[JackSpratts]

"It's absolute paranoia — at the highest levels of our government." – Rich Hersh


"I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for." – Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis


"The odds against being taken to court for downloading are…60 million to 1." – Nick Parker


"We see piracy being contained." – Edgar Bronfman


"No matter how frustrated I may be about the legal or illegal ways in which other people may reduce the value of my property, it's not rational to use the term 'theft' to describe it. Even if the value of my property is reduced to nothing, I still posses the property and thus nothing can be claimed to be stolen." – Russell McOrmond























They Like To Watch

Web pages are increasingly filled with reports of government surveillance systems either in place or proposed. It’s not surprising. Once something is possible, it’s usually tried, somewhere. And digital information capturing has certainly become possible, and cheap. It’s now so easy to spy on your own people governments can barely restrain themselves, so while a dangerous development it’s no surprise it’s being done, even here in the land of the free. What is surprising is the reaction of the people, or at least the ones in democracies, especially after warnings from authors like Bradbury, Orwell and Huxley. Two of the biggest reasons for this are a post 9/11 fear of terrorists and the media companies’ crass manipulation of public opinion; government policy fueling irrational fear and the copyright cartels’ equating sharing with terror. The heads of congressional policy committees nod in lock-step whenever any company anywhere tells them of business losses and proposes solutions based on surveillance systems. The public, and by that I mean you and I are never invited to testify on how we feel about total strangers knowing our private affairs, nor interestingly enough are laws ever crafted that impose real penalties against the misuse of the massive information swept up by these ever growing spynets. That’s a telling point about where the loyalties of lawmakers lie, because it’s certainly not with us. They say they push through these laws to prevent crimes from occurring, but whatever protections they may produce always seem to flow towards corporations and states. They rarely consider criminal information abuse, which is surely more devastating to the individual, and certainly more common. From cops selling your personal details for cash to state and federal workers using your private information against you in business or politics, information abuse is increasingly widespread and devastating to its victims. When carrying a camera into a movie can get you twenty years behind bars, the criminal misuse of information gathered by high tech sweeps against law-abiding citizens remains pointedly unaddressed.

Two cases are ringing alarm bells this Christmas. One is President Bush’s furious acknowledgement he’s been spying on U.S citizens for years without warrants or even probable cause, and the U.K.’s colossally invasive program to track its citizens’ as they travel through their own country. Orwellian barely begins to describe the scope of these astonishing abuses of power, especially the situation in England. Soon when you drive in the UK you will be watched and tracked wherever you go, at all times, and a database will be complied of your movements and held for years. We’re not talking about known criminals here - they are already being surveilled. England’s lawmakers have now decided that law abiding citizens must be monitored continuously. No doubt exceptions will be made that exclude the powerful, for "security reasons" of course, and as always such laws will lightly apply to the elite if at all, but everyone else rest assured; the day is fast approaching where every second of every day your movements will be watched and noted. Shadowy bureaucrats will own a dossier on you of heretofore unimaginable reach and detail, and just as assuredly this information will be used to destroy the lives of even the most honorable among you. Blackmail comes to mind immediately, but it will lead to all sorts of danger to one's job, for one’s love life and for one's family and friends. It will permeate society like acid.

I’ve never sensed the British were all that comfortable with the concept of equality, what with their acquiesce to a parasitical aristocratic class and acceptance that these "lords" are their "betters", but this is astounding even for them. It separates the "commoners" from the rulers with an unbridgeable gulf. It makes the people impotent, little more than chattel corralled by onerous laws, reduced to grim lives solely in support of their owners.

Perhaps everyone wants to be "looked-after" and assured they’re being protected. Just be careful what you ask for. There are those who understand you better than you think and they are decidedly not your allies. By the time you’ve realized they posses you, it may be impossible to pull them off.

No Sales Final

I was standing at the counter yesterday buying my dear mother a present when a woman next me laughed and said, "What are you doing here so early? My husband won’t be shopping until the day before Christmas!" I apologized to males everywhere for grabbing such a long four-day jump on the holiday, but I just couldn’t think of a thing to get anybody this year. Staring at a 20” screen was going nowhere - the Web was no help - so I finally decided to throw myself into the fray, get out, take a look around and handle the goods. That barely worked either, but it did I think jump-start my consumer brain functions and once firing I was able to get on with the process. I launched into the Connecticut Shopping Experience, for a few hours anyway, and managed to grab a little something personal for everyone on my list. I try to shoot for things that people want – but won’t get for themselves: Too expensive, too silly, to unjustifiable a purchase you know but cool. No sooner had I got something than I saw something better, but that’s typical for this time of year. There is the law of diminishing returns and at some point I had to cut my losses and go home. Decisiveness is next to godliness and all that. I did make sure I included those new "Gift Receipts" in every box and maybe I’m mellowing but it won’t bother me too much if my hard thought choices become mere suggestions in the days following Christmas and, who knows, maybe even wind up under somebody else’s tree. In any event I’m sure I’ll be making that trip to the stores to exchange a thing or two myself, or maybe just to view the process. Better living through swapping you could say, and it’s true.

Hey, talk about presents – the French Parliament voted to legalize file-sharing! While it gauls me governments think we need their permission to trade freely among ourselves when it’s they who need our permission to form, it’s still nice to see some lawmakers somewhere, anywhere, thinking about us for a very rare change. No doubt this unusual amendment will be followed by something crushingly punitive, but it does make for a festive treat this week.

Whatever it brings, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Keep sharing.














Enjoy,

Jack

































December 24th, ’05





30 to 28

French Parliament Votes to Allow Web File Sharing

The French Parliament voted last night to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet, setting up a conflict with both the French government and with media companies.

If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes, a French group that defends people accused of improperly sharing music files.

The law would be a blow to media companies that increasingly use the courts worldwide to sue people for downloading or sharing music and movie files. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.'s Fox say free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year.

``The deputies used this vote to show their independence from the government, but they don't know what they are doing,'' Nicolas Seydoux, chief executive of French cinema company Gaumont SA, said in an interview on France Inter radio. ``We are not trying to ban anything, just to make sure the work of others isn't stolen.''

The government can overturn the amendment, either by re-opening debate or if the Senate votes it down when the bill moves to the upper house. French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has asked that parliament re-open debate on the amendment today, Agence France Presse reported.

The amendment, which is attached to a bill on intellectual property rights, states that ``authors cannot forbid the reproduction of works that are made on any format from an online communications service when they are intended to be used privately'' and not for commercial use.

Parliamentary Debate

Parliament is debating a bill that would transpose a 2001 European Union directive on intellectual rights into French law. The government had introduced articles into the bill that would make file- sharing akin to counterfeiting, punishable by prison sentences of up to three years and fines of up to 300,000 euros ($355,000).

Consumer groups such as UFC-Que Choisir had protested the government's proposed bill.

The amendment voted at about midnight yesterday, which would replace the contested articles, was introduced by Alain Suguenot, a deputy from the ruling Union for a Popular Movement.

The amendment was approved 30 to 28, with 22 members of the UMP voting in favor. While there are 577 members of the lower house, few were present for last night's vote.

`At Risk'

``The vote puts the livelihoods of people in the music and film industry at risk,'' Gaumont's Seydoux said.

Soufron of Audionautes said any system that allowed unlimited downloading could be accompanied by a system similar to the royalty tax that exists for blank compact disks and DVDs.

Under the amendment, Internet service providers would pay part of their revenue to Sacem, a group that has handled artists' royalties since 1851, Soufron said. Details of the payments are not in the amendment. The group redistributed 578 million euros to musicians last year.

Legal music downloading sites such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes have French-language sites, as do major music companies such as Vivendi Universal SA. Last night's amendment would allow someone having bought a song from one of those sites to share it with family or friends.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...&refer=europe#





P2P Population Nears Record High
Thomas Mennecke

During the middle part of 2005, the P2P population experienced a slight plateau as it hovered around 9 million total connected users. This plateau also witnessed a slight decline in total P2P users, dropping from a peak of 9.6 million users in August to 9.1 million users in October.

P2P statistical information is gathered by BigChampagne, an emerging leader in gauging the strength of this community (you can read their gathering techniques here.) These statistics are in close parallel with those monitored by Slyck.com. In addition, it's noteworthy to mention the approximately 9 million individuals connected to various P2P networks at any given time do not include those participating on BitTorrent. Due to the nature of the BitTorrent community, it's extremely difficult to garner any exact number of total participants.

The temporary plateau and slight decline of the P2P population represents a normal cyclical pattern associated with the file-sharing community. Various reasons, such as returning or departing college students, broadband penetration, computer and MP3 player sales, all have an impact on the strength of the P2P community. While the behavior of these factors may result in a minor decline or stagnation, the overall trend has been unprecedented growth. Indeed, the month of November 2005 represents one of the strongest months yet with a total of 9,465,000 total connected users - third only to August and July with 9,620,000 and 9,496,000 total connected users.

The resuming growth of the P2P population defies the RIAA's lawsuit campaign against individual file-sharers, and more remarkably defies the MGM vs. Grokster decision. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision on June 27th, 2005, the P2P population grew from 8.8 million in June to its present number. This represents the addition of over 500,000 file-sharers. This study further dismisses the NPD Group’s latest P2P research, which found the number of people downloading at least one song on file-sharing networks had declined by 11%. The technology community largely ignored the NPD Group’s study, much like their last one, as it’s information gathering techniques are not consistent with the more realistic habits of file-sharers. (Would you download a song if you were being monitored?)

Another RIAA copyright enforcement tactic these statistics directly confront is the decision to serve commercial P2P developers with cease and desist letters. On September 13, 2005, the RIAA sent several leading commercial P2P developers cease and desist letters, ordering them to prohibit users from infringing on their member's copyrights. Commercial developers responded in various ways, such as WinMX (FrontCode) shutting down, MetaMachine "throwing in the towel", and Ares Galaxy going Open Source. The P2P community responded by continuing their sharing habits unabated.

The RIAA may be winning over the courts and legislators, yet these victories are proving hollow. Their courtroom and legislative successes are yielding little in the way of tangible benefits as the P2P population continues to grow. If there's one message associated with the continued growth of file-sharing, it's that people continue to want unencumbered (DRM–free) access to music. Many have argued that Napster and Rhapsody, and to a lesser extent, iTunes, simply do not provide that.

