If Thine Eye Offends Thee, Pluck It Out
Steady readers know the RIAA sued a handful of college swappers last week for having
the nerve to run a few campus P2Ps at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Michigan Technological University and Princeton. Not that the individuals in question were doing any down loading themselves mind you, that wasn’t at issue, sure a little distribution maybe…well ok maybe
a lot ahem, but it was the
facilitation of swapping for others, lots of others that got the RIAA’s goat (Warner/Electra/Atlantic records [WEA], EMI, BMG, Sony etc.).
Seems like a pretty straightforward case to me since just about anything having do with computers can be seen as facilitating file-sharing, including say AOL Time Warner itself, Atlantics’ parent company. I mean after all AOL gets you on the Internet then goes ahead and sticks a really good server based file sharing program (AIM) right on your computer – without you even asking! They also own high speed Internet cable pipelines.
Now that I think about it it’s true -
AOL owns it all, the Big Three of file-sharing: The Servers, the High Speed Connections, The Programs.
AOL facilitates copyright infringement on an unprecedented and massive scale!
My god AOL, if you want to save Atlantic, if you want to save Warners, if you want to save music itself, then Shut Yourself Down NOW! 
Yes, well, that doesn’t seem too likely - or that Warners will sue itself. On the other hand AOL is looking to spin off the music subsidiary so maybe someday Warner Bros.
will sue AOL. That would be interesting. Still and all I’m not holding my breath. What’s interesting about it at the moment is the analysis of the suit that shoots down the Princeton case – before it even goes to trial. You’ll find it right here in this weeks WIR.
Enjoy,
Jack.
Legal Eagle Analyses RIAA Suit Against College Swapper, Finds It Lacking
Tears it apart like a Duck L’Orange
The plaintiffs' rhetorician was in rare form, but their logician was asleep at the switch. Unlike Napster, the facilities supplied by the allegedly-infringing Wake system are neither necessary nor sufficient for file-sharing. Unlike Napster, Wake-like systems only provide an catalog of available files. All of the actual file sharing is handled by Microsoft Windows File Sharing programs, which run, can be run, and are often run independently of Wake- like software. Napster users, on the other hand, were dependent on the Napster company's MusicShare software to merely share files, much less search shared files. Without a Wake-like system, users can still find music by word-of-mouth, or by browsing the machines on the network using Microsoft's Network Neighborhood tool. They can search the files on individual machines using the "Start->Find..." command in Microsoft Windows. All that Wake could do was speed the process --- it allegedly performed the equivalent function of searching all of the computers simultaneously, saving the user a lot of pointing, clicking, and typing. But it did nothing that a dedicated user could not do with time, or that a savvy user could not do with her own software. In modern versions of Microsoft Windows, a user does not even need copious spare time or technical know-how: Microsoft incorporated a network-wide search tool directly into Windows XP, which functions as a personal Wake-like system.
The defendant cannot be described as having converted Princeton's file-sharing network into an "emporium of music piracy" because for his alleged search service to even function, people must have been sharing files in advance. (They were; file sharing at Princeton started long before the defendant arrived in Fall 2001, as did the first Wake-like search service.) The Web would be useful in the absence of Google.com, but Google.com would be useless if no one placed web pages online. Likewise, the alleged file sharing on the Princeton network is independent of the existence of Wake. It existed before Wake, and we've no reason to presume that it stopped now that Wake was voluntarily shut down.
The Full Magilla: http://barillari.org/papers/peng/peng.html
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When in doubt, sue somebody
Mathew Ingram
Is your business in decline? Here's a good way to appeal to your prospective customers — sue their pants off. That way, instead of thinking of you and your
products as something desirable that they should pay for, they will instead be forced to buy your products out of shame and guilt, or as some kind of court- ordered settlement. If that approach strikes you as odd, you obviously don't work for the record industry.
Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America, a group dominated by the five major labels — Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI — launched simultaneous lawsuits against students at several universities for running networks that infringe on their music copyrights. The suits against students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic and Michigan Technical University are asking for $150,000 per file.
Given that the networks provided access to between 500,000 and one million files, the students named face potential damages of between $75-billion and $150-billion, if all of the files are found to be infringing. As a lawyer with the Electronic Freedom Foundation pointed out, that's more than the profit generated by the entire music industry since sheet music was created. At least one of the students wasn't even operating a file-swapping network — his service was simply a search engine.
Obviously, the record labels have no intention of collecting on these suits. Their plan is to convince students running file-sharing networks, and the universities that provide Internet access, that doing so isn't worth it. In that sense, the RIAA suit is the file-sharing equivalent of the 900-kilogram "bunker-busting" bombs the United States is using in Iraq — a way of trying to generate shock and awe in the enemy.
One of the problems with the record industry's approach to file-swapping is that term: the "enemy." The RIAA may not use that kind of language, but it's obvious from the way it treats file-sharing that the industry sees the majority of people who do so as the enemy. The dilemma is that the group the record labels have targeted for destruction is the same group that it relies on for its salvation — music fans.
The RIAA regularly releases reports about the decline in sales of compact discs and other music formats, and calculates how much money it is "losing" as a result of digital downloading, something it compares in its TV commercials to shoplifting and car-jacking. Presumably the $150,000-per-file figure it came up with in its recent lawsuits is based on a similar kind of calculation of the revenue that its member labels are "losing" when students choose to trade music files rather than buying CDs.
That kind of calculation, however, assumes that all of those students would have gone out and bought dozens of CDs if they hadn't been able to download songs. Is that a reasonable assumption? Maybe. Or maybe those students wouldn't have bought CDs anyway — in which case the industry hasn't lost a cent. If anything, the artists in question have gained as a result of the publicity their songs are getting by being traded. The people sharing all those files are the industry's core customers.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...th0408/GTStory
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Verizon Says Subpoena Process in Piracy Case Violates Constitution
Josh Long
In a fight with the recording industry over whether it should be required to divulge the names of its Internet customers, Verizon Communications Inc. is poised to make its case before an appeals court based on the First Amendment and an article of the Constitution designed to block abuse of the judicial system's authority.
The case pits the recording industry's battle to block piracy versus the desire of ISPs to protect the privacy of their customers and limit the number of names they are required to disclose to a third party.
The recording industry is winning the fight. A federal judge ruled in January Verizon must disclose the identity of a customer the Recording Industry Association of America alleges distributed more than 600 music files through peer-to-peer software without the permission of the copyright holders.
Verizon has its supporters, however, including the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In a filing with the appeals court, Juley Fulcher, director of public policy for the coalition, said the organization is worried an ex-spouse or other person with access to a victim's e-mail could request a subpoena through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and then find the battered women or children.
"We understand that the Recording Industry Association of America is concerned about the infringement of their members' copyrighted works. We believe, however, that even if one beating, rape or other harm occurs as a result of this subpoena process, the potential harm clearly outweighs whatever benefits are allowed under this process," Fulcher wrote.
http://www.phoneplusmag.com/hotnews/34h3145612.html
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Copy protected CDs: artists can be the losers
Staff
Music companies which use copy protection may be denying the artists under contract to them legitimate play time on radio stations, if the happenings at one outfit are any indication.
This radio station, which recently received its regular bag of freebies from EMI, finds that it is unable to play any of the CDs it received - the copy protection on the discs gets in the way.
EMI started issuing the copy-protected CDs in November last year. Many people have complained about them.
Record companies regularly send out free copies of most singles and hot albums hoping to get airplay on radio stations.
The station in question has no standalone CD players, just desktop PCs (all running Windows 2000) and a couple of old Denon CD Cart players.
"The CD tries to install some files to allow the PC to play the CD but my boss won't authorise the installation of these files because he has no technical info on the software,"
wrote the gentleman who let us know about this.
"And if we can't transfer the CD tracks to our digital playout system the CD ain't going to get any airplay at all!"
This won't help the career of Dave Bridie one bit - one of the CDs which landed at this station was Hotel Radio.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...962867084.html
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No Code Is Unbreakable - So What's Good Enough?
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier
Any computer security expert will confirm there is no such thing as unbreakable protection for networked systems. However, there are products and methods that are so time-consuming and computationally expensive to crack that they are "good enough" for all intents and purposes.
But how can an IT manager who is not a security guru tell the good from the bad? Fortunately, there are a number of ways to evaluate security products that do not require deep knowledge of computer security.
The first thing to watch out for are claims that cannot be met. As Forrester Research analyst Laura Koetzle told NewsFactor, "You can't claim unbreakable encryption technology." If a company is not honest in its advertising, it is generally a good idea to avoid doing business with that firm.
"It's just like buying any large consumer durable," Koetzle said. "Look for stuff that's too good to be true."
Bob Toxen, one of the original Berkeley Unix programmers, told NewsFactor that customers also should beware of fad technologies. "Somebody who claims their product is new and unique, it's probably snake oil."
In addition to bragging, companies trying to pass off shoddy security products usually are slow to show proof of their claims. When shopping for a new security solution, therefore, IT executives should look for a company that backs up its hype with detailed information on how its product works, what algorithms are used and how the product has been tested.
"Are they willing to talk about the algorithm and let other people analyze it?" Toxen said. "A good security expert will tell you the only thing that is confidential should be the passwords." If a company does not want to explain how its product works in detail, buyers should take a pass, he advised.
Toxen added that enterprises should shy away from becoming guinea pigs for new theories. "Don't use anything that hasn't been time-tested. People come up with an idea, and five years later there's a bug in the algorithm or in the code itself."
Another red flag to watch for, Koetzle noted, is prices that are out of sync with the rest of the market. Competitive pricing is fine, but if a product is priced at a fraction of its usual cost, this may be a warning sign. "If you see what's supposed to be a good off-the-shelf product, but the price is way below retail, chances are you're getting the one they got off the truck," she said. For example, when spammers advertise Norton Anti-Virus for below-retail prices, chances are good that the software is either bootlegged or outdated.
Koetzle also said buyers need to factor in update prices. "One thing people don't always think of [is that] with software products that need to be updated frequently, you want to make sure you don't get into a situation where you think you're getting the updates and you're not."
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21174.html
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Painted LEDs make screens simpler and potentially cheaper
Spread it on a surface, shine tiny spots of ultraviolet light on it, and voila, a certain type of plastic turns into a full-color, high- resolution, flexible flat screen display. The simple process could make computer screens much cheaper.
The German researchers made the displays by spreading light-emitting plastic, or polymer, molecules on a surface and exposing the polymers to spots of ultraviolet light.
The method could produce color screens that are comparable in quality to current flat screens, but are more rugged and require less power, according Klaus Meerholz, who conducted the research at Munich University in Germany and is now a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Cologne. The method allows for "flat panels with high brightness, extremely large viewing angle, and fast switching times," he said.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/0...en_040903.html
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Holographic Storage on the Horizon
Evan Koblentz
System administrators who perform nightly backups to optical or tape libraries may soon need to check their mirrors: a newer medium, holographic storage, is closer than it appears, component vendors say.
