Quotes Of The Week
"This again demonstrates that the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are so complicated that no judge can be expected to figure them out." – Fred von Lohmann
"If the last names of the CEOs of most major record labels ended in a vowel they'd be calling this behaviour racketeering." - Wayne Rosso
"If you help us, we just might get it right, if you don't, we're going to [kill P2P]." – Republican senator Orrin Hatch
"If file sharing is killing record sales, why are records starting to sell better?" - Koleman Strumpf
Senator Wants To Ban P2P Networks
Declan McCullagh
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary said Thursday that a ban on file-trading networks is urgently required but agreed to work with tech companies concerned that devices like Apple Computer's iPod would be imperiled.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he intended to move ahead with the highly controversial Induce Act despite objections from dozens of Internet providers and Silicon Valley manufacturers. The Induce Act says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations.
Hatch added, however, that he welcomed comments from critics. "If you help us, we just might get it right," he said. "If you don't, we're going to do it. Something has to be done. There's no way to solve these problems so everyone's totally pleased."
The Induce Act, which enjoys broad support in the music industry and from a handful of software companies, is designed to overturn an April 2003 ruling from a California judge that said StreamCast Networks, which distributes Morpheus, and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software. Critics of the bill warn that it could make hardware makers like Apple and Toshiba--and even journalists--liable for products and reviews that could "induce" the public to violate copyright law.
Vermont's Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the panel, echoed Hatch's comments. "Nobody wants to undermine the iPod or any other piece of technology out there," he said. "We have to understand that some people use P2P technology in ways that are wrong and illegal."
The Business Software Alliance, which counts as members Microsoft, Apple and Adobe Systems, initially applauded the Induce Act in a favorable statement last month that called it a "reasonable balance between antipiracy and technological innovation."
But by the time Thursday's hearing took place, BSA President Robert Holleyman had become far more tepid in his appraisal of the bill. Holleyman testified that the measure would be acceptable only if it were rewritten "to ensure that only bad actors are found liable."
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, suggested that the Senate wait for the courts to figure out which file-swapping networks are legal. "Right now, I don't think legislation is necessary, because the harm is greater than any benefit that may be derived," he said.
More than 40 trade associations and advocacy groups voiced similar sentiments in a letter to senators July 6. The Induce Act "would chill innovation and drive investment in technology" overseas, said the letter, signed by CNET Networks, eBay, Google, Intel, MCI, TiVo, Verizon Communications, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo. CNET Networks is the publisher of News.com.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5280384.html
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Federal Court Broadens DMCA Safe Harbors
Paul Festa
Attorneys for a wide range of Internet companies may be in for a surprise with a little-noticed federal ruling on DMCA immunity.
In a 56-page order handed down June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Lourdes Baird muddied the already troubled waters of determining what Internet businesses qualify for the "safe harbor" provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
"There is a lot in this decision that will surprise lawyers who thought they understood the safe harbors," said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual-property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Whatever a judge says is what goes, so we lawyers are learning afresh what we thought we already knew."
The DMCA has regularly inspired controversy since its passage six years ago, particularly for its prohibitions of technology designed to circumvent copy-protection devices. And its complex safe harbors have created headaches for lawyers and judges trying to determine who can berth there.
Baird's order on motions for summary judgment comes nearly two years after Perfect 10, an online pornography publisher, filed suit against four different Internet companies alleging copyright infringement, various trademark violations, unfair competition, false advertising, violation of right of publicity and RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act violations.
Defendants in the case--age-verification service Internet Key; online payment processor iBill, now owned by Penthouse; Web hosting provider CWIE; and subscription payment manager CCBill--sought to have the charges against them thrown out on the grounds that they qualified for DMCA safe harbor protections.
Baird's ruling granted some motions for summary judgment and denied others. In the process, according to legal experts, it apparently articulated new protections for Internet businesses.
One law professor praised the order, saying it brought DMCA law more in line with congressional intent.
"There are several firsts in this ruling," said Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Marquette University Law School. "Courts are beginning to realize that the early rulings under the DMCA safe harbor interpreted the safe harbor too strictly and unfairly, and therefore the courts are reversing those rulings and providing more expansive protections under the safe harbors."
In her order, Baird brought age-verification and payment services into the DMCA safe harbor, raising the possibility that more businesses that don't fall under the usual Web hosting and connectivity categories will qualify.
She ruled that the online service providers qualified for the DMCA's "information location," or "linking" safe harbor. Perfect 10 argued that that safe harbor only applied to search engines like Yahoo and Google, which locate and link to millions of sites they're not affiliated with.
According to Baird, however, a company that linked to a limited network of sites with which it had contractual relationships still qualified.
The DMCA requires that copyright holders alleging a violation must first issue a DMCA "takedown notice" to the company or individual in question. Baird raised the bar for how specific DMCA takedown notices must be before copyright owners can demand that a service provider terminate an allegedly infringing subscriber.
"This ruling provides some very important--and expansive--interpretations (of specific DMCA safe harbor sections), in each case finding that a broad array of online service providers could take advantage of the safe harbors and that copyright owners could not thwart the safe harbor with weakly drafted notices of infringement or by claiming that service providers aren't doing a good job policing infringements," Goldman said.
Baird also staked new ground in the ever-evolving landscape of CDA (Communications Decency Act) Sec. 230 immunity, a similar safe harbor provision in the landmark 1996 law aimed at controlling online smut. Sec. 230 shields ISPs and other online businesses from prosecution for many of their subscribers' actions.
Sec. 230 immunity does not apply, however, to laws governing intellectual property. In a potentially worrisome development for Web publishers, Baird said the right of publicity-- under which public figures can sue businesses for using their likeness for commercial purposes--is an intellectual-property matter, ruling out Sec. 230 protection for publishers.
Calling the DMCA safe harbors "horrifically complicated" and "bewildering," the EFF's Lohmann said Baird's order may not have gotten the letter of the law exactly right-- particularly in raising the bar for the specificity of DMCA takedown notices.
"I think the district court didn't really fully understand how the safe harbors work," Lohmann said. "This again demonstrates that the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA are so complicated that no judge can be expected to figure them out."
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5279000.html
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Antipiracy Bill Gains New Ally
Declan McCullagh
In a move that's alarming technology firms, the U.S. Copyright Office is about to endorse new legislation that would outlaw peer-to-peer networks and possibly some consumer electronics devices that could be used for copyright piracy.
Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, is planning to announce her support for the measure at a Senate hearing on Thursday. The Induce Act, which critics warn could imperil products like Apple Computer's iPod, is an "important improvement over existing law," according to a copy of her statement seen by CNET News.com.
Peters goes even further than the politicians supporting the Induce Act, saying a 1984 Supreme Court decision "should be replaced by a more flexible rule that is more meaningful in the technological age." That 5-4 ruling said that VCRs were legal to sell because they were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses"--a legal shield that one federal court has extended to cover the Grokster and Morpheus file-swapping networks.
The endorsement of the nonpartisan Copyright Office complicates what is shaping up to be yet another high-stakes tussle over copyright between hardware firms and e-commerce companies, which worry about legal liability if their products are used for copyright violations, and large copyright holders who fret about rampant copying on peer-to-peer networks. The Induce Act says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations.
In an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Les Vadasz, who retired last year as an Intel executive vice president, denounced the Induce Act as having a wealth of undesirable side effects. "The chilling effect that a law like this would have on innovation cannot be underestimated," Vadasz said.