It’s interesting to note the file-sharing population is continuing to march forward despite the rapid decline of the FastTrack network. As corrupted files and lawsuits continue to plague this network, the P2P population has grown aware of these concerns and taken refuge in a multitude of other communities. Smaller private networks, eDonkey2000, Gnutella, BitTorrent and Ares Galaxy have all benefited from FastTrack’s decline.

Courtroom and legislative successes aside, the statistical news for the entertainment industry has been unfavorable. Last week it was reported that authorized digital music sales stalled for the first time since introduction. Although a minor decline (.49%) from the third quarter, it represents a stagnated authorized digital music industry. Conversely, the P2P population grew by 4% since last month and shows little sign of slowing down. Considering the total number represented by BigChampagne does not include those participating in the BitTorrent community, the total population of 9,496,000 is a very conservative estimate. Judging by the sheer scale of BitTorrent, especially its consumption of over 60% of an ISPs total bandwidth, these days are likely the strongest yet for P2P and the file-sharing community.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1031





ReplayTV To Launch TV Recording Software For PCs

Digital video recording pioneer ReplayTV plans to announce on Monday it will start selling software to allow personal computers to tune in and record live television next year in a deal with Hauppauge Digital's Hauppauge Computer Works.

Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR tuner-encoder card, which lets PCs tune in and record live television, will be sold with ReplayTV software starting next year in North America.

ReplayTV, owned by D&M Holdings, said it has successfully restructured over the past year, and its digital video recorder business is "solidly profitable."

A company spokeswoman said ReplayTV will complete its transformation from a hardware manufacturer to a DVR software and services provider with the sale of all remaining 5500 Series DVR models, probably by the end of 2005.

ReplayTV and TiVo were the first to market digital video recording capabilities that allow viewers to pause, rewind and replay live broadcasts by recording them onto computer hard drives.

More product and pricing details for ReplayTV's software will be announced in 2006, the company said.
http://news.com.com/ReplayTV+to+laun...3-6000219.html





Still crazy after all these years

Copyright Group Takes New Napster To Court
Chris Lewis

Napster, the infamous song downloading service that was once shut down by the courts, allegedly continues to break copyright law as a fee-based online store, according to a publishing group that has filed a federal lawsuit in Nashville.

MCS Music America, a Nashville-based company that administers copyrights for about 45,000 songs, claims Napster has put hundreds of songs controlled by MCS and its publisher clients on Napster.com without obtaining the proper licenses for paying royalties.

Among the songs named in the suit are such hits as “Wipe Out,” “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” “CC Rider” and “The White Cliffs of Dover.”

MCS Music America — which does business as Pollyday Publishing, Su-Ma Publishing Co. and C Minor Music — filed the copyright infringement suit Friday on behalf of 27 publishing companies, many of them based in Tennessee.

“We believe it’s a very significant case,” said Stephen Grauberger, a Goodlettsville attorney who filed the case for MCS. “I really don’t have much of a comment until we get a response and see what their position is.”

Napster officials have not been served with the suit, said Dana Harris, vice president of corporate communications.

A prior incarnation of Napster made headlines in 2001 when it was shut down after courts found it aided the free and illegal downloading of copyrighted material through a central server. Roxio Inc. purchased Napster in 2002 and launched the paid subscription service the following year.

For a monthly fee of $9.95 a month, subscribers can listen to unlimited songs that are played, or streamed, over the Internet and download them to listen to offline. For a fee starting at 80 cents per song, users can download the music to permanently keep and copy.

Napster sent MCS a form seeking a licensing agreement, but neither party signed it, the suit states. After getting the inquiry, a MCS employee subscribed to Napster and found the songs were being used without permission.

The suit is seeking $150,000 in damages per violation on two counts involving both the downloaded song and the streaming version. The number of songs involved hasn’t been tallied, but they number in the hundreds, Grauberger said.

A couple of digital copyright consultants said they were surprised that Napster would be hit with such a lawsuit.

“They’re certainly trying to do the right thing; they’re famous for that. I’m surprised it has to be worked out with a lawsuit,” said E. Michael Harrington, professor of intellectual property and music business at Belmont University.

He said copyright law is clear: Users of material have to pay a negotiated rate to both the writers and publishers of the underlying work as well as the owners of the sound recording. But, he said, mistakes can happen and are often resolved administratively.

Phil Leigh, a Florida-based digital media analyst, said the lawyers are taking advantage of a law that allows victims of copyright infringement to collect up to $150,000 in damages per violation.

“If there has been a copyright infringement, they’re certainly entitled to damages, but it appears to me they’re simply being greedy and manipulating the statute to collect damages not within 1,000 miles of what they actually suffered,” Leigh said.
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/in...&news_id=46733





New Spyware Claim Against Sony BMG

The Texas attorney general said on Wednesday that he added a new claim to a lawsuit charging Sony BMG Music Entertainment with violating the state's laws on deceptive trade practices by hiding "spyware" on its compact discs.

Attorney General Greg Abbott filed the original lawsuit in November, accusing the company of violating state anti-spyware laws by embedding software in its CDs and media player to monitor users' habits.

The new charges brought by Abbott contend that MediaMax software used by Sony BMG to thwart illegal copying of music on CDs violated state laws because it was downloaded even if users rejected a license agreement.

"We keep discovering additional methods Sony used to deceive Texas consumers who thought they were simply buying music," Abbott said in a statement.

The original lawsuit contends that Sony BMG secretly installed copy-protection software, using XCP programs, that was extremely difficult to remove from users' computers.

Sony said it has recalled the CDs, which feature music from 52 popular artists including Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Celine Dion.

Critics have said the MediaMax software lets the company track customers' listening habits even if customers reject maker SunnComm's terms in a licensing agreement that appears upon installation.

The Texas attorney general said both the MediaMax and XCP software can put customers' computers at risk.

"Malware" was detected in a mass e-mail in November that was designed to exploit the Sony BMG software and enable hackers to access people's computers by bypassing firewall protections.

Sony BMG denied the MediaMax software was hidden and said it does not collect the personal information that spyware typically does.

"We are in an ongoing dialogue with the Texas Attorney General and as part of that discussion we believe we will establish that Sony BMG has responded appropriately to the issues raised today--particularly about the MediaMax software installation," a company spokesman said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/New+spyware+clai...3-6005042.html





Men Face Criminal Charge For Xbox Tampering

U.S. prosecutors have charged three men with copyright infringement for selling modified Xbox consoles that enabled the original video game machine from Microsoft Corp. to play pirated games.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday named ACME Game Store co-owners Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, as well as Pei "Patrick" Cai, 32.

The complaint alleges that Jones and Bryant sold Xbox systems that Cai modified with chips and hard drives that allowed users to copy rented or borrowed games onto the console for future play.

All three men are charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The charge of conspiracy carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in federal prison.

Lawyers for the men, who will be summoned to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in late January, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Jones and Bryant demonstrated the modified Xbox game consoles in their Melrose Avenue store. They charged from $225 to more than $500 for the modifications, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of games preloaded onto the hard drive, according to a statement from prosecutors and the complaint affidavit obtained by Reuters.

During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.

Microsoft released the Xbox 360, the new version of its game console, on November 22 in North America. The premium version of the system sells for $400 and is sold-out at many retail outlets.

The original Xbox was released in late 2001 and now retails for around $150. Games for the system cost up to $50 each.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RTRS&srch=xbox





Forced speech

To Settle Lawsuit, Grandfather Will Speak Against Film Piracy
Bob Purvis

A 67-year-old Racine man who was sued for up to $600,000 by a group of major film studios over four movies his grandson downloaded will lecture children about Internet piracy as part of an out-of-court settlement.

In the settlement reached late last week, Fred Lawrence agreed to work with the movie companies and the Milwaukee Bar Association in coming weeks to develop a program to teach local families and school children about copyright law, said his attorney, Jill Gilbert Welytok.

"My client maintains that at the time the downloading occurred, neither he nor his grandson understood that they were infringing the movie studios' copyrights," Welytok said. "This is an area of the law where education rather than litigation is appropriate."

Lawrence's grandson, then 12, admitted downloading "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge" and "The Forgotten" over a peer-to-peer electronic file- sharing network last December, not knowing it was illegal.

Lawrence was sued in federal court in November after he ignored a letter offering to settle the matter out of court - a letter similar to one sent in March to hundreds of alleged illegal file sharers across the country.

Although Lawrence and his grandson live in Racine, they will actually speak to elementary school children at Maple Dale School in Fox Point when the program rolls out in January, Welytok said.

Lawrence also will pay an undisclosed amount to the studios, Welytok said. Under the agreement, that sum is to remain secret.

Lawrence previously rejected an offer to settle for $4,000, which was made days after news of the lawsuit became public.

"The Lawrences are honest people and have taken financial responsibility for the inadvertent infringement that occurred. They do not condone copyright infringement and are saddened that they inadvertently infringed someone's rights," Welytok said.

The Motion Picture Association of America said they were pleased with the compromise.

"The purpose of these lawsuits is not only to punish people for film piracy but to inform them about the law," said Kori Bernards, an association spokeswoman. "With respect to Mr. Lawrence's family, they offered help to inform people about piracy, so we are taking them up on their effort."

The association's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Wednesday, but details were not settled until late last week, according to Welytok.

Lawrence had argued that although he felt bad that his grandson had downloaded the movies, he couldn't afford to settle the lawsuit and didn't think it was fair to punish him for something his grandson did.

Both parties say the settlement was mutually beneficial.

"At the end of the day, this is a very constructive outcome that will help many people understand the importance of respecting copyrights and intellectual property," Welytok said.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/racine/dec05/378950.asp





Artists Revolt Against DRM
Posted by Suzi Turner

My Morning Jacket, the artists who recorded the copy protected CD "Z" I mentioned here, are doing more than protesting Sony BMG's use of DRM spyware. They are revolting. Yesterday I read that My Morning Jacket was doing their own recall of the affected CDs. Now I see they are burning unrestricted copies of their CD and mailing them to users. Hmm… I wonder if they are breaking the law under the DMCA.