Holography stores data by using multiple light beams to create chemical reactions. The result is data that's smaller and more permanent than laser-induced ridges and valleys, and as fast or faster than magnetic electron flopping. For users, that means consolidation is possible due to higher capacities, and the chance of corruption during data restores decreases.
InPhase Technologies Inc. will announce progress on this front at the National Association of Broadcasters 2003 conference, next week in Las Vegas.
Bill Wilson, chief scientist at InPhase, of Longmont, Colo., said first-generation holographic drives would appear as standard interfaces to existing libraries and servers. It won't be until successive generations that existing storage technology will be able to exploit holographic data's unique characteristics, he told eWEEK in a recent interview. A basis for that second generation will be rewriteable media, which InPhase is working to develop as part of a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program. Explaining the challenge, Wilson said, "You want to have a material that's easy to write, you want to have a material that's easy to erase. Those two things are mutually exclusive."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,997039,00.asp
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Free content: Why not?
Greg Blonder
COMMENTARY--"Ripping" a copy of a friend's music CD, or grabbing a track from a Napster-like service on the Internet, is stealing, plain and simple.
Music fans, seeking to justify this casual act of larceny, claim they're really supporting an economic boycott of a usurious and uncreative music industry. "Cybershoplifting," reply the record companies, seizing the opportunity to impose their opaque and onerous copyright schemes on the listening public.
While the battle rages on, piling up legal fees and taking the joy out of music, a simpler solution is on the horizon. The best way to stem this tidal wave of thievery is to give the music away.
Free content, by itself, is not at all that unusual. Broadcast television is "free"--at least to the viewer-- courtesy of ad-supported subsidies, as are radio, many concerts and sporting events. But even those services commanding a fee today should become free tomorrow as the economics of music distribution take radical new shape.
To understand how, we would do well to look at a very different industry, but one with surprising parallels to music: 19th-century fuel delivery. In the late 1800s, when a tenant sought to warm a cold apartment, she had to buy her own coal from passing coal wagons and then haul it in coal buckets up to her fourth-floor kitchen. This apparently straightforward transaction brought with it considerable challenges for wagon drivers.
Theft was endemic. Stories abound of coal wagons stripped of half their load by street urchins before a first delivery could be made. Various solutions to improve security were proposed, including various patented coal locks. The ultimate solution, however, proved to be something quite different: a new distribution model that made coal theft irrelevant. It was called central heating.
Coal distributors sold their product efficiently in one large delivery to apartment landlords, at the same time removing the incentive for individual tenants to steal. Landlords could pass a significant part of the savings on to tenants in their bill for monthly rent. Everyone benefited, even the families of the coal- stealing urchins.
Similarly, it is the power of low-cost distribution, combined with subsidized free services, that will save and transform the music business. Stealing will become equally irrelevant.
It is the power of low-cost distribution, combined with subsidized free services, that will save and transform the music business.
To understand how, consider these statistics: The U.S. music industry collects $12 billion per year from CD sales to about 50 million active fans. That means each person spends an average of $250 per year to purchase around 15 albums a year.
Now, $250 per year is a very interesting number. By next year $250 will buy an MP3 player with a 100GB disk. That disk will hold over 2,000 CDs. Even strapping on headphones 15 hours a day, a listener would still need over four months to cruise through every track. For many people, 2,000 CDs is all the classical, jazz or rock music they will ever care to collect. For others, it's just about enough to fill a summer vacation with tunes. But it's a lot more than 15 CDs.
With these economics, distributing music on flashy plastic disks one album at a time seems, well, like heating your kitchen with coal. And $250 is not too high a price for a marketer--even those outside the music business--to spend acquiring customers, especially those dedicated fans holding an ad- supported player in their hand 15 hours a day.
Imagine the possibilities. Buy a new Kia? Get 1,000 albums with every car. Purchase a lifetime subscription to the Boston Symphony Orchestra? Receive an MP3 player with a library of the world's 2,000 most important classical music selections. Sign up for a new cellular contract? Get unlimited access to music from over 30,000 indie bands.
The economics are such that it would take only one leading company to break the music distribution mold. Among MP3 player makers, Apple Computer, with its pioneering iPod and remnant counter- culture customers, is one possibility. Sony--rumored to earn more from player hardware than from its own music division--is another. Or it might be a local brand in China, with less to lose.
A workable payment plan?
But how will artists and their agents and lawyers get paid? This time we can turn for answers not to coal distribution, but to an industry much closer to musicians' homes: the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP licenses, collects and redistributes music royalties from music performance venues (like radio stations, concert halls and so on) to the artists. It determines who gets paid what by polling these venues to see whose music gets played and how often.
To determine reimbursement in an MP3 player world, a small sample of users could be invited periodically to voluntarily, and anonymously share their listening history stored in the player. Then, just as in the ASCAP model, payments collected from the music player distributors (Kia, the BSO and the like) would be split among the copyright owners. No fuss, no complexity and no secret CD police.
And we consumers would finally have the freedom to play music where we want it, when we want it, how we want it.
This is the future of music, if anyone is listening.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-995332.html
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Are we free to copy DVDs?
Dawn C. Chmielewski
Software that allows consumers to make backup copies of their DVDs -- or unauthorized duplicates of any movie they rent from Blockbuster or
borrow from a friend -- has raised the ire of Hollywood studios, which claim it's nothing more than a tool for piracy.
The looming court battle between software maker 321 Studios and seven entertainment companies, to be heard this month in San Francisco, is more than just another chapter in the seemingly endless legal wrangling between Hollywood and technologists.
It could further define consumer rights in the digital age.
321 Studios and technology activists say the lawsuit -- which the software maker defensively initiated last April -- could establish the right of consumers to make personal copies of DVD movies they legitimately own, just as they do now with music CDs or computer software.
The studios say that's just a pretext to gain legitimacy for a $100 software product whose real value lies in cracking the copy protection on DVDs to make flawless bootlegs.
Attorneys for 321 Studios argue that the St. Louis company's products, ``DVD Copy Plus'' and `DVD X Copy'' (
www.321studios.com), say the software has perfectly legitimate uses.
DVDs are fragile objects that can be rendered unplayable by scratches and cracks. Consumers -- be they parents of small children known to use movie discs as Frisbees, or the adult son of a handicapped father who inadvertently drops and scratches the media -- have legitimate need to make backup copies of their DVDs, 321 Studios argues.
DVD X Copy is intended for these users -- and others who offered sworn legal statements in the case.
``This isn't about circumventing an access control mechanism. This is about whether you, in the privacy of your own home, can do what you want with what you already own,'' said Elizabeth Sedlock, 321 Studios chief marketing officer. ``I can buy Picasso today, cut it to ribbons and paint all over it . . . There's nothing that I own that I cannot do anything I want with, except a DVD.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/5549446.htm
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100 million copyproof CDs sold?
John Borland
Copy-resistant CDs may still be scarce in the United States, but signs are growing that the technology is becoming increasingly mainstream elsewhere and may finally break into the American market this year.
Silicon Valley company Macrovision said Wednesday that its anticopying technology had now been applied to more than 100 million CDs worldwide, the bulk of them released in Europe and Japan. Over the last six months, the company has seen shipments of 10 million discs a month distributed across those markets, it said.
"People are getting used to the idea (in those areas,)" Macrovision CEO Bill Krepick said. "I think the sense is that consumers in those countries tend to be a little less vocal than American consumers."
Technology companies touting copy-protection wares--and, to a lesser extent, record labels themselves--have been promising for two years the impending release of CDs shielded against unauthorized computer copying. But the progress of the technology to market, particularly in the United States, has been slow and bumpy, and the technology companies themselves have repeatedly been forced to retrench and rethink their techniques.
Early versions of the technology rendered albums unplayable in many CD players or computers, even breaking some machines. Several versions of copy-protection technology proved to be easily broken, some using tools as low-tech as a felt-tip pen. In addition, record label concerns about universal playability and consumer reaction have helped slow the CDs' pace to market substantially.
The development of so-called second session technology, which allows two versions of the same album to be stored on the same CD, has helped win label support, however. When this technique is used, the ordinary CD music files are accompanied by a music file--typically an encrypted MP3 or Windows Media Audio file--meant to be copied to and stored on a computer hard drive. Most, if not all, future copy-protected discs are expected to contain this type of computer-ready file.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-995273.html
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RIAA Wants Rudy Guliani For Top Job
Tim Arango
The music industry would like to lure Giuliani to head the Recording Industry Association of America, sources tell The Post.
That might be wishful thinking, however.
A spokesman for the former mayor and possible future presidential candidate said Giuliani has not been approached about the job and that he is "committed to advancing our clients' interests at [consulting firm] Giuliani Partners."
Meanwhile, Hilary Rosen, who announced in January that she would step down as head of the RIAA by the end of the year, is leaving her post June 30, sources tell The Post.
A spokeswoman for the RIAA confirmed that Rosen will be leaving at the end of June, which is when her contract runs out, but said that she will remain available as a consultant until the end of the year.
The organization is expected to name a replacement by early June, sources say.
Cary Sherman, RIAA's president, is one likely candidate, although some music industry sources say the organization is seeking a prominent Republican with extensive political connections.
Rosen, a Democrat, has served as head of the RIAA since 1998.
http://nypost.com/business/56129.htm
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Committee Wants DRM Attached to all Wi-Fi Transmissions
Jackson Pratt
A Bar Association group with the somewhat Orwellian name of
The Committee on New Information Technologies has proposed permanent and unalterable Digital Rights Management markers be attached to every Wi-Fi transmission in order to track and ultimately control the movement of copyrighted material.
“At the present time, virtually all computer-based communication systems involve moving bits from a source to one or more destinations (in the latter case this may occur by broadcast or selective multi-cast as well as multiple one-to-one interactions) without regard to the meaning of the bits being communicated. For purposes of content identification, it would be most useful and practical to identify content at higher levels than either 802.3 or 802.11 now appears to allow. For example, if content capable of being independently identified and processed was present in the form of a digital object, i.e., structured data having an associated unique persistent identifier, then it would be possible to track content at various points in the communications pathway, or even identify transaction records at such points. However, since actual content may be encrypted in different networks or, more generally, in different information systems, explicit arrangements would have to be made with the system operators to leave the identifier field in the clear (if, indeed, the 802.11 standard would allow this when encryption is used), or to trust various intermediary systems along the way that see the content in the clear to extract the identifiers for the purpose of content identification and processing.”
Cory Doctorow writes “This is one of the most clueless documents I've ever read. It appears that the Bar Association believes that WiFi networks are essentially tools for infringing on copyright, with a grudging admission that offices find them useful sometimes.
