Hot, sweaty and scandalous
Bikram Choudhury, founder of the fastest-growing style of yoga in America, has
copyrighted his poses and is threatening to sue anyone who teaches his "hot" style without permission. Is this enlightenment?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Nora Isaacs
Kim and Mark Morrison thought they had achieved small-business nirvana. Eight years after Kim borrowed $25,000 to open a tiny yoga studio in Costa Mesa, Calif., it has grown into a bustling enterprise that employs 12 instructors and offers 40 classes a week in several styles of yoga. After years of working long hours, and investing more than $100,000 in expensive renovations, the Morrisons' venture, Yoga Studio Costa Mesa, has become more than just a place to bend and stretch. The studio -- with its meditation room, yoga programs for kids and pregnant women, spaces for baby showers and weddings -- has become the nexus of a small but devoted community.
But that might be about to change.
A year ago, the Morrisons received a letter that threatened the future of their beloved business. The correspondence came from lawyers for Bikram Choudhury, founder of the fastest-growing style of yoga in America, Bikram Yoga. "It was a dagger of a letter -- long, nasty and filled with allegations," says Mark, who is also a lawyer. The missive alleged that the Morrisons were violating a recently acquired copyright and insisted that they comply with a long list of demands and pay fines starting at $150,000 -- or risk a lawsuit. The warning, the Morrisons say, makes a mockery of yoga's ultimate promise of both peace of mind and freedom. "We're not just scared about what this could do to our finances," Mark says. "Yoga is something really personal, something that we love. And that's being attacked."
If Choudhury has his way, every Bikram Yoga studio in the world will soon be franchised and under his control. To start this process, he recently obtained a copyright for his particular sequence of yoga poses—a 90-minute series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises done in room heated to 105 degrees. Choudhury says that yoga studios that want to continue teaching Bikram Yoga must pay franchise and royalty fees, change their name to Bikram's Yoga College of India, stop teaching other styles of yoga, use only Bikram- approved dialogue when instructing students, refrain from playing music during classes, and a host of other stipulations.
"From the business side, I kind of understand it," says Judith Hanson Lasater, a prominent Bay Area yoga instructor who has been teaching since 1971. "But from the yoga side I think it's really sad."
No link, it’s from Salon –
$30.00 paid registration now required! They can do their own spamming.
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Legislators Need to Get a Clue
Lance Ulanoff
It's official: Our legislators need some serious face time with the country's technology gurus—and fast.
Someone near the top needs to help our leaders get up to speed on what's really happening in technology today. I came to this conclusion after reading about the testimony given by Representative Henry Waxman (D–CA) before the House Government Reform Committee. Waxman explained that peer-to-peer (P2P) file- sharing systems like Gnutella, Kazaa, and WinMX were not only enabling teens to download music, but pornography as well.
People have been downloading porn since the days of the electronic bulletin board (BBS), many of which were dedicated to porn. Of course, BBSs were a little different than today's P2P networks. First of all, you had to pay to access most porn BBSs, and you would rarely find music or other useful files alongside the garbage. Just a few years later, the Internet made possible the widespread use of anonymous File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Again, there were (and are) all kinds of files to download, but FTP never really achieved the notoriety of today's P2P networks. Early file-sharing services like Hotfiles allowed you to peruse hundreds of private servers, many of which were rife with pornography. When true P2P services like Napster began showing up, porn naturally found its place on the networks along with the music, though not necessarily mixed in. Representative Waxman seems unaware of this history.
The other amazing discovery the congressman reported to the committee was that filtering tools have no ability to stop the downloading of porn from file-sharing sites and services. He's partially right, but again this is ancient news. Only recently have Internet filtering products begun addressing file sharing. Net Nanny, for instance, cannot actually stop file-sharing software from running, but you can set the newest version to prevent the necessary peer-to-peer connections from being made. In the main, though, filtering products are designed to filter whole sites based, typically, on words and domain names, but maybe even on images, if the filtering software can open them first (zip files filled with images can pass through untouched).
I'm glad to see that those in government recognize and are publicizing these limitations so that parents don't mistakenly think filtering apps can do it all. But why weren't these public servants talking about this five years ago? This is old news getting the treatment of a major discovery. What our leaders should already know and really be communicating is that connected PCs in homes belong in central and highly visible spots, so parents can see what their children are doing online. Obviously, children under 13 really should never browse the Internet unsupervised.
I've heard stories about old 386 systems and other outmoded technology used on a daily basis on Capitol Hill. But I've also heard that a lot of congressional leaders use BlackBerry e-mail devices and have their own Web sites. I'm not foolish enough, though, to believe that many of these public servants configure their own handheld messaging devices or write their own HTML. Based on this account of Representative Waxman's statement, I have to assume that the US government operates in the dark ages.
Look, the government has no shortage of high-level advisors that legislators consult—drug experts, education experts, homeland security experts, and more. And the place is exploding with tech experts. You'd think they were all hiding, though. Someone from our industry needs to drag legislators into the 21st century. That wise technosage could give the people running our country crash courses in the latest advances and how to implement them—and perhaps head off our elected officials before they announce more of these amazing discoveries.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1012680,00.asp
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Pointless Exercise
UK Company Creates Download Chart - Ignores P2Ps
The UK's most downloaded songs will soon be compiled in a chart organised by the creators of the Top 40 Singles chart.
The Top 40 download chart will be ready by Christmas, created by the Official UK Charts Company and endorsed by the music industry according to digital music distributors, OD2.
However, it will only compile the 175,000 tracks from 7,500 artists such as Coldplay, The Streets and The Coral which are currently available for official download on such websites as MSN, HMV and Freeserve.
Tracks downloaded from illegal file-sharing sites Morpheus and Kazaa will not be included in the chart.
There are thought to be 4,500,000 people downloading up to a billion pirated tracks over the Internet at any one time.
A provisional Top 40 download chart will be compiled on April 18 after today's (April 9) second free OD2 digital download day gets underway.
OD2 co-owner, former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, will offer music fans £3 of free music, including 30 downloads, 300 streams or three recordings onto CD, from today until April 15.
Music fans can register for free downloads at digitaldownloadday.com.
http://www.nme.com/news/104732.htm
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Digital Download Day Return$
Dinah Greek
In an attempt to win web surfers over to downloading music from legal sites, digital service provider OD2 has launched its second Digital Download Day.
Following the first Digital Download Day in October 2002, which had problems coping with the number of people trying to register, OD2 has extended the pre- registration period and will give users three days in which to choose their music.
From 9 April until 15 April, users can register for downloads in one of three formats for just €5 (£3.40). After registration they have three days in which to download free tracks, although the offer closes on 18 April.
Users have a choice of streaming tracks for 1p, downloading only to the hard drive for 10p a track, or burning tracks to CD at £1 a track.
But tempting people away from popular peer-to-peer (P2P) sites such as as Kazaa and Grokster, where they can swop music files for free, has proved hard.
The recording industry has focused much effort on issuing legal threats and warnings rather than working with providers to develop a business model that appeals to the public.
But critics of the OD2 model have said it does not go far enough to discourage people from downloading files from P2P sites.
Wayne Rosso, president of file sharing site Grokster, described it as a formula for disaster.
"My message to the industry is 'get real'. How greedy can they be?" he said. "The current models are extremely expensive and restrictive."
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140068
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But it’s not FREE!
Digital Download Day touted as success
The second Digital Download Day, the music industry’s promotion of unequivocably legal digital music, kicked off in the UK yesterday with the website becoming the number 1 ‘music site’ in the UK according to Hitwise.
The site apparently accounted for 9.6 per cent of visits to UK music sites, as defined by Hitwise, and was ranked 87 in the top 100 UK sites.
In an attempt to win web surfers over to downloading music from legal sites, music fans are able to download E4.5 (GBP3) of free tracks from over 7,500 artists. Users have the choice of downloading from seven major websites – Dotmusic, MSN, Tiscali, HMV, Ministry of Sound, MTV and Freeserve – and have 3 days after registering to claim their free tracks.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15856
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MTU President Irked by RIAA Lawsuit
Ryan Naraine
The Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) decision to slap lawsuits on file-swappers at three U.S. universities has been met with an angry retort from the president of the Michigan Technological University (MTU).
In a letter to RIAA boss Cary Sherman, MTU's Curtis Tompkins accused the association of turning a blind eye to the school's efforts to curb illegal file-sharing within its network and hinted that the RIAA was more interested in lawsuits and publicity.
The MTU's Joseph Nievelt was sued along with Daniel Peng of Princeton and Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for operating "Napster-like internal campus networks" that aided the theft of copyrighted songs. The RIAA is seeking damages of $150,000 per song traded on the networks.
However, the school's president argues that the association did not make good on promises to work together to stamp out illegal file sharing within its network.
"I believe that we would not be facing this situation with Joseph Nievelt today had we been able to gain your help in providing additional information to our student body. We have cooperated fully with the RIAA, but in recent months, have not seen the same from your organization," Tompkins said in his letter.
You have obviously known about this situation with Joe Nievelt for quite some time. Had you followed the previous methods established in notification of a violation, we would have shut off the student and not allowed the problem to grow to the size and scope that it is today," he added.
Clearly irked that the RIAA had filed its lawsuit before giving MTU a chance to act on the information, Tompkins said, "I am very disappointed that the RIAA decided to take this action in this manner. As a fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being notified early and allowing us to take action following established procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of lawsuits and publicity."
http://boston.internet.com/news/print.php/2179281
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Canada's music industry fires anti-piracy broadside
Jack Kapica
The Canadian recording industry is reaching deeper into its weapons stockpile to fight the downloading free digital music, starting with a new ad campaign
Wednesday aimed at young people.