US band My Morning Jacket has responded to fans' complaints about copy protected Sony BMG CDs by sending them DRM-free copies of its album.

The group began burning unrestricted CDs after fans found that they could not transfer their album 'Z' (pictured) to their iPods. Their manager, Mike Martinovich, told Rolling Stone that Sony BMG should drop DRM on CDs entirely.

The Rolling Stone article says Sony BMG is reconsidering their plan to use copy protection on all their CDs. If a lot of artists refuse to sign with Sony BMG and other companies using copy protection and go indie, perhaps the big labels would get the message. Wikipedia has an extensive list of indie record labels.

More here about My Morning Jacket's revolt.

MMJ are by no means the first act under the Song BMG umbrella to express their displeasure over the corporation's attempts to curb piracy via copy-protection software — the Foo Fighters, the Dave Matthews Band and Switchfoot have also done so — but they're likely the first act to publicly offer to burn individual copies of their album for fans.

Sony BMG had no comment on MediaMax issue or My Morning Jacket's response to it.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/151...g_jacket.jhtml





If you say so…

Swapping On The Ropes
Steven Musil

Recent court activity suggests that illegal song swapping may be facing its swan song.

A Chicago woman who downloaded songs for free from the Kazaa file-sharing network violated copyright law and has been ordered to pay a $22,500 fine to the record labels. In what appears to be the first U.S. case of its kind, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Cecilia Gonzalez's arguments that she was merely "sampling" downloaded music to see which CDs she might want to purchase and that her sampling was protected under copyright law's "fair use" exception.

Gonzalez's claim that "she obtained 'only 30'--or 'only 1,300'--copyrighted songs is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted 'only 30' compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later for any he liked," the court said.


Meanwhile, the masterminds behind Kazaa could face time behind bars in Australia after the record industry initiated contempt of court proceedings, claiming an earlier ruling wasn't adhered to. Record companies allege that Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, didn't comply with an Australian Federal Court order to modify the software to ensure 3,000 keywords would be filtered by Dec. 5.

However, the judge in the case did not appear to be in a big hurry to put Kazaa's owners in jail.

"Contempt proceedings are fairly rare in this court and I've never yet sent anyone to jail," Justice Murray Wilcox said in the Federal Court in Sydney. "I've threatened to a few times, but there's always a first I suppose."

The number of United States households that swap music illegally online has dropped significantly since the Supreme Court's summer ruling against peer-to-peer software companies.

However, the number of actual music files being traded has stayed high, indicating that the most active downloaders remain online. The drop of 11 percent--from June, when an estimated 6.4 million households downloaded at least one music file, to October, when 5.7 million households downloaded at least one file--seems to show that the entertainment industry's campaign against file swapping is gaining momentum.
http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+S...3-5997671.html





Kazaa Owners Back In Australian Courts

Peer to peer service operators Kazaa owners are back in Australian courts. The executives of the Sharman Networks might find themselves facing jail time if they are indeed found to be in contempt of court’s ruling regarding the usage of Kazaa application by web users in the country. the recording industry of the country has claimed that the software developed failed to comply with the court’s rulings.

Kazaa was instructed to add filters to their p2p application to prevent file sharing of digitally protected content by their users on the internet. The application developed decided to instead boycott the users in the country and disabled access to their sites to Australian IPs. However, recording industry claimed that this is not what the court demanded them to do and as a result, they were in contempt of the court’s ruling.

The court has said that it would be considering the contempt motion next month. Kazaa claims that they disapproved the new Australian users from downloading their software application and also warned existing users to stop using the tool to share files on the internet. However, this failed to please the industry people who have filed the contempt proceedings against Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming, Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister, Sharman Networks, LEF Interactive, Altnet, and Brilliant Digital Entertainment.

Sharman and the record companies will now have a chance to put forward their claims on January 30.
http://stuff.techwhack.com/archives/...tralian-courts





Guidelines Set on Software Property Rights
Steve Lohr

To remove obstacles to joint research, four leading technology companies and seven American universities have agreed on principles for making software developed in collaborative projects freely available.

The legal wrangling over intellectual property rights in research projects involving universities and companies, specialists say, can take months, sometimes more than a year. This legal maneuvering, they say, is not only slowing the pace of innovation, but is also prompting some companies to seek university research partners in other countries, where negotiations over intellectual property are less time-consuming.

"This a great start to addressing the problem," said Peter A. Freeman, assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation. "It's a recognition by both sides that for precompetitive research, 'It's the science, stupid.' It's not the intellectual property."

The companies involved in the agreement, which will be announced today, are I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Cisco. The educational partners are the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the universities of Stanford, California at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois and Texas.

Concern about the issue of intellectual property restraints on collaborative research has been growing among academic and private-sector scientists. The new effort is a byproduct of a gathering of university and industry researchers in Washington last August, sponsored by I.B.M. and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., which studies and finances innovation and entrepreneurial activity.

The current problem, said Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at the Kauffman Foundation, was partly an "unintended consequence" of policies meant to encourage universities to make their research available for commercial uses, thus stimulating innovation and economic growth.

The tone was set, Ms. Mitchell said, by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed universities to hold the patents on federally funded research and to license that intellectual property to industry.

Since then, universities, like many corporations, have sought to cash in wherever possible on their intellectual property. The companies and universities have agreed to make intellectual property developed in open collaborations available free for commercial and academic use.

They have also agreed to a set of guidelines addressing the rights of the participating companies and universities, and the public.

The guidelines and framework for the agreement will posted this week at www.ibm.com/university, and at the Kauffman foundation's site, www.kauffman.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/te...9research.html





If you say so…redux

Music Pirates Walk The Plank
Kevin Allison

HAS the music industry reached a turning point in its battle against illegal music downloads?

Edgar Bronfman, chief executive of Warner Music Group, seems to think so.

"We see piracy being contained," Bronfman said, at an investor conference this month in New York. "The music industry is beginning to look better than it has for years."

Some music executives say 2005 may have marked a watershed for online music. But experience suggests the illegal trade in music protected by copyright is unlikely to go away any time soon.

There is some evidence to boost the optimists' case. Over the past two years, the Recording Industry Association of America has launched high-profile lawsuits against college students and others who trade in copyright music using file- sharing software.

A recent survey by the National Cyber Security Alliance, a computer industry group, found that the number of active file- sharing programs on respondents' computers had halved this year, from 22 per cent of home computers to just 11 per cent.

In November, the music industry won a big scalp after Grokster, the peer-to- peer file-sharing service, agreed to shut down as part of a legal settlement.

"There is increasing consumer understanding not only that download sites are illegal, but also that there are easier-to-use legal alternatives," says Dan Sheeran, vice-president of paid music services at RealNetworks, the owner of Rhapsody, a subscription music service.

Four years ago, when a lawsuit forced a shutdown of Napster, the first broadly popular peer-to-peer network, there were no viable online alternatives to Grokster to take Napster's place. Now, with Apple's iPod music player and the iTunes Music Store, which sells songs for US99c ($1.33), legal music downloads are in the mainstream.

Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, which tracks peer-to-peer activity, agrees the campaign against file-sharing has been felt. But he says talk of the demise of illegal downloading is overdone. "You've got people talking about online copyright now," says Garland. "People are sitting around having discussions about how you support an artist, and what's OK and what's not OK." Unfortunately, he says, the reality is, getting it on the brain is not the same as changing the behaviour.

One reason illegal file-sharing is likely to continue is architectural. Unlike Napster, which used an index of music on its system to help connect downloaders and hosts, Grokster and others are merely gateways for users to access one of several file-sharing networks on the internet.

"When you shut down Napster, you shut down the Napster network," Garland explains.

"When you shut down Grokster, you shut down a company but you don't shut down the network. Grokster is gone but these networks aren't controlled by Grokster or anyone else. They're open networks."

According to BigChampagne, the average number of users on peer-to-peer networks at any given time in October was 9 million, compared with an average of 6 million in October, 2003.

But growth of paid music services has remained anaemic. Apple, which accounts for more than 80 per cent of the pay-per-download music market, says it has sold more than 600 million songs since it opened its iTunes Music Store in 2003. Taken by itself, the number is impressive. But, compared with Apple's sales of more than 30 million iPods over the same period, that adds up to just 20 songs per iPod.

Even if the record industry does scare downloaders away from the mainstream file-sharing networks, users can still get their hands on free music elsewhere.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital free-speech advocacy group, says fear of lawsuits and a flood of low-quality junk files have led many downloaders to turn to so-called darknets: private, invitation-only networks that allow users to trade files anonymously.

"Infiltrating these private p2p circles is much more difficult than simply trolling public networks," the EFF says. One New York computer programmer who uses several darknets says he fears a recording industry lawsuit like "I fear getting hit by a cab while walking home".

New storage technology, such as HD DVD and Blu-Ray optical discs, will substantially reduce the cost of passing huge music libraries between friends. People who trade music this way run little risk of being found out. "No matter how Orwellian our society may become, the only two people who know about it are you and me," says Garland. But companies are forging ahead with new, legitimate online services. Along with Apple's iTunes, subscription services such as Rhapsody and a new, legal version of Napster have begun to enjoy some success.

"We are a very strong No2 against Apple's iTunes," says Laura Goldberg, chief operating officer of Napster's second legal incarnation. "But we think a subscription system is better value. It's just not economical to buy an evening's worth of music at 99c each."

But subscription services have limitations. For example, they tend to limit customer ability to copy, or transfer, music to other formats. Rhapsody last year launched Harmony software, which allows subscribers to load rented music onto iPods. But the music files are designed to disappear if a subscriber withdraws from the Rhapsody service.

Regardless of the advances in paid music services, "there has been no substitute for the old Napster," says Atri Chatterjee, co-founder of Mercora, an online music start-up. Mercora is taking a Google-like approach to online music by offering free, non-transferable downloads paid for by advertising.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E36375,00.html





That’s more like it

P2P Business As Usual
Nick Parker

The statistics bandied around by the recording industries belie the fact that not only is P2P well and thriving, as reported in Slyck, but that the numbers seem certain to continue to increase at an exponential rate over the next few years. How successful have the copyright enforcers been in their campaign to kill off P2P? Slyck explores the facts underlying the fear campaign being disseminated by the recording industries.