More than 40 trade associations and advocacy groups voiced similar sentiments in a letter to senators on July 6. The Induce Act "would chill innovation and drive investment in technology" overseas, said the letter signed by CNET Networks, eBay, Google, Intel, MCI, TiVo, Verizon, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo. (CNET Networks publishes News.com.)
On the other side are the music industry groups that have become Silicon Valley's typical political adversaries on copyright laws--with one exception.
The Business Software Alliance, a group that includes Adobe and Autodesk as members and is closely affiliated with Microsoft, has applauded the Induce Act. BSA said in a statement that it is a "reasonable balance between antipiracy and technological innovation."
On Wednesday, entertainers joined BSA in welcoming the Induce Act. "We urge the committee to pass this crucial legislation as quickly as possible," said a statement from groups including the American Federation of Musicians, the National Music Publishers' Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association, and the Songwriters Guild of America.
A lawyer for the Copyright Office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, defended the Induce Act as making modest changes to copyright law that were necessary to target file- swapping companies. "If people have specific concerns (about the wording of the bill), we'd be open to working with the committee to figure out how to address them," the lawyer said.
Alarm over "inducing"
NetCoalition, which represents e-commerce firms and Internet publishers, said it was alarmed by the Copyright Office's call to revisit the 1984 "Betamax" VCR decision.
"We would vigorously disagree that Congress ought to reconsider the Betamax decision," said Markham Erickson, NetCoalition's director of federal policy. "We're troubled by the Copyright Office's suggestion that it's no longer applicable in the digital era. In fact, we would suggest that the Betamax decision is one of the reasons why we had the explosion of the Internet, instant messaging and Web browsing products. The Betamax decision helped to foster this era of great products."
Fred von Lohmann, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said it's no real surprise that the Copyright Office is eager to see the Induce Act enacted.
"The Copyright Office tends to view copyright law through the narrow lens of what does it mean for copyright owners," he said. "The Copyright Office has not traditionally and certainly not recently viewed as one of its core missions asking, 'How has copyright law affected other areas, such as technology policy and innovation?'" EFF has prepared a fake lawsuit that shows how Apple, Toshiba and CNET Networks could be sued for products and reviews that allegedly "induce" people to violate copyright law.
The Induce Act's supporters include Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D- S.D.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5278980.html
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Labels Blacklist Song-Swap Companies
Andy Sullivan
The recording industry has "blacklisted" Internet file-sharing services and is preventing other companies like RealNetworks from doing business with them, according to music and technology industry officials.
The record labels' attempts to isolate song swapping "peer to peer" networks like Grokster and Morpheus have blocked deals that could have potentially brought in millions of dollars in revenues, the sources said, and might violate antitrust laws.
"If the last names of the CEOs of most major record labels ended in a vowel they'd be calling this behaviour racketeering," said former Grokster president Wayne Rosso.
Record labels say they are simply refusing to work with companies they regard as illegal.
Some 9.5 million Internet users log on to peer-to-peer networks each day to copy music and other material from each others' hard drives.
The recording industry says such unfettered copying has cut into CD sales, and it has sued both the networks and roughly three thousand of their users for copyright infringement.
Even as the two sides are locked in litigation, several peer-to-peer firms have tried to open talks with the industry.
So far, recording companies have shown little interest.
"There is a big difference between exploring a new business model in a legitimate and open business manner ... and going into business with the taxicab driver who just ran the red light and hit me," EMI Group Plc Executive Vice President John Rose told the Senate Commerce Committee last month.
Peer-to-peer firms have also run into a brick wall with other technology companies that distribute licensed content.
British download service Wippit Ltd. broke off plans to advertise and sell music on Grokster last year after officials determined that Universal Music Group would cut them off.
"UMI have expressed concern about our relationship with your company and even though we are providing you with a legitimate service they will not license music to Wippit if we have any dealings with your company who they consider 'pirates'," Wippit CEO Paul Myers wrote Grokster in a May 2003 e-mail.
"We had some opportunities, and unfortunately those opportunities were taken away from us," Myers told Reuters. He declined to elaborate.
"We have the right and the sense not to do business with people who aim to profit or otherwise enable the theft of our artists' music," Larry Kenswil, president of Universal's eLabs division, said in a statement.
Other label officials said privately that their contracts commonly are written to ensure that their material is not sold alongside illegal or objectionable content.
Also last year, RealNetworks abandoned negotiations to bundle its music-playing software with Morpheus, a deal that could have eventually steered Morpheus users to paid content distributed on Real's Rhapsody service.
"The labels have blacklisted you guys ... which means I'm probably not going to get much latitude to do anything as far as Rhapsody goes," RealNetworks general manager Ryc Brownigg said in a phone message to StreamCast Networks Inc. last September.
Brownigg did not return a call seeking comment, and a RealNetworks spokeswoman declined to comment.
Two other download services have also declined to work with Morpheus because of pressure from the labels, StreamCast CEO Michael Weiss said, adding that confidentiality agreements prevented him from saying which were involved.
The record labels have a right to forbid partners from working with peer-to-peer companies as long as they do so individually and not as a group, one antitrust expert said.
"If it's done individually, then I think the question is, 'Is this a reasonable condition on the contract,' and the answer is yes," said George Mason University professor Ernest Gellhorn.
But the labels are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring such a large audience, said one music-industry executive who declined to be identified.
"If they could get one dollar out of these peer-to-peer users ... that's $10 million in the kitty toward the artists and writers. That's a step forward, and one song sold is one song not illegally downloaded," the executive said.
Sony Music Entertainment Inc., BMG and privately held Warner Music Group declined to comment.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackage...6§ion=news
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P2P Company Not Going Anywhere
Michelle Delio
It seems logical that the headquarters of a file-sharing network would be located offshore, far from the reach of the long legal arm of the Recording Industry Association of America or Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Hatch's latest foray into file sharing, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (SB2560), backed by the RIAA, would hold liable anyone who "intentionally aids, abets or induces'' others to violate copyright laws. The penalties for copyright infringement can be up to $30,000 per infringement, and up to $150,000 per instance of willful infringement.
Major technology companies such as Sun, Intel and Google have released or signed statements saying that the broad wording of the bill could lead to litigation aimed at every company that produces consumer devices devoted to any type of digital file access or storage.
But Jed McCaleb, founder and CTO of file-sharing network eDonkey, and Sam Yagan, president of the company, don't have to wonder whether the Hatch bill will affect their business. They already know that if SB2560 passes they'll be one of the first against the wall.
Still, they plan to continue to be very public about the location of their New York City office -- on 14th Street between Fifth and Sixth, just west of the famed Union Square Greenmarket, in a brightly painted room that looks a whole lot like the nursery of a particularly geeky toddler.
Yagan and McCaleb said they do worry about lawsuits, but they try to stay focused on getting their message out to content owners instead of fretting that the copyright police might show up for coffee some morning.
"We thought about incorporating offshore, and many attorneys tell us that we made a huge mistake not doing so," said Yagan. "But we look at it differently. Going offshore would have given the impression that we had something to hide. We hope that our status as a New York company sends a strong signal that we see ourselves as a legitimate, tax-paying software company, a technology company that the entertainment industry can do business with."
EDonkey currently averages approximately 2 million concurrent users, about 10 percent fewer than front-runner Kazaa.
"I think P2P networks will continue to expand," said McCaleb. "They are very useful tools, and it is obvious that people want to use them. I believe and hope that the recording and movie industry will come around to see what great potential lies in P2P networks and will start using them to their advantage rather than fighting against them."
