemed to me to be the next frontier after decentralized network connectivity was fully colonized by the filesharing people, because the decentralization of network connectivity created more centralization of taste, not less.
The first reason is that you traverse filesharing networks by search -- search-driven navigation relies on memorable identifiers to search for, for an identifier to become memorable requires marketing, and marketing is a tool only available to large centralized entities like major labels. The second reason is that, when demand drives supply as it does on filesharing networks, being known is a condition of becoming more known. The expense to break into this system is currently covered by marketing dollars.
To decentralize taste I needed to break that cycle. I chose to stick strictly to above ground networks because unauthorized material is cleaned out by DMCA requests and lack of bandwidth for consumer ISP accounts. The more marketing dollars are going into an artist, the more DMCA takedowns are issued and the more downloads there are to blow through upload bandwidth. If a rights holder has a problem with a URL, I don't want the URL, so it's convenient that such rights holders will knock down those URLs for me. Everything I do is out in the open because open networks are, for now, naturally inhospitable to centralized taste.
Development path from World OS to Webjay
Richard: In the Wayback archives, you describe how the World OS project began and how eventually you stopped development on Goa and moved into P2P consulting instead:
"Writing now six months later, while the P2P hype balloon has been growing, the dot-com hype balloon has been shrinking. In that time we grew to eight people, released a steady stream of updates, worked an unbelievable number of hours and talked to more investors than I can count. We had serious deals on the table, but never one with plausible terms.
[...]
We are dropping development of the Goa product and moving full time into P2P consulting."
That's from January 2001. Looking at it now, 3.5 years later, is Webjay a natural progression for you from World OS - i.e. is it on the same developmental path you started down with World OS, a path which has thrown up legal and money obstacles for everyone?
Lucas: At the time the legal issues made a big difference because they scared away investors and customers. My colleagues in other companies doing P2P for business will tell you the same thing -- the RIAA successfully irradiated that turf, at least for a few years.
So what's the developmental path from WorldOS to Webjay?
WorldOS' budget was ridiculous. Webjay is ultra lean -- one guy, me, plus a lot of help from my friends. All it takes for Webjay to exist is a server and my rent money.
WorldOS was all vegetables and no dessert. Webjay has very little delayed gratification, it gets straight to dessert without stopping for dinner. The concept is that, where you normally have to download and listen to songs one by one, with Webjay you do it all with one click. It's about saving clicks.
What about the legal issues that Webjay is designed to finesse? Honestly, if I wanted to go for unauthorized music it would be no problem as long as I was willing to live in an underground style. Put the server in Russia, get a PO Box in Jenin, you're all set. But that's not the point -- authorized (but freely downloadable) music has compelling advantages.
Some P2P History and Decentralization Theory
Lucas: But let's go back a bit, change the question a little, ask things differently, because I have better stories than these to tell. Specifically I want to say how it is that the idea of decentralization is now so common.
It's New Years, 2000. I'm running a little web consulting company and we're doing well. I've got the money to do something else for a while, so I let the main contract lapse without renewal, let the subcontractors go off to fend for themselves, and sit down to do my thing. I'm just fooling around on the code that's going to be Goa, though it's not that well defined. In early March Gnutella appears. I get interested in it as a solution to the problem of ad-hoc discovery. I start working on a clone, in Java, which gets incorporated into the rest of my code. The Napster/ Gnutella/Seti@home thing starts to break big. On June 2 I posted an announcement of a pre-alpha Goa release, along with a tarball of source:
"WorldOS is a framework for distributed applications similar to Freenet or Gnutella. The recent announcement of a portal based on Gnutella, Infrasearch, shows that there are a number of useful tools that can be created using this new technology. This framework enables the creation of many more such tools."
I get invited to talk about my related work at an academic conference called Twist 2000, which is at UC Irvine. The UC Irvine guys are mainly W3C affiliates; WebDAV and REST (the thesis, not necessarily the concept) are from there. This is July 2000. About ten days before the conference the P2P term took off via a column by Lee Gomes in the WSJ, so there is now a word.
There's a colloquium on what this new stuff is about. Now, back in those days we were calling this new stuff distributed computing, not decentralized. The question came up: what's the difference between this new thing and DNS? Somebody, I don't remember who, suggested that this new thing was decentralized.
I came home from the conference. To follow up on the conversations there I founded a mailing list called "decentralization" on eGroups, the topic of which was this new stuff. The list became a community center for people interested in peer to peer. It took off with the punditocracy and pretty soon that word become the conventional wisdom as to the value of P2P:
"All this was envisioned by our common teacher, Tim Berners-Lee, who was willing to design a system built on links that can break. This is the key philosophy to decentralization, a lovely term brought to us by Lucas Gonze. Don't wait for the chaos to end, embrace it, move on and do it again. The world will take care of itself."
On the Legal Hassles of P2P
Richard: With Webjay (and I think with World OS too?) you've been careful to avoid any of the legal trouble that plagued the likes of Napster and Kazaa. On the Webjay website you say that Webjay is "specifically crafted for both legality and common courtesy in a crazy environment" and you are at pains to encourage your users to "stick to authorized music". Is this strictly a business decision for you, in that you don't want lawyers to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Or were there other factors in the 'play it safe' strategy? e.g. a moral duty??