New music-industry efforts include migrating businesses on-line and offering digital music on demand, said the Canadian Value of Music Coalition, a group of recording companies and associations representing musicians and composers.
Industry spokesmen said they will also try to lure people into paying for their music by offering low-cost CD singles, enhanced bundling with video DVDs, special on-line offers and front-of-the-line ticket sales.
The public-service announcements, created by the ZiG Inc. advertising agency, are directed at people aged 9 to 17, and will be aired on radio and TV stations across the country.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ckapr9/GTStory
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CD sales down 6%, Music Video sales up 9%
World sales of recorded music fell by 7% in value and by 8% in units in 2002, according to figures released today by the IFPI. Mass downloading from unauthorised file sharing services on the internet and the proliferation of CD burning were cited as major causes of the fall in CD sales, combined with competition from other entertainment sectors and economic uncertainty on consumer spending.
The IFPI, or the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, comprises a membership of 1500 record companies, including independents and majors, in 76 countries.
It found that recorded music sales worldwide fell to $32 billion in 2002. Compared to 2001, sales of CD albums fell globally by 6%, and there were continued declines in sales of singles (down 16%) and cassettes (down 36%). Music videos saw a growth in value of 9%, driven by strong growth in DVD.
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?...1299&area=news
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ITD restricts file-sharing to halt copyright infringement
Jennifer Sutcliffe
A firewall blocking outside Internet users from accessing files shared within the Emory network will be tested on campus computers beginning tomorrow.
Network Communications and Information Technology Division will test the effectiveness of the firewall until Friday in an effort to boost network speeds, which they say are slowed by popular peer-to-peer sharing programs such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
Administrators will implement the final version of the firewall this summer. Designed to regulate the transfer of information through Internet pathways, firewalls block connections between the outside Internet and a computer on Emory's network.
http://www.emorywheel.com/vnews/disp.../3e923c9ad7dff
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Commission increases pressure over France Telecom
The French government is about to be accused by European regulators of giving preferential treatment to state-owned France Telecom compared to its competing cable providers of telephony and internet services.
The European Commission will mount legal action against the government in the European Court of Justice if they do not amend regulations that the Commission says restricts competition.
This week the Commission has said that France Telecom must pay back millions of euros to private competitors who paid the incumbent telco to provide telephone services to poorer areas.
Concurrently, the Commission is investigating whether the government’s E9bn credit line to the troubled France Telecom breaks European anti-trust laws.
France Telecom’s internet service provider, Wanadoo, is also under investigation over a possible similar breach of anti-trust laws.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15806
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Anonymous backer funds patent foe
Paul Festa
Bruce Perens has found what every open-source activist needs: a sugar daddy.
A sponsor has provided Perens with a $50,000 annuity to support his advocacy for open-source organizations and his opposition to the software patents that he says are stymieing industry standards on which open-source groups depend.
"I'm very concerned about software patents," Perens said. "They remain a blocker for open-source software. It's really difficult for us to coexist with them, and what we're trying to do right now is mitigate the problem in the standards arena by encouraging standards organizations to engineer standards that are royalty-free."
The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, and Perens--who until last September was on Hewlett-Packard's payroll--would not say whether it was a company, a nonprofit group or an individual.
"I've been working the past two years on this issue, sometimes with very generous support from HP," Perens said. "But it became kind of a problem for HP, because I would say things for open source that would be very embarrassing to the company. I need to be able to say what I want to say, and thus people who send me money may prefer not to have their names associated with the donation."
Perens is a Linux developer who co-founded the Open Source Initiative, founded a group called Software in the Public Interest, and helped develop the Debian version of Linux. Following HP's acquisition of Compaq Computer, Perens found himself with a pink slip.
Since then, he has worked on government policy for George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy & Research Institute and consulted on open-source implementation for companies including the Open Group, Novell and HP.
The problem with software patents, according to Perens and other open-source advocates, is that companies working with standards organizations may assert their ownership over a certain piece of intellectual property that they contributed to a standard, potentially forcing implementers to pay royalties on it. Open-source licenses and royalty-encumbered licenses do not mix, advocates warn.
Corporations with large patent portfolios have pressured standards organizations, even if they have a stated preference for royalty-free technologies, to make exceptions for "reasonable and nondiscriminatory," or RAND, licenses. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently turned back an attempt to carve out a broad RAND exception. Perens said the final compromise did provide for some RAND exceptions but only under stringent conditions.
Perens has now turned his attention to other standards groups, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-996070.html
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Philips adds streaming to DVD recorder
Richard Shim
Philips Semiconductors is adding broadband connectivity and streaming media capabilities to its reference design for DVD recorders, a sign of interest among consumer electronics makers in supporting the playback of digital media.
The semiconductor division of Royal Philips Electronics announced Tuesday that it has enhanced its Nexperia DVD+RW reference design to include a media chip that will aid in the processing of multiple media formats, such as MPEG-4 and DivX, as well as adding the ability to connect to the Internet.
The company plans to sell the enhanced reference design initially to electronics makers in Japan and South Korea, where broadband access is more widely adopted. The United States will likely see products based on the new reference design in the middle of next year, according to Jeroen Keunen, general manager for consumer and multimedia within Philips Semiconductors.
"This platform will be for the high end of the consumer electronics market and will help our customers to differentiate their products," Keunen said. "There will be a premium that will be charged for these features."
The enhanced design will be in the $30 range, but developing software to help in the playback of digital content would also add to the total bill of materials for manufacturers, Keunen said. He declined to comment on what the price might be for consumers, pointing out that electronics makers may differ in what features they make available with the design.
Sony, another consumer electronics giant that is a part-time partner and part-time competitor of Philips, is also working to add digital media playback and broadband access to its devices including a plasma television project.
Philips is looking to take advantage of the growth of DVD recorders in the consumer electronics market, and enhance it with the new design.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-996117.html
Breathless Press Release:
A Jukebox in Your Pocket?
Why not?
You are your own DJ of this exclusive audio jukebox – the world’s smallest recording audio jukebox.
Weighing just 167 grams (5.8oz - js), Philips HDD100 has the awesome 15GB capacity to pack your entire music world within its svelte frame. That’s more than 3,000 songs on the go!
A real stunner, the HDD100 is decked in high gloss magnesium and hardened glass, exuding the hard-core signature allure that’s hard to resist.
It’s called Awe.
http://www.audio.philips.com/betatest_HDD100.asp
But it
sounds like BS. lol! – js.
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Sony DVR to sport broadband
Matthew Broersma and Richard Shim
Sony is continuing to make its network strategy a reality with three new digital video recorders that have broadband connectivity and can be programmed from a cell phone.
Sony will release in Japan three new digital video recorders (DVRs), each with a broadband connection and Web browser, the company announced earlier this week. All are part of Sony's CoCoon line of DVRs, which are available in Japan and are expected to come to the United States once the consumer electronics giant can establish a DVR service.
Toshiba and Panasonic have similar devices, which include a hard drive and DVD recorder, but Sony is the first to add a broadband connection to receive program guide information and to access Web pages. The NDR-XR1, set to launch on April 12 for about $1,200, is a combination DVR and DVD recorder, while the NAV- E900 and NAV-E600 are combination DVRs and DVD players with an AM/FM radio tuner.
The NAV-E900 comes with a 600-watt amplifier and will cost around $950 and the NAV-E600 comes with a 500-watt amplifier and will cost about $700. The NAV devices are set for an April 26 launch in Japan. Sony representatives declined to comment on a U.S. launch.
The devices represent Sony's latest effort to network its electronics products to allow for broadband access. Its network strategy would allow the entertainment and electronics giant to make its content available over its consumer devices. Sony is also working on a plasma screen television project, which also fits well into its network strategy. Sony owns film studios, music labels and a games unit in addition to its huge electronics division, giving it all the pieces to connect the digital entertainment universe.
However, infighting between the entertainment and electronics divisions over fears of piracy and the need to distinguish products has slowed collaboration efforts to date.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-995549.html
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Sony targets pros with blue laser drives
Richard Shim
Sony Electronics is expanding into new markets with its recordable DVD products.
The company is demonstrating blue laser drives and media for professional use as well as new multiformat DVD drives with rewritable speeds of 4x DVD+RW for desktop PCs. Sony is one of the first manufacturers to announce these products.
Blue laser drives represent the next generation in DVD recording technology, using a short-wavelength violet laser--instead of the red lasers in current optical drives-- to read data from the discs. The drives allow for much higher storage density than current DVD formats, which typically hold 4.7GB of data. One blue laser format known as Blu-ray is designed to allow a single-sided, 12-centimeter disc to hold up to 23GB of storage.
In March, the Japanese parent of Sony Electronics said it would release a consumer blue laser disc recorder in Japan on Thursday of this week, priced at about $3,800. Those devices will use Blu-ray, which is currently being considered as a standard. The new professional drives announced this week will use a different format that is not compatible with Blu-ray, Sony said.
Sony's rewritable and write-once discs will come in cartridges, instead of bare discs, and will be able to store up to 23.3GB of data at a transfer rate of 9MB per second. The 5.25-inch drives use an Ultra-wide 160 SCSI interface.
The company is licensing the design for the drive as well as the media to other manufacturers and both should be available by this summer. The drives will cost about $3,000, and the media will cost around $45. A Sony-branded version of the drive and media will be available before year-end.
Sony said manufacturers already are interested in selling second-generation drives and media with 50GB capacity and transfer speeds of 18MB per second by 2005. The third-generation products would involve recorders and media with 100GB capacity and 36MB-per-second transfer rates.