People who use P2P – file-sharers - form part of a thriving and growing community, fuelled by high prices, increasing social acceptance and a certain thrill at being able to get for nothing what other people have to pay dearly for. No longer viewed as shady undesirables, trading in pedophilia to fund drug operations and prostitution, the public are starting to see P2P users for what they are, ordinary people. And whilst a few of their number have admittedly paid a relatively high price for that pastime, the recording industry has achieved little in deterring those seeking simply what they want from the internet for free.

Taking account of figures produced by analytical experts such as Cachelogic and Big Champagne, around 60% of the available bandwidth of the Internet is used by file- sharers. This leaves less than 40% of the remaining bandwidth for browsing, emails, electronic transactions and the plethora of other uses that the Internet is put to. Given that the Internet is only available to around 15% of the world’s population at the present time, the continued growth of the Internet, not too mention the economic growth it spurs, result in its being viewed as far more important to the global economy than the stagnating recording industry.

The IFPI, the international voice of the collective recording industry representatives, have issued figures that show that 15,597 filesharers have been served with financial demands for copyright infringement in the US since September 2003. Their figures, drawn from a BBC article, infer that these have been a result of civil lawsuits. This is at odds with the facts, for not one contested suit has been won against anyone file-sharing for domestic purposes, only arguments about who is actually liable. More significantly, no suits have ever been issued in respect of anyone downloading only.

Arguably, a handful of cases have been heard in the USA that involve personal file- sharing, Santangelo, Leadbetter, Chan and Gonzalez, being the names that spring to mind. However, none of these have actually been contested on the basis of file- sharing, simply on the issue of liability. Despite the RIAA spin put on the Gonzalez case, she was not sued for downloading files but simply for distributing 30 of those files, which where in turn downloaded from her by MGM. If she hadn’t been file- haring, she would never have been sued. To this present day there has still not been a single precedent established against those who only download for personal use.

The figures published by the RIAA & MPAA don’t bear analysis, either. In the same breath that they tell us that 15,597 file-sharers have been served with financial demands for copyright infringement in the US, they tell us that there have only been 3,590 settlements. In other words, they have received a financial settlement in only 23.3% of cases. So, if the rest of them, all 12,007 cases, haven’t been taken to court and they haven’t settled, what exactly has happened to them? Statistically it seems that 76.7% of those caught in the USA just walked away. These are not statistics that the recording industries want people to hear.

The odds of being identified and having to settle are therefore of the order of 3,590:60 million, or 16,713 to 1 against. The odds against being taken to court for downloading are therefore an even more staggering 60 million to 1 against. Put into context, people have a 1 in 300 chance of being misprescribed in hospital or a 10 million to 1 chance of being involved in an aircraft collision and dying as a consequence.

In most (if not all) countries, domestic file-sharing continues to be a civil and not a criminal issue. In general terms, uploading or sharing can result in civil action, albeit that the odds are very small. Technically the same could arguably apply to those downloading only. In practical terms, nobody has yet been sued for downloading only, and the prospects of such a case being successful are less than diminutive. In the UK, the prospects of such an action are currently nil, given that the BPI have confirmed they have no intentions of taking such action.

Users of the FastTrack network (Kazaa users in particular, who have accounted for around 94% of those who have received demands for settlement) are migrating to other, safer networks. If the statistics bandied around by the RIAA are to be believed, Kazaa users have certainly shown themselves amongst the most prolific sharers of all, and should therefore be particularly welcome to the P2P community.

A report issued by Napster claims that a substantial increase in sales is being generated by people replacing music that has been lost to them over the years as well as those buying a second time so that they have their music in a more convenient format. The report concludes that people are replacing around 30% of their existing record collections, and many people naturally feel quite aggrieved at being expected to pay twice for the same recording. In addition to this the predicted 37 million new iPod users that Apple predicts will be using their products in the next 12 months and doubtless swell the ranks of those who not only download, but share their files. If Apple takes away the ability to use DRM free MP3 format files, concentrating their market on their proprietary AAC format, their products will undoubtedly lose much of their market appeal. Creative, arguably the inventor of the original portable MP3 player, are conservatively predicting 8 million new buyers of their own MP3 players over the same period. These figures will certainly increase once other mainstream consumer goods manufacturers come on line, such as Philips, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sanyo, Akai, etc.

To spur further growth, many artists are now leaking music to the file-sharing fraternity as part of a cynical marketing strategy, using P2P in the way radio was used over the years. A new brand of independents is starting to emerge, bands that shun the traditional recording contract approach and set out to make their marks before signing with the giants. For example, British band Kaiser Chiefs concede that they leaked material on file-sharing networks to bolster presales of their “I predict a riot” track and subsequent album. The Arctic Monkeys launched on the Internet, driving them to number one chart success. System of a Down have reportedly given up issuing presale releases in the knowledge that their albums are available to file- sharers long before the official release date. In addition, few can doubt that both Madonna and The Darkness, have shamelessly exploited file-sharing networks to bolster pre sales hype. Ironically, they are helping to publicize the availability of free music and attracting new members to our community.

The Grokster case was thought by many to signify the beginning of the end for file- sharing, as the “fair use” defense was unsuccessful. BigChampagne instead tells us that the growth has been unabated, with file-sharing doubling over the past two years. Only this week consumer researchers NPD Group claimed illegal downloads have fallen 11 per cent since the Supreme Court ruled in June that Grokster and other P2P companies were operating illegal businesses. However Eric Garland, CEO of established media experts BigChampagne, promptly disputed those figures.

"BigChampagne's aggregate data show that the period following the Grokster ruling represents a record high," Eric said in an email to Slyck.com. "In fact, in every month since Grokster (June), P2P activity is actually higher than it was in May/June, or at any previous point on the timeline."

Full details from BigChampagne are available in yesterday’s news article. (This weeks lead, Jack)

The future of P2P remains in the balance, although it seems the P2P fraternity is making far more ground than the recording industry. As P2P users approach critical mass, believed to be around 100m, perhaps the recording industries will step back and consider that they have seen this all before when they believed the combination of FM stereo radio and the cassette would signify the end of their world back in the 80s. Yet it inspired an unprecedented growth in music sales, much the same as the VCR did for the movie industry less than a decade later. Surely the lessons learned then should be equally applicable today?

One thing that is certain, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt caused by a handful of generally irrelevant cases against poorly represented members of the general public will do little to stem the rising tide of P2P in the mid & longer term, let alone attract any sympathy for the recording industry. The recording industries will have to live with the fact that file-sharing is simply not going to go away, and that they will have to adapt to survive. The message to file-sharers for the New Year is best summed up business as usual, but don’t get careless.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1032





That’s more like it …redux

P2P File Sharing Is On The Rise
p2pnet

Organized Music's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) would have you believe its sue 'em all campaign is making a significant impact on the file sharing scene and the p2p community, and that as a direct result, business for the sites supplied and supported by the cartels is improving dramatically.

However, as p2pnet has been reporting consistently, there is no significant corporate online music business and although the IFPI claims there are 300 sites doing good business, only three are ever mentioned - the much-hyped iTunes, RealNetworks and Napster.

The latter two, though, are barely breaking even, to paint the brightest possible picture for them: they're certainly not prospering and in truth, iTunes is the only one that's doing anything - 600 million downloads since it went online in 2003, says Apple.

But even if that figure is accurate, iTunes is still a promotional vehicle for iPod, not a genuine music service whose raison d'etre is to sell music to the online public

We've been relying on BigChampagne for our statistics and on the left is the latest BC chart showing the p2p stats from November, 2003, until November this year.

They indicate the number of people around the world who were simultaneously logged onto one or more the p2p networks at any given time.

Go here if you want the Excel chart on which the table in the left is based.

'Ah,' you say, 'But that's around the world. The RIAA has been suing thousands of people in the US and there, the sue 'em all marketing scheme is making a huge difference.'

Not so.

One again, the number of people sharing files on the p2p networks in America is rising, and doing so very noticably.

In the US in November, 2003, on average, 2,498,431 were logged on t the same time at any given point in the day or night.

By November, 2004, on average, 5,445,275 people were online at any one time.

And by November this year, the number had risen to 6,530,408.
http://p2pnet.net/story/7369





Music Industry Failing To Halt Illegal Downloads, Poll Finds
Owen Gibson

Despite a sustained record industry campaign to stamp out digital piracy, more than half of all consumers still download music illegally over the internet, a new survey
shows. The figures, which will worry record companies hoping to sell music to the millions expected to receive an iPod or similar this Christmas, show that 51% of those who currently download tracks do so illegally.

More than three-quarters of those surveyed admitted that they had illegally downloaded music at least once. By contrast, just one in six said they exclusively used paid-for services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store or Napster to buy music over the internet.

The survey, conducted by Mori for the internet service provider AOL UK, also highlighted a large degree of confusion among consumers about whether or not they were breaking copyright laws by using illegal sites. Only four in 10 said that they understood the law.

The British Phonographic Industry has spent much of 2005 getting tough with those who illegally share large volumes of music over the web. It has taken legal action against more than 150 internet users, half of whom have paid settlements of up to £6,500 to avoid court action.

Internationally, the record industry has targeted "peer to peer" sites that allow users to swap pirated tracks and won landmark legal rulings against Grokster in the US and Kazaa in Australia. But despite the fact that a large number of those targeted by the BPI are believed to have settled on behalf of their children, more than half of those surveyed would not ban their children from downloading music illegally.

One case involved a London jazz singer who was fined £2,500 after her 19-year-old son shared 1,330 songs using the family computer.

More than a quarter of those surveyed said that they had used the peer to peer service Limewire to download songs, compared with one in five for the leading legal alternative, the iTunes Music Store.

A spokesman for the BPI said that the number of tracks legally downloaded during the year had topped 24m compared with 5.7m the previous year. The mass popularity of devices such as the iPod and the growing number of homes with high speed broadband connections, together with a strong push by record labels to widen the choice of songs available legally, have contributed to the growth.

Record companies are also attempting to lure customers to legal sites by offering added extras or exclusive tracks. The fastest selling download to date is the version of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band performed by Paul McCartney and U2 at Live8 in July.

