[JackSpratts]

Who's Winning Download Wars?

RIAA Lawsuits May Be Slowing Swapping ... Maybe Not
AP

What effect have music industry lawsuits had on the number of people who are downloading music online? Like so many issues in the controversy, it depends on who you ask. A study that came out last month found the number of Americans downloading music has dropped by half from just six months earlier. That indicates that 17 million fewer people were grabbing free copies of their favorite songs online.But some experts and users say file swapping is actually increasing. They say those who are downloading are being more secretive. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month. Some have said that part of the decrease in free downloading is because there are now several industry- backed services selling music online, often for 99 cents per song. The Recording Industry Association of America has sued more than 1,400 people since September. The latest batch was more than 500 filed this month against people in four cities.

Meanwhile, record labels down under are trying to come out on top in their legal battle against the file- sharing service Kazaa. The labels are asking a judge to allow their copyright infringement case to proceed even though there's a similar suit being carried forward in the United States. The Australian music industry wants the federal court to shut down Kazaa. But owners of Kazaa have asked that the case be held up until there's a judgment rendered in the U.S. courts.

Previous Stories:

January 21, 2004: RIAA Files 500 More File-Trading Lawsuits
January 16, 2004: File-Swappers May Be Losing Fear Of RIAA
January 5, 2004: Dramatic Drop Seen In Music Swapping
December 19, 2003: RIAA Can't Get Info From ISPs, Appeals Court Says

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/...00/detail.html


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Oregon City Builds P2P Network
Dibya Sarkar

The city of Medford, Ore., is deploying an IP-based broadband communications network with interoperability for first responders and other government agencies.

The city plans to go live April 2 with the first phase, in which individual users can form a communications network with or without the infrastructure. Initially it will have 100 users, mostly police, fire and public works employees, but government officials plan to deploy it throughout Jackson County.

"As we identify funding we're going to continue to expand the program until we have truly countywide interoperability," said Ron Norris, the Medford police deputy chief. "The beauty of this system is that it becomes more robust with the more users you have."

MeshNetworks Inc., based in Maitland, Fla., commercialized the mesh technology originally developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Rick Rotondo, the company's vice president of technical marketing, said the secure network is self- forming, self-healing and able to automatically balance loads if traffic at any one node becomes congested.

The architecture has four components:

* A client modem, either a PC card or vehicle-mounted modem, connects to a mobile data terminal or laptop.

* Wireless routers, the size of a small shoebox, act as the network's permanent hopping points and can be attached to light poles, traffic lights or other structures. They also serve as geolocation reference points to triangulate the position of vehicles or users.

* Intelligence access points bridge the wired and the wireless systems.

* Network management software runs the system.

The peer-to-peer technology lets each user's machine act as a router, allowing the network to cover great distances. "So if you have a power outage or the nodes get destroyed or turned off or one of them breaks, the units themselves act as a relay network," said Rotondo. "You are the network."

This technology will help Medford, located in southern Oregon near the California border in a region that lacks interoperability with surrounding jurisdictions and the outlying rural areas. The city is phasing out its Cellular Digital Packet Data network and has coverage limitations with its General Packet Radio