Sony Electronics was also demonstrating new multiformat drives with 4x DVD+RW rewrite speeds at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas this week. The higher speed means that consumers will be able to record a full length DVD in about 15 minutes.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-995825.html
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Disney Plans to Be on Digital Frontier
Edmund Sanders
Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner said Monday that his company would not let the threat of piracy keep it from aggressively pursuing business strategies based on new digital technologies, even if that means rethinking its current business models.
Eisner's remarks at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention appeared to signal a shift from Disney's emphasis on policing copyright infractions. Last year the company was a leading proponent of a bill, which didn't become law, that would have forced electronics makers to prevent consumers from making unauthorized copies of films and songs.
In the future, Eisner said, movie studios will need to be more flexible about the way they distribute movies. He suggested that in place of the current sequence of studio releases -- from theaters to video to pay per view to television -- studios would need to offer faster distribution, directly to consumers.
"If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will," he said.
This year Disney will begin testing Movie Beam, a service that lets consumers download movies via broadcast signals transmitted to set-top boxes.
Disney's ABC also is working aggressively to offer more broadcast shows in high-definition or HDTV, including the upcoming season of "Monday Night Football," a move experts say should help increase demand for digital TV sets.
Eisner noted that Burbank-based Disney was one of the first movie studios to see television as a distribution and marketing outlet, rather than as an unwelcome competitor, and then helped popularize color television with "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" in the 1950s.
"We take this tradition very seriously and are now positioning ourselves to be on the leading edge of the next technological wave in entertainment," the Disney chairman said.
Separately at the convention Monday, media mogul Barry Diller warned against allowing the major entertainment companies to grow any larger and said he opposed efforts to relax the national 35% television audience cap.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...s%2Dtechnology
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Radio Tunes In Warily to Its Digital Future
Technology offers better quality, sophisticated services. But only 20 stations use it, amid concerns about making the investment pay off.
Jon Healey
Advocates of digital broadcasting technology descended on the National Assn. of Broadcasters' annual convention in Las Vegas Sunday, hoping the promise of higher quality and profits will persuade local stations to go digital long before their audience is ready to tune in.
This time, the target is radio broadcasters, not television stations, the majority of which have already started down the dimly lit path to digital. But though many radio executives are excited about the digital future, most are moving cautiously -- if at all.
The new technology delivers better reception, higher fidelity and more sophisticated services, such as providing traffic information on demand or letting listeners rewind to the beginning of a song. The concept is so appealing that 14 of the country's largest radio chains have invested in the company that developed the technology, IBiquity Digital Corp. of Columbia, Md.
The first receivers that can tune in digital signals, though, won't be sold until later this year. And there's no telling how long it will take to develop a digital-radio audience large enough to be meaningful to advertisers and other potential sources of revenue.
Record companies eye the emergence of digital radio warily because the signals aren't scrambled, making them susceptible to being copied and redistributed freely over the Internet, said Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations for the Recording Industry Assn. of America.
Gary Richardson, owner of WJLD-AM, a 1,000-watt urban station in Birmingham, Ala., has been through the new-technology drill before.
In the early 1990s, Richardson invested about $20,000 to convert his station to AM stereo, a much-hyped upgrade that never caught on with consumers. So he had second thoughts about spending $35,000 on digital technology -- calling it "a significant amount of money for a stand-alone AM station my size."
The concerns evaporated after the equipment was installed.
"Once that digital signal was turned on and I heard it on a receiver, all doubts were removed," Richardson said. "It is an awesome signal."
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtech nology
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"He was like a ghost," Bales recalled. "You guys are destroying the record industry," Gieselmann told him. "You've distributed more music than the whole record industry has since it came into existence."
The Napster Book - “All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster”
Joseph Menn
It was sheer anarchy. That's exactly what transpired in the late 1990s when teenage computer whiz and college dropout Shawn Fanning created Napster--a system that connected computer owners and allowed them to swap music files over the Internet. The $40-billion music industry reeled as a generation of young computer users, completely ignoring the notion of copyright, adopted a disturbing credo: Why pay for music you can get for free? By May 2000, it was estimated by the Internet research firm Webnoize that 73% of U.S. college students were using Napster.
In these excerpts from the book "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster" (to be published April 15 by Crown Business), Times staff writer Joseph Menn chronicles how a few unworldly kids almost caused the powerful music industry to implode: Artists were caught between trying to maintain their livelihoods while not appearing greedy to their fans, and at one point, the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG antagonized its peers by financing Napster at the same time its own BMG record label was suing to shut down the online service.
In her ruling against Napster, the presiding judge noted that technology had gotten ahead of the law. It also had gotten ahead of reason: If Fanning and his young colleagues didn't understand the full implications of what they had created, the professionals in charge of Napster's business didn't care. The music industry understood, but it had no idea how to stop the juggernaut.
As Napster is stymied (the site is in limbo as its new owners attempt to develop a pay-for-play service), its legacy continues to spiral outward: Pirate successors now combine for a bigger reach than Napster had at its peak; Hollywood and Silicon Valley are jousting on Capitol Hill over whether widespread anti-copying mechanisms will be mandated in future computers; and sales of blank CDs, often used to make custom discs of downloaded music, now top sales of prerecorded CDs.
It all began with a poor Boston-area kid who came west to Silicon Valley and started a revolution…
L.A. Times
Nick: peermint
Pass: peermint
All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster - excerpts
http://www.latimes.com/features/prin...s%2Dmagazin e
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“Far higher bandwidth than other wireless technologies.”
Intel Tunes In to Mesh Radio
Martin Courtney & Martin Veitch
Intel's recent developer forum in San Jose saw the vendor outline its support for one of the most promising technologies in the burgeoning wireless sector: mesh networks. Also known as multipoint or multi-hop networks, the mesh model can provide high-speed fixed wireless links into offices, industrial sites and homes. But a number of issues, including cost, security and quality of service, may cause difficulties.
So far, the use of mesh systems has been restricted to fledgling fixed wireless broadband links. There has been little enthusiasm for the services being offered by mesh specialist Radiant Networks in the UK, and BT recently scrapped its mesh network trial in Wales.
Technical problems showed that mesh may be unsuitable for providing fixed wireless broadbank links, according to BT, but another barrier is the high price of the transmitter nodes, estimated to cost about £6,000 each. If Intel's vast manufacturing resources and resulting economies of scale can bring those costs down, however, many firms may start to take a greater interest in using mesh for both broadband wireless links and to create wireless LANs that cover greater distances than the WLANs of today.
Mike Witteman of Intel's Network Architecture Lab emphasises that there are other uses for mesh networks besides giving service providers a means of providing customers with wireless last-mile access links. In enterprises, extending network range and load- balancing would be obvious applications, for example, while in industrial settings, so-called sensor networks could relay data from gauges on factory equipment.
Mesh networks use multiple wireless devices, tens or even hundreds of nodes, that relay data signals from one to the next to transmit across multiple radio links. The result is far higher bandwidth than other wireless technologies -- up to 25Mbit/s. Also, because the network has multiple communications paths, it is much more robust -- if one transmitter node is unavailable, the signal path can simply switch to another within range. "You have multiple paths that can go round any blocks, and if a path ever degraded it would move to another path," said Witteman.
In multi-hop networks, devices, such as a PDA with a radio, can act as routers, and shorter ranges mitigate against interference, provide redundancy and extend total coverage. Also, each node needs to draw only a small amount of power, which reduces installation and operational costs.
However appealing mesh network technology sounds in theory, its proponents admit that there are hurdles to be overcome: business models must be developed for service providers to justify the cost of their transmission licences; installation is time-consuming; quality of service and resource scheduling are complex; and security is inherently problematic.
http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/21169.html
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MSN: A Rabbit Hole to Nowhere?
“The computing field in general recognizes that Web services are now about smart clients and about services that can be hosted at the edge of the network via peer-to-peer computing.”
Tiernan Ray
If IDC is right about Microsoft's "techtonic shift," it's unlikely there will be anything of value to salvage from MSN.
This past weekend I had another desultory encounter with what some still believe is Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) interest in the "content" business. While trying to hook up to the Net a friend's ultralite laptop running Windows XP Professional, and bereft of the ubiquitous AOL (NYSE: AOL) software, I was taken on a tour of frustration as the preloaded Microsoft Network tried first to use a username it hijacked from another dial-up connection, then led me on a tedious and insanely slow walk through utterly irrelevant shopping and news links, none of which had anything to do with the Internet. I ultimately toasted the MSN connection and set up a third- party ISP account I had in my back pocket.
MSN won't make most people's experience of connecting to the Net very special. This is a network that doesn't care about being a network, like a supposedly hip restaurant that secretly yearns to be a car wash. And so it comes as no surprise that IDC has recently concluded MSN may soon give up on being an Internet access player. What is left after you jettison the dial-up part, the so-called "content" business, would leave MSN in the position of being a re-tread of C/Net's failed "Snap!" online service from five years ago.
C/Net, you'll recall, launched Snap! in the belief that the integrated dial-up model of America Online would give way to a flexible union of content providers and broadband services. I still have my T-shirt from Snap! that says, "Goodbye, AOL, Hello Snap!" It was, of course, the other way around, and Snap! became proof that merely declaring oneself a network does not a product make.
I don't think Microsoft would be silly enough to repeat C/Net's move, becoming, in effect, some kind of disembodied content vendor. If there is a change of heart at Microsoft, it is likely the dual realization that integrated content networks are a lot of effort for nothing, as with AOL, and that selling connections to a disaggregated network doesn't sell software.