“They conclude that 802.11 should be redesigned to accomodate DRM (which they sometimes call ‘DMR’), though they don't really understand how DRM works. My co-worker Seth Schoen characterized the report as reading like it was cut-and-pasted from DRM-vendors' press-releases, and it draws nonsensical conclusions about incompatible technologies, which he says is like saying 'to protect the environment, we should get recyclable toner cartridges for our manual typewriters.'"
That this is being proposed for the benefit a special interest group yet cannot be accomplished without harming the entire wireless internet seems to be lost on the proponents. It’s reminiscent of the time the content guys wanted to “close the Internet” back in the 90’s.
Word doc
http://craphound.com/Committee_703_Mid-Winter_Re.DOC
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Online File Sharing Thrives in USA
comScore Networks reports that despite growth in most sectors of consumer e-commerce, online sales of recorded music in the USA have continued to decline sharply for three consecutive quarters. At the same time, millions of Internet users continue to use online file-sharing services even as some of these applications have vanished.
The comScore analysis - based on the actual online activity of more than 1.5 million representative Internet users - shows that 2002 online music sales through the third quarter were $545 million, down 25 percent from the $730 million spent over the same period last year. In fact, the decline in online sales of recorded music has accelerated throughout 2002, with sales declining versus year-ago by 12 percent, 28 percent and 39 percent in the first, second and third quarters of 2002, respectively. In contrast, online sales of all products (excluding auctions) increased 30 percent, 28 percent and 30 percent over the same three quarters.
The decline in online music sales far exceeds the decline in overall shipments of recorded music as recently reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). While the RIAA reported in August 2002 that total U.S. music shipments dropped seven percent in the first half of 2002 versus the first half of 2001 ($5.93 billion versus $5.53 billion), comScore data shows that online sales of music fell 20 percent (from $531 million to $424 million) over the same period.
‘The music industry attributes the decline in online and offline music sales to a variety of factors, such as a slow economy, fewer hit songs, piracy, CD-burning and file-swapping among others,’ said Peter Daboll, division president of comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks. ‘While a host of factors inevitably impact consumer behaviour, the greater sales decline online as reported by comScore would suggest that Internet file-swapping and CD-burning are having a severe negative impact on music sales among Internet users.’
After the fall of legendary file-swapping pioneer Napster, comScore data shows that U.S. consumers quickly flocked to numerous alternatives, including Kazaa and Morpheus. Each of the latter two increased its average monthly U.S. home user base from less than one million in the second quarter of 2001 to 4.6 million and 7.1 million, respectively, in the first quarter of 2002. By the close of the third quarter of 2002, Kazaa had built an impressive following of 9.4 million average monthly U.S. home users.
‘comScore Media Metrix will continue to report online purchases of music as well as usage of file- swapping,’ concluded Daboll. ‘In addition, we'll be conducting more in-depth analyses and looking at key online segments such as the university population, an audience which our data show contains many heavy users of file-swapping services.’
http://www.mrons.com/drno/news1980.htm
SoulSeek To Improve Traffic Handling
Paul Rotello
SoulSeek people say a new version of the app will have protocols allowing connected network nodes to handle search requests more efficiently than at present. As a proto-decentralized Peer-To-Peer, SoulSeek seeks a balance between server and client to achieve performance that’s better than using just one or the other. So far the major problem has been search requests collapsing after about 100 results. The update will change the way information is communicated from the server to the nodes that in time should translate into wider and deeper search returns.
Progress:
http://slsk.blogspot.com/
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File-sharing of music is theft minus the rivalry
Paul Kedrosky
The big bust has begun. This week the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for the first time brought lawsuits against four U.S. university students for setting up "music-sharing networks" at their respective universities.
While the four students are getting sympathy for being made examples of when so many others are doing the same thing, it is easy to see why the RIAA is getting aggressive. The music industry is moribund, and piracy is in large part to blame. Global music sales fell 10% last year, and they will likely fall at least another 6% this year. So far this year U.S. album sales are down about 9% from the lousy levels of 2002.
Some are fond of arguing that poor product is to blame. But that is a hard charge to defend. The music industry produces as much music as ever, perhaps more. Long-time top artists are still producing product, and new artists are rising to prominence all the time. The trouble is, no one wants to pay to play.
And that has consequences. Sony Corporation, the largest music company in the world, recently announced a major restructuring of its music business.
And the music units at most of Sony's rivals -- including AOL Time Warner Inc., Bertelsmann AG, Vivendi Universal and EMI Group -- are generally thought to either be for sale, or looking at purchasing others labels.
Where do things go from here? For starters, everyone can stop pretending that they're on the side of goodness and light.
The consumer lie is obvious: calling music theft "file-sharing." Yes, music in digital form is, as economists like to say, non-rivalrous -- that is, my using it doesn't prevent you from using it, nor does my usage necessarily make your usage any worse.
So while you might want to call file-shares on their slippery language, and point out that car-jackers would similarly be thought of as gentle car-sharers, there is a difference. And that difference is that music is non-rivalrous and car-jacking isn't. If you steal my car it either prevents me from using it, or, if I am still unhappily in the car at the time, it almost certainly degrades my car-using experience.
Within reason, almost all information goods are non-rivalrous -- you can e-mail 100 copies of this column to friends and it doesn't make it any easier or harder to read. But that doesn't mean that "sharing" non-rivalrous goods therefore is absolved of the taint of theft. It's still piracy, even if it doesn't feel like it.
So that is one lie, the consumer lie that they're just sharing files. Or as it's sometimes put, the idea that file-sharing is really all about sampling music toward future purchase. As the most recent recording industry data makes clear, there is a lot of sampling going on and there hasn't exactly been a tsunami of subsequent purchasing, yet people still seemingly listen to music.
But consumers aren't the only ones lying. So is the music industry. After all, it persists in claiming that the trouble is purely one of piracy. It isn't. As a Sony executive pointed out recently in a controversial speech, part of the problem is an ossified music industry that wants to continue doing things the way it always has. It has always distributed music as collections of songs -- sometimes as an album, more recently as a CD -- so it fights stubbornly to continue distributing music that way.
http://www.nationalpost.com/financia...4E9E1E1F9FB%7D
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Businesses Plan for the Unexpected
Steve Lohr
STEP back from the war in Iraq for a few moments, if possible. The larger picture — a struggling global economy and no shortage of geopolitical tensions — looks pretty dicey. Now, imagine that events veer toward something close to a worst case. What are the implications, and how could companies cope in such an environment?
Here are some excerpts from the gloom-and-doom script: Japan goes bankrupt. Al Qaeda cements alliances with Palestinian extremists and sets off a series of terrorist attacks, mostly in Israel, hoping to create a political split in the Western alliance to thwart Qaeda-sponsored terrorism.
There are more: The belief in globalization as a benevolent economic force is shaken further, rendering the International Monetary Fund and World Bank all but irrelevant. In the United States, a new government organization, the Home Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, is created to set the national agenda for technology research, shifting the emphasis from ubiquitous computing and biotechnology to focus on the security economy. Meanwhile, major cracks develop in the world legal order protecting intellectual property rights, threatening the livelihoods of companies like I.B.M., Microsoft and Merck.
"It's all completely plausible," insisted Steven Weber, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who wrote the pessimistic, if plausible, story line for the workshop.
A higher-risk world could require the rethinking of many tenets of conventional business wisdom. The canons of globalization included shopping the world for low-cost parts, developing tighter relationships with fewer suppliers, and deploying an itinerant corps of key managers and engineers who were willing to travel anywhere on a moment's notice to meet a customer or solve a problem. Those assumptions would all be challenged if more developing nations, in particular, became politically unstable.
Another arena of possible instability, according to the scenario planners, is intellectual property rights. For Mr. Weber, the crisis in the music industry over digital piracy and file-sharing software is just the beginning of the problem, which he says goes beyond the entertainment industry. Hollywood, software publishers and pharmaceutical companies have all assumed that the United States government, through international trade agreements, would be the trusted world policeman enforcing intellectual property rights.
Yet Mr. Weber points to what happened when worries over anthrax and bioterrorism surfaced in October 2001. After the Canadian government overrode Bayer's patent for Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax, some senators said the United States should follow Canada's lead. The Bush administration resisted and anthrax fears soon waned.
The incident, however, should be unnerving to corporations whose businesses are deeply dependent on intellectual property protection, Mr. Weber says.
"The conceptual and political foundation for intellectual property rights is really insecure," said Mr. Weber, who is writing a book on open source software — code that is distributed for free.
Already, some legal scholars have advocated that the duration of most forms of intellectual property protection should be shortened. What, Mr. Weber asks, might be the effect on intellectual-property companies like Microsoft, I.B.M. or Merck?
"It has the potential to be a bit like the crash in the telecommunications business," he observed. "Is there is an I.P. bubble in technology companies? There could be."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/te...rtne r=GOOGLE
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Hacking Kazaa
One programmer has done it. The recording industry could learn something from this guy.
Jimmy Guterman
Kazaa has far surpassed the late Napster as the leading file-sharing service on the Net. With more than 200 million having downloaded its Media Desktop program, it's everything that Napster was and more: Its peer-to-peer network is more reliable, its search functionality is more precise, and it can work with a broader set of file types (not just music but also video, images, documents, and software).
Of course, describing Kazaa that way is like describing the high-tech attributes of a weapons system without mentioning that its purpose is to kill people. Developed in the wake of Napster, Kazaa was intended to provide a way for people to acquire copyrighted music files without paying for them. Needless to say, the recording industry isn't fond of this kind of distribution scheme and reaches into its legal arsenal to defend itself. That's why the original company sold the program and why Kazaa's current owner, Sharman Networks, is based in either Australia or Vanuatu, depending on which Sharman press release you believe. With the Napster case as precedent, Sharman will probably have to close down Kazaa one day -- various industry organizations (in particular, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America) and Sharman are now swapping lawsuits -- and a federal judge in California has ruled that the suit against Sharman can proceed. When Sharman goes away, something else will spring up: As I write this, some 3.8 million people are connected to the service and more than 800 million files are being shared. Future attempts to capture this huge audience are inevitable.
The recording industry's complaints aside, the most annoying thing about Sharman has been its practice of embedding programs in the free Kazaa software to make money, everything from popup ads to spyware that tracks Internet behavior. So Shaun Garriock, an enterprising programmer from Scotland, came up with Kazaa Lite, a program that removes the adware and spyware from the system. In recent months, Kazaa Lite has actually surpassed the official version in quality, adding crucial new features and exterminating several of the original's nasty bugs. It shows that even renegade programs on the Net can be altered and improved by other renegades (and renegades with more altruistic motives, at that).