AOL, like other internet service providers, sees music as a major draw in persuading people to upgrade to broadband. To mark the launch of its Play Legal campaign, it will launch a new website to educate consumers and team up with rivals to adopt a new kitemark-style logo that will appear on legal download sites.

"This survey shows that there is still a lot of confusion out there about what is legal and what isn't," said Dan Patton, head of digital music at AOL. "We see it as our responsibility to educate and inform our customers." Record company insiders have privately criticised internet service providers in the past for adopting a hands-off attitude to whether their users were downloading music illegally.

The BPI's chairman, Peter Jamieson, said that he welcomed the new initiative. "The UK recording industry is working hard to make available its huge catalogue of recordings to the growing number of high quality legal services. Using unauthorised services is not just illegal, it is bad for music and bad for the music fan."
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/new...671167,00.html





Got a Digital Music Library? Hoarder! Pirate!
Jon Newton

The corporate online music business so far exists only in the minds of the media and those trying to promote it, and iTunes' sales of some US$600 million since it started in September, 2003, don't even merit a statistical blip against what's happening in the real world of online music. There, the P2P applications and networks rule.

Guess what? Your digital music library is not actually a library. It's considered "hoarding."

The entertainment cartels have already pirated the word "pirate" to replace "counterfeit" and/or "duplicate" and/or "share." It's so much more PR-friendly -- more emotive and evocative.

And it works so well in a sound-bite or a headline.

Now the Organized Music family, Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, plan to do the same with "collection" and/or "library" when applied to file sharing, and they've chosen the shadowy NPD Group to deliver the message via a "study."

Spinning the Facts

The statement "Study finds many U.S. homes hoarding downloaded music" looks so nicely underhanded, almost criminal, doesn't it? Much better than "Many U.S. homes have large digital music collections."

"Most American homes have at least one digital music file on their computer, more evidence that Internet music piracy is widespread, according to a study released this week," says the Gannett News Service, quoting an NPD report.

When I first came across the NPD Group in late 2003, adidas International, International Flavors & Fragrance and Wrigley typified its client base, but it was nonetheless churning out "studies" bolstering entertainment cartel party lines. The mainstream media immediately began quoting these studies as authoritative sources.

I e-mailed NPD wondering how many years' experience it had in the music research field and asked about the team of expert interviewers/statisticians I thought it must boast given the nature and number of its outpourings.

I never did hear back, and when I visited the NPD site, I wasn't able to find a single music, or other entertainment industry, client, although since then, the company has added movies, music, video, TV, etc., to the list it professes to be expert in.

Getting a Grip

More recently, NPD was touting iTunes as a "formidable competitor against free peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services," an assertion which is, of course, ludicrous.

iTunes also "tied with LimeWire as the second-most-popular digital music service in March, 2005," claimed NPD. Not even in your dreams.

The corporate online music business so far exists only in the minds of the media and those trying to promote it, and iTunes' sales of some US$600 million since it started in September, 2003, don't even merit a statistical blip against what's happening in the real world of online music.

There, the P2P applications and networks rule, and iTunes is a joke.

Meanwhile, "More than two out of three U.S. households with Internet access had a least one digital music file on their computer while more than half had at least 50 songs," said NPD Group.

And you know what that means: Piracy! Hoarding!
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/47895.html





Faux Hulks Can Keep Fighting Evil Online
Daniel Terdiman

Marvel Entertainment and NCSoft, publisher of such online games as "City of Heroes," have settled a lawsuit over whether characters created by players can legally resemble Marvel's comics characters.

Marvel--publisher of titles like "Spider-Man," "The X Men," "The Fantastic Four" and many others--filed the suit in November 2004. It alleged that "City of Heroes," an online game with hundreds of thousands of users, infringed on Marvel's copyright by giving players a content creation engine that allows them to design avatars that can look like the Incredible Hulk, Captain America or any other copyright-protected Marvel character.

To some legal experts, the most noteworthy result of the settlement is a victory for player creativity. Terms of the settlement, which was announced on Wednesday, were not disclosed.

In the aftermath of the suit, many law professors, game designers and others interested in promoting open-ended content creation expressed concern that a Marvel victory would put a halt to such creation--not just in games but in other arenas where users can create content that could be considered infringing.

They also asserted that Marvel's claims were specious, given that the company was effectively suing NCSoft for giving people the ability to enact the digital equivalent of making a Spider-Man costume and wearing it in their backyard.

Since filing its suit, Marvel has begun working with online game publisher Sigil to produce an online game based on it characters.

In any case, the terms of the settlement appear to do nothing to immediately halt "City of Heroes" players from creating any kind of characters they want.

"The parties' settlement allows them all to continue to develop and sell exciting and innovative products," NCSoft wrote in a press release about the settlement, "but does not reduce the players' ability to express their creativity in making and playing original and exciting characters."

The problem, according to several legal experts, is that the language of the announcement doesn't make clear the terms of the settlement. Thus, it is not known whether Marvel has retained its right to seek legal relief against publishers like NCSoft or players who create potentially infringing characters in games like "City of Heroes."

Suits may not be over
That's because the announcement included the following language: "Therefore, no changes to 'City of Heroes' or 'City of Villains' character creation engine are part of the settlement."

The suit, which was filed in U.S. district court in Los Angeles, has seen a series of rulings that have largely gone NCSoft's way. Neither NCSoft nor Marvel would comment on the settlement beyond Wednesday's announcement.

Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been tracking the lawsuit, said that because Marvel and NCSoft settled, it is likely no one will ever know the terms and what rights online game publishers and players have going forward.

"This is one of the big problems with copyright and trademark law," von Lohmann said. "There is no easy way to get an answer to any of these questions if the rights holder is unwilling to fight it out in court."

But because the announcement contained language saying that the "City of Heroes" content creation engine wasn't involved in the settlement, von Lohmann fears companies like Marvel aren't done suing online game publishers.

"This probably won't stop Marvel and other rights holders from threatening the (online game) community," he said. "Their lawyers can send letters and they can put pressure on companies to stop what they're doing, and if they don't comply, they run the risk of legal action."

In a Wednesday e-mail to many of the experts in the online game community, Greg Lastowka, an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Law, noted that "the terms of the settlement apparently allow the NCSoft character creation engine to stand, which is a victory for the players."

But he also echoed von Lohmann's concerns.

"However, Marvel's claims of player infringement have not been formally rejected by the court, which means analogous claims might be pursued by Marvel, or a like-minded company, in the future."

Still, to some legal experts, the most noteworthy result of the settlement is a victory for player creativity.

"The public has long benefited from a certain degree of ambiguity in copyright," said Beth Noveck, an associate professor at New York Law School. "One the one hand, this creates uncertainty among creators. On the other hand, it is this ambiguity that opens up opportunities to try new things and test the boundaries."
http://news.com.com/Faux+Hulks+can+k...3-5995628.html





Governments Tremble at Google's Bird's-Eye View
Katie Hafner and Saritha Rai

When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids.

But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders.

India, whose laws sharply restrict satellite and aerial photography, has been particularly outspoken. "It could severely compromise a country's security," V. S. Ramamurthy, secretary in India's federal Department of Science and Technology, said of Google Earth. And India's surveyor general, Maj. Gen. M. Gopal Rao, said, "They ought to have asked us."

Similar sentiments have surfaced in news reports from other countries. South Korean officials have said they fear that Google Earth lays bare details of military installations. Thai security officials said they intended to ask Google to block images of vulnerable government buildings. And Lt. Gen. Leonid Sazhin, an analyst for the Federal Security Service, the Russian security agency that succeeded the K.G.B., was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying: "Terrorists don't need to reconnoiter their target. Now an American company is working for them."

But there is little they can do, it seems, but protest.

Google Earth is the most conspicuous recent instance of increased openness in a digitally networked world, where information that was once carefully guarded is now widely available on personal computers. Many security experts agree that such increased transparency - and the discomfort that it produces - is an inevitable byproduct of the Internet's power and reach.

American experts in and outside government generally agree that the focus on Google Earth as a security threat appears misplaced, as the same images that Google acquires from a variety of sources are available directly from the imaging companies, as well as from other sources. Google Earth licenses most of the satellite images, for instance, from DigitalGlobe, an imaging company in Longmont, Colo.

"Google Earth is not acquiring new imagery," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, which has an online repository of satellite imagery. "They are simply repurposing imagery that somebody else had already acquired. So if there was any harm that was going to be done by the imagery, it would already be done."

Google Earth was developed as a $79-a-year product by a small company called Keyhole that Google bought last year; it was reintroduced as a free downloadable desktop program in June. It consists of software that can be downloaded onto a personal computer and used to "fly over" city streets, landmarks, buildings, mountains, redwood forests and Gulf Stream waters. Type in any street address in the United States, Canada or Britain, or the longitude and latitude for any place - or even terms like "pyramids" or "Taj Mahal" - and the location quickly zooms into focus from outer space.

It was in the 1990's that the federal government started allowing commercial satellite companies to make and sell high-resolution images, to allow American companies to compete in a growing market.

But a number of security restrictions apply to those companies. For instance, United States law requires that images of Israel shot by American-licensed commercial satellites be made available only at a relatively low resolution. Also, the companies' operating licenses allow the United States government to put any area off limits in the interests of national security. A 24-hour delay is mandated for images of especially high resolution.

Vipin Gupta, a security analyst at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, said the time delays were crucial, saying that in the national security sphere much can change between the time an image is taken and when it is used by the public.

"You can get imagery to determine whether there is a military base or airfield, but if you want to count aircraft, or determine whether there are troops there at a particular time, it is very difficult to do," Mr. Gupta said. "It's not video."

Andrew McLaughlin, a senior policy counsel at Google, said the company had entered discussions with several countries over the last few months, including Thailand, South Korea and, most recently, India.

India may be particularly sensitive to security issues because of its long-running border disputes with Pakistan, its rival nuclear power, and recurring episodes of terrorism. Since 1967, it has forbidden aerial photographs of bridges, ports, refineries and military establishments, and outside companies and agencies are required to have those images evaluated by the government. High-resolution satellite photos face similar restrictions in India, which has its own sophisticated satellite imaging program.