In other words, MSN has always been a software vendor, not a content player. So the question arises as to what, if anything, Microsoft can do with nearly 9 million MSN subscribers. It can keep bundling MSN access with laptops and scoop up some new accounts, but the portal it has created increasingly seems like a rabbit hole to nowhere. After all, it has become clear that the entertainment business does not move units of operating systems.
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/21054.html
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News Corp. Seals $6.6B Deal for DirecTV Stake
Reuters
News Corp. said on Wednesday it struck a deal to take control of DirecTV for about $6.6 billion, giving media mogul Rupert Murdoch his long-sought foothold in the U.S. satellite television market.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Apr9.html
Fox stock pummelled on DirecTV deal structure
Reuters
Shares of Fox Entertainment Group Inc. FOX.N , which holds the U.S. entertainment assets of News Corp. NWS.N , plunged to their lowest level in nearly six months on Thursday, as analysts criticized the structure of the takeover of DirecTV, the No. 1 U.S. satellite television service.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said on Wednesday it would take control of Hughes Electronics Corp. GMH.N , which owns DirecTV, from General Motors Corp. GM.N in a $6.6 billion deal. But News Corp. plans to transfer ownership of Hughes to Fox, in which News Corp. owns a 81 percent stake.
The structure saddles Fox with an additional $4.5 billion of debt. The unit will also issue 74 million new shares to News Corp. as part of the transfer, which further pressures its shares.
Fox shares fell 19 percent, or $5.20, to $22.05 shortly after midday on the New York Stock Exchange, following a drop of 20.2 percent earlier to $21.75 -- its lowest level since Oct. 10. News Corp. American depositary receipts fell 6.76percent, or $1.84, to $25.38, also on the NSYE.
"Via this transaction, we are less convinced that Fox is being managed as an operating entity rather than a financing vehicle for News Corp.," said Jessica Reif Cohen, an influential analyst with Merrill Lynch.
She noted that by saddling the company with $4.5 billion in new debt, the debt would need to be serviced by Fox's cash flow. "Thus Fox shareholders in effect do not have access to this capital." She downgraded the company to "sell" from a "buy" rating.
One investment firm that sold its 1.76 million shares of Fox earlier in the year said the market is spooked by balance sheet issues.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2544648
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Internet Cafe Chain Settles Music Download Suit
Reuters
Stelios Haji-Ioannou's EasyInternet Cafe chain agreed to pay the British Phonographic Industry $326,700 in damages and fees to settle a 21-month-old feud, the trade body said on Wednesday.
In January, a High Court judge found EasyInternet Cafe guilty of copyright infringement for allowing customers to download music from the Internet and copy it onto a CD.
At the time, Haji-Iannou, the Greek entrepreneur and founder of UK low-cost airline easyJet Plc, said he would appeal the verdict.
The two sides worked out a settlement, however, with EasyInternet agreeing to pay $125,000 in damages plus the BPI's legal fees, bringing the total to $326,700.
"I am glad that Stelios has seen sense and agreed to settle this case," said Peter Jamieson, executive chairman of BPI, which counts major music labels Sony Music, EMI and Universal Music, among others, as its members.
EasyInternet suspended the disputed commercial service in September 2001, citing commercial reasons. In court it said it should not be held liable for customers downloading copyright-protected materials, a defense rejected by Justice Peter Smith. The music industry has been fighting an all-out war on illicit CD-copying and Internet downloading, blaming it for falling CD sales.
On Wednesday, music trade organization, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry, said global music sales fell 7.2 percent to $32.2 billion last year. Its chairman, Jay Berman, told Reuters he expected CD sales to fall a further five percent in 2003.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2535394
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US mod chip retailer jailed and fined
gamesindustry.biz
A US man found guilty of selling mod chips on his website in breach of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has been sentenced to five months imprisonment and a $28,500 fine.
David Rocci, who sold the Enigmah mod chips for the Xbox from the site, Isonews.com (the domain was seized by the US Department of Justice last month, but the site is still operating here), pleaded guilty to breaching the DMCA by selling illegal copyright circumvention devices last December.
His full sentence is five months in prison, five months of home detention, three years of probation and a $28,500 fine - that's £18,355 in real money. While we certainly don't approve of helping people to pirate software, we see this as a massively harsh and disproportionate punishment for a man whose crime is selling devices that allow people to modify their own equipment.
However, one thing is certain; the sentence will send an extremely powerful message to anyone else involved in the production or sale of Xbox mod chips in the USA (so far, the attempts of the US Department of Justice to extend the reach of the DMCA beyond its borders have - thankfully - been a failure). Expect a lot of mod chip projects and websites to quietly disappear in the next few days.
http://www.theregister.com/content/54/30165.html
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Busted: ISP Xtra Backtracks on TOS
New Zealand ISP Terms and Conditions Said it Owned Everything You Say
Paul Brislen
Xtra is back-tracking on its decision to change its terms and conditions after a public outcry over a new clause which seemed to give Xtra ownership rights over copy sent over its network.
On Friday Xtra, the country's largest ISP, sent users an email alerting them to changes in the terms and conditions. In particular, clause four of the Xtra's service terms relates to intellectual property and says:
"By placing any content, software or anything else ("Materials") on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence".
Newsgroups were inundated with users outraged at what seemed to be an attempt to subvert their ownership of any intellectual property that passes through or resides on an Xtra server.
The clause includes the following types of communication:
"...email services, information services, bulletin board services, chat areas, news groups, forums, groups, personal web pages, calendars, photo albums, file cabinets and/or other message or communication facilities designed to enable you to communicate with others".
Auckland-based IT law specialist Mark Copeland says the owner of any artistic work is always the creator and that Xtra had clearly gone too far with the clause.
"I'd say it's unquestionably too wide. It's not maintainable and if they relied on it as a defence should they re-publish someone's work after it was sent by email to, say, an editor, then they'd be in hot water."
However Xtra says it only introduced the clause to allow it to fulfil its obligations to customers.
"The intention of these [changes] is to make clear that Xtra and its suppliers are able to deal with materials given to them by customers for the purposes of running their services."
To that end, Xtra has revised its wording to include a disclaimer:
"Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services".
However another Auckland IT law specialist, Averill Parkinson, says even that may not be enough.
http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.n...256D010019265D!opendocument
Another clause for concern with Xtra's TOS
As legal concerns over one aspect of Xtra's terms and conditions fade (see Xtra backtracks on changes to terms and conditions), questions are being raised about another clause which seems to grant Xtra the right to block email.
Xtra is still defending the terms and conditions, saying they are consistent with international best practice.
But IT law specialist Averill Parkinson says clause three, which relates to the end user's responsibilities, includes a paragraph about what Xtra deems to be an unacceptable use of the service.
"[A]ny material or communication which we consider to be unauthorised, misleading, objectionable, restricted, defamatory, illegal, inappropriate or contrary to these Service Terms or detrimental to our reputation or to our brand".
Parkinson says the first half of the paragraph is fine, and is common practice.
However, the second half, "detrimental to our reputation or to our brand", is a bit over the top she says.
"Something can be true and still be detrimental to their brand."
If anyone does use the service for such unwelcome content, Xtra requires users to agree that "we may edit, delete, block or disconnect that material or communication ourselves".
"What if I'm a lawyer representing someone who is suing Xtra? I could conceivably be using the service to transmit information that could be detrimental to Xtra's reputation. Does that mean they have the right to block it, or to edit my email?" asks Parkinson.
She is also concerned by the word "delete".
"Can Xtra then require access to my system to delete the content from the network?"
http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.n...256D02001C30C0!opendocument
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Benetton takes stock of chip plan
Winston Chai and Richard Shim
Clothing maker Benetton has clarified its plans regarding radio tags in response to reports that it is preparing to place millions of the devices in its products to help track inventory.
A company spokesman on Monday said the company has to date purchased only 200 radio frequency identity (RFID) chips and is still studying whether or not it will use controversial technology to track its products.
Spokesman Federico Sartor said there was a misunderstanding about Benetton's use of RFIDs, and though the company didn't think it was a major issue, concern in the financial markets regarding the cost of technology and its benefits caused the company to clarify its position.
"We are not using any RFIDs in any of our more than 100 million garments today," he said.
With RFID tags, it becomes technically possible for marketers to obtain invaluable information on a host of consumer preferences, ranging from the clothes they like to the food they prefer.
In addition, there are worries that such a technology could be exploited for government surveillance or be misused by hackers and criminals.
Philips, on its part, has reassured consumers that the clothing can't be tracked beyond Benetton stores and warehouses, as its chips have an operating distance of about 5 feet.
While the assurance may hold true for now, some industry experts say it is possible for criminals to increase the tracking distance by building a more sensitive RFID signal receiver.
Such nagging privacy concerns have sparked consumer furor over the initial Philips-Benetton announcement.
Soon after the announcement, U.S.-based privacy group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, lashed out at the international clothing chain and called for a worldwide boycott.
The group urged consumers to avoid Benetton products until the company publicly renounced its involvement with RFID.
While it is unclear if Benetton is bowing down to such pressures, the company did say it will consider the "potential implications relating to individual privacy" before firming up its RFID plans.
http://news.com.com/2100-1020-995744.html
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The land of the increasingly insecure
With Total Information Awareness, the government, too, can know that your sweater spent an evening in jail after a protest march.
Wendy M. Grossman
THE COMPUTERS, FREEDOM AND Privacy conference isn't exactly where I discovered the nexus of issues that make up net.wars, but it's the place where they came together for me as a related set, as opposed to a bunch of unrelated stuff I was interested in. It's good for that: the cross-disciplinary mix makes it inevitable that you will make new connections between ideas.