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,48716,00.html
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SGI Delivers Infinite Structure for Broadcast, Production and Broadband Industries at NAB 2003
Press Release
At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, Nev., April 7-10, SGI (NYSE: SGI - News) will be demonstrating powerful solutions in booth SL3868 that put information technology (IT) to work for broadcasters, post-production professionals and broadband businesses. SGI® data management solutions transform a slow, video-based workflow into an effective dataflow. This dataflow unites a facility's entire operations through the SGI® CXFS(TM) shared filesystem with a storage area network (SAN) -- enabling the secure sharing of video as data files across high-speed networks. For broadcasters, that means getting news to air faster. For post-production professionals, it means moving multiple film or video resolution projects through their facilities simultaneously. Overall, the SGI digital data IT infrastructure can improve a staff's productivity and profitability.
"Broadcasters and post-production professionals are just beginning to see the advantages of IT, of a digital data infrastructure. They're finding that just transitioning from analog to digital video is not enough," said Chris Golson, senior director of Media Industries, SGI. "As a computing company, what sets SGI apart from our competitors is that we also understand the world of video. We're able to develop interoperability between the worlds of data and video that is of great benefit to our customers."
This infinite structure is based on the SGI® XFS(TM) filesystem, a robust, high-performance, 64-bit filesystem able to scale up to 18 million terabytes. That's thousands of years of 50Mb broadcast material or nine million uncompressed movies at full 2K resolution. Although filesystems routinely impose limitations on broadcasters and post facilities, the SGI filesystem provides an essentially limitless growth path. File transfer speed will not be an issue either. Multiple Fibre Channel connections have already allowed SGI users to achieve 12GB per second of aggregate throughput. That kind of bandwidth will allow broadcasters and post-production facilities to expand, secure in the knowledge that they won't be outgrowing their data infrastructure for years to come. The XFS file- journaling technology guarantees high reliability and restarts in less than one second after an unexpected interruption, regardless of the number of files it manages.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030404/sff011_1.html
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Movielink tagged with patent suit
Stefanie Olsen
Film-rental site Movielink, a joint venture of five Hollywood movie studios, is being sued for patent infringement by a video technology company, in a case that could have far-flung ramifications on the video-on-demand market.
USA Video Technology, based in Delaware, Conn., filed suit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Movielink, a video-on-demand service that USA Video says violates its patent rights for an online movie delivery system.
USA Video, a unit of USA Video Interactive, was awarded the patent, called "Store and Forward Video System," in July 1992; it broadly covers a method for Internet users to request and receive "a digitized video program for storage and viewing," according to the complaint. Movielink, which sells digital copies of films for download from its five partners including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Viacom's Paramount Pictures, violates this patent on the basis of its service, the complaint says.
USA Video does not operate a competing service to Movielink or others in the VOD industry, rather it develops and sells Net media delivery services and systems. But the plaintiff's attorney said that the patent rights could affect many other such VOD offerings. USA Video chose to file suit against Movielink because of the breadth of its content and service, said Erik B. Cherdak, plaintiff attorney at Steptoe & Johnson.
"This case is ripe now because the content is available and the legal landscape permits (an online movie rental service)," he said. "And the technology permits bandwidth that allows movies to be downloaded practically."
"The reality is this case has far-reaching affects on whether the corner video store will remain as a going concern in the future," he said, referring to greater movement toward delivering video programming over the Internet or IP (Internet protocol) networks.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-996442.html
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Another Egregious Super-DMCA Provision
Edward W. Felten
I have written before about the danger posed by the Super-DMCA's ban on concealing the origin or destination of communication. I want to turn your attention now to a much more egregious provision of these bills -- the ban on devices and information.
Here is the relevant portion of the MPAA's model legislative language:
Any person commits an offense if he knowingly:
...
(4) possesses, uses, prepares, distributes, sells, gives, transfers or offers, promotes or advertises for sale, use or distribution any:
...
(ii) material, including hardware, cables, tools, data, computer software or other information or equipment ... for use in the manufacture, assembly or development of an unlawful access device; ...
The term at the end, "manufacture, assembly or development of an unlawful access device", is defined this way:
To [...] or modify, alter, program or reprogram any instrument, device, machine, equipment, technology or software so that it is capable of defeating or circumventing any technology, device or software used by the provider, owner or licensee of a communication service, or of any data, audio or video programs or transmissions, to protect any such communication, data, audio or video services, programs or transmissions from unauthorized receipt, interception, acquisition, access, decryption, disclosure, communication, transmission or re- transmission, or to knowingly assist others in those activities.
Note the breadth of this language -- to be in violation, the device need only be
capable of circumventing a measure that somebody uses to protect their data from unauthorized receipt, interception, acquisition, access, decryption, disclosure, communication, transmission or re-transmission.
This is stunning in its overbreadth. Any device that is even
capable of illegal uses is banned, and even
information that could be used to build such a device is banned.
This would appear to make most computer security research illegal, since it would be illegal to even talk about how somebody might to try defeat a security measure. As a computer security researcher, I consider that a big problem. In this case, though, that problem is small potatoes compared to the greater harm this part of the bill would do.
As a thought experiment, let's try applying this approach to the regulation of non-technological goods. Imagine that it was illegal to make, use, or distribute "material ... or information" that was "capable of" being used in a violent attack on another person.
In such a world, virtually all knives would be illegal. Ditto for screwdrivers or any other pointy objects. Hammers are out, too, along with all other blunt, heavy objects, including even rocks. Vehicles are probably out too, since they are capable of being used to attack someone. I could go on, but you get the picture.
Even information about how to make or use any of these dangerous devices would be banned.
Last week I asked my class if they could think of any technological tools that are capable of only illegal uses, or of only legal uses. They were hard pressed to think of any. That's the nature of tools -- they're designed to be flexible and to admit a wide variety of uses. To ban every tool that might possibly be used illegally, and to ban even information about such tools, is simply madness.
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000350.html
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Radio Stations Can't Play Crippled Music Disks
Richard Menta
Here is a story out of Australia that I picked up on the wire. Something that should give the record industry pause.
A few days back we wrote about how Arista records made the committment to ship all of their CDs with copy-protection to prevent their being played on PCs. Their notion is to stop users from ripping tracks to trade online. The problem we had about this scheme is that it will only distant consumers from CDs, because they won't work as expected. For many, that expectation is to play in the background on the computer as people do their job.
But working stiffs are not the only ones who have turned to the PCs as their music conduit. Many radio stations have integrated PC systems to play tracks over the air.
The Age is reporting that radio stations are finding that they are unable to play copy-protected CDs on the air. So what are they doing about it? Simple, the CD go into the wastebasket rather than get much-needed air play.
"...if we can't transfer the CD tracks to our digital playout system the CD ain't going to get any airplay at all!" said an unamed radio jock.
Radio stations in the states have also incorporated computers to serve the daily rotation. Just the other day I was listening to college radio station WRSU and the DJ was lamenting how the only place he was able to get a hold of the latest Third Eye Blind single "Blinded" was to download it from the Net. This is not unusual, the MP3 format offers radio stations quite a bit of time saving convenience in organizing and selecting tracks for airplay.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/crippled.html
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Hail to the Online Thieves
Bands can't prevent bootlegging, but they can control it more than they have so far.
Jimmy Guterman
Let's say you front a big-time rock 'n' roll band, and you've just spent the better part of a year sweating out your most recent record. It's more or less finished, and you're now in postproduction: approving art, planning a tour, getting ready to present the fruits of your labor to your large audience.
Then you find out that your large audience has it already.
This has actually happened recently -- more than once. The release of Eminem's last record, for example, was pushed forward because music-download site Kazaa had become overrun with free copies. A number of high-profile performers have even started shrink-wrapping "bonus" DVDs to their regular CD releases, because DVDs are, so far, harder to copy and share online than CDs.
Premature online album-sharing is currently hitting Radiohead in a particularly blunt way. Late last week, full copies of the band's Hail to the Thief, planned for release in mid-June, began floating around the usual online sources. At first the group seemed mostly unconcerned. Guitarist Johnny Greenwood's blithe reaction said it all: "We're not angry, really. Shame it's not a package with the artwork and all, but there you go. I feel bemused, though, not annoyed. I'm glad people like it, most of all. It's a little earlier than we'd expected, but there it is."
A day later, Greenwood had apparently reconsidered his statement, saying he and his bandmates were "pissed off" that "stolen recordings of early work" were being circulated.
Artists and their labels want to control content, and they deserve to. They created it and/or paid for the creation of it. Even in the pre- Napster era, record companies worked hard to keep to a minimum the number of advance copies circulating. (In 1992, I edited a music magazine based in New Hampshire, and I had to send an editor down to New York to sit in a conference room and listen to the latest Nirvana album for review, because the record company wouldn't part with the tape.) Desire for control is nothing new.
But I wonder whether events such as the premature Radiohead unveiling might encourage more bands to embrace the "beta" aesthetic that pervades the Net. On the software side, every company from Microsoft (MSFT) down to the shareware guy next door posts early, beta versions of software for comment. There's a notion on the Net that fixing something in public is a good thing.
Performers seem to agree. The songs on Hail to the Thief are far from new to Radiohead fans; most of them have been played before audiences, and copies of those live versions have been around the Net for months. There's probably little loss of income for the band: Anyone devoted enough to download audience-recorded live versions of a song by a favorite group will surely purchase a professionally made take. These early live outings are, in essence, the beta versions, worked out in front of audiences before they're cut in a studio. What Radiohead is demanding, however, is an environment in which it can release such test versions but control the distribution completely.
That simply isn't possible anymore. Even if a digital-rights management scheme that actually works should arrive, there is no way to prevent someone from sneaking a tiny recorder into a concert or recording studio. Radiohead may be pissed off, but that's the rule now. So why not accept it and use it to their advantage? Beta versions of software become irrelevant when finalized versions ship; Radiohead and others could agree to release early versions of songs as similar stopgaps, to keep their most devoted fans satisfied.
http://www.business2.com/articles/we...,48598,00.html
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Un-public domain
Will DRM and the challenges to fair use spell the end for your local library?
Ed Foster
It was a very strange experience. I’ll admit that it had been awhile since I’d visited my local library, so I was totally unprepared -- even after our recent discussion about books vs. software -- for how much it had changed.
The first change would have been hard to miss: I found the entryway to the stacks blocked by a turnstile. When I tried to push through it, an LED panel flashed “Insert Library Card” next to a small slot at the side. My tattered, old library card didn’t look as if it would fit, and indeed, it was rejected when I tried to insert it. “Access to Reading Room Denied -- See New Accounts Desk,” the LED flashed.
Looking around, I saw signs leading me to a door I’d never seen before marked “New Accounts.” Inside, a well-dressed young lady greeted me so warmly that at first I thought she must be somebody I knew.
“What can we do for you today?” she asked, and I produced my old card. With professional restraint, she suppressed a smirk over this relic and proceeded to reveal the wonderful benefits my new library account would provide. Although I didn’t understand what a lot of the features she touted had to do with a library -- being able to use my Blockbuster card to get videos at the library seemed an incongruous benefit -- I agreed to sign up.