Yagan points out that currently P2P users don't have the option of paying for content, even if they were inclined to, and said that it seems obvious that such an option should be provided, since legislation may change but won't stop the development and use of P2P systems.
"I don't know of a single precedent in which legislation or litigation stopped technological development," said Yagan. "Let's say, though, that the labels shut down the major peer-to-peer networks. Would P2P go away? Not at all. The networks would continue to operate even if the companies themselves go out of business. It's like if you put Xerox out of business, its copy machines will still work.
"Then what will happen is networks will spring up in jurisdictions that don't recognize U.S. laws or judgments. My favorite example is Earthstation 5. Here's an excerpt from its website:
"'Please take notice: EarthstationV Ltd., a Palestinian corporation, does not accept any legal process via e-mail, nor will we accept any attachments via e-mail. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine.'
"Whether P2P networks can offer paid downloads is exclusively up to the major record labels and movie studios who would need to issue us the license to do so," Yagan continued. "What I do know, though, is that unlike Earthstation 5, we want to do business with the entertainment industry. The execs in L.A. might not like the prospects of working with me, but I've got to be better than the guys in Jenin."
EDonkey's software was written by McCaleb, who was and is captivated by the "interesting technical problems" specific to P2P systems. The first version was released in September 2000.
McCaleb is currently in the process of developing a new application called "kdrive," which will provide a way to securely share files and chat with friends and colleagues. McCaleb said it's an attempt to make a "secure virtual global hard drive," and though kdrive is still in early beta form, he's very excited about its potential.
"We're not really in this for the profits or because we're P2P zealots," Yagan said. "We're in this because P2P is the future of digital media distribution and we want to be a part of it. It's like when Fred Smith founded FedEx and bought his first plane -- he saw the future and an opportunity to help transform an industry."
Of course, Fred Smith didn't have anti-FedEx legislation and litigation to contend with. Yager and McCaleb, members of P2P United, a lobbying group that represents peer-to-peer software companies, said the entertainment industry outspends P2P United 300-to-1 in lobbying efforts, according to their best estimate.
"Through P2P United I've gotten an up-close look at how the legislative process works, and I have to say, it's a lot like the proverbial sausage factory -- it's a really ugly process," said McCaleb.
"Orrin Hatch's Induce Act proposed upending a century of copyright law without holding a single hearing. Not a single hearing -- one has to ask why not. Then there's the Pirate Act. The Pirate Act would direct John Ashcroft (who must have something better to do) to prosecute individuals who violate copyright law. And any judgments Ashcroft would win against U.S. citizens would go directly to the record labels -- the government would not even be reimbursed for its expenses.
"Think about it: The government would spend money prosecuting its own citizens and then send big checks to the entertainment industry. Where's the outrage?"
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64233,00.html
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Record Labels Settle With Israeli P2P Company
John Borland
The Recording Industry Association of America said Tuesday that it had settled its lawsuit against Israeli file-swapping company iMesh, for damages of $4.1 million.
The organization had sued iMesh last September, charging--as it has in a half-dozen lawsuits against rival peer-to-peer software developers--that the company was contributing to copyright infringement on a massive scale. As a part of the deal, iMesh has agreed to move to a business model that "abides by U.S. copyright laws," the RIAA said.
"Peer-to-peer technologies hold real promise," RIAA Chief Executive Mitch Bainwol said in a statement. "This settlement with iMesh is an opportunity to demonstrate that promise in the legitimate marketplace."
The deal is a sign of the increasing pressure being put on file-trading companies, as the RIAA and other copyright holders seek new legislation in Congress that could hold companies like iMesh or Kazaa parent Sharman Networks more directly liable for copyright infringement.
In the most recent court ruling on the issue, a federal judge said file-swapping companies using the decentralized technology now typical of most networks are not liable for their users' illegal actions. In a partial response to that decision, the RIAA has shifted much of its recent legal activity toward suing individual file traders rather than peer-to-peer companies.
The RIAA-backed bill is scheduled to come up for a hearing later this week.
Details on exactly how iMesh will transition to a different business model remain slim. A company spokeswoman said the service would continue to operate as is, without shutting down, until a "new technology platform" is put in place later this summer. Currently, iMesh software connects to the FastTrack network, which is the same technology used by Kazaa, as well as a handful of other file- swapping services.
"Entering into this agreement with key players within the entertainment industry to put the lawsuit behind us will allow us the opportunity to migrate to a business model that will continue to provide users with the P2P experience that they have come to expect from iMesh," Ofer Shabtai, iMesh's chief operating officer, said in a statement.
The label group previously settled with Audiogalaxy, which ultimately distributed Rhapsody, RealNetworks' subscription-based music service.
iMesh was the fifth most popular piece of software last week on Download.com, a software aggregation site owned by News.com publisher CNET Networks. The software has been downloaded more than 76 million times, according to the site's records.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5277217.html
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RIAA Praises 'Magnificent' P2P
Andrew Orlowski
An open letter to the Senate from Recording Industry Association of America chief Mitch Bainwol praises peer-to-peer technology as "magnificent". But this isn't a change of heart: the RIAA is rallying support behind Orrin Hatch's INDUCE Act.
Bainwol paints critics of the bill - which makes manufacturers of devices such as the iPod liable for infringing uses - as the real Luddites.
"Ironically, these P2P operators who hide behind the protective cover of 'technology' resist deploying existing technological answers to solve this problem. They resist modernization because it undercuts their business model," he claims.
"There is nothing inherently evil about P2P," writes Bainwol. "On the contrary, it's a magnificent technology. But it has been hijacked by some unscrupulous operators who have constructed a business model predicated on the taking of property financed by my member companies."
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket
Bainwol uses some selective statistics to show how badly the industry is hurting. With overall sales dipping only slightly in line with the economic downturn, and with CD sales now on the rebound, this is a challenge. So Bainwol uses a declining sector of the market to illustrate his point.
"In 2000, the top ten hits sold 60 million units in the U.S. Seven of the ten sold more than 5 million units each; every one of them sold at least 3 million units. Then the slide kicked in. Last year, in 2003, the top ten hits were cut almost in half, to 33 million units. Just two of the ten sold more than 5 million units; five of those top ten hits sold less than 3 million units," he reckons.
The industry's logic is based on it being a hit machine, then subsidizing other acts on this using these proceeds. But a critic might point out that if the fortune generated by hits is down so significantly - and sales are holding up - then what Bainwol claims to be his industry's basic business model is flawed. Either that, or else he doesn't know how the business he represents really works, which is unlikely. Or that he knows and isn't telling the truth.
Bainwol thinks the notion that P2P drives sales to "flying pigs". But the jury is out on this one, as the evidence is far from conclusive.
"If we don't value intellectual property," he concludes, "we are compromising our country's economic future and the foundation of property rights that underlies our great capitalist system," he writes.
Stirring stuff: and US-based readers may want to write a nice letter to their Senators pointing out the contradictions in his argument.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07...induce_letter/
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On Campus: Good News For Music Franz
Simon Hogg
Exclusive! Edinburgh's Student newspaper carries the views of a former IT programming lecturer on the downloading of music from the internet. Fortunately, the former academic is Alex Kapranos, the lead singer of arty rock band Franz Ferdinand.
Speaking at Edinburgh law school, Kapranos defended fans who downloaded music, describing file sharing as "very much like radio - it allows you to hear new and old music for free, while it lacks the charm of owning a CD or an LP".
Mushroom Cloudy
A cautionary tale from the US where Paul Cunningham, a 21-year-old studying at Wilmington College, Delaware, apparently embarked on a crime spree last week after eating a whole bag of magic mushrooms.