Blood wasn't spilled on the carpets until about 2:15pm on the first day, when Heather MacDonald, defending Total Information Awareness, called us all Luddites for not being thrilled by the capabilities of this new technology. She would, she said emotionally, be happy for her daughter to answer a few questions if it meant she wouldn't be blown up at her college. Patrick Ball, who does statistics and relational databases for a living in human rights work, challenged her with some numbers. We are, he said forcibly, talking about hundreds of millions of suspects and a few dozen terrorists. Even the tiniest error rate, he pointed out, means hundreds of thousands of false positives and therefore investigations. As retired ACLU head Ira Glasser said yesterday, "Nobody is made safer when you arrest the wrong person." (This does not, of course, worry the Department of Justice, which announced this week that records contained in its National Crime Information Center database do not have to be accurate.)
That hasn't made the litany of new initiatives less depressing: passenger profiling, anti-terrorism laws that target all of us, surveillance cameras, total information awareness, PATRIOT-II, data retention. Some of the conference attendees couldn't make it because they were refused visas; others declined to try. Here in orange alert New York, they've got clumps of gun-accessorized men in camouflage military gear searching for an appropriate desert all over Penn Station, the hotel is demanding photo ID, and bags are scanned and searched on the way into the Empire State Building. Kinda like Belfast used to be, at the height of the IRA campaigns, except that the searching hasn't spread to ordinary stores and the city center isn't cordoned off. Do you feel safer now?
Probably most people don't. I don't know a lot of people who feel safer when they walk past a clump of five guys carrying guns, even if all those guys are doing is saying, "Use the pedestrian crossing to get across there." (That happened to me in San Francisco last week; didn't they have something more important to police?)
Things are no better when you look at the non-government side. In one panel, we were reminded that free speech and open access to the Internet depends heavily on its architecture. But the conversion from dial-up to broadband is putting the Internet much more into the control of the large cable and telephone companies than before – and the cable companies want content-based routing that will let them control distribution just like TV.
Then there's the nightmare future of RFID chips, which campaigner Katherine Albrecht believes will turn the world into an all-tracking, all-surveilling global network. Manufacturers, she says, love the idea of a future in which they can follow their products post-sale. With Total Information Awareness, the government, too, can know that your sweater spent an evening in jail after a protest march.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8736
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Why we may never regain the liberties that we've lost
Dan Gillmor
NEW YORK - The lights of a magnificent, recovering city glittered from the 80th floor of the Empire State Building on Wednesday evening. The multiple ironies were not lost on the gathering of civil-liberties and public-interest activists.
The Empire State Building is now the tallest structure in the city, still half-stunned from the attacks that brought down the two taller buildings 18 months ago. As a new war raged in Iraq, the people in the room were acutely aware of the only slightly older war that has consumed their daily lives like nothing before -- the way in which the war on terrorism has also turned into an assault on individual liberties.
The activists were in New York for the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. They continued to take heart from small victories here and there, some of which were simply stopgap efforts to keep a bad law from becoming even worse. But the prevailing mood, even more so than a year ago in San Francisco, struck me as downright gloomy.
Maybe I'm projecting my own worries onto others. But I sensed a deepening fear that things are really different this time.
Liberties ebbed and flowed in America's past. Leaders curbed liberties, with the public's often ignorant endorsement, in times of crisis. But the rights tended to come back when the crises ended.
The fabled pendulum of liberty may not swing back this time. Why?
For one thing, the damage that one evil or deranged person or group can cause has grown. Even if America somehow persuades all Islamic radicals that we are a good and just society, there will still be some evil and deranged people who will try to wreck things and lives in spectacular ways. In other words, the ``war on terrorism'' can't possibly end.
Moreover, the architecture of tomorrow is being embedded with the tools of a surveillance society: ubiquitous cameras; the creation and linking of all manner of databases; insecure networks; and policies that invite abuse. They are being put into place by an unholy, if loose, alliance of government, private industry and just plain nosy regular folks.
The Bush administration's attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.
You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks.
But the damage we will do to ourselves if we allow our liberty to disappear is incalculable. An entrepreneurial society can't exist if political freedom disappears, and if Big Brothers, public and private, are invading our daily existence with impunity.
The damage we'll do globally will be tragic. The world looks to America in large part because of our freedoms. We are a magnet, and a beacon, because liberty means something here.
So I deeply admire the activists who gathered in New York, because they keep trying even in the toughest of times. They are fighting for all of us, and for our future.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/5571471.htm
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Cop Sold Secret Data on People to Tabloids, Suit Says
AP
A Los Angeles police officer used department computers to access confidential law enforcement records of celebrities and sold the information to tabloids, according to a lawsuit recently settled by the city.
Officer Kelly Chrisman, a 13-year veteran, acknowledged looking up the information, but said he did so at the direction of his superiors, according to internal Los Angeles Police Department records. Attorney Christopher Darden said his client never sold the information to anyone.
"There's really nothing in those records to sell to tabloids," Darden said. "He didn't do it. That's that."
The lawsuit prompted the department to launch its own investigation, which the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday turned up "hundreds of hits" on the names of famous people, including Jennifer Aniston, Mickey Rourke, Pamela Anderson, and Nicole Brown Simpson.
Between 1994 and 2000, Chrisman also accessed computer files on such celebrities as Sharon Stone, Sean Penn, Meg Ryan, Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson, Larry King, Drew Barrymore, Cindy Crawford, and Halle Berry, according to the internal documents.
Personal information available on the department's computer system includes criminal histories, birth dates, driving records, ownership of vehicles, physical descriptions, Social Security numbers, restraining orders and, in some cases, unlisted phone numbers.
The lawsuit was filed by Chrisman's former girlfriend, Cyndy Truhan, who is also the ex-wife of former Los Angeles Dodgers star Steve Garvey.
In March, the city paid $387,500 to settle the suit, which claimed Chrisman secretly used police computers to investigate Truhan along with hundreds of other people and made a substantial side income by selling the information to supermarket tabloids.
Unauthorized use of police databases is a violation of federal and state laws, as well as department regulations. Chrisman was placed on home duty, similar to paid leave, while the allegations are investigated.
Meanwhile, officials expressed concern the case could lead to other lawsuits.
"How many other situations do we have like this?" asked City Councilman Dennis Zine. "How does this go unchecked? We're spending almost $400,000 of taxpayer money on this one suit, and God knows how many more will come down the line."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...elebrity_x.htm
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Smithereens Frontman Launches Subscription Service
Barry A. Jeckell
New Jersey-based artist Pat DiNizio, lead singer/songwriter of the Smithereens, has founded Patrons & Artists Together, a boutique entertainment partnership meant to fund his recording and touring projects and reward participants with a unique music experience, as well as provide free music via the Internet. Limited to 100 subscribers at a cost of $1,200 each, the program offers CD releases that will not be available through conventional channels, private concerts, and more.
In a statement, DiNizio describes Patrons & Artists Together business model as "a 'vision quest' in which an artist partners up with his or her audience to make an end run around the way that business is done these days in the ever-imploding music industry."
Once underway, subscribers will receive a numbered and autographed copy of the two-disc set "This Is Pat DiNizio," which the artist says was equally inspired by the Beatles' "White Album" and the Rick Rubin-produced "American Recordings" albums by Johnny Cash. Subsequent albums -- including "Dark Standards," an album of standards on which DiNizio is backed by a jazz quartet and big band, a remix set, a Christmas album, a children's album, and a collection of demos for the next Smithereens release -- will follow approximately every four months.
Subscribers will also receive 50 copies of each album to distribute to friends and family members. Abbreviated versions of the releases will also appear online for free download by the general public, along with CD artwork.
Beyond the recorded music, DiNizio will perform a private "living room concert" for each patron, which includes DVD and audio copies of the performance for all in attendance. Each show will be coupled with a fund raising or charity performance to benefit a local organization of the patron's choice. Other perks include Smithereens tickets and backstage passes, and Patrons & Artists Together t-shirts.
"I believe that I've come up with a solution for any type of artist, emerging or established, to make his or her music available online for free to anyone in the world -- and still earn a living," DiNizio says. For more specific details on the venture, visit DiNizio's official Web site.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1859066
Top 10 D/Ls - Singles
BigChampagne
Gnubian: This Peer-to-Peer Says It Protects You From Copyright Cops
Site Announcement
Welcome to the Gnubian Project. Early next month, we will be launching the Gnubian peer-to-peer file sharing application, an application that promises to change the face of file sharing.
Since the death of Napster, users have longed for an easy-to use, reliable, fast way to search for and download movies, music, applications, ebooks, and other data. While KaZaA, Gnutella, and others have made a stong attempt at making this a reality, they all fall short. Gnubian's model is based on the same peer-to-peer ideas as other applications of the same nature, but we've taken the idea to next level.
The trick is to bring user participation up a notch. Popular files will be indexed, verified, and then partially distributed to all clients who have marked themselves willing to act as a "buffer" node. They won't be given the entire file, just a small chunk. When a user goes to download that file, they will be able to pull parts from many users, increasing speed and availability while freeing the users from any accountability for any material that might be copyrighted.
While we don't specifically support the trading of copyrighted material, we feel that there are legitimate reasons to download such material, such as for educational purposes or to have a backup of something you already own. Thus, we've designed Gnubian to be completely censor-proof.
Our network has spent the last several months in beta, going through a series of stress tests and scalability improvements. Our beta users have been blown away by the performance, and our developers are working out the last few bugs before launch.
At launch, only a Windows client will be available, but the source code for Gnubian will also be made available, along with a Gnubian Network SDK, for anyone interested in developing clients for other platforms, or simply for the purpose of bettering the official Gnubian client.