“Great!” she enthused. “I’ll just need to see a photo ID and a major credit card.” As I handed them over, she was not amused by my little joke about how the library must be taking overdue fines pretty seriously to ask for a credit card. She proceeded to have me sign an array of Terms of Service, Acceptable Use, and Privacy Policy documents.
“Just one more,” she finally said. “Initial this here and here to show that you agree your use of all lending library materials will be governed by the appropriate Microsoft End User License Agreement.”
She must have misunderstood, I said. I wasn’t there to get any software. I just wanted to borrow a few books for springtime reading. Why would I need to agree to a Microsoft EULA for that?
“It’s just a formality,” she assured me. “Microsoft provides the Digital Rights Management technology we use to protect the intellectual property rights of all the authors and artists represented here. So it’s really just an umbrella agreement that allows them to update that technology as needed. I’m sure you understand.”
The full satire -
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...13gripe_1.html
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Library Groups Say Sweeping State Copyright Laws Could Stifle Teaching and Research
Andrea Foster
Academic-library groups are denouncing copyright-protection bills that legislatures in several states are considering. The groups say that the bills, if they became law, could erode fair-use rights even more than the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the controversial federal law that makes it illegal to bypass technologies designed to protect digital works.
The state bills are based on model legislation pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America and cable operators and programmers. The legislation would amend state telecommunications and cable-security laws to prevent digital piracy. But the bills' wording is so sweeping that it could become illegal to view or copy radio, television, or Internet material without communications providers' express permission, says Jonathan Band, a Washington lawyer who represents the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the American Library Association.
Under the model legislation, theft of a communications service could be defined as encompassing a broad range of activities, including "the receipt, interception, disruption, and transmission" of broadcast works, says Mr. Band.
He helped the library groups draft a letter last week to Colorado and Arkansas legislators. The letters warn lawmakers that the antitheft bills could stifle encryption research, security testing, and reverse engineering, a procedure that allows users to take apart and fix defects in software.
"While digital piracy is a serious problem," the letter to the Colorado Senate reads, "some of the proposed amendments will undermine the ability of libraries to provide important information services."
Mr. Band says the state bills could also disrupt the ability of scholars to assemble databases from Web material.
The letters were sent to Colorado and Arkansas legislators because those states are furthest along in considering the antitheft legislation, says Mr. Band. But Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are also considering the legislation, according to Edward W. Felten, a Princeton University computer scientist who has been tracking the state bills, which he calls "super-DMCA" bills.
Mr. Felten is well known for his unsuccessful lawsuit against the recording industry and the U.S. Justice Department, in which he argued that the digital- copyright law is unconstitutional. That case was dismissed in November 2001 (The Chronicle, December 14, 2001).
Mr. Band says bills similar to the model legislation already have been signed into law in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Illinois, and Michigan. He says it's unclear whether the federal digital-copyright law trumps related state laws, which might make them less of a worry.
http://chronicle.com/free/2003/04/2003040101t.htm
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French Libraries
miladus
The French parliament just approved a new law that will pay publishers and authors for each book borrowed from a library. The government will reimburse publishers 1.50 € for each registered library user (1 € for each registered student). The money is to be shared equally between publishers and authors. Libraries will also pay an extra 6% when purchasing a book in order to cover 'borrowing benefits'.
Full details here (in French).
http://www.assemblee-nat.fr/12/dossi...bliotheque.asp
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article....55&mode=thread
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International ring of theft?
Calif. government condemns online music, film piracy
AP
The state Assembly unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday condemning online piracy and the growing practice of free downloading associated with lost sales in the music and film business.
The resolution asks parents to teach children that "file-sharing" is the same as stealing. It also requests that businesses, government and colleges with high-speed Internet networks discourage downloading with new policies and technical obstacles.
"In the next 24 hours, millions of Internet users will illegally download copyrighted music, games, software, films and other images," said Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, D-Saratoga.
The resolution's author, Cohn cited music industry estimates that piracy costs it $4.3 billion a year. The film industry reports illegal downloading costs $3 billion in annual losses.
Media analysts say up to 61 million Americans use Internet services such as Kazaa to download music, films and software.
"This international ring of theft has now become larger than the industries it violates," said Cohn, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media.
The resolution now goes to the Senate for consideration.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...f-piracy_x.htm
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Record labels face legislators' scrutiny
Jim Wasserman
SACRAMENTO -- Record companies plagued by steadily declining sales now face legislation, both in California and in New York, that will attack contract and accounting practices.
Last year, California legislators convened hearings involving disgruntled recording artists and their record companies. The artists said the industry had cheated them; the record executives complained about spoiled superstars.
Stars, including Carole King, Montel Jordan, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, and the Backstreet Boys' Kevin Richardson, complained of short earnings and long contracts. Clint Black, the country singer, said he owed his label money, although he had sold millions of records. Merle Haggard has made similar charges of underreported royalties.
No laws were passed in California, and two major music firms pledged to reform their dealings with artists. But state Senator Kevin Murray, a former music agent who led last year's attack, is introducing four bills this year that would change how the industry signs and pays its artists.
''I still think a lot of this is ripe for discussions with the companies and the artists,'' Murray said of the industry, which employs 28,000 Californians.
Murray's bills aim generally to toughen penalties for companies that underpay recording artists. The bills also provide greater access to internal accounting within labels. Murray would also modernize and simplify royalty accounting methods, some of which date to vinyl albums.
The new bills are coming due as falling sales are shaking the industry. New York-based Nielsen SoundScan says the music business sold 104 million fewer CDs and cassettes in 2002 than in 2000.
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said Murray's bills had hurt an industry that has seen artists and their labels fighting piracy and illegal downloading.
''Collectively, industry artists and labels alike are seeing layoffs, retail stores closing, double-digit sales declines; and that impacts the economics of everybody,'' Sherman said.
Stung by criticism last year from stars such as Hole's Courtney Love and the Eagles' Don Henley, and unsettled by attacks on the industry's financial integrity, two of the music industry's biggest players, the French-owned Universal Music Group and the German-owned Bertelsmann Music Group, have floated some reforms similar to those proposed by Murray.
Both firms are considering ideas to simplify industry accounting methods, to become more receptive to outside audits, and, for the first time, to tell artists the number of CDs they've manufactured. For years musicians have never been given the numbers. This has led many to suspect that some CDs bring them no money.
''There does seem to be a change in the wind in terms of attitude,'' said Donald Passman, a Beverly Hills music lawyer and author of the book ''All You Need to Know About the Music Business.''
But Passman, like others who interact with a recording industry dominated by five global giants, said it's too early to tell if anything is really happening.
A California auditor, Fred Wolinsky, said he has yet to see any records from CD manufacturers for his artist clients. ''I'll believe it when I see them,'' he said.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/09...crutiny+.shtml
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Microsoft's digital media mogul
Joe Wilcox
The head of Microsoft's digital media division has a problem. Should he watch the college basketball finals on television or online?
The dilemma for Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media, comes because Yahoo's new subscription service is using, in part, Windows Media technology to stream the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament online.
The Windows Digital Media division is one of Microsoft's most influential--and controversial--product groups. Critics have slammed Microsoft for giving away valuable digital media technologies, much the same way it did during its browser battle against Netscape Communications. At the same time, the division is wooing customers on the merits of Windows Media 9 Series, which introduces new capabilities such as digital music with 5.1-channel surround sound.
The group's greatest challenge, however, may not be in responding to competitors or critics but in attracting content creators and consumers. At the heart of Microsoft's digital media strategy is digital rights management (DRM) technology that could advance the distribution of online digital content.
As Fester explains to CNET News.com, finding the right balance between the demands of content creators and the expectations of consumers is a tough task.
Q: Some critics charge Microsoft has an unfair market advantage by using Windows as a distribution platform for digital media technology.
A: Digital media is and has been a feature of both Windows and (Apple Computer's) Mac OS for over a decade. Microsoft is delivering a platform that enables software developers and content providers to create their own digital media solutions. With our new licensing program for Windows Media 9 Series codecs, we expand that ability to non-Windows platforms, applications and devices.
We rely on developers and third parties to keep making great products based on our technology and grow the digital ecosystem. The fact that there are over 500 software solutions, services and devices in so many areas using Windows Media and other technologies is great proof of the opportunities that exist, and that many in the industry recognize.
Other companies wouldn't give away valuable DRM technology with the goal of recouping the technology investment through another product like Windows; they might sell it.
We sell Windows, and DRM is part of its overall value. It is really complementary to other types of security we have created in the operating system. Just like we have deep file-level security in Windows today, this is similar. Yet it also extends that protection as media travels across machines or over the Internet. In order for digital media to be a viable solution for the content industry, they require DRM to be a part of the platform. In order to build a healthy digital media ecosystem--with great content from content providers who can continually get paid for their work and consumers who demand great content--we built the DRM building blocks in Windows.
Last year, a research paper called "Dark Net," which was independently produced by some Microsoft researchers, concluded that DRMs would never succeed in the marketplace, that consumers won't ever stop file trading. What's your response to this conclusion?
This does not reflect the position of Microsoft, and that was not the conclusion of that paper. Just because piracy continues to exist does not mean there is no point in developing content protection solutions. It's critical for the IT and content industries to recognize that while legitimate content will compete with stolen goods, legitimate content distribution can thrive with a good balance of sound technology, easy access to a broad range of content that consumers really want, and the ability to take that content with you on devices while still providing a fair exchange of value to the owner for it.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082-994933.html
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Massachusetts Super DMCA Hearing: Report
Derek Slater
First, I should mention that I have notes from the first hour and a half here. Sadly, I had to miss the rest. But I managed to catch John Palfrey's rousing speech and many other fantastic presentations (John's also got comments here[speech below – js.]). Given the amount of people there, I assume that the hearing went on for several more hours.
Now, onto my thoughts and feelings:
It was a good day in the copyfight
At least, that's my impression. I'd say around 20 people, maybe 25, showed up to oppose the bill. We filled the room and the committee's minds. It seemed like the state representatives understood that this bill was very problematic because of vague language. They also seemed to understand that the bill's content in general, in its target and its tactics, is troubling. They want to ensure law enforcement is effective, but they get that there's something wrong here.
They knew we were coming, too. Before the hearing, some committee members were speaking with an MPAA rep about the stir this has caused and the bill's really vague language. One of them said something to the effect of, "Professor Felten stirred up those bloggers." I was surprised that he even knew what a blogger was. Certainly, he used that mildly insulting tone that some people use when their talking about political activism - the "oh, those meddling kids are back again" tone. At the same time, his tone seemed to indicate that this band of security experts, privacy defenders, geeks, programmers, lawyers, businessmen, students, and copyfighters was actually being recognized as a coherent group. We are a set of people with a common set of concerns. We can and will mobilize effectively and quickly. You can count on us showing up when you try to pass legislation like this.
Maybe this has been the case for years. Certainly, I experienced a similar feeling when I watched local news reports about the Free Dmitry protests I attended. But it was important (for me) to watch actual legislators realize that their citizens will organize and fight for their rights.