Mr. Ramamurthy, the Indian science official, acknowledged that "there is very little we can do to a company based overseas and offering its service over the Internet." But General Rao, the Indian surveyor general, said the Indian government had sent a letter asking Google "to show sensitive sites, which we will list - areas such as the presidential residence and defense installations - in very low-resolution images."

Mr. McLaughlin said he had not yet seen such a letter; he said talks with India had centered specifically on images of the Kashmir border, long disputed by India and Pakistan.

Meetings with Indian officials or those from other nations have yet to result in a request that Google remove or downgrade any information, Mr. McLaughlin said. Nor, he said, has the United States government ever asked Google to remove information.

The same cannot be said for Mr. Pike, whose Web site has images of nuclear test sites and military bases in much sharper focus than can be found on Google Earth.

Last year, Mr. Pike said, he was asked by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an arm of the Defense Department, to remove from his site some of the maps of cities in Iraq that the Coalition Provisional Authority had created for planning cellphone service.

Mr. Pike said he had complied, but added that the incident was a classic example of the futility of trying to control information. "To think that the same information couldn't be found elsewhere was not a very safe assumption," he said.

Dave Burpee, a spokesman for the agency, said that the incident was relatively isolated, and that Mr. Pike had been asked to remove the maps because they were marked "limited distribution." A service like Google Earth, on the other hand, contains nothing classified or restricted.

An outcry over security was the last thing John Hanke was thinking five years ago when he joined in founding Keyhole with the aim of using satellite and aerial photography to create a three-dimensional world map. The idea, said Mr. Hanke, an entrepreneur who founded two video game companies before starting Keyhole, was to make video games more interesting.

Now Mr. Hanke, as a general manager at Google in charge of Google Earth, finds himself in the thick of frequent discussions at Google and with outsiders about transparency. He speaks enthusiastically of the benefits of openness. "A lot of good things come out of making information available," he said, and proceeded to list a few: "disaster relief, land conservation and forest management for fighting wildfires."

The images, which Google Earth expects to update roughly every 18 months, are a patchwork of aerial and satellite photographs, and their relative sharpness varies. Blurriness is more often than not an indication of the best quality available for a location.

Chuck Herring, a spokesman for DigitalGlobe, said that to the best of his knowledge, the federal government had never asked his company to obscure or blur images. Similarly, Mr. Hanke said no specific areas on Google Earth lacked high-resolution data because of federal restrictions.

For a brief period, photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured, because the government had decided that showing details like rooftop helicopter landing pads was a security risk. Google has since replaced those images with unaltered photographs of the area taken by Sanborn, a mapping and imagery company, further illustrating the difficulty of trying to control such information.

As for security issues raised by other countries, Mr. Hanke said, "When we reach out and engage with knowledgeable people, the concern tends to subside."

Still, imagery is growing harder than ever to control, especially as it makes its way around the Internet. Several countries, notably Nigeria, China and Brazil, have recently launched satellites, making it harder for any one government to impose restrictions.

"When you have multiple eyes in the sky, what you're doing is creating a transparent globe where anyone can get basic information about anyone else," said Mr. Gupta, the Sandia analyst. His recommendation to the Indian government, he said, would be to accept the new reality: "Times are changing, and the best thing to do is adapt to the advances in technology."

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/te...rtner=homepage





Trials and Tribulations

Video games’ many visits to court
Nadia Oxford

Lawsuit is the first word spit out after a car accident, or after someone burns themselves with boiling coffee that didn't include a flashing warning label, or after someone's heart takes a small vacation following the twenty years of daily cheeseburgers. Americans love to sue: Disgruntled customers sue corporations, one kid sues another for calling him a mean names, and corporate lawyers hand one other court summons as casually as Christmas cards.

So it should be no surprise that the videogame industry is plagued by legal battles -- many of which have shaped companies and games as we know them. And it's hardly a new trend; the justice system has a long relationship with videogames, stretching back to the medium's infancy.

Activate Activision

The very first video game was created in a Long Island laboratory by a nuclear physicist named Willy Higenbotham. Born in 1958 on an analog computer called an oscilloscope, his creation, "Tennis for Two," was part of a visitor's exhibit set up in the lab to ease the fears of nearby residents made jittery by the Cold War and anything to do with atoms. Using two controller boxes, the visitors could play an electronic version of "tennis" that even simulated wind resistance and gravity. Higinbotham never grew overly attached to his creation, nor did he bother to patent his idea because it was "so obvious."

In 1966, Ralph Baer, a German-born American engineer who primarily worked on third-party military projects wanted to do something new with the television set: Electronic games. Baer worked with his associate, Bill Rusch, to develop concepts, including a two-player chase through a maze, and a tennis game that closely resembled Higenbotham's. Financial difficulties forced Baer to sell his ideas to Magnavox, and in 1972 the company displayed its $100 "Odyssey" and a handful of games -- including Tennis -- at trade shows. A young engineer named Nolan Bushnell, who would grow up to become the daddy of Atari, was very interested in one game in particular. Unlike Higenbotham, Baer had been granted a patent for his game console and its games. So when Atari's Pong (designed by Bushnell) single- handedly gave birth to the home and arcade videogame industries, it also gave birth to the first videogame lawsuit. Baer called shenanigans, producing proof that Bushnell had seen Magnavox's Odyssey at a trade show; with Magnavox's victory, the courts clearly decided that Bushnell had been inspired by Baer's concept -- a little too inspired. Atari managed to thrive through the 1970s despite this setback thanks to an array of quality original creations; Pong kicked things off, but the VCS home system (also known as the 2600) was the company's greatest creation.

Yet despite its runaway success, the company only paid employees standard salaries and offered little in the way of bonuses or appreciation. A handful of programmers assumed that they could continue to make good games by themselves, away from Atari's thumb. These defectors called their new company Activision and made a handsome sum with four hits -- Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing. Atari, overconfident that customers would buy whatever fell on the shelf with their label, noticed that gamers actually did prefer Activision's relatively detailed graphics and quality gameplay. Activison's work not only put Atari back in touch with consumer demand, it boosted sales of their consoles.

To show their appreciation, Atari took Activision to court, claiming that the company didn't have the right to develop Atari games. Atari lost, and more companies decided to follow in Activision's footsteps, creating the concept of third-party developers. It was a defining moment for video games.

War of the Wakka

This was hardly the end of Atari's appearances in court. In 1981, Philips released a game called K.C. Munchkin! for their system, the Odyssey II. Munchkin was heavily inspired by Namco's 1980 arcade hit, Pac-Man, but contained significant improvements to the gameplay. Instead of chomping a screen full of stationary dots, Munchkin chased down 12 dots that were constantly in motion. The remaining pellets got faster as the others were eaten, and getting the last dot required strategy and interception. The maze walls moved, and players could program their own courses.

Atari sued Philips and forced them to stop production of K.C. Munchkin! because Atari had exclusive rights to the home version of Pac-Man, which wasn't due out until 1982. They won on appeal; the court decided that Philips had copied Pac-Man, and that Munchkin's differences only "emphasized" this plagiarism, a ruling that ultimately established how copyright laws would apply to the look and "feel" of software. Munchkin was a vastly superior game to Atari's pitiful conversion of the Namco-designed hit, but the law was less concerned about quality and more about upholding the law. After Munchkin was pulled off the shelves, Philips developed K.C's Krazy Chase!, in which Munchkin devoured a tree-eating creature called the "Dratapiller," an insect that strongly resembled the insect star of Atari's hit, Centipede.

David and Goliath

Even after all of this, Atari's legal dealings weren't over. Long after they had largely given up on hardware and a new game console called the Nintendo Entertainment System took the 2600's place in gamers' hearts, the company that created the gaming industry still found its way to court. Though Atari had turned down a request a couple of years prior to help Nintendo distribute their fledgling system, the system's success made them realize that the videogame industry wasn't quite as dead as they'd left it, and they wanted back in. The aging 2600 and its successor, the 7800, didn't make much headway against the NES; Atari shrewdly decided to hedge its bets and support the NES, too, adopting the name Tengen.

Nintendo believed that Atari had lost its hold on the industry due to it lack of control over third parties. Literally anybody could make a game for the 2600, resulting in games that were only slightly altered, slapped with a new label and put on the shelf, as well as some "erotic" adventures that were not fun and certainly not sexy. As a result, Nintendo shepherded its third parties under strict (and, some developers argued, unfair) rules that required all NES games to be licensed. In addition, companies were not allowed to release more than five games a year for the system, and those games were required to remain exclusive to Nintendo. Some companies found ways around the restrictions, such as Konami's splitting of its resources to create a "new" company, Ultra Games. Tengen simply appealed for a less restrictive license, and Nintendo refused. Tengen complied at first and in 1988 they released their only three legitimate NES games: RBI Baseball, Pac-Man and Gauntlet. At the same time, they secretly worked on ways to bypass Nintendo's 10NES security chip, which locked out games that were not given the coveted Nintendo "Seal of Quality."

The chip could be disabled easily enough with a good zap of electricity, but Tengen feared that such a route might damage consoles, and they didn't want liability suits on top of the trouble they already knew they'd be in for. Instead, Tengen reverse-engineered the chip by contacting the Government and requesting a copy of Nintendo's lock-out program for a potential court case against the company. With the help of the program, the NES' lock-out program fell away easily and the unlicensed Tengen games were launched. Nintendo sued the company for breach of contract as soon as the games hit the store shelves, and claimed that Atari created Tengen as "a front company to defraud Nintendo." Tengen lost and was forced to pay damages.

"I dunno, Davey..."

The dogfight between the companies flared up again with the release of Tetris for the NES. Both Tengen and Nintendo had their own versions of the wildly popular puzzle game; many gamers still maintain that Tengen's version, which allowed for two player head-to-head competition, was the superior of the two. Despite some confusion, though, only Nintendo possessed the rights to publish Tetris for home consoles-- meaning that Tengen's version, unknown to them, was illegal. Nintendo yanked Tengen back into court, forcing them to remove its inventory of hundreds of thousands of Tetris cartridges from stores. Already reeling from expensive legal defeats, Tengen was nearly run out of business when Nintendo threatened to stop supplying any retailers who were found carrying the illegal games. Tengen released a few Genesis games before giving its last wheeze, but Atari wasn't out for the count and would soon jump on Nintendo's back again. Nintendo was already battle-hardened before it dealt with Tengen. Not long after Donkey Kong became a huge success in American arcades, MCA Universal sued Nintendo on the grounds that the barrel-chucking gorilla was a ripoff of their own hairy movie star, King Kong. It was a frightening scenario at first; Nintendo was still fragile at the time, and if they lost the suit, Nintendo of America would cease to be. The game manufacturer's lawyer, Howard Lincoln (now well-recognized as the Senior Vice President of the company) discovered that not only did Universal not own the rights to King Kong, they'd won a lawsuit years prior declaring that King Kong was actually public domain. It wasn't Universal's finest moment, and the Hollywood giant was swatted down like Kong himself, forced pay legal reparations to the up-and-coming Nintendo.