Naturally, there's more to what makes Gnubian special than this, but you'll have to wait until launch to find out what it is, so stay tuned...
http://www.gnubians.org/
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Internet via the Power Grid: New Interest in Obvious Idea
John Markoff aand Matt Richtel
As cable, telephone and wireless companies compete to provide high-speed Internet access to homes, a new challenger is emerging based on a decidedly old technology.
The idea is to send Internet data over ordinary electric power lines. Proponents argue that it can be a competitive alternative to digital cable, telephone digital subscriber line and wireless efforts to connect the "last mile" between homes and Internet service providers.
Power-line networking has held out promise for several decades, in part because the electric grid is already in place, running to almost every residence in the nation, and also because it was thought that power companies would leap at the idea of a new revenue source — if the technology is proven.
But the idea has elicited deep skepticism from technologists who argue that the electric power network is a remarkably difficult environment for transmitting digital information. Moreover the nation's electric power industry has for the most part remained complacent about the technology.
Still, the technology is getting sudden attention in response to several trial efforts around the country and in other nations. Today, Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave the concept a further boost when he toured a demonstration site for the technology in Potomac, Md.
The agency and its chairman have said they are backing the power-line approach in an effort to stir competition and offer greater consumer choice.
"I was struck by how it has matured," Mr. Powell said. He said the F.C.C. was preparing to undertake a regulatory proceeding that could help pave the way for commercial deployment. "I'm optimistic," he said.
The F.C.C. has licensed seven companies to conduct field tests in roughly a dozen communities around the country, including Raleigh, N.C.; Potomac, Md.; Cincinnati,; Lehigh, Pa.; and Briarcliff, N.Y.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...gy/10POWE.html
NYTimes -
Nick: bobbob
Pass:bobbob
It Adds Up (and Up, and Up)
Rob Fixmer
WHEN Jon Green was growing up in rural Massachusetts in the 1970's, his family's phone service consisted of a party line shared with several neighbors. A simple rabbit-ears antenna captured all of seven television channels.
Today, like many middle-class Americans, Mr. Green and his wife, Stacie, carry cellphones, and their home in Maynard, Mass., has a land-line phone, cable television and a high-speed connection to the Internet, each offering an array of extra services. The connections they have come to consider necessities are discreet if not invisible. The tangible reminder is the stack of bills the Greens must pay each month.
When technology executives and marketers talk about the value of their products, they tend to focus on computer chips, which are 350 times more powerful today than they were 20 years ago and cost about a third as much.
But it is not the cost of the machines that has most altered household budgets. Instead, all that cheap computing power embedded in scores of new gadgets and married to communications networks has resulted in a growing number of subscription services that most consumers cannot resist - and continuing charges that they cannot escape.
The party line phone service they had in 1974 probably cost Mr. Green's family about $19 a month, the equivalent of about $70 today when adjusted for inflation. Long-distance calls were thought of as expensive, infrequent luxuries. Watching television was free, and access to the Internet would not be generally available or billable for two decades.
Today the Greens pay more than $225 a month for services that enable them to watch television, make phone calls and communicate over the Internet. That is more than a threefold increase, in today's dollars, for communications and home entertainment.
Research at Columbia University in the late 1990's suggests that like the Greens, most other American households have spent an increasing percentage of their disposable income over the last decade to link themselves to the outside world. Other research, done at Rutgers University, suggests that the appetite for such services has not reached its limit: American families are spending only about half as much as they say they would be willing to pay for technologies that would perfectly meet their needs. That is heartening news for the companies that are trying to convince consumers of the virtues of high-speed Internet connections or digital cable or satellite television services.
Not everyone, to be sure, is happy about that continuing evolution. Some consumers say they resent the addictive nature of such offerings.
"They get you hooked, and then you can't let go," said Sari Boren, a designer of museum exhibits from Cambridge, Mass. "A big part of what bothers me about the monthly payment thing is that no matter which of these services you subscribe to, you know they're going to keep raising the rates."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10cost.html
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A Self-Powered DNA Computer Redefines Small
Ian Austen
EXPERIMENTAL computers that calculate using DNA rather than electronics have many promising properties. To start with, they are exceptionally tiny. About one trillion DNA computers would fit in a single drop of water. Yet their storage capacity is potentially vast. A single gram of DNA holds about as much information as one trillion compact discs.
Now a research group at Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, has added another twist. Its latest creation makes data function as the computer's power source.
"It's not like we're going to save the energy store of the world with this," said Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist and the lead researcher of the Weizmann project. "But lo and behold, we have been able to compute without using energy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10next.html
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Q n A
J.D. Biersdorfer
Q. Can I record MP3 files to my computer in MusicMatch Jukebox Plus 7.5 from sources other than the CD drive? Can I record from vinyl records?
A. MusicMatch Jukebox Plus, a digital music management program for Windows users, is usually set by default to record audio from a compact disc in the computer's CD or DVD drive. Most people use the program for encoding songs from the CD into the compressed MP3 format for use with a portable MP3 player or for desktop listening within the MusicMatch Jukebox program itself.
But you can change the settings for the program's Recorder component to capture sound from sources other than the CD drive, including a cassette player, a turntable or a microphone.
To record songs from vinyl records or cassette tape, you will need to connect your stereo receiver or tape player to the computer with an audio patch cable.
In most cases, you will need a Y-shaped cable with two RCA connector plugs on one end to plug into the output jacks behind the stereo receiver, and a single 3.5-millimeter stereo mini-plug on the other end to connect to the Line In port on your computer's sound card. You can find a selection of audio cables at Radio Shack and other electronics shops.
While in MusicMatch Jukebox Plus, go to the Options menu and select Recorder. Under the Source submenu, choose Line In to change the sound source for MusicMatch Jukebox. Then go to the View menu and select Recorder to open the program's recording controls.
You will be asked to enter a name for the file you are about to record. Click the Start button on the Recorder window when you are ready to record the song from the external music source, and click the Stop button when you are finished recording.
To get the sound quality you want, you may have to adjust the volume level on your stereo and experiment until you find the right balance.
MusicMatch Jukebox Plus can accept input from a microphone if you want to record an MP3 from a live source - for example, to make a recording of a song to study before a guitar lesson. The recording process is similar, except that in the Options menu for Recorder you should change the Source to Mic In.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10askk.html
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Play Fascinating Rhythms, for Your Ears Only
Ian Austen
Except for the models designed to be children's toys, digital drum sets have been beyond the budget of many musicians who perform only at home. But at $300, Pacific Digital's DrumXtreme might find an audience among amateurs.
"We're not just trying to go after professional musicians who want a digital drum set that is compact and light," said Robert Horton, director of product marketing for Pacific Digital (
www.pacificdigital.com), a company more widely known for its digital photo frames. "We think a digital set with a lower price point would be of interest to intermediate and beginning drummers."
The DrumXtreme, the first musical instrument from Pacific Digital, replaces acoustic drums and cymbals with digital pads that are arranged on a collapsible frame. It connects to a Windows-based computer through a U.S.B. port. The software supplied with the drum set includes some instructional and practice exercises as well as what the company calls play-along scores. An additional pad and foot pedal are available for $50.
Neighbors and family members of DrumXtreme owners should especially like one feature: DrumXtreme owners can keep their rhythms to themselves by listening to the set through headphones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10drum.html
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Zap a Foe, Surf the Web: Keys to Suit Your Software
Charles Herold
It's often difficult to remember which key does what when you're playing a PC game; a key that fires a gun in one game may operate a flashlight in another. Ideazon's solution is its Zboard, which offers keyboard interfaces for specific games and other applications.
The Zboard has two parts, a keyboard base that connects to your computer and an interface that can be inserted into the keyboard base or folded up and stored on a bookshelf.
The initial selection of interfaces will be limited to Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Excel and Word; Adobe Photoshop; and the games Age of Mythology and Medal of Honor. The game interfaces are especially interesting, with many keys that correspond to esoteric game actions, and colorful themed designs.
A base unit is available for $29.99 and a base with one interface for $39.99 at
www.ideazon.com; each additional interface will cost $19.99 or more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10zboa.html
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No Holds Barred for a Roving Office
Rob Fixmer
FOR the frequent business traveler, the need to stay connected to the office and home is often paramount, and the cost of technology may be no object if it can provide a competitive edge.
"My laptop bag is my office," said Richard Ginsburg, chief executive officer of Protection One, a security monitoring company that operates nationally. Mr. Ginsburg, who travels about 300,000 miles a year from his home in Miami Beach, spends a minimum of $608 a month for a collection of communications services. "It's a lot of money," he said, "but I have to live on the road. I can't be in a city and not have the proper tools."
Each month, in addition to paying for his home phone and a cable-modem Internet connection, he spends $330 for three cellphone lines, $50 for a pager, $30 for interactive access to an investment service on his BlackBerry device and - by far the most important expenditure of all, he said - at least $25 for Boingo Wireless (
www.boingo.com), a service that offers high-speed wireless Internet access at airports, hotels and other Wi-Fi "hot spots" around the country. The service has become so essential, he said, that it dictates which cities he visits and which hotels he chooses.
Mr. Ginsburg, 34, admitted to being a "gadget guy" who travels with a digital camera and a satellite-navigation unit and spends $13 a month for TiVo television recording service at home. But he said he would give up any of those gizmos or services before he would let go of his Boingo subscription.
"Over the last year and a half, the Wi-Fi service has made the biggest change of any technology in the way I work," he said. It enables him to send and receive huge files, including spreadsheets, graphics and video.