It was a beautiful thing to watch, and I am gracious to all of you who showed up. I wish I had gotten a chance to meet you all.
While everyone there gets a gold star for the day, I should point out that David Turner of the Free Software Foundation (I think that was his name) and John Palfrey were really stellar. Turner made very clear the dangers of prohibiting all unauthorized access, touching on issues of fair use, technology innovation, and our general intuition (that is, isn't it ridiculous to think the MPAA should determine whether we can record tv programs?). Palfrey gave the committee an overall sense of the direction of Internet law and the dangers of special interests dictating the legislative agenda.
Also, everyone brought up how ridiculous the MPAA rep's focus on intent was. First of all, it's important to realize how little of the bill actually speaks of intent. For instance, 42B(c) doesn't discuss intent for using or distributing "unlawful access devices." Intent comes up in 42B(d) when addressing plans for manufacturing access devices, but it isn't really significant. Intent is only important if you were creating a device that was not intended to circumvent; all circumvention is still illegal under the definition of "unlawful access device" and 42B(c). People picked up on problems like this and spelled them out for the committee. I hope the legislators got the point.
By the time I had to leave, everyone else had basically said everything I would have. I was hoping someone would bring up the idea that even if you built exemptions into the circumvention device prohibitions, you wouldn't cover everything because fair use is an evolving concept. Perhaps someone brought this up later. (Even though I didn't get to speak, I did get to submit testimony. I presented copies of Professor Felten's criticisms and the EFF's "Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA," along with comments describing their relevance.)
In any case, I think the committee got the point. They know there's something wrong with the telecommunications and access device prohibitions. They know they have to study the issue more. They know they need to listen to more than just the MPAA.
So, a job well done.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cmusings/2003/04/02#a106
Testimony regarding Massachusetts House Bill No. 2743
Good morning Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Joint Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the proposed House Bill Number 2743.
My name is John Palfrey. I am Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. I also teach Internet law and have practiced intellectual property and technology law at a large firm here in town. I would like to testify today, however, in my capacity as a citizen. I am a lifelong resident of the Commonwealth and live in Somerville.
I appreciate the work of this committee to protect our public safety and to promote justice in our state. I appreciate also the work of the Massachusetts Attorney General's office and others in law enforcement who do very good things to fight Internet-related crimes. I appreciate the very great need to grow our economy here in Massachusetts.
This proposed legislation, ladies and gentlemen of the Joint Committee, is a bad idea. It is unnecessary to achieve its stated purposes. In fact, it would have a series of unintended consequences that would do precisely the opposite of what it purports to do. Make no mistake: this is special interest legislation, plain and simple. It would favor the very few over the many -- the very few over your constituents.
There are many here today, many who have spoken already and who will speak after me, who can tell you more eloquently and more precisely than I can why this bill would be bad for computer security and terrible for the developers of software, both for-profit and not-for-profit, in this state. I will confine my comments to three substantial problems with this bill from what is more or less a legal perspective.
First, you do not need this bill if you are simply trying to keep people from stealing or hacking a computer system. We already have an alphabet soup of laws that achieve that end. Starting with the state's criminal statutes and common law, our law enforcement agencies that do good work on this front have many tools at their disposal. Consider, for instance, just the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Patriot Act, and other prohibitions against theft, copyright violation, fraud and trespass to chattels. If all you want to do is to criminalize hacking or stealing, then we need to be honest: these acts are already crimes, here and elsewhere, and hackers and computer thieves are already in jail. If our law enforcement officials really need more tools at their disposal, let's work out a properly narrow way to achieve that goal. I think it's worth noting that the state Attorney General's office is not here testifying that it needs this law, just as they were earlier on the topic of identity theft.
Second, Internet law in the United States is already a complete mess. This legislation would just make things worse. The proponents of this law would extend an already regrettable piece of federal legislation -- the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- to many state books. The DMCA, as it's called, has had many unintended consequences and we should not repeat that mistake here in the Commonwealth. This law would add new provisions for Internet Service Providers to understand, new definitions of "Telecommunication Service Providers," and new requirements that consumers will not comprehend. Innumerable people who have web sites already do not follow the meaning of the literally dozens of definitions of "Internet Service Provider" on the books. I study this topic for a living, and I don't pretend to understand my rights and responsibilities in this area; it's already too complex. This law will make a bad situation worse.
Third, this law will go much further than just banning hacking and stealing. This law will stifle research, like some of the work we do at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. One of our star researchers has already had to go to federal court to determine whether his research is lawful under the federal DMCA. This law would worsen that problem. It will chill speech. It would criminalize legitimate scholarship -- research that would further our understanding of computer security and of civil liberties on the Internet. Worse still, perhaps, it could criminalize otherwise lawful consumer behavior.
Please, ask yourselves: who wants this bill? The only person who showed up here today to support this bill has a narrow special interest. The people who showed up in opposition are your constituents, people who live and work in this state.
We must also see this bill in its proper national context. This bill is a part of a concerted national special interest campaign. This bill has been proposed as a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation in numerous states around the country. In response to Representative Linsky's good question, the representative of the MPAA here today couldn't even say whether the law is redundant when compared to the state's larceny statutes. This bill was not written for this state and it should not be enacted in this state.
We are a nation at war overseas to protect American freedoms. This special interest campaign would undercut those freedoms for one reason only: greed. It's not even the good kind of greed, that will help lots of people by creating lots of jobs. It's not going to help the economy of the Commonwealth; it will just make a few rich people richer. Make no mistake: this bill is a bad idea. It is an assault on the first amendment. It is an assault on the fourth amendment. And it will not be good for the economy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, members of the joint committee: thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey...es/storyReader$86
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Digital Media group calls it a “band aid”
Webcasters, RIAA propose new royalties
Jim Hu
The Digital Media Association and the Recording Industry Association of America agreed on Thursday to a proposal for royalty fees that Internet radio services must pay record companies for Webcasting their songs.
The proposal, submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office, will require large Internet companies such as America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks to pay 0.0762 cent for each song that they Webcast from their radio services. The rate is an increase from the 0.07 cent a song established by the Librarian of Congress last year and would pick up where the previous one left off, spanning 2003 through 2004.
The 0.0762 cent rate, as well as a rate of 1.17 cents per aggregate hour, covers individual streams for subscription and nonsubscription services. The recording industry would also receive 10.9 percent of subscription revenue but no less than 27 cents a month per subscription.
The proposal, which must undergo public hearings before a decision is made, will not affect smaller Webcasters, such as college stations and start-ups. Congress last November approved a bill that would offer substantially lower rates for small Webcasters.
Despite the agreement, the outcome has not pleased everyone. The Digital Media group, which negotiated the proposal on behalf of the Internet giants, viewed the latest proposal as a "Band-Aid" that would avoid "millions of dollars of legal fees" that would arise from going through the arbitration process with the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. The group said the negotiated rates underscored a system it considered broken.
"First, Webcasters remain at a competitive disadvantage to terrestrial radio by having to pay huge royalties for sound recordings that broadcasters get for free; and second...the arbitration process that determines these royalties is sorely in need of reform," John Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-995470.html
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HP aims DVD-burning PCs at mainstream
Joe Wilcox and John G. Spooner
Hewlett-Packard is looking to repeat its early successes with CD rewritables in the market for consumer computers equipped with DVD-recording drives.
In late 1999, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company jumped on the CD-RW bandwagon ahead of competitors, quickly making the technology standard equipment on all consumer PCs. On Thursday, HP launched its first DVD-burning notebook, the Pavilion ze5300, and a low-cost DVD-recording desktop.
Pricing for computers--$899 for the desktop and $1,723 for the notebook--marks HP's attempt to take the DVD-recording technology mainstream, NPDTechworld analyst Stephen Baker said.
Apple Computer--the early leader offering DVD burners--Dell Computer, Gateway, Sony and Toshiba are among the computer manufacturers providing the technology on desktops or laptops. Some of those companies, too, are pushing hard on the pricing front.
"Obviously, among the PC companies, HP, and in some respects Sony, has the most vested interest in moving DVD recording into the mainstream," Baker said. "They're already building awareness in the aftermarket with add-on drives, and they're looking to extend that to the desktops and notebooks."
An HP Pavilion ze5300 series notebook configured with a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor, 15-inch SXGA+ display, 512MB double-data rate (DDR) SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, a DVD+R/RW drive, 802.11b wireless networking and Windows XP Home is $1,723 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Dropping to a 2.4GHz processor and a 30GB hard drive would reduce the price to $1,574 after the rebate, which is in the range of some desktop PCs equipped with DVD-recording drives. The computers can be ordered online immediately.
"That's an incredible price point for a DVD-recording notebook," ARS analyst Toni Duboise said. "If you look at the price points they're offering, they're definitely undercutting the competition. This is definitely very aggressive pricing on the part of HP."
"Wow," said Baker about the pricing of the ze5300.
"This shouldn't surprise anybody," he continued. "We're already seeing DVD-recoding drives in the aftermarket for under $200. The cost differential between CD-RW drives and DVD drives is close enough so that we're at the tipping point of the newer technology replacing the older technology."
http://news.com.com/2100-1042-995341.html
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Prisoners of Digital Television
A misadventure in high-tech regulatory policy -- and a Harry Potter Fix
Mike Godwin
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the young student wizard Harry Potter is pursued by a horde of creatures called Dementors. To make a long, well-plotted story far too short, a future version of Harry suddenly appears and waves his magic wand, reciting the spell "Expecto Petronum!" Thus Future Harry manages to scare away the Dementors, protecting the Harry of the present.
The transition from analog broadcast television to digital broadcast television (DTV), now an enshrined part of American broadcasting policy, faces its own set of Dementors -- a horde of technical, legal, economic, and social problems. Taken together, the problems look as unbeatable as any monster. Making things worse, many factions with a stake in the outcome are at war over such issues as technology mandates, copyright protection, and fair use.
But what if we could somehow look back from the future to today’s troubled present debate, wave our wands, and magically defeat the problems that bedevil the DTV transition? Such magic is beyond us mere muggles (as Harry’s fellow wizards disparage non-magical humans). But it is possible to look back from the future we have long been imagining -- one in which various consumer electronics and information technologies have converged, and in which the broadband Internet reaches every home. From there, we can come up with our own version of a magical solution.
It’s fair to ask why we even need a solution, other than letting our DTV industrial policy collapse under the weight of its own mistakes. The short answer is this: There’s much more than digital television at stake. Bad government actions in this sphere -- and you can be sure that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission will act rather than refrain from acting -- could permanently shoehorn part or all of the computer revolution under government-driven design control. Not only would this likely kill the dynamism of the information-technology sector, but it is unlikely to do much to protect copyright interests.
