ISPs Must Help Stop Hate Web Content
The number of extreme right-wing German-language Web sites has more than doubled in the past year, now totaling more than 1,000, according to a German politician who often speaks out against racist and hate-group material. Fritz Behrens, interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said that in an effort to stop the spread of hate Web sites, efforts would be intensified to convince Internet service providers to practice “self control” over content transmitted through their lines. Behrens, who made his comments in a statement released by his office, said Germany should and will use its laws to suppress the distribution of “fanatical propaganda,” even if that material is “disseminated by foreign Web servers.” Germany has strong free speech laws, except when it comes to racist and neo-Nazi material, whose distribution is illegal in Germany.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/168444.html
First, Eat Your Rivals 
Today, most of the digital music dot-coms have been swallowed up; Napster has been shut down in preparation for its relaunch as a paid service; and the labels are rolling out subscription services later this summer (or, more likely, this fall) with a slew of new names and high hopes. Vivendi Universal and Sony created Pressplay (nee Duet) and BMG, EMI and Warner are behind MusicNet. The labels are also slowly warming up to independent services such as FullAudio, Uplister and Streamwaves. But just like last time, major-label digital music revolution 2.0 appears poised to become another failure. The recording industry is asking consumers to try out a whole new concept of music ownership. Through the services now in the works, most popular music wouldn't be owned at all. Rather, songs would be rented by the month. Consumers would pay a monthly flat fee for access to a predetermined number of songs. Once they stop paying the fee, the downloaded files stop working. It's hard to see how this scheme will add up. The average consumer spends about $90 a year for six CDs and gets to keep them forever, says Gartner Group analyst P.J. McNealy. The new subscription services will ask consumers to pay about $120 a year - and come away with nothing.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28275,00.html
Spawn of Napster: how the Record Industry screwed it up
Ethan Weinberg is the kind of music fan the record industry doesn't like to hear about. Since a judge ordered Napster in March to block copyrighted songs, the Princeton University junior has become a devotee of peer-to-peer music sites Audiogalaxy and BearShare. "Only if they were shut down would I resort to paying a minimal fee," he says. Or, more likely, he would turn to one of the other free alternatives now reaching critical mass. By crushing Napster without immediately jumping online themselves, record labels created a void that a string of spunky startups has been more than happy to fill. There's Gnutella and the services that piggyback on its decentralized network, LimeWire and BearShare. Then there's iMesh playing the field from Israel and Netherlands-based FastTrack licensing its surging peer-to-peer technology to two other services, MusicCity and KaZaa.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28280,00.html
Web Radio's Battle Royalty
The recording industry will face off against Webcasters on Monday in the first day of what promises to be spirited testimony over royalty rates for Internet radio. The recording industry, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, is asking an independent panel to set a royalty rate in the neighborhood of .004 cents per song streamed. Webcasters, represented by the Digital Media Association, will argue for 1/30th of that rate, or .0015 cents per listener hour. The six-month arbitration process will include testimony from 60 witnesses, including Alanis Morissette; representatives from all five of the major labels - Sony, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI; broadcasters such as Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting; and Internet companies such as Launch Media, Spinner, MTVi and Live365.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,28319,00.html
With Napster Weakened, RIAA Hopes To Settle Landmark Lawsuit 
As injunction blocks sharing of copyrighted music, RIAA head feels trial is unnecessary. After driving Napster to its knees in court, the music industry is ready to settle its copyright infringement lawsuit against the now-crippled file-sharing service. Hilary Rosen, president of industry trade group the Recording Industry Association of America — which led the fight against Napster — said Thursday that since a judge has already issued an injunction ordering the service to block copyrighted music, going to trial is unnecessary. Rosen declined to say whether the RIAA has already begun negotiating a settlement with Napster.
http://www.sonicnet.com/news/digital...445467&index=0
Pirate versions of ‘American Pie 2’ hit Net before U.S. movie release
Two weeks before its U.S. box office release, pirated copies of the movie ‘American Pie 2,’ Universal Studio’s sequel to the 1999 hit comedy, are circulating on the Internet on underground file-sharing services. AMERICAN PIE 2’ is scheduled to make its global debut August 10 in the United States, but Reuters has learned that digital versions of the movie are being exchanged between Internet users’ computer hard drives. Universal, a division of Vivendi Universal, was not immediately available for comment. The movie, which has been compressed into a format called DivX, has been trafficked through a popular so-called peer-to-peer file exchange service Hotline, the main product of Toronto-based Hotline Communications Ltd. This technology was developed to transfer large data files, but people who download it have used it to share pirated materials.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/606173.asp?0dm=C12NT
A movie palace on steroids
A U.S. Army Humvee collides with a civilian vehicle in Kosovo, injuring a small child. As a crowd gathers, the young lieutenant in charge must comfort the distraught mother, make a series of difficult decisions or face disastrous consequences. Though the accident is merely a training exercise, it’s no ordinary simulation. In this scenario only the officer is real; the rest are computer-generated characters that can synthesize speech and respond with humanlike gestures and emotions. It’s the first production from the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a collaboration between the U.S. Army, University of Southern California computer scientists and Hollywood. But ICT promises something grander than simply improving how our fighting forces are trained: it offers a glimpse of what gaming and entertainment will look like on tomorrow’s high-speed networks.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/605150.asp?0dm=C1BNT
Windows ME memory leak
Even though PC memory is literally a dime a dozen nowadays, it is still a finite resource that users want to make the most of. That’s why BugNet took particular interest in reports of a memory leak in Windows Me. With help from our testing partner KeyLabs, BugNet was able to reproduce conditions that cause memory to be allocated, but not freed when the application is closed. The bug, which has been confirmed by Microsoft, would create a condition where the PC could become intolerably slow or unstable.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/606135.asp?0dm=C13NT