But he may be nearing the limit of his comfort level in paying for all this convenience. "I would say over $800 is starting to get into nosebleed territory," he said, "and I would look to pare down other services."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/te...ts/10trav.html
NYTimes -
Nick: bobbob
Pass:bobbob
Interesting Web Sites
Connecticut artist Sam Brown
Entertainment industry goes after little guy
Ken Hamner
The totalitarian iron fist of the "entertainment" industry has closed its grip upon the little guys now. It wasn't enough for them to destroy Napster and other "corporate" file swapping systems. It has now decided to target individuals who swap files, not with just warnings, but with lawsuits.
Students attending the universities of Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Michigan Technological University are being sued for having computer systems that, without charge, transferred thousands of songs to people interested in listening to fresh music not readily available on corporate radio or that costs up to $20 on a CD.
While it probably would have been possible to warn the students and have the universities shut down their systems, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) instead decided to file lawsuits in New York, New Jersey and Michigan. The RIAA, having been made very sad and infinitesimally poorer by these individuals, has decided to ask the courts to make these students pay reparations for their heinous deeds. The amount? A maximum of $150,000 per song.
That seems like a lot of money to charge for file sharing. How does it break down? The worst case involves the Michigan student who stored 650,000 songs on his server, in addition to 1,866 of which he actually owned, that were available to everyone on his network. At $150,000 per song, that means he would owe the RIAA $97.5 billion. Just to compare with other monetary statistics, the cost of the space shuttle Endeavour was $2.1 billion, the projected sales of Kellogg's cereal in the year 2000 was $2.5 billion and the gross domestic product (GDP) of China was estimated to be $1.2 trillion in 2002. As we can all see, ladies and gentlemen, these songs are worth a lot!
How long would it take these students to pay off their debts to the RIAA they ripped-off and humiliated so shamelessly? Let's take a smaller example. Recently, The RIAA told Verizon to sell out a client suspected of allowing people to download (for free) 600 songs, which the company had to do, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Assuming the maximum fine the RIAA seems to believe every song is worth would be levied against this individual, he would be forced to pay $90 million. Next, let's assume this individual has a good job that allows him to make $20 an hour. Since everyone is required to sleep, we'll assume he works 112 hours a week, and since everyone needs to eat and pay rent, we'll assume at least $3 an hour go toward food and rent. This means that, at $17 and hour, at 112 hours a week, it would take roughly 909 years for this man to pay off his damages to the RIAA.
Let us all hope, for the sake of the persecuted and wronged RIAA, that this man is incredibly long-lived if convicted.
http://www.collegian.com/vnews/displ.../3e9363ef38f06
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Ice T Offers Album for Sale to Kazaa Users - It’ll Run You $4.99
Sue Zeidler
Rapper Ice T, one of the few artists to support file-sharing and the now-defunct Napster, said on Wednesday he is making his music available for purchase to users of the controversial Kazaa service.
Under the deal, marking the service's first commercial distribution of music by a hit artist, Ice T's new album, "Repossession," will be available for $4.99 to Kazaa Media Desktop users through a secure platform for peer-to-peer services developed by Altnet, a unit of Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. BDE.A
Since last year, Altnet has placed pay-content listings among Kazaa search results, leading to authorized, protected files instead of the unlicensed type normally traded on Kazaa.
While Kazaa's parent company, Sharman Networks, has touted the partnership with Altnet as a potential and legitimate revenue source for the music industry, the world's big record labels consider it a foe and have sued Kazaa for copyright infringement, hoping to shut it down.
So far, Altnet and its content partners have received payment for 18 million licensed content files, spanning music, software, games and videos.
But the songs Altnet embeds with copy protection are mostly obscure and make up a tiny fraction of the pirated files traded through Kazaa. Analysts say at any moment, about 4 million Kazaa users are sharing some 800 million movie, picture, music and pornography files, most of which are unauthorized.
Kazaa has argued in court that by incorporating Altnet, it has significant legal uses.
Kevin Bermeister, Altnet's chief executive, has said he has tried to establish a working relationship with music companies and was optimistic that signing on Ice T would help open the door to other distribution deals.
The deal also provides for future distribution of an additional 16 Ice T audio or video files.
"We are thrilled to have Ice T as the first multi-platinum artist using Altnet's technology," Bermeister said in a statement. "Altnet enables content owners to tap into the promotional and commercial power of a peer-to-peer environment."
Ice T, an outspoken critic of big record labels and an advocate for new distribution channels, said teaming with Altnet was an easy decision.
"With technology today, artists don't need to rely on the workings of a traditional label to get their music to consumers, and without the label being in the middle to get a stake, it enables artists like myself to generate more revenue through selling product ourselves," Ice T said in a statement.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2539762
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Widespread Panic Gave It Away
Barry A. Jeckell,
Widespread Panic made the track "Nebulous," from its forthcoming Sanctuary album "Ball," available free online (April 9) to users of Altnet's Kazaa Media Desktop peer-to-peer file-sharing software. As previously reported, the jam band broke its tradition of road testing songs for months prior to recording. Therefore, no material from the new album has previously been heard by fans in any setting.
"Widespread has always been committed to bringing music to their fans by encouraging tape- trading and the like," a band representative said in a statement. "This is simply another step forward in that direction. We're excited about this technology and think it should be embraced." For more information or to download the KaZaA Media Desktop software application, visit Kazaa.com.
Widespread Panic kicks off its spring tour tonight in Madison, Wis. Following the tour's end May 16-17 in Indianapolis, the group has plans to co-headline the second annual Bonnaroo festival in June in Manchester, Tenn. "Ball," the band's first album since the death of founding guitarist Michael Houser and first studio set for Sanctuary, is due Tuesday.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=1861485
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Technology of many
In the post-web services world, amorphous computing or swarm computing will leverage on the strength of multitudes of components to overcome the power of monolithic systems.
Louis Chua
Peer-to-peer technologies, web services, grid computing and all kinds of clusters
are some of the hottest forms of distributed computing. These are the technologies that will capture the industry's interest for the next couple of years. But ever wonder what will come after them? Looking at the billions of very different smart devices with communication capabilities threatening to flood everyday lives, amorphous computing would probably be a good bet.
Amorphous – which means lacking definite form, of no particular type and lacking organisation – is a concept that accepts heterogeneity as a way of life, yet allows very different components the ability to interact with one another in their own manner. This allows for many different interpretations for amorphous computing.
Also known as swarm computing, amorphous computing emphasises the concept that a collective result that emerges from individual micro-level behaviours could provide a more efficient system. It is, in a sense, a form of bio-mimicry in which scientists get inspiration from nature. Amorphous computing is similar to the concept of a colony of cells cooperating to form a multi-cellular organism under the direction of a genetic programme shared by the members of the colony.
Using biological systems as a metaphor or inspiration for computing machines has been a recurring theme in technology. In the mid-1940s, John von Neumann spent considerable time studying how biological systems processed information, and used this to help formulate his theory of automata, both natural and artificial.
Instead of a single monolithic system, the concept of amorphous computing tries to obtain coherent behaviours from the cooperation of large number of unreliable parts that are interconnected in unknown, irregular and time-variable ways. The first tentative steps have already been taken by technologies like web services. However, for web services, there is a lack of an overall mechanism that can direct a group of cell-like computing devices.
There is still a lot of fundamental research to be done into the organisation of computing systems, such as the methods for instructing myriad of programmable entities to cooperate to achieve particular goals. In fact, we haven't even begun to identify or categorise the problems that might manifest themselves in the amorphous world. There is a need to identify the engineering principles and languages that can be used to observe, control, organise and exploit the behaviour of programmable materials.
http://computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.ns...6?OpenDocument
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P2P Helps Small Business
Scientific supplies distributor VWR International selects GridNode's GridTalk communications software to automate previously batch-based EDI transactions with RosettaNet protocol and processes.
Tan Ee Sze
Singapore business process automation software provider GridNode has announced
the successful completion of RosettaNet-based business processes automation and integration for VWR International, a leading global distributor of scientific supplies. RosettaNet is a global business consortium which is creating an ecommerce framework to align processes in the IT supply chain.
VWR International, a Merck company with worldwide sales of more than US$2.5 billion ($4.35 billion), has a highly diversified business which spans a spectrum of products and services, customer groups and geography. The company offers more than 750,000 products, from more than 5,000 manufacturers, to over 250,000 customers throughout North America and Europe.
"Since VWR has thousands of trading partners in a variety of different industries, it is necessary for us to work with flexible and reliable communication technology solutions for our mission-critical internal and external needs," said Mary Ann Donlon, manager of Electronic Integrations, VWR International.
According to Donlon, GridNode deployed the out-of-the-box RosettaNet business automation solution in just three days. Using a highly-optimised, distributed architecture for business-to-business (B2B) integration and collaboration, GridNode's peer-to-peer (P2P), XML-based (extensible markup language) product suite enables supply chain data to be exchanged, synchronised and analysed in real-time via the Internet infrastructure. The company also offers a RosettaNet Basics-compliant solution for enterprises of any size to connect directly to their trading partners.
http://computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.ns...5?OpenDocument
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P2P Helps Small Churches
Press Release
Kingdom Ventures, Inc., a rapidly growing church development company, announced today that it has launched UCAN - Undercover Angels Network. UCAN is a private label community program for churches that enables young disadvantaged individuals or single parents to receive a free car by simply performing 100 hours of service to their local church. The program has been created - and is administered and managed - by Kingdom Ventures, a publicly traded church development company.
Only six percent of the country's churches have more than 1000 members. The remaining 94% rarely have the time or money to manage this type of community outreach program. This is why Kingdom Ventures created UCAN. It is a private label community program for smaller churches, completely administered and managed by Kingdom Ventures.