Worse, by slowing technical innovation, the Hollywood studios may end up shooting themselves in the foot, since digital innovations have both lowered production costs and let new features and effects be included in modern TV and movies. Since our government is dead-set on taking action, the question becomes one of helping our regulatory Harry Potters invoke the most innovation-friendly spell rather than (as might otherwise be preferable) giving up the magic of regulation altogether.
http://www.reason.com/0304/fe.mg.prisoners.shtml
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Judge Posner at TechShow
Judge Richard Posner was the keynote speaker at ABA TechShow this morning. I tried to take as many notes as I could about the presentation...
His talk was loosely focused on the role of law in the new economy. In his words, the product of the new economy is intellectual property. "The cardinal characteristic of intellectual property is that the making of copies is extremely cheap." Wherever a producer incurs significant costs before being able to sell the product, he said, "the threat of copies - where the cost is close to zero - means that the producer of the intellectual property can't recover their costs." This, he concludes, drives a wedge between upfront costs (very high) and continuing costs (marginal).
He noted that if IP producers sell directly to their buyer (no middleman), then the producer can impose any contractual limitations they want. For instance, copyright law has firmly established that buyers of copyrighted works have the right to make a second "backup" copy. But you can waive that right by contract if you choose to. Similarly, you can contractually bind yourself to agree to never copy a copyrighted work - regardless of the actual copyright term as established by law.
Fair Use
Fair use reflects a belief that the "vitality and dynamism of intellectual property depends on the existence of a public domain." The nature of intellectual property is that today's producers build on a body of prior intellectual property by "borrowing it" or incorporating those ideas into their own. The reason that public domain is so important is that the alternative - a model where any producer today needs an explicit license in order to incorporate prior work - would be stifling to creativity.
He noted that today's IP - much of which is digital - is increasingly reliant on digital protections (i.e., encryption) to safeguard against unlawful copying. This use of encryption, he noted, can have the effect of shrinking the public domain - which can be damanging to the longer term goals of future creation.
Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)
"I'm concerned about the shrinkage of the public domain through the use of encryption," Judge Posner started. "However, the issue with the DMCA is more complicated than that." He noted that if you don't have some limitations on the circumvention of encryption used to protect copyrighted acts, then you "set off an arms race between the offense (the circumventers) and the defense (the producers who use encryption to protect their property)."
He allowed that if you limit circumvention, you probably also have to limit the encryption that's used too. He concluded this section by stating that the "technology may present challenges for the law that the law may not be in a position to rise to right away."
http://www.rklau.com/tins/2003/04/03.html#a936
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Musicrypt expands trials
Musicrypt Inc has installed its Digital Media Distribution System at the Canadian head offices of Universal Music and Sony Music Canada for internal testing. In addition to delivering music from record companies to radio stations over the Internet, DMDS is being tested by record companies for internal file-transfer needs. The system's design also allows digital delivery of music files directly from the recording studio to the record label. The files can then be reviewed internally at the record label and subsequently forwarded to designated recipients within the digital realm without compromising pre-release security.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...si0403/GTStory
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Piolet - The latest P2P Hero
Thomas Mennecke
As time marches on, it has become increasingly evident that dispite courtroom victories, the RIAA and MPAA is quickly loosing the P2P war. With numerous files-sharing communities establishing strongholds through the Internet, it seems the more the copyright holders tighten their grip, the more networks slip away.
One of the most sucessful communities today is the Piolet/Blubster network. With the release of the Piolet 1.0x series, this community has witnessed it population surge beyond 100,000 users. Certianly by mid spring, we project that over 200,000 simultaneus users will connect to this network, a truely remarkable milestone.
This number has become an important benchmark in the P2P community. From Kazaa to iMesh to WinMX, this number has represented the quintessential stepping stone towards the 1 million users club, an achivement reached by only the most popular P2P networks.
In addition, it should be mentioned that the powerful eDonkey2000 and Overnet communities are also within a stones throw of joining the 1 million users club, as both networks have populations that range from 500,000 to 850,000.
Piolet has managed to accumulate a large following due to its resourcefulness as an mp3 haven. A wide assortment of mp3s, from the latest top 40 to old skool ska is available on this network.
In addition, most downloads are instantaneous, as its effective multisource feature doesn't force its users to idle by and wait for a lengthy queue to wane away (cough...WimMX...cough..)
With Piolet 1.06 wrapping up beta testing, many of the remaining issues should be resolved. It is understood, and appreciated, that many cannot connect to this network. However, with numerous network enhancements, most remaining connectivity problems should be resolved.
The most important question that remains for the Piolet community is whether it should forego its mp3 only policy and open its doors to all file types. As Pablo has said in the past, that question is up to the community (if you want it, speak up!)
With truely decentralized community, a fasted paced development team and a sky rocketing userbase, Piolet has become the latest hero in the P2P world.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=128
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Flatlan shut down over legal fears
Skye Schell
Rice's Flatlan server flatlined last Thursday after the Recording Industry Association of America filed four suits against college students who run similar servers.
Flatlan, a Napster-like file-sharing program, allows users to download shared media files from other computers. Rice's Flatlan operator, a student who wished to remain anonymous, said he took the server offline to avoid legal action and does not plan to restore access.
The RIAA filed suits against four students - two at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University and one at Michigan Technological University - accusing them of music piracy. According to an April 5 Detroit Free Press article, the RIAA is claiming damages of up to $97.8 billion.
The RIAA filed similar charges against Napster in 2001.
Napster indexes files that individuals anywhere on the Internet have shared, and allows users to send files to each other through Napster's software. Flatlan, on the other hand, resides on a local area network like the Rice network. It allows users to search the network, but does not handle file transfer. Instead, it provides the user with a network address so they can retrieve the file from its home computer.
While his server made it easier to search for media files on the Rice network, students can access those files even without Flatlan, the student said. All popular operating systems, including Windows, MacOS and Linux, come with networking software that allows file transfers.
http://thresher.rice.edu/article.tcl...d=43&dept_id=1
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Sony Revisits Online Offer of Custom CD's
Matthew Mirapaul
In a venture similar to the custom compact disc sites that looked promising during the early years of the dot-com boom, Sony Music Entertainment has started a Web site where online shoppers can buy CD's containing songs of their choosing. But rather than appealing to casual consumers with a broad mix of music, the site is designed to promote particular artists. Currently the site offers only songs by Bob Dylan and the alternative-rock quintet Train.
Sony, which opened the site,
www.custommixcd.com, in February, will begin promoting it today on Microsoft's MSN.com.
For $15, plus shipping, consumers can select up to 12 songs or 78 minutes of music. While many songs by the two artists are available on the service, there are noticeable gaps: Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is not available, and the version of "The Times They Are A-Changin' " is taken from a recent live album.
Yet the site does have 14 rare Dylan tracks taken from soundtrack CD's, European singles and other hard-to-find sources and 21 live tracks by Train. Those live and rare tracks are not available as file downloads from PressPlay, the online music-subscription service that Sony owns with the Universal Music Group, which is part of Vivendi Universal.
The point is to allow customers to compile customized CD's easily and quickly. But that idea is not new. Personics tried to sell custom audio cassettes at retail kiosks in the 1980's. Several custom-CD ventures were on the Web in the mid-90's. SuperSonicBoom, iMix, MusicMaker and CDuctive all promised to give consumers the ability to create personalized CD's, but they are no longer online.
Josh Bernoff, a music industry analyst at Forrester Research, said he remained skeptical of the venture's potential. Although he praised the site for offering rare tracks, he said, "What consumers have demonstrated by their use of file-trading services is that they're very interested in assembling the pieces of music they want from a wide variety of sources for use in whatever format they want."
He continued: "What they're not willing to do is back up and have only certain stuff from certain artists from certain labels."
Officials at Universal and RCA Records said they had no plans to offer a custom-CD service.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/te...gy/07SONY.html
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Cablevision Is Said to Drop Out of Bidding for DirecTV
Andrew Sorkin
Cablevision Systems has abandoned its plan to bid for Hughes Electronics and its DirecTV satellite television operation, people close to the company said
yesterday, leaving Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation as the sole suitor for Hughes.
Cablevision's decision, which was made late Friday, came a few days after SBC Communications also decided to drop out of the bidding for control of Hughes, which is a unit of /> General Motors.
With SBC and Cablevision out of the running, Mr. Murdoch's chances of finally taking over Hughes appear to have risen substantially. In 2001, he lost a bidding war for Hughes to EchoStar in a deal that was later quashed by regulators
News Corporation remains locked in talks with G.M. and Hughes, according to people close to the negotiations, and they have been working steadily on a deal. Still, people close to G.M. stress that they could decide to simply spin off the unit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/07/bu...ia/07CABL.html
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Disney to Test Video on Demand Service
Will use over the air bandwidth
AP
Disney will begin testing its long-awaited video on demand service, dubbed "Movie Beam," later this fall, chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner said Monday.
Eisner, speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, said the service will allow consumers to view up to 100 films when they wish.
Unlike current video on demand services, which send movie files over the Internet, Disney's system will use the same broadcast spectrum the company uses to send its ABC Television network to homes.
The system will be tested in Salt Lake City and two other markets this fall, the company said.
Disney is the last company to enter the video on demand marketplace. It announced a joint venture with 20th Century Fox in 2001, but that dissolved after Fox pulled out.
Five other movie studios have been operating a video on demand venture called Movielink since last year.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e/disney_video
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Barry Diller Criticizes Media Deregulation
Gary Gentille
AP
Ever the contrarian, media veteran Barry Diller on Monday said deregulation of media conglomerates will limit diversity in movies and television and stifle competition.
Most large media companies have been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to remove or relax the ownership cap that has limited the number of newspapers, television and radio stations one company can own in a market.
But Diller, speaking to the National Association of Broadcasters, said big media companies need to be restrained or they will push out smaller competitors.
"There are real dangers in complete concentration," Diller said. "The conventional wisdom is wrong. We need more regulation, not less."
"The big four networks have in fact reconstituted themselves into the oligopoly that the FCC originally set out to curb in the 1960s," Diller said during his keynote speech at the association's annual convention. "Five corporations, with their broadcast television networks and cable, are not on the verge of controlling the same number of households that the big three did 40 years ago."
Diller said today's "vertically integrated giant media conglomerates," are driven only to gain "world media dominance," a motive that will gain support if current regulations are relaxed.
The FCC is expected to issue new rules by this summer governing cross media ownership. Most observers believe the agency, under the leadership of Michael Powell, favors relaxing the ownership cap. Powell will address the NAB Tuesday.
Independent producers such as Universal, with no network of their own, rely on the networks buying their programs. Networks such as CBS and ABC, have been buying more shows from their own production arms, a strategy that keeps profits within the media company but shuts out independent producers, critics have charged.
"Ten years ago, independents produced 16 new series," Diller said. "Last year, they produced just one. The independents are dying in droves."
Diller also slammed the effect of media consolidation in radio, where large companies such as Clear Channel produce programs that supplant locally produced shows in their national chain of stations.