As the Nintendo Entertainment System grew in popularity and entered millions of American homes, some small video stores fed their registers some extra profit by buying their own copies of Nintendo games, and renting them out to customers who paid a fraction of the game's original price to play it for a few days. Nintendo received no profit from the practice beyond the initial cost of their game, and unlike video cassette rentals, a hot game could be put up for sale and for rent on the same day. Nintendo took steps to stop game rentals, but they didn't come out roaring until Blockbuster Video began to make game rentals a large-scale service. Nintendo lost the lawsuit, however; the only thing Blockbuster could be nailed for was including original, copyrighted instruction booklets with their rented games. Blockbuster simply switched over to photocopied booklets, or handed out a card that explained the game's basic premise and controls to the player. Despite threats to rental kiosks and retailers who sold multiple copies of certain games, video game rentals were free to prosper, and still do. As the 1980s drew to a close, Atari filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Nintendo, which controlled more than 80% of the home gaming industry. Sega of America joined in as well, claiming that its own 8-bit Master System had failed because Nintendo threatened to stop supplying stores who carried the rival system. Atari contended that Nintendo's strict "quality control" was actually meant to smother competitors. The Justice Department ultimately decided that Nintendo was indeed strong-arming their competition, and their penalty was to issue $25 million in coupons to anyone who had bought an NES between June 1, 1988 and December 31, 1990. Customers received a $5 discount towards their next game purchase -- which actually encouraged a flood of sales that the best of Nintendo's advertising campaigns couldn't hope to instigate.

"Your wish is my hax."

Nintendo had less success in 1992 against Galoob, the makers of the infamous Game Genie. The Game Genie was a code-based "game- enhancing" device which could grant the player infinite health, lives or time if they were having a rough time getting through a game on their own... and if a player just wanted to watch Mario blast off halfway to the moon with a tap of the jump button, the Genie was good for that, too. Nintendo sued Galoob for copyright infringement with the argument that the use of the Genie produced a derivative work, since it altered the game data passing between the cartridge and the console. The court held that this wasn't the case, and even if it was, the derivative could fall under fair use: "Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work."

Fight the Fighting Fighters

These early industry-defining lawsuits are arguably some of the most interesting, and affect the way we play games today. But even though the bedrock has stopped shifting and the lava has congealed, modern video game suits aren't in short supply.

Nor are they exclusive to the companies that manufacture hardware. Software developers often sue each other in court cases that twist and turn. Japanese developer Data East created a 1993 Super Nintendo game called Fighter's History that bore more than a passing resemblance to Capcom's popular Street Fighter II. Many of the characters' moves mirrored those of Street Fighter's World Warriors, and the background art was certainly inspired. Even the roster of characters in Fighter's History was familiar: There was the chunky Commie wrestler, the smart-ass American, the stoic martial artist who lived for the fight, and the Masked mystery man. Although Capcom lost, the lawsuit was still ironic; it was Data East's 1984 arcade game, The Way of Karate, that first used the side-view fighting perspective that was the very basis for Street Fighter II. Even stranger, Data East had previously sued an American software company, Epyx, for its Commodore 64 game, World Karate Championship. Data East had argued that World Karate Championship looked and played very similar to their own Way of Karate. Data East initially won the lawsuit and had Epyx's game pulled, but Epyx appealed and the US Federal Court reversed the judgment, upholding the right of game developers to create and distribute products that express the same ideas, even if the products are similar.

Copycat

When computers and the Internet became household tools, video game designers had the perfect means to hawk their wares. Not only did websites and rapid DSL connections allow for online shopping, but an incredible amount of hype for a game could be built up with the hosting of game trailers. But game companies curse the Internet for at least one reason: The spreading popularity of emulators, which can be easily downloaded to allow gamers to play their favorite games on their computers without actually purchasing the games or systems. Some defend emulation, pointing out that it's a great way for a new generation of players to get in touch with their "roots" -- after all, it's not easy to find an Atari 2600 or to acquire every game in the massive NES library. Game companies are less enthusiastic about co-existing with this controversial technology, especially since emulators don't stop with ColecoVision. Almost every console ever sold has been emulated, including new systems like the Nintendo DS. U.S.-based emulation software maker Connectix Corp. developed the Virtual Game Station in 1999, allowing Macintosh owners to play PlayStation games on their computer. Citing misappropriated trade secrets and unfair competition, Sony retaliated with legal action, but without success. While distributed ROMs and ISOs (binary copies of the games themselves) are considered illegal, U.S. copyright law protects emulators provided they mimic the function of hardware through reverse engineering. Finally concluding the legal battle in 2001, Connectix and Sony formed a "joint-technology agreement" in hopes of improved development tools and advancements in emulation. The move to work closer with emulator developers is not a bad one, as these programmers undeniably possess useful talent. The net result for gamers, though, was that Virtual Game Station was no longer sold or updated.

Burnt Toast

The epic cases of years past are interesting to read about, but what really marks today's game lawsuits is their personal touch. Increased awareness of regular people suing corporations for absurd reasons has caused more people to try their hand at winning a big cash settlement. If smokers can sue tobacco companies (and win) because they didn't know cigarettes can cause cancer, or if obese individuals can sue McDonalds (and win) because they didn't know that Big Macs contain enormous fat content, why should a parent be shy about blaming video games and the media for something as heavy as the death of their child? In 2001, a Louisiana woman named Esther Walker sued Nintendo of America under the claim that the N64 killed her 30-year-old son, Benjamin. Benjamin bought his N64 in 1999, purchased 11 games and played them for 8 hours a day, six days a week. He suffered a seizure while playing, but didn't lessen his habit. He experienced a sixth seizure in 2001 that caused him to hit his head on a table and suffer major internal injuries. He died shortly afterwards in hospital.

Esther Walker claimed that Nintendo released a defective product, and failed to give adequate warning about the health risks associated with playing video games. Nintendo, as well as other game companies, has been more cautious about alerting gamers and their parents that video games can indeed cause seizures in a small percentage of players, and if you do experience any sort of dizziness or disorientation, continuing play is not a hot idea. Turning on any Nintendo game will initiate a brief warning about the potential health risks associated with games, and software manuals instruct the player to take a rest after every hour or so of gameplay.

The shot heard round the 'Net

Sometimes, such personal lawsuits are understandable, even inevitable. Last year, the wife of an EA employee (choosing to remain somewhat anonymous with the moniker "EA Spouse") made an angry blog post about the treatment her husband was receiving at the hands of the massive software company, including endless months of seemingly needless "crunch time" that kept employees chained to their desks for over 90 hours a week. In addition, the blog stated that the overworked programmers received nothing in the way of overtime or sick leave. The post prompted a great deal of reaction from the industry and gamers. Critics condemned the sweatshop-like conditions and the mergers and buyouts that have been swallowing smaller game companies and smothering the human element of game development. EA has denied breaking labor laws, but some employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in an attempt to get their overtime pay. Other employees have launched blogs similar to EA Spouse's, verifying the illegal working conditions.

Bowling for Columbine

Liability relating to game violence has formed the basis for many game- related lawsuits today. 1999 marked the Columbine tragedy, in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot 12 students and wounded 23 others in Colorado's Columbine High School before they killed themselves. Harris and Klebold were frequently taunted and isolated by their schoolmates, but whereas the incident should have sparked a serious look into the problems of bullying in high schools, easy access to guns in households, and the availability of materials that allowed the teens to build pipe bombs in their spare time, the blame shifted almost exclusively to the media, particularly video games. No newspaper missed the chance to report that the assassins' favorite games included id Software's violent first-person shooter, Doom. It was id Software and 25 other game companies -- including Sega and family-friendly Nintendo -- that the parents of the Columbine victims eventually chose to take to court. The group claimed that investigations into the case revealed that their children's killers had been inspired by violent games; if they had never played those games, the shooting wouldn't have happened. Not much came of the suit. Similar claims had been filed at earlier dates, including a 1997 incident that involved the shooting deaths of three students by a teenager named Michael Carneal. The judge dismissed the case, noting that video games were not subject to product liability laws.

Jack's Back

Many politicians, parents and lawyers still beg to differ, particularly the media's most infamous "Crusader" against video game violence, Florida lawyer and failed politician, Jack Thompson.

Although the mention of Thompson is recently all it takes to make gamers roll their eyes and bash their foreheads against the wall, the lawyer never been shy with his zealous linking of media violence and the breakdown of morals in modern teenagers. In 1999, he filed a $33 million class action lawsuit against Time Warner Inc., Polygram Film Entertainment Distribution Inc., Palm Pictures, Island Pictures, New Line Cinema, Nintendo, Sony, Atari and Sega on behalf of the parents of Michael Carneal, who was sentenced to life in prison for his act. Jack Thompson's blame suit failed, but he continued relentlessly in future court cases. Besides blaming first- person shooter games for what happened at Columbine, he also called for Microsoft to pay damages on the grounds that the Washington Sniper broke down his inhibitions towards killing with the aid of Halo.

Thompson's obsessive linking of Rockstar Games' popular titles (particularily Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto) to particular instances and motivations for murder is almost legendary. On TV and in court, he points out that "studies indicate video games damage children's' brains (whereas in actuality, the study, founded by a parenting group campaigning against media violence, couldn't find a concrete link between exposure to violent games and brain activity)." Ignoring the events in 50% of the Old Testament, Thompson told interviewers that "The Bible doesn't promote the killing of innocent people ... Grand Theft Auto does." He also attempted to link Rockstar's Manhunt and the killing of British teen Stefan Pakeerah by his 17-year-old friend, Warren LeBlanc. The courts denied that the game was a factor, seeing as the game was owned by the victim, not the killer. Thompson later told IGN that the British Tabloids fabricated his involvement with the case.