"We will provide the church with material they can use to inform their members about their new local program, including a description they can include in their church newsletter, a sermon and a brochure that describes the program. The material will help churches solicit members for unused or unwanted cars. They can use it to inform the disadvantaged members of the church, or the community, about the launch of their own UCAN program. And, utilizing our state-of-the-art peer-to-peer system called KingdomNet, churches can even access necessary IRS forms, applications and customizable service pledge agreements. Everything is private labeled - Kingdom Ventures operates in the background, making the program as easy for the churches to manage as possible," describes Jackson.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...m&footer_file=
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Polish internet use statistics
According to SMG/KRC, a public opinion research institute, around 20 per cent of Poles aged between 15 and 75 use the internet. This represents a total of 5.95m people. 30.9 per cent of people with access to the internet use it every day. The most popular portals are Onet.pl, which is visited by 73.6 per cent of all internet users, followed by Wirtualna Polska (63.3 per cent) and Interia (40.9 per cent).
According to Ipsos, a research company, around 25 per cent of Poles are internet users, 78 per cent of whom use the internet every week. 42 per cent of users access the internet at home and 33 per cent at school. Around 28 per cent of respondents visit internet cafes.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15828
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The Real-Time War
Cynthia L. Webb
Communications technology -- the Internet, e-mail, satellite video and voice-only phones, digital video and more -- is feeding the appetite of a worldwide audience hungry for news about the war in Iraq. Unlike the 1991 Persian Gulf War, today's viewers can watch battles unfold in real-time on the their televisions, communicate directly with loved ones fighting in Iraq, and read news coverage from around the world -- all with one click of a mouse or TV remote control.
In a piece earlier this week, the BBC Online noted: "There can never have been a war when so much information was available to so many. Newspaper pages galore, special supplements, magazines, rolling TV and radio channels, and extended bulletins all jostle for people's attention. And, of course, there is the worldwide web, whose birth wasn't announced until some months after the end of the first Gulf War. (Tim Berners-Lee posted his message heralding the first browser on the alt.hypertext newsgroup in August 1991.)." The BBC cited the view of Web guru Jakob Nielsen, who argues that those who use the Web to get information about the war, opposed to those just watching TV reports, might have access to more and better information.
"This was not what [Nielsen] was expecting to find. But he says people who get their news from the web could be benefiting from a significantly different perspective from those who are restricted to newspapers or TV. 'I usually find myself saying that the web is a secondary way of communicating information,' he says. 'But people are getting a good deal from the web in terms of war coverage.'" Nielsen: "Usually the web has this downside that people don't want to read so much stuff online. ... So it gives you a bit of an abbreviated view -- which in this case I think is really good as this gives you a much better perspective of what is going on. And of course the web is still 'real time'... With the web you get the best of both worlds."
DMCA Challenge Fails
A federal judge yesterday tossed out a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.. The suit, filed on behalf of a Harvard Law student, argued that Internet filtering software used to enforce the law was blocking more than just its intended adult-themed and nefarious sites. The Associated Press explains: Student Ben Edelman "had asked a Seattle company called N2H2 for a list of sites its software blocks, but was rebuffed. He then went to court to seek permission to reverse-engineer N2H2's product, saying he needed court permission because the controversial 1998 law forbids the dissemination of information that could be used to bypass copyright-protection schemes. CNET's News.com says the ACLU hasn't decided yet whether it will appeal Wednesday's ruling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Apr10.html
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Students put their own spin on downloading music
Jefferson Graham
As the record industry starts to come down hard on unauthorized music downloading on college campuses, students are responding with defiant words and defensive actions.
The Recording Industry Association of America, which had relied on warnings and educational programs aimed at campuses, last week filed its first legal suits against students at Princeton, Michigan Tech and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The record industry says the students infringed on copyrights by operating song-sharing sites on university servers.
Since then, according to the record industry and other sources, students on at least 15 campuses, including UCLA, Brandeis, Rice and Syracuse, as well as the four defendants, have pulled down their sites.
But students on the UCLA campus said this week that they weren't cowed by the threat of legal action. "I'm not scared," says UCLA history major Ean Plotkin, 21, who says he still downloads regularly. "The record labels will never be able to stop downloading. It's too widespread."
In fact, he says, he doesn't see it as theft. "This is exactly like going to the library. Do I have to pay to check out a book? I'm just listening to the song, not selling it."
Meanwhile, students who don't indulge in swapping remain rare. Jackie Vayntrub says she's the only one she knows on campus who won't do it. "My roommate even just bought a second hard drive to hold all of her MP3s."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-04-09-download_x.htm
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Interview: Lawrence Lessig on Copyrights
Russell Roberts
Roberts: Let's talk about the Eldred case that ended up in the Supreme Court challenging the Sonny Bono Act. Give us a little background on the Sonny Bono Act and the goal of the case.
Lessig: The Constitutional background is that the Constitution requires that copyrights be granted for the purpose of promoting progress, the progress of science, and they be granted for only limited terms. But our Congress has gotten into the practice of extending the terms of copyright that they've already granted. So in the last forty years, they've extended the terms of existing copyrights eleven times. In 1998, Congress extended the term again, this time, the longest they've ever extended existing terms, 20 years. So for the next 20 years after that passage, no work would pass into the public domain from copyright expiration at all.
To keep that in context, in the same 20 years, one million patents would pass into the public domain. So we brought a challenge after the Bono act was passed claiming that this practice showed that Congress was no longer respecting the requirement that the terms be limited, but in effect, copyright had become perpetual, on the "installment plan" as Peter Jazsi put it.
Our claim was that the court should step in to attempt cut back on this practice to guarantee that the constitutional vision of work once created and earning its copyrighted return should pass into the public domain for others to build upon.
Roberts: Seems kind of open and shut. The Constitution says copyright should be for a limited duration. The Congress seems to make it perpetual. What issue came into play in the 7-2 decision upholding the extension?
Lessig: There's an argument that what Congress is doing is respecting the Constitution. And then there's the historical practice which led the Court to do what it did. The argument is, Well, as long as each extension is itself a limited term, then you still have a limited term. That's an argument which ordinary people laugh at. It's the sort of thing your child says when you say, take one cookie and the child takes five. The child says, I did take one. Five times. But it's a technical way of saying Congress is complying with the Constitution. And what the Supreme Court said was that because Congress had done this in the past, that had established a practice of deference to Congress's decisions in the past.
Roberts: Let's go back to the details. Any copyrighted material before 1923 is in the public domain. Anything after that is protected. Correct?
LL: It's a little bit more complicated. We used to have a very sensible system. It required that you both register and renew your copyright in order to gain copyright protection. So work after 1923 had to have been renewed in order to continue the copyright protection. But in the 1990s, Congress passed a statute that basically said you didn't even have to renew any existing copyrights. So there's a period of time where copyrighted works were subject to falling into the public domain if they were not renewed and a bunch of that work did fall into the public domain. But from now on it's automatic and will continue to be.
Another part of this problem which we emphasized but the Court didn't take account of, was that it's so hard to know what material is available and what material is not available. There are no good records of who copyright owners are (because renewal isn't required anymore) and not even a requirement of registration. You can't even know who's claiming a copyright over what. So there's this mass of unsorted material out there that could or could not be available for public use creating vast uncertainty. As we said, just at the time that technology is enabling all sorts of new creativity, to build on this material and do stuff with it, the law is getting in the way and locking it up. Supposedly for just another 20 years, but I'd bet a lot that—
Roberts: Just by chance it might be extended again?
Lessig: Exactly.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Colum...copyright.html
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The progress of greed
South End Editorial Board
The news that the Recording Industry Association of America has sued four college students who allegedly run file-sharing networks is absurd to say the least.
The RIAA claims these "pirates" are stealing intellectual property without roper compensation. People share music without paying the industry for it every day at used records stores, garage sales or just giving CDs to someone else.
How the RIAA expects to collect on the $150,000 per song charges is interesting considering the students charged in the lawsuits didn't make money off of file sharing, and their range of influence was limited.
The RIAA is trying to make an example of these four students. Its tactics amount to nothing more than intimidation. The recording industry has a death grip on music, radio stations and retail outlets. Their power is nothing more than a monopolistic dictatorship.
Theses young adults are learning a valuable lesson about American business - entrepreneurs beware! The long-existing monolith of corporation will crush any upstarts who threaten to improve the general welfare, unless the corporation can make money off of them.
The RIAA is passing the buck for its own incompetence. As technology evolves, so too must businesses. The fact is the industry is losing the war against technology. They were slow to embrace the Internet and now they are struggling to catch up. Rather than run a fair race, they're throwing roadblocks in their competitors' paths.
The RIAA has no more authority or capability of being the moral police, judge, jury and executioner of the Internet than any other industry does. The industry is creating new "pirates" every time it shuts down one file sharer. The industry can't stop people from creating Web sites just as it can't stop people from making mixed tapes, burning CDs or videotaping television programs.
There's an obvious market for file sharing and exchanging individual songs. Rather than get on board with what consumers want, the industry is offering what it feels is fair.
The problem is most albums don't have enough quality tracks to justify spending so much on what amounts to a luxury item. If the album is quality, then people will buy just to add it to their collection.
Some groups and their labels have made CDs more valuable by offering more than just music. Videos, exclusive artwork and merchandise will make the CD more attractive.
Copyright laws, as stated in the Constitution, were meant to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Nowhere in Article I, Section 8 does it mention corporations, businesses or industries. If the Internet and all creations within it are not the "Progress of Science," what is?
http://southend.wayne.edu/days/2003/...eed/greed.html
Until next week,
-
js.
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Current Week In Review.
Recent WIRs -
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15843 April 5th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15729 March 29thth
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15623 March 22ndth
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15526 March 15th
The Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts@lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.