Lucas: It's true that I can't afford to go to court. Webjay will be history the instant somebody sues, no matter how stupid and wrong the suit is. Obviously.
But it's more important that the music I want to promote is music that I can share (whether through a URL or a direct copy). Webjay is ultimately a promotional tool -- it fills the same kind of role as the radio. I don't want to promote unauthorized music because it forces me to choose between the golden rule and the law. I don't listen to unauthorized music, so I need Webjay to find stuff to listen to.
I don't believe there is a moral duty to stick to authorized music. I do believe that politeness is the only path to a political solution. If somebody wants me to stand on my head while listening to their music, I will either stand on my head or find other music. If somebody wants me to listen to their music, they will have to make it available under terms that I can accept.
Politeness is a winner tactic. It forces the crappy businessmen in the recording industry to stop hiding behind piracy. It makes the good guys smell serious. It's a dignified way of living. It helps musicians who respect listeners get popular at the expense of musicians who don't. The sole problem with politeness is that the technology and culture to filter up the best music libre is still immature.
The Future of Webjay
Richard: Lastly, what's the future of Webjay do you think? Given your experience with World OS and the lessons you learned from that, where would you like to go with Webjay in the next 2-3 years?
Lucas: Webjay will probably take on new features via spinoff projects, so that I don't break the existing community. The site does need a major makeover for usability and attractiveness; I don't know yet whether I'll call that new version Webjay or something else.
This web app is a beautiful machine. Over the next 2-3 years I will try to make more beautiful machines. I'd really like to make a better living, but that's secondary.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002378.php
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Today's Pop Stars In It For The URLs
LONDON: By one measure of their success, chart-topping rockers The Darkness have sold enough song downloads, T-shirts and thongs on their official website http://
www.TheDarknessRock.com to nearly finance their next recording.
Rock band Marillion has gone a step further. Since striking off on its own in 2000, the band has used its online site,
http://marillion.com, to raise over 500,000 pounds from fans to finance its last two albums and support its first North American tour since 1995.
"The internet is our saviour. Without it, we wouldn't be what we are today. It's really turned the business around," said Lucy Jordache, the band's marketing manager.
In what is believed to be a web first, Marillion has twice raised the money needed to record a studio album by convincing devoted fans to buy the album up front – in both cases shelling out money a year before they could hear it.
The strategy has paid off. For the latest album Marbles, the band has scored three singles in European music charts. The last time Marillion cracked the Top 40 was 1985 when it was signed to EMI, one of the world's largest music labels.
CALL IT A COMEBACK
Formed in the early 1980s, the band attracted a cult-like global fan base who bought 14 million albums before parting ways with EMI in 1995. Thanks to the web, the band has made a full-fledged comeback.
No serious band could function these days without a web strategy. The website, once considered a vanity plate for the geekiest of pop stars, is essential to promote new releases, sell concert tickets and songs, and even fight off negative publicity.
Within hours of Ashlee Simpson walking off stage mid-performance during the October 23 Saturday Night Live, Simpson herself, along with some sympathetic fans, jumped to her defence on message boards at http://
www.ashleesimpsonmusic.com.
In this celebrity-obsessed age, an unfiltered forum between an artist and fans can douse a scandal before it impacts a career.
"It's inconceivable to imagine even the half-serious artists without a website these days," said Ajax Scott, editor-in-chief of Music Week in London.
"It gives the completely unknown artist a voice. You can publicise gigs on the local circuit, sell the odd T-shirt. And, it gives the musician the opportunity to either post positive information about yourself or conduct damage control," Scott said.
Unfortunately, for the 18-year-old Simpson, the same message boards on her site also carried harsh critiques and elaborate theories on her ability to sing live.
CA-CHING
In the last few years, artists have seen websites become a serious money-maker. And with that, comes a new twist to the burning question: Will the internet forever change the music industry?
With most mega-star musicians holding exclusive rights to whatever is sold on their sites, the more wily ones have big plans for their URLs.
"Ultimately, bands want to reach fans and maximize revenues without a huge chunk disappearing into the labels. This is definitely a new business model," said Russel Coultart, co-founder of http://
www.Recordstore.co.uk, a technology firm that operates the websites of over 150 artists including The Darkness and Robbie Williams.
"I'm certainly not convinced the major labels are over, but their roles will change," Coultart added.
Universal Music, the world's top music label, has begun signing untested acts such as pop artist Derek McDonald to a "digital rights" contract before committing serious money to his career.
The label starts the riskier acts with a website, and if enough fan interest is generated online, Universal inks them to an old-fashioned record contract.
"It acts as an incubation label, if you will," said Rob Wells, director of new media services at Universal Music UK. "It's the Marillion concept."
In beginning the unscientific process of "breaking" the young musician, Universal started with a Web site for McDonald (
http://www.derek-mcdonald.com), selling ringtones and offering alerts on upcoming concerts.
"I believe the future for all artist Web sites is to make them fully commercial," Wells said. A successful Web site may even draw fans away from file-sharing networks, the scourge of the industry, he said.
Meanwhile, middle-aged rockers Marillion have discovered a second life via a website that serves as its label, through its fund-raising function, and its busiest record shop.
"You can make money through the Web. None of them can retire tomorrow. They're not living in million-pound mansions. But they are earning a living," Marillion's Jordache said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,...1a1860,00.html