Cunningham recovered his senses three days later, while climbing a mountain in Connecticut, 300 miles from home. Turning himself in to the police, Cunningham allegedly said: "I think I stole a car, I'm not sure." They informed him he had stolen two. The student reportedly concluded: "In retrospect, this was a bad idea."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...ixteright.html
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Copyrighted Media Guarded
Jonathan Takiff
Securing our digital future
If the music and movie industry can't stop illegal file sharing with warning stickers, guilt-tripping and the occasional lawsuit, maybe the government can scare people straight.
That's the mission of the boldly named PIRATE (Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation) Act (S-2237) recently pushed through the Senate by Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. The measure allows the Department of Justice to bring civil copyright infringement cases - much easier to win than the current criminal suits - against people who download unauthorized copies of music, movies and games.
Also recently approved by the Senate is a far less controversial bill jointly promoted by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. The Artists Rights and Theft Prevention Act (S. 1932) makes it a federal crime to operate a camcorder in a movie theater.
The act also ups the fines for putting a copyrighted album or movie on the Internet before it is formally released. To my way of thinking, the scum who engage in these activities deserve to fry in their own grease.
But a third measure (S. 2560), promoted by Hatch, is really scary in a "Big Brother" kind of way. Called the Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act, it could put the kibosh on all sorts of technological advancements by making "criminally liable" any equipment or service provider whose product has the potential to "aid, abet, induce or procure" copyright infringement.
Satellite Radio Attacked
The National Association of Broadcasters and old-line radio station groups, including Greater Media and Salem Communications, are pushing for a "declaratory ruling" from the Federal Communications Commission.
Their goal: to stop satellite radio services XM and Sirius from delivering customized traffic and weather reports to the top 20-plus U.S. markets.
The satellite radio guys argue that they're sticking to the letter of their "national-only" FCC service authorization since the traffic/weather channels can be picked up anywhere in the United States. (Like some guy in Portland, Maine, really needs to hear the Chicago forecast.)
Salem's Los Angeles stations provide traffic and weather reports and view the satellite services as "duplicative and harmful to the economic viability of local radio."
In my listening, I've found satellite radio's instant weather feature very useful, while the traffic reports are not yet as thorough as those on my local news radio station.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld...ne/9183058.htm
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eBay Flirts With Digital Music Downloads
Rachel Konrad
Online auction giant eBay Inc. will allow some customers to buy and sell digital music files as part of a pilot program that could piggyback on the success of Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes service.
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay said an unspecified number of "preapproved" users could conduct digital music transactions in eBay's new "Digital Downloads" category for the next 180 days. Executives will then determine whether to formally enter the market.
"We don't want to blow this out of proportion -- this is a pilot program to see if there's even any demand," said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy. "Much of what happens on eBay happens because the community takes us there, and this is essentially giving the community a way to see if we should create this new venue."
The experiment, announced this week in a posting on eBay's Web site, reverses a longstanding policy at the world's largest auction company.
For years, eBay included digital music on its list of forbidden merchandise, along with human corpses, weapons and drugs. The company still forbids most digital downloads, including software, video delivered through peer-to-peer file-sharing communities and e-books.
Customer service representatives will monitor eBay's fledging music site and try to ensure that the sellers own copyrights to the songs.
EBay's venture comes the same week that Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple announced that 100 million songs had been sold at its iTunes Music Store.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/TechNews...pf-545749.html
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Downloading for Democracy
Kim Zetter
While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings.
But outragedmoderates.org isn't offering copyright music and videos for download. The site, launched two weeks ago, has aggregated more than 600 government and court documents to make them available for download through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek P2P networks in the interest of making government more transparent and accountable.
The documents include such items as recent torture memos related to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a Senate Intelligence Committee report on what the government knew before it invaded Iraq and a document showing how the Bush administration suppressed information about the full cost of its Medicare plan until after Congress passed the plan. There is also a copy of a no-bid contract obtained by a Halliburton subsidiary for work in Iraq and congressional testimony from former employees of the subsidiary showing how their company engaged in wasteful and costly conduct in Iraq (such as abandoning an $85,000 Mercedes truck after its tires went flat).
Thad Anderson, a second-year student at St. John's School of Law in Queens, New York, said he was driven to launch the site by what he says is the current administration's disregard for fundamental democratic structures and its increasing practice of withholding information from the public. He wanted to give people access to crucial data about what elected officials were doing.
"I really think this is a crucial point, during my lifetime, for people to really look at what's going on with the government and make it be more accountable for what it's doing," he said. "The president and vice president have used executive privilege to withhold documents that almost every president for the last 30 or 40 years has released."
Anderson didn't intend to make a statement by using P2P networks, but his use of the networks to deliver the data counters the usual government and entertainment industry arguments that P2P networks have no value, apart from stealing copyright works, and therefore should be outlawed.
In this case, the P2P networks are promoting public knowledge and doing so in a way that makes it easy for people to obtain all related documents swiftly with a single mouseclick.
Although all of the documents on Anderson's site are available elsewhere, they are buried deep in government and court sites or scattered among the sites of various government watchdog groups and media outlets. It took Anderson about four hours and 2,000 mouseclicks to download more than 13,000 documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force from the National Resources Defense Council's website and from Judicial Watch. But a visitor to Anderson's site can download a folder containing all of these documents in a few minutes with a couple of mouseclicks.
The documents, obtained from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, suggest that the task force, convened in 2001, met secretly and may have colluded with energy companies and lobbyists to craft the nation's energy policy. The documents include a map of Iraqi oil fields, pipelines and refineries, and a document called "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" dated March 2001, before the attacks on the World Trade Center. They also include a now-infamous e-mail, known as the "If You Were King" memo, written by an Energy Department employee to a lobbyist asking what, if the lobbyist were king, he would like to see included in the nation's energy policy.
Some of the documents are informative for what they don't say. A 1.5-page e-mail between two Department of Energy employees features only the greeting to "Margot" and a final sentence reading, "Let me know if you have any further questions." The rest of the e-mail was blanked out by the department before it was forced to release the document in the lawsuit.
"This would be a crucial document the public would want to know about. But the entire document and other documents were redacted so heavily there was really no point in the Energy Department releasing it," Anderson said.
Anderson said that seeing the documents themselves, rather than reading about them through the filter of a news article, has a greater impact.
"It's a very direct and primary source when you read (these documents) without any spin," he said. "Unlike a Michael Moore film, there is no dramatic music being played. You're sitting there looking at it on your computer, and it's a great way for people to make up their own minds about things."
Steven V. Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says the site answers a growing demand from the public to examine original source documents. He calls it the Smoking Gun effect, referring to the popular website that provides original documents on celebrity misconduct.
"People have a taste for unmediated source documents," Aftergood said. "There is something attractive about being able to see original documents and not just be told by a newscaster or reporter what the documents say. What Smoking Gun is doing for celebrity misconduct, these guys are doing for public policy. I would say that the more Americans who develop a taste for government documents, the richer our democracy will be."
Aftergood says that although it's possible to get many documents, like congressional debates, through the Government Printing Office, sites like outragedmoderates.org and The Memory Hole help single out the most important documents from thousands of pages of material and put them in context so that readers can know, for example, if one document they are reading contradicts another document that came out a year earlier.
"What these sites do is to provide some editorial selection, to say that out of this undifferentiated universe of government information, here are some interesting things. That's a useful function," Aftergood said.