Over-Brewed

For all his adventures, the event that truly elevated Thompson to gamers' awareness was Rockstar's infamous "Hot Coffee" fiasco. In July of 2005, a modder discovered an erotic mini-game hidden in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that could be accessed through a third-party hack. The cry of outrage from Thompson and other activists was loud and clear. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was forced to re-evaluate the game and give it an Adults-Only rating due to the hidden content. In August, Thompson reported that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City also contained an unlockable sexual minigame that took place in a strip club. Third-party hackers tried their very best, but found no such thing. With the media outburst on Hot Coffee, Florence Cohen, an 85-year-old New York grandmother, filed a class-action lawsuit against Rockstar Games. She cites that Rockstar and Take Two Interactive, GTA: San Andreas' publisher, are guilty of abuse, false advertising and deception based on the changing of the game's original rating.

It was a brief summer of glory for Thompson, who launched another 2005 lawsuit in Alabama against Rockstar when 18-year-old Devan Moore, a fan of GTA, killed three people and declared that "Life is like a video game. Everybody's gotta die sometime." Thompson and the families of two of the victims aimed to prove that Moore never would have pulled the trigger if he'd not played GTA, despite his extremely troubled childhood that saw him bounced from one foster home to another. But as the year cooled down, so did Thompson's credibility in court. Long regarded by gamers as being unstable (cemented by Thompson's attempt to get Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade arrested for speaking out against him), the courts became wary of Thompson's seemingly random outbursts and far-out court comparisons of Japan's export of video games and the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor. On November 7, 2005, Thompson withdrew from the Moore case, stating that it would do fine without him. James Judge Moore, however, had revoked his license to practice law in Alabama because of inappropriate behavior. Thompson hotly stated that nothing as minor as the removal of his license was going to stop him from representing the right side of the law in court. Nevertheless, Thompson has lost the support of some of his previous backers, most notably the National Institute on Media and the Family. Despite his tumbling reputation, it's easy to believe that he'll continue his crusade against gamers and games, even if it means ending up alone on the high road, mad and gibbering like Psyche in her search for Cupid.

You don't know me, but you hate me.

Thompson frequently launched suits on grounds of slander and defamation, which is becoming an increasingly popular practice in the world of law, and as alarming as it can be to receive a legal letter dripping with heavy jargon, it can also be amusing under the right circumstances. The site administrator for Megaman Network, was more than a little surprised when he received a letter from the world famous physician/ biologist, Doctor Weil. Although the letter didn't threaten immediate legal action, it did make accusations of defamation, noting that the website labeled him as an "evil scientist." In response, Weil was sent the email address for Capcom USA. After all, website admins didn't have much say when the company decided that the villain in their Mega Man Zero series would be named "Doctor Weil."

With the growth of personal lawsuits, gamers are understandably enveloped with a feeling of nostalgia when a company goes to court simply to defend its profits, whether justified or not. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited (SCEE) filed a suit against Hong Kong- based importer, Lik-Sang.com, for selling and shipping the PSP to addresses in the UK and Europe before the official European launch date. Lik-Sang argued that the laws in Hong Kong clearly allows parallel trade to restore natural competition and offer customers lower prices. And unlike Sony's previous attacks on PlayStation mod chippers, Lik- Sang couldn't be faulted for shipping unmodified, boxed product to wherever there was a demand. According to Pascal Clarysse, Marketing Manager for Lik-Sang.com, "This is the most aggressive move against its own customers that a console manufacturer has ever taken in the 30 year history of videogames. Sony wants to completely cut hardcore gamers away from items released in Japan or anywhere else outside their own country. A very active part of the gaming community has been enjoying Japanese gaming culture for over two decades, and that's what the Empire is now willing to destroy."

As long as there is money to make, personal morals to uphold (however noble or whacked) and profits to defend, courts will never lack for activity. Gamers and non-gamers alike have reason to shake their heads as the strong foundation of Democracy is smothered by frivilous and petty lawsuits launched by weasels looking to get rich quick. But it's undeniably important--as well as interesting--to review those historic copyright lawsuits that formed the prosperous industry of today.
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3146206&did=1





Review

Generation Xbox
Hugo Lindgren

Here's a theory that may be neither original nor empirically defensible but feels true: The more fun an activity is, the less interesting it is to read about. War producces great journalism; water-skiing does not. Can you guess where video games fall on this spectrum? In the last few years, a great many words have been expended to report on this flourishing cultural phenomenon. Most accounts begin with a hyperactive presentation of statistics, which we will not rehearse here. This is all you need to know (and perhaps already do): Video games have grown into a huge business, outpacing the movie industry and bulldozing childhood as we knew it. We adults are not safe, either. Whether they admit it or not, you probably have friends who can be found awake at 2 a.m. disemboweling orcs, foiling terrorist plots and scooping up fumbles and running them into end zones.

It is the opinion of Edward Castronova, author of "Synthetic Worlds," that such electronic experiences are not merely a hedge against boredom but a profound indicator of where the entire world is heading. Online, off-line; reality, fantasy - these distinctions will cease to matter as more and more of us pass our time in virtual environments. Economies will evolve as we pay real money for virtual goods and vice versa. Conflicts that begin online will spill into the real world and back. Laws will be written to protect our newfound interests.

Castronova's vision has elements of both utopia and dystopia. But mostly he is bullish. Life in these alternative zones may eventually become so fulfilling, he contends, "that a fairly substantial exodus may loom in the distance." He means this, really. Like the Irish and Italians who left their native lands in the late 19th century to come to America, gamers could create a genuine human migration, away from the real and into the virtual. What will be real then?

The specific object of Castronova's scholarship is Mmorpgs, the inelegant acronym for "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," which can involve hundreds of thousands of players plugging in from all over the world. A disproportionate number of these games revolve around dwarfs, wizards, quests and magic lands, though the content is becoming ever more diverse. These days, there's a Mmorpg out there to suit the interests of just about anybody. One game, The Sims Online, merely simulates suburban life, and it is madly popular.

Castronova is an economist who teaches telecommunications at Indiana University, and among academic economists he is a bold contrarian, if only because he dares to take computer games seriously. My oh my does he take them seriously. In dense, lifeless prose, he sledgehammers away at his major themes, constantly pausing to review the material he's just covered and preview what is to come. His sweeping conclusions are intriguing - get ready for governments sending agents into virtual worlds and waging war with avatars! - but he's not a vivid enough writer to animate most of his futuristic abstractions.

In "Smartbomb," Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby try harder to entertain. They've organized their history of video games as a study of ambitious individuals, breaking it down into a series of breezy, magazinelike profiles of uneven quality. A lot of the original reporting seems to take place at gaming conventions, which is not where one imagines the really interesting stuff happens. But the stories are pretty good, even when they don't break new ground. Rereading the legend of Nolan Bushnell and the founding of Atari is like hearing a bar band play a spirited "Twist and Shout" - enjoyable, but no additional points for Degree of Difficulty.

In two spots, though, Chaplin and Ruby really score. In their chapter on Mmorpgs, they sensitively profile David Reber, a 30-year-old Californian who spends every free moment chained to his computer, acting out a series of intense fantasy existences that provide him with the companionship and sense of achievement missing in his real life. Just as Castronova would predict, Reber withdraws from the real world as his fantasy life deepens - he has lapses at work and when Chaplin and Ruby last check in with him, he's moved back in with his mother.

The other winning portrait in "Smartbomb" is of Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, as well as its offshoot The Sims, and a new simulation called Spore in which players guide a new creature from its biological origin onward. In an industry that mimics Hollywood's craven predilection for cheap, gory theatrics, Wright stands apart as a humble philosopher in love with the potential of games to expand the human experience. Though Chaplin and Ruby don't have much to say themselves about the significance of video games, they wisely hand matters over to Wright, who foresees a future that might just keep us all staying up past 2 a.m. "I think one thing that's unique about video games is not only that they can respond to you but down the road they'll be able to adapt themselves to you. They'll learn your desires," he says. "It might just be that games become deeply personal artifacts - more like dreams."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/bo...8lindgren.html





Senators Introduce Law Curbing Game Sales To Young

Sen. Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senate colleagues on Friday introduced legislation prohibiting the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors, saying the industry's self-rating system was not being adequately enforced.

The proposed measure was the latest development in an increasingly strident battle over the content of video games, which represent a $10 billion industry in the United States, rivaling the box office revenue of Hollywood movies.

Some states have already passed laws regulating the sales, although the video game industry has won some early court battles against them.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, New York Democrat Clinton said legal restraints should be imposed to keep inappropriate video games from children, in the same way laws protect children from tobacco, alcohol and pornography.

In some video games, characters routinely spray each other with machine gun fire, drive over pedestrians and kill police officers, Clinton said, saying it is all too easy for minors to buy such games.

"These video games are stealing the innocence of our children," said Clinton. "Our bill puts teeth into the standards set by the industry."

Clinton introduced the bill along with Democratic senators Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana. They did not discuss prospects for advancing the legislation, but said they expected to attract some Republican co- sponsors.

The bill would prohibit any business from selling or renting a video game rated "Mature," "Adults-Only," or "Ratings Pending" to anyone younger than 17.

Violation would be a federal misdemeanor. On-site managers of stores that made the prohibited sales would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first offense; and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense.

Video game ratings are set by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, an independent nonprofit group established in 1994 by the Entertainment Software Association.

The president of that association, Douglas Lowenstein, said the proposed measure was unconstitutional and infringed on the industry's creative rights. "We place our trust in parents, not Congress, to decide what's right for their families," he said in a statement.

But Lieberman said he was confident the law was constitutional, because it did not impinge on freedom of expression, only restricted sales to minors. There has been no ruling on the matter from the U.S. Supreme Court, he noted.

"Courts in America have not been hesitant to uphold laws that limit children's access to pornography. It's very ironic that courts have now struck down attempts to limit children's access to violent materials," Lieberman said.
http://news.com.com/Senators+introdu...l?tag=nefd.top