"Local broadcasters should not be simply the distribution arms of monolithic enterprises," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e/broadcasters
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Censorship and sex.
Pakistan & Pennsylvania Blocking Porn Sites, Oklahoma Forcing Citizens to Turn Each Other In
Zarar Khan, Ted Bridis
AP
Pakistani authorities said Sunday they've blocked 1,800 Web sites in a crackdown on Internet pornography in this deeply conservative Muslim country.
But it's not proving to be easy.
"Curbing porn sites is as difficult as blocking the wind," said Web engineer Farhan Parpia, of the state-owned telecommunications company. "You block one, and dozens more come up like mushrooms."
Under pressure from powerful religious parties, Owais Leghari, the information technology minister, last month ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Co. Ltd. to filter porn sites. Filtering began 10 days ago, said Ather Javed Sufi, a company spokesman.
He said 1,800 sites had been blocked by Sunday. The company regulates private Internet service providers who use its lines.
When Internet users click on a blocked site, they get a reply that the site was not found or the query was invalid.
"This is one good move on the part of the present government. The young generation should be saved from sinking neck-deep in the filth of pornography and vulgarity," said Hafiz Muhammad Taqi, a leader of the six-member political alliance of religious parties known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum.
The alliance made strong gains in national elections last October, campaigning for Islamic laws in Pakistan and opposing what it deemed corrupting Western influences. In Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier province where the alliance took power, billboards of films with scantily clad women were torn down.
Some Internet users seemed undeterred by the blocked sites, and said they were ready for the challenge of finding new ones.
Fourteen-year-old Ghayur Ahmed said: "How can the government deprive us from having fun at least through Web sites?"
"There are tens of thousands of such sites," he said Sunday, sitting in an Internet cafe in Karachi. "Will they be able to block all?"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...et_pornography
Pa. Won't Identify Web Sites Blocked
Pennsylvania's attorney general is citing laws against distributing child pornography in refusing to identify any of hundreds of Web sites his office has forced the nation's largest Internet providers to block under a unique state law.
The legal stand by the attorney general, Republican Mike Fisher, stymies efforts by a prominent civil liberties group in Washington to challenge an unorthodox strategy in Pennsylvania to stem online child pornography.
The Center for Democracy and Technology had sought the list of sites to buttress its assertions that the Pennsylvania law blocks Web surfers visiting innocent sites located in the same electronic neighborhoods as those peddling illegal porn. Without the list of blocked sites, the group cannot find examples to support its claims.
"We will not aid and abet child pornographers by publicizing their illegal Web sites," attorney general spokesman Sean Connolly said Thursday. "This is not a First Amendment issue. This is child pornography, a heinous and destructive crime."
Fisher's office said disclosing the list of blocked Web sites would itself be disseminating such pornography, which is illegal.
"The documents that you seek contain the Web addresses of Internet sites that contain such depictions," wrote L. Kinch Bowman, director of management services for the attorney general's office.
A letter from Bowman to the civil liberties group, dated Tuesday, responded to a request under Pennsylvania's open records statute for information about the state's use of the pornography law.
The Associated Press made a duplicate request on the same day and received the same explanation this week.
"It's really amazing to say, 'If we told you what we can't tell you, it would be breaking the law.' It means there can never be any oversight of a provision like this," said Alan Davidson, the associate director for the civil liberties group.
Davidson said the group was considering an appeal under Pennsylvania's open records law or a lawsuit to compel the attorney general to disclose details about enforcement of the law.
Under the law, enacted last year, Fisher has so far instructed Internet providers with customers in the state to block subscribers from at least 423 Web sites around the world. The law is unusual because it could impose a $5,000 fine on companies providing Internet connections to Web sites with illegal photographs, but no fine on the pornography sites themselves.
Fisher says the law and his use of it is an effective way to prevent citizens from viewing child pornography.
Lawyers for the civil liberties group said the technique undermines the Internet's global connectivity by regularly blocking Web surfers visiting harmless sites that may be located on the same server computers as sites with child pornography. They have compared the tactic to disrupting mail delivery to an entire apartment complex over one tenant's illegal actions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ernet_blocking
Oklahoma porn bill unearths deeper concerns
Oklahoma lawmakers expressed reservations Tuesday over legislation that supporters said will help stop the distribution of child pornography over the Internet.
The state House overwhelmingly passed the bill requiring computer technicians to report any child pornography they find on computers they repair. But some members said unintended consequences could lead to complaints against innocent people.
"This bill is a woolly booger," said Rep. Ron Kirby, D-Lawton.
The measure will force computer technicians to make subjective assessments over whether pornography they find on computer hard drives and discs involves someone under the age of 18, House members said.
It could also lead to complaints against people who innocently open unsolicited spam e-mail that contains pornographic images, they said.
"Just the accusation of something like this can cause damage to somebody's reputation," said Rep. Hopper Smith, R-Tulsa.
"This thing could get out of hand," said Rep. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, who operates a computer repair business.
Wilson said his technicians are not supposed to look at private information on computers on which they work. And they would have a hard time coping with any pornography they found, he said.
"These are nerds, folks. These are people who can't even deal with sexuality," Wilson said. "This is a bad, bad bill. We need to put it out of its misery."
Michael Camfield, development director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Oklahoma City, also expressed concern.
Police officers showed up at Camfield's apartment in June 1997 and asked him to give up his rented video of The Tin Drum after an Oklahoma County judge ruled the movie violated Oklahoma's obscenity law. A federal judge later cleared the film and ruled that the confiscation was unconstitutional.
"I had three law enforcement officers who mistakenly identified material as child pornography," Camfield said. "If it was a problem for police officers, it is certainly going to be a problem for computer technicians."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...orn-bill_x.htm
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Professor, lawyer weigh in on debate over file-sharing lawsuit
Josh Brodie
It only took University students a few hours to react to charges of copyright infringement against sophomore Dan Peng.
By Thursday afternoon, campus network search engines Wake, Gank, Sleep and pTunes were all absent from their normal locations, and students who had previously shared thousands of songs and hundreds of movies had removed their collections from public view.
If the Recording Industry Association of America intended to scare students into compliance with copyright law, it seems their effort may have succeeded.
"The RIAA really wants to send a frightening message," wrote David Dobkin, chair of the computer science department, in an email. "These students (Peng et. al.) are being set up to scare others away from doing this."
In fact, the scale of the lawsuit leads some to wonder if the RIAA actually expects to collect damages. "The amount of money they are asking for is larger than the entire profit of the record industry in one year, and perhaps in its entire history," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's ridiculous to think you can get that out of one person."
The suit against Peng includes two claims. The RIAA alleges that Peng committed direct copyright infringement by distributing copyrighted music files from his personal computer. It also claims that Peng engaged in contributory infringement by maintaining the Wake service, which facilitated music theft by others on a larger scale than would have otherwise been possible.
The direct infringement charges are easily proved or refuted with network traffic records, but the contributory infringement law is open to interpretation, von Lohmann said.
The RIAA must establish three facts to support their contributory infringement claim.
First, they must establish that some direct infringement occurred, for example, that users illegally exchanged copyrighted music across the network.
Second, they must show that Peng was aware of, or should have been aware of, the direct infringement.
Third, they must show that the Wake site materially aided the direct infringement, in that it made it easier for users to find and illegally download copyrighted music.
According to von Lohmann, the second point will be the hardest to establish. One of the results of the lawsuit against the Napster music-sharing program in 2001 was a legal description of what it means to know about incidents of direct infringement on a network.
"Somebody needs to tell you that infringement is going on," von Lohmann said. "In this case it appears that the recording industry hadn't notified Princeton or Mr. Peng [about copyright violations as a result of Wake searches] so there is an open question as to whether the [RIAA] filled the requirements of the 'Napster' ruling."
Because of the flaws he sees in the RIAA's contributory infringement argument, von Lohmann said he would love the opportunity to try Peng's case. The EFF has already been in contact with several of the students named in the latest RIAA suits, though he could not confirm whether Peng was one of them.
Though the Napster case will likely be cited as precedent by both sides if Peng's case ever goes to trial, there are important differences between the Wake and Napster services.
Napster required users to actively sign on for the sole purpose of sharing music files, while Wake required only passive involvement of its users. Peng's site searched the preexisting campus network for any shared files, cataloging anything and everything it found along the way.
One source familiar with file-sharing law, but who would not be named because of a possible conflict of interest, said, "It seems pretty clear that the [Wake] site is a search engine. It looks to me like a search engine."
Von Lohmann suggested that the courts should be careful not to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" by removing sites like Wake which offer valuable, non-infringing services.
"You can imagine people sharing research materials or term papers or photographs that they themselves have taken. There is no limit to the kinds of stuff you can share [legally]," he said.
According to the file-sharing expert, one of the outstanding questions about the case is how the RIAA intends to substantiate its claims of direct infringement. To support these claims, the RIAA must show that users illegally downloaded copyrighted music from shared folders on the campus network. But it is unclear how the RIAA could have obtained such information without being attached to the campus network itself, the source said.
Even if they were inside the network, it is not clear that they could have obtained that sort of information, the source said.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of a trial would be the discovery phase, in which both sides are allowed to interview witnesses and gather evidence. It is possible that the log files on the Wake server will contain lists of searches conducted by its users and that these lists could be used as ammunition for future legal actions. "There is nothing you can do having already accessed the site," the source said.
So far, the RIAA has taken action only against those who have created tools that they believe aid music piracy. But it is possible that if, in a few years, the file-sharing problem worsens, the association will resort to filing suits against individuals solely for direct infringement.
However, it is not clear that a trial would have any longterm impact on the use of peer-to-peer file-sharing systems.
"More Americans are using file-sharing [technology] than voted for the president," von Lohmann said. "The answer is to make sure artists get paid while making file-sharing legal."
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/arc...ews/7846.shtml
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Been Comatose For Four Years? Serious MP3 Newbie? Here’s The Primer You Need
Just disregard the POV…
Hiawatha Bray
The CD, introduced in the 1980s, has always been a digital music format. But CDs use a recording method that takes up a lot of bandwidth. A standard audio CD's worth of music uses around 700 megabytes of digital storage.
It would take hours to transmit that much music over a slow dial-up Net connection. So people went looking for a way to compress the same music files so that they'd still sound good, but take up much less space. The most popular method by far was developed at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute in the late 1980s. The technical name for the system is Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III -- but the world knows it as MP3.
The new technology sat on a shelf for a decade, until an engineer in Croatia wrote some software that would play back music files recorded in MP3. In 1998, a couple of University of Utah students used this software to build the first popular MP3 player, a program called Winamp, which is still widely used. Soon, other developers released code that let people convert existing music recordings into MP3 files. Now a CD's worth of music could be compressed to 70 megabytes or less, with very little loss of quality.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/09...s_slide+.shtml
Another site w/P2P, RIAA etc info -
http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~zrosen/