Aftergood finds the use of P2P to deliver the documents a good move and calls it part of the evolutionary cycle of online technology, in which tools and services that are controversial -- such as pornography -- lead the way in getting people to adapt to new technologies. Pornography, for example, had a role in pushing broadband into more homes.
"These questionable uses help win acceptance for new technology, and then others follow in their footsteps. If (outragedmoderates) provides an after-the-fact (legitimization) for P2P, that's great," Aftergood said.
Although Anderson is a Democrat, his site supports no particular political stance. It doesn't need to, he says, because the principles behind it find support among people of all political beliefs.
"There's a lot of people of both parties and independent parties who are saying that the things Bush has done on a number of issues is going beyond what mainstream Americans are willing to go along with," Anderson said.
Anderson said his goal is to help people obtain the information they need to speak up about what the government is doing wrong. He's encouraged that more and more people are doing so.
"Compared to a year ago when any criticism of the government was viewed with skepticism and accusations that you were being unpatriotic or unsupportive, I think it's great that people are starting to step out and say this is what our country is about. Being able to criticize our government is what makes us different from a dictatorship in the Middle East."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64237,00.html
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IFPI Shock-Horror Piracy Report
P2PNet
"Music disc piracy in 2003 grew at its slowest rate in four years, indicating that enforcement efforts by industry anti-piracy teams, and by some government enforcement agencies, are now having a significant impact," says Big Music's IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industries). "There were record levels of seizures of discs and a huge increase in seizures of CD copying equipment." it states.
The IFPI hectors 10 national governments.
But it doesn't say if it plans to start legal and enforcement actions against Sony Corp or other makers of high volume and 'consumer' burners and associated technologies and media which make "music disc piracy" possible.
As half of the new Sony BMG company, Sony is one of the Big Four labels which fund the IFPI and provide it with its instructions.
"Seizures of industrial-scale CD-making equipment soared in the year, " says the IFPI. But small-time crooks can do very well with one or more cheap store-bought burners.
Music piracy remains a $4.5 billion illegal business "driven by organised crime, government apathy and corruption," says the IFPI.
In a report which includes ten "priority" countries "named for government action," the organization says global sales of illegal music discs rose 4% in 2003 and the global average piracy rate increased to a record 35%.
"The ratio of illegal to legal CDs sold continues to increase: in 2000, one in five CDs sold worldwide was a pirate copy; in 2003 the ratio was one in three, and rising," it states.
Through IFPI chairman and ceo Jay Berman, ther Big Four record labels tell governments – especially Brazil, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine – to "act decisively against the problem". This means "proper enforcement, deterrent sentences against pirates, effective regulation of disc manufacturing and, above all, the political will to make sure real change happens."
The ten countries are, "in IFPI's view," failing to "protect and enforce intellectual property rights and tackle unacceptable levels of piracy".
China has the largest pirate market (worth just under US$600 million) and Russia, home to a US$330 million pirate market and a massive international exporter of pirate CDs to some 30 countries, says the IFPI, going on to highlight raids in which national police forces acted for the Big Four labels.
Pakistan has entered the list of top 10 for the first time and, "Mexico and Brazil also feature prominently as countries that were until recently among the world's top 10 largest legitimate music markets but whose music industry, artists and workforce have been decimated by CD-R piracy," says the IFPI, specifying "actions involving teams of investigators from IFPI and its affiliates, including:
A lengthy investigation by police and IFPI investigators in Athens lead to the seizure of 200,000 discs and 123 CD-R burners and the break-up of an alleged illegal immigration ring in September 2003 Police in Italy dismantled a major organised crime ring in Naples when 50 Fiscal Police raided six undercover music, film and software disc burning laboratories in October 2003. 500 burners were seized and nine people arrested. Mexican police were involved in violent clashes with criminal gangs in Mexico City's notorious Tepito market in a raid which netted hundreds of thousands of discs and equipment along with firearms and illegal drugs. A four-hour confrontation led to 39 arrests.
And, "A huge seizure in Peru involving 1,000 police officers netted no fewer than 1 million burned CD-R discs in the famous 'Hueco' flea market. During the operation over 400 stands were raided and 10 people were arrested."
There's no mention of the tremendous disruption these IFPI raids must have caused legitimate businesses, or of similar reports of IFPI / National police "actions" in China, Russia or Pakistan.
Nor did the IFPI report give details of how many people were killed and/or injured during these Big Music inspired raids, including the one in Mexico in which police levelled loaded (presumably) rifles.
World Black Markets
Organized gangss selling counterfeits, duplicates and cracked software on world black markets are without doubt responsible for dips in corporate profit charts. The entertainment industry routinely manipulates governments and enforcement agencies claiming massive losses due to piracy and online file sharing, usually speaking of the two in the same breath.
Yet the now famous Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf paper found file sharing has no measurable effect on music sales.
"Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," says The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis. "Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales."
The same no doubt applies to movies.
Instead of trying to kill p2p, the industry could be using it to market and distribute movies, music and software online at very little cost. This would dramatically cut down on the amount of physical product available to 'pirates,' slash overhead and bring alienated consumers back into the fold.
It wouldn't eliminate counterfeits, but it would significantly reduce their proliferation.
It's long gone time that the entertainment industy stopped using the IFPI and other pseudo-cop units to bludgeon 'consumers' into buying 'product'.
File sharing is here to stay, but it can be Hollywood's friend instead of its enemy.
http://p2pnet.net/story/1972
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Apple Strikes Deal With 3 Music Labels
AP
Apple Computer Inc. has struck licensing deals with three of Europe's largest independent music labels, ending a discord that would have kept many local favorites off the new iTunes Music Store in Britain, France and Germany.
Apple officials said Wednesday it had reached deals with Sanctuary Records Group, Beggars Group, and V2, and that it now had a standard agreement with the Association of Independent Music, a trade group representing a variety of independent labels.
Now ``tens of thousands'' of tracks, such as songs from Basement Jaxx, The Crystal Method and the Pixies, will be added to the online music store's library of more than 700,000 songs in each country, Apple said.
In Europe, about 22 percent of artists are signed with independent labels.
When the Cupertino, Calif.-based company launched its popular iTunes store in Europe last month, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said independent artists were offered the same contracts as the larger labels, but AIM said its members couldn't agree to the terms.
In the meantime, AIM had agreed to collective deals with Apple's rivals, including Sony Connect, Yahoo, OD2, Wippit, O2 Music, and Napster.
Despite the missing repertoire, Apple said it sold more than 800,000 songs in the first week of the European launch, echoing the market-leading momentum it already has in the United States.
Apple has not disclosed a more current figure for European downloads.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...es-Europe.html
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Demand for iPods Leads Big Increase in Profits for Apple
Laurie J. Flynn
Apple Computer said on Wednesday that its fiscal third-quarter profit tripled, led by surging demand for the iPod portable music player and higher sales of its Macintosh computers.
"It was an outstanding quarter - our highest third-quarter revenue in eight years," Apple's chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, said. "Our Mac sales were up 19 percent, and we're thrilled with that."
The company reported net profit of $61 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with $19 million, or 5 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Revenue climbed 30 percent, to $2.01 billion.
Analysts had expected earnings of 15 cents a share on sales of $1.94 billion, according to Thomson First Call.
In its April earnings release, Apple had projected third-quarter profit of 12 to 13 cents a share and revenue of about $1.93 billion.
The results included an after-tax restructuring charge of $6 million, without which net profit would have been $67 million, or 17 cents a share. Apple executives said the company's gross margin was 27.8 percent, a slight increase over 27.7 percent in the quarter a year ago.
Looking ahead, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said the company expected revenue of about $2.1 billion in its fourth quarter and earnings of 16 to 17 cents a share.
Apple executives also disclosed yesterday that problems in I.B.M.'s manufacturing of the G5 microprocessor were the reason for the delay in shipments of several new Macs, most notably a new iMac model.
But in an interview yesterday, Mr. Jobs said that the problem was temporary and that he was confident that I.B.M. would resolve the problems by the end of the current quarter.
Like much of the semiconductor industry, I.B.M. is making the transition to 90 nanometer wafers, the latest in PC chip manufacturing.
On Tuesday, Intel executives disclosed that the transition to the new manufacturing process had caused inventory problems.
"The semiconductor industry has a lot of problems in its move from 130 to 90 nanometers," Mr. Jobs said. "This is just a speed bump. I.B.M. has told us it will be over by the end of the quarter."
This month, Apple announced that the much-anticipated new version of its iMac consumer PC would be delayed into the fall, meaning that the new system would not be ready in time for the back-to-school shopping season.
Analysts, however, said they were not concerned that the delay would cause any lasting problems for Apple.
"Not having a new desktop for back-to-school is a problem, but not a big one," said Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, which owns Apple shares. "Many students seem to be buying notebooks."
The results lifted Apple shares as much as $2.08 after hours. Before the earnings announcement, they closed at $29.58, up 36 cents.
Apple shipped 876,000 Macintosh computers in the quarter, a 14 percent increase compared with shipments in the quarter a year earlier. But the brightest star was the iPod, the company's portable music player; shipments of iPods nearly tripled, to 860,000.
Mr. Wolf said that Apple's music products had become something of a Trojan horse for the company as the popularity of the iTunes service and the iPod are clearly helping sell Macs. "The Apple Macintosh is starting to be a growth story," he said. "Music is starting to drive Mac sales."
Apple executives said they were working hard to correct the supply problem with the iPod Mini, Apple's latest music player, saying that demand has been unexpectedly high.
Currently, a customer ordering an iPod Mini can expect to wait about a month. The company is expected to start shipping outside the United States next week.
On Monday, Apple said that it had sold more than 100 million songs from the iTunes Music Store since the service was introduced a little more than a year ago. Today, Apple has 70 percent of the market for legal music downloads. Last month, the company announced the introduction of the iTunes service in Europe and the service is already the market leader there, Mr. Jobs said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/te...y/15apple.html
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"It's going to be an iPod Christmas."
John Paczkowski
That's what Pacific Crest Securities analyst Steve Lidberg said Wednesday after learning of the near tripling of iPod sales in Apple's most recent quarter, and his statement couldn't be more apt. Apple sold 860,000 iPods in the quarter that ended June 30, up from 304,000 units a year earlier. And it's certain to sell even more in the coming months, especially if these rumors I've been hearing lately prove true. Word on the street is that Cupertino is prepping a new iPod for an August release and that the device will be the subject of a story in an upcoming issue of Newsweek.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...sv/9162156.htm
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Duke Gives IPods to Freshmen
Katie Dean
Duke University will give each of its 1,650 incoming freshmen a free iPod this fall as part of an initiative to foster innovative uses of technology in the classroom, the school said Monday.
IPods, of course, are better known for their use outside the classroom. The pocket-sized devices can store up to 10,000 songs on their hard drives and have helped fuel interest in digital music.
But Duke wants to experiment with creative academic uses for the devices. The school will preload the 20-GB iPods (retail price, $300) with freshman-orientation information, an academic calendar and even the Duke fight songs before handing them out to the incoming class Aug. 19.
Students also will be able to use the devices to download course content, recorded lectures, foreign language lessons, audio books and music from a special Duke website modeled after iTunes. The school will supply voice recorders for some classes, enabling students to record notes while working in the field.
Expanding the use of information both in the classroom and in the campus community is part of the school's overall goals, said Tracy Futhey, Duke's vice president of information technology. The school is looking forward to ideas from the faculty and students about additional uses for the devices, Futhey said. The student newspaper, for example, might use the iPods to distribute a daily audio editorial.
"There are a lot of creative ideas that students will come up with themselves," Futhey said.
Duke is paying for the plan with a fund designated for a one-time technology project. The school estimates it will cost more than $500,000, which includes hiring a technician and the purchase of the iPods, among other research costs. The terms of the pricing deal with iPod manufacturer Apple Computer are confidential.
The freshmen will get to keep the iPods. An additional 150 iPods will be available for upperclassmen to borrow for courses that use the devices. At the end of the year, the school will assess the educational value of the project.
Lisa Merschel, visiting assistant professor of Spanish, plays audio lessons for her students in her intensive elementary Spanish class using a CD-ROM. Occasionally, the lessons are too fast for some and too slow for others. "I can see their eyes glaze over or become anxious with fear," she said.
With the iPods, students will be able to pause, rewind and play audio lessons as often as they like.
Merschel is also planning to record native speakers reading the four novellas students are assigned during the semester, so students can hear the correct pronunciation, intonation and accent as well as read the text.
Futhey said the iPod experiment is not a push to combat copyright infringement over peer-to-peer networks but said: "I do think having a device that gives them an easy-to-use legal alternative could be helpful in curbing illegal file sharing."
Other universities are working with digital music services specifically to offer an alternative to P2P file sharing, which can hog bandwidth and sometimes result in lawsuits for students.
Cornell, George Washington and Wright State universities, Middlebury College, University of Miami and University of Southern California all inked deals with Napster to offer streaming music to their students this fall. Penn State and the University of Rochester were the first schools to offer Napster to students last semester.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64282,00.html
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Napster Expands University Program with the Addition of Six Schools
Cornell, The George Washington University, Middlebury College, University of Miami, USC and Wright State to Offer Napster Service
Press Release
Napster, a division of Roxio (Nasdaq: ROXI - News), announced today it has forged progressive agreements with a diverse group of some of the nation's leading colleges and universities to provide access to the biggest brand in online music. Cornell University, The George Washington University, Middlebury College in Vermont, University of Miami, The University of Southern California and the Wright State University (Ohio) will all work with Napster to create campus-specific programs providing their students access to Napster's compelling subscription service and huge 800,000-digital song catalog, with the primary goals of combating peer-to-peer music piracy, conserving university bandwidth costs and protecting intellectual property. Penn State University and University of Rochester were the first to join Napster's university program this past winter. Based on the success of the program at Penn State, the school will expand the offering this fall so students at all 23 campuses can participate.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040719/nym056_1.html
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Seagate Lands Customer For Tiny Drives
Seagate Technology announced that its tiny hard drives will spin out tunes for portable music players made by Creative Technology. Creative chose Seagate to supply disc-drive storage technology for its new portable audio product lines, starting with Seagate's new ST1 Series hard drives, the companies said on Tuesday. In June, Seagate introduced the ST1 1-inch drives, which are designed to hold up to 5GB. Hitachi and other rivals make drives 1-inch in diameter, but these do not store as much data.
Although disk drives have emerged as an important storage technology for consumer electronics gear such as Apple Computer's iPod, Seagate has been struggling of late. On Tuesday, it reported a net loss of $33 million, or 7 cents per share, for the quarter ended July 2. It also has announced a plan to trim its work force by about 2,700.
http://news.com.com/Briefly%3A+Seaga...l?tag=nefd.top
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MPee3.com: Music Searching and Downloading
Press Release
The MPee3 Corporation, today announced the launch of its new search engine dedicated exclusively to MP3 music files. MPee3 allows users to search and download MP3-format music files simply and efficiently, and without the legal ramifications of P2P (peer-to-peer) services like Napster or Kazaa.
MPee3.com takes the most basic Internet service, a search engine, and applies it to MP3 (MPEG2- Layer3 Audio) files. The result is a search engine dedicated exclusively to searching MP3 files, allowing end users to locate and download MP3s quickly and efficiently.
The site also has directories of MP3-related content such as bands, shopping sites, online radio, tutorials, portable media players, encoders, and software for every major operating system. However, the engine prohibits listings for hacking, porn and gambling sites, which are commonly found on many "underground" MP3 download directories.
"Our search engine draws from a database of millions of legally downloadable MP3 files," says Stephen M. Noton, President of the MPee3 Corporation.
"Unlike many other MP3 services that charge a membership fee and collect personal information which could be used to trace your online activity, at the MPee3.com MP3 Search you can download MP3 files without providing any personal details, preserving your privacy."
Noton believes this unique feature averts many of the legal concerns involved with the use of peer-to- peer (P-2-P) services, and ensures total user privacy.
Optional membership programs allow users access to the MPee3.com forum, newsletter, and the ability to add MP3 sites to the search engine. The basic membership is free, while the premium membership is about $20 per year.
Featured site sponsored listing programs are an ideal way for new bands, independent labels, and Internet radio stations to increase traffic and visibility.
MPee3.com appears in the College Music Scene edition of the Rolling Stone Magazine and will be in the Digital Music Spotlight section of Billboard. For more information please visit: http://
www.MPee3.com
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040720/latu019_1.html
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Summer weed
Heart Crazy On TrustyFiles P2P File Sharing Network Distribution
Press Release
RazorPop, Inc. and Sovereign Artists, announced the release of Heart’s new CD "Jupiters Darling" over the TrustyFiles P2P File Sharing Software (
http://www.TrustyFiles.com) and the TopP2P web site (
http://www.TopP2P.com). Deal marks the first time a major artist has ever released music from a CD to file sharers.
The program provides distribution across all major P2P file sharing networks, including Kazaa, Gnutella, and eDonkey.
"Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have always been an innovative force in music", said Paul Angles, Director of Internet Marketing at Sovereign Artists. "Their first concern is reaching out to the fans they love. That’s why they made 'Jupiters Darling' and that’s why we’re distributing over P2P, where they can reach the most people."
RazorPop CEO Marc Freedman added "When a legendary band like Heart embraces file sharing, you know it’s become mainstream. Don't be misled by the entertainment terror campaigns designed to instill fear and stunt innovation. The real focus should be on the artists and making music. A wide majority of musicians support P2P file sharing. There's been an explosion in its use by independent artists. Some, like the G-Man, have achieved success directly due to file sharing.
"Heart is only the first of many big name bands and other content providers that will discover the value and profit in reaching 100 million file sharers across the world. RazorPop and its partners help both new artists seeking free promotion and established bands adding a new sales channel."
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/7/emw142671.htm
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P2Pers: We Can Make File-Sharing Secure And Outsell iTunes
Tony Smith
In a bid to persuade the music industry that P2P networks can encourage legal file- sharing, P2P companies today claimed that more people have bought tracks from Heart's new album, 'Jupiter's Darling', via the likes of Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa than through Apple's iTunes Music Store.
So far, the album's 16 songs have yielded 2000 sales via the P2P, more than iTunes has. Of course, the P2Pers don't provide an iTunes sales figure, which could easily be as high as 1999 and they'd still be able to make the claim. And don't forget that there are many, many more P2P users out there than ITMS customers.
Some 30,000 CDs have also been sold, but again there's no data yet on how many illegal copies of the disc's songs have also been distributed.
The legal versions are distribute in WMA format wrapped within the Weed DRM system. Weed allows downloaders to play any given song three times before they must pay up or lose the ability to play that track. Payment is made via PayPal.
Weed files can be shared, and anyone who grabs a shared-but-paid-for song then coughs up the 50c to $1 charged for the song ensures 20 per cent of the proceeds go to the person who paid before. Previous sharers get ten per cent and five per cent, going down the chain. Artists get 50 per cent of the sale price and Weed developer Shared Media Licensing gets the remaining 15 per cent.
This isn't the first time someone has come up with a way to make P2P file-sharing legal and to make it pay, but it's clearly an important step in the right direction. One example doesn't prove P2P is a better sales mechanism that ITMS or Napster, but it shows the potential if labels and artists allow tracks to be distributed this way.
Few, we suspect, will be willing to do so, however, while so many unauthorised copies of their songs are being batted around the Internet via the P2P networks. The move by Heart and its label, Sovereign Artists - the glory days at major label EMI/Capitol seem a long way away - is bold and shows at least one industry party attempting to create a legal P2P distribution system in the hope that it encourages an end to the illegal sharing.
We wish them luck, but our feeling is there's going to have to be a lot more content distributed this way before the dodgy stuff diminishes. Frankly, it's not going to happen until P2P networks actively block the sharing of content that has not been authorised by the copyright holder to be distributed that way. That's what Israeli P2Per iMesh has agreed to do, albeit under immense legal pressure from the Recording Industry Ass. of America. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/22/p2p_vs_itunes/
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Source Code Thieves Back In Business
Gregg Keizer
The brazen hacker bunch that last week shilled stolen source code is back in business (
WiR 7/17/04 - Jack), but has abandoned the web and instead is relying on Usenet to advertise its services.
Self-dubbed the Source Code Club, the group -- which last week shuttered its Ukrainian-hosted website -- has moved operations to a Usenet newsgroup, according to a message posted to the Full Disclosure security mailing list by someone claiming to be "Larry Hobbles."
The group says it has the source code of Enterasys Networks' Dragon intrusion detection system and Roxio's Napster file-sharing software.
It shifted to the online discussion group because "we feel usenet is better suited for us," according to a newsletter posted to the alt.gap.international.sales newsgroup.
A more likely explanation is that a website can be easily shut down by a hosting service, while Usenet newsgroups cannot.
The club reiterated its offers: the Dragon source code for US$16,000, and the Napster source code -- which Roxio purchased from the defunct file-sharing service, but does not use in its resurrected version of Napster -- for US$10,000.
Users may purchase the code in chunks, said the Source Code Club, and use a variety of online payment services to transfer the money.
The hacker club is ready to dodge investigators with typical tactics. "If [our] website/email ever get shut down, we will simply open a new email and setup a new website," the newsletter read. "SCC is here for the long haul, and will re-emerge as necessary."
Beyond the source code it's advertising -- which it's doing only to establish its bona fides -- the group claims it can obtain almost any information by hacking into corporate networks.
"Yes, SCC does take requests. If you are requesting something from a Fortune 100 company, there is a good chance that we might already have it," the group stated in the posted newsletter.
If the club doesn't have the information, it will consider taking on the job of stealing it, a chore that could take up to two months.
To hide the club members' identities as well as its customers', the SCC requires PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption of any emails sent to it.
http://www.itnews.com.au/storyconten...9&Art_ID=20649
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Comcast and Disney in High-Speed Internet Venture
The Walt Disney Co. has struck a deal with Comcast Corp. to provide news and children's Internet programming as part of the cable company's effort to distinguish its high-speed Web product, the companies said.
Disney will launch its Disney Connection suite of kids Internet games and features in the United States with the deal, while Disney's ABC unit will provide its streaming broadband Internet news station.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Comcast, aiming to maintain high-speed Internet prices above competitors' by offering unique content, has been rolling out music, news and other features on its Comcast.net portal, the home page built for subscribers.
ABC News has deals with a number of DSL providers in the United States, while Disney's Internet Group has already launched its "Connection" product outside the United States.
The ABC/Disney deal follows others with the likes of CBS, Foxsports.com and Major League Baseball.
Comcast has 5.7 million high-speed Web subscribers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/bu...E-COMCAST.html
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When Technology Imitates Art
Joshua Tompkins
A FEW weeks ago, a sculptor in France contacted Studio Roc, a new stone-milling company in North Hollywood, Calif., with the type of challenge the company was seeking. He had a 19th-century limestone lion's face that he wanted to reproduce for a line of fountains. But carving each face by hand was a tedious chore for which he no longer had the time or resources.
Instead, he shipped the original work to Studio Roc, where technicians mapped it in three dimensions with a laser scanner. Then they placed a limestone blank in a computer-controlled milling machine and used the scan data to carve a duplicate lion face at the touch of a button.
The result required some hand detailing, but that was exactly what the sculptor wanted. In about six hours, the machine had done the busywork that would have taken him much longer with a hammer and chisel.
"What energy does he have left after slaving for a week over one piece?" said Studio Roc's chief executive, Kenneth Kai Chang. "Now he can really get toward the back end, the finished look, much faster than he could before."
The limestone lion is an example of how technology is transforming the way sculpture, architectural elements and many other once-hand-carved items can be created or cloned. Scanners, computer-aided design software and automated milling devices are assisting sculptors and in some cases replacing them, creating detailed pieces from slabs of marble and reverse-engineering complex forms.
The result is the seemingly oxymoronic concept of mass customization, in which infinite copies of infinite variations are possible as long as there is stone to quarry.
But the harnessing of these granite-grinding Xerox machines, able to duplicate just about any sculpture, may also blur the line between what is authentic and what is not. Is such a sculpture art, or merely a computer-aided copy?
In March, for example, using data generated during a monthlong scan of Michelangelo's David by researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington, Gentle Giant Studios, a special-effects firm in Burbank, Calif., turned out a small replica of the 17-foot tall statue.
While reasonably faithful copies of David have been created using plaster casts, the 15-inch replica is the most perfect scale model ever created of the masterpiece. Made with permission from Italian officials, it could potentially seed an army of near-identical twins. (A Stanford University Web site says the researchers will indeed sell copies of the model eventually, although Marc Levoy, a computer science professor who oversaw the scanning project, said there were no plans to do so.)
Studio Roc's goal is not to upset the art world, but to attract architects and contractors who want custom-carved fixtures turned out faster, at a lower price and with more precision than if they were done by an artisan. Mr. Chang, a former architect who describes his company as "on the leading edge of the stone industry," said, "We just felt it was about time someone really put their head to it and pulled together the three or four or five technologies to make this area of construction up to date."
William Hablinski, a Los Angeles architect who has designed residences for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Warren Beatty, predicts that computerized milling will become an integral part of upscale home construction, especially for moldings. "You're basically asking a robot to do what you would normally have to pay a master stone carver something on the order of between $70 and $180 per hour," he said.
Mr. Hablinski said he would still hire an artist to create a unique fixture such as an ornate mantelpiece. "We want to keep the craft alive," he said. "We don't want the craft of stone carving to go away."
If the craft does fade, it will be because of equipment like that at Studio Roc, including a huge Italian-made Omag Mill5 five-axis milling machine. Equipped with a scanner and 30 interchangeable diamond-tipped bits and blades, the Mill5 can record nearly any object in minutes and carve a duplicate in any stone in a few hours.
The scanner and milling head are housed in a single armature that hangs from a motorized gantry and can deploy its tools at any angle, even aiming upward to trim a cornice detail or hollow out a gargoyle's maw. Like the lion's face, each finished product requires some hand work at the end, but the system can shoulder as much as 95 percent of the job, Mr. Chang said.
The field of computer-aided machining was first developed by the aviation and automotive industries in the 1950's. It spawned the modern technique known as rapid prototyping, in which engineers use computer-aided design, or CAD, software to create physical mock-ups of products, from toothbrushes to action figures, to test and tweak before full-fledged production begins.
The technology began trickling down into stone milling a few years ago. "We would not have embarked on this enterprise except for the fact that a lot of people have gone before us," Mr. Chang said. "We are the heirs of that tradition."
Controlling the hardware is a simple language called G-Code, which the Mill5's operators generate using several CAD packages. Programmers can model an object from scratch onscreen - or use a CAD file provided by a customer - and set the Mill5 into motion. Once begun, the carving process requires little or no human input; jobs are typically started at closing time so the machine can perform its noisy task at night.
While Studio Roc is aiming for the building trade, the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture in Trenton caters to New York-area artists who want to begin a new work or enlarge an existing one by sitting at a PC instead of standing on a ladder.
"They can take a twelve-inch piece and in less than a week we'll have it twelve feet," said Jon Lash, director of the institute's Digital Atelier division. "Then they'll come in and do the final manipulation of the surface."
The Digital Atelier has handled about one project a week for the past three years, working in stone and other materials, including foam. "I don't get the million-dollar commissions," Mr. Lash said. "I get people saying, 'I got five thousand dollars, can we do this?' "
A few years ago, the answer would have been no because the hardware and software required were too costly for most people in the art world. When the technology became available, its industrial programming was not fully prepared for the subtle textures and flaws of handmade creations. "It's not a smooth fender on a Chevrolet," Mr. Lash said.
By the same token, artists were not fully prepared for the technology. A New York sculptor who has embraced it, Julian LaVerdiere, said the reaction of some artists echoed the contempt with which many 19th-century painters regarded the first daguerreotypes. "It's a new technique," he said. "It's no threat by any means. Casting bronze was a new technique."
Last year Mr. LaVerdiere used a portable laser scanner to digitize one of the 22 marble eagles that adorned the entrance to the old Penn Station before the building was demolished in 1964. Johnson Atelier then milled an exact replica in styrene, which Mr. LaVerdiere coated in urethane and faux-finished to look like weathered stone. It was exhibited at the Lehmann Maupin gallery, swinging on a chain as if swooping in flight.
Larger civic preservation efforts are in progress. Two years ago Mr. Lash visited the Milan Cathedral in Italy, where officials had started replacing hundreds of deteriorating life-size statues with copies. And the United States government has commissioned the scanning of several national icons and monuments, including the Statue of Liberty, the Capitol and Mount Rushmore, so blueprints will be available for reconstruction if the originals are destroyed by terrorism.
Clearly, in the wrong hands, machines like the Mill5 could become first-class knockoff factories (although the equipment is expensive: a Mill5 can cost $100,000 to $600,000, depending on options). Mr. Lash said he would not copy a sculpture without the right permission, and Mr. Chang agreed. "If someone brought me their Henry Moore and said, hey, make a replica for me, I wouldn't take it on."
Not that sculptural piracy requires laser scanning. Mr. Lash noted that foundries, mostly in Asia, already churn out countless copies - some from molds of the originals, others based on photos. "Just look at all the Remington horses in circulation," he said.
But Mr. LaVerdiere noted that duplicating a well-known work was once an honest academic endeavor, pursued mostly by artists honing their skills.
"It's long been a tradition to copy classical sculpture," he said. "And now we're kind of using 21st-century technology. It's really cool. It's too bad it costs so much money."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/te...ill.html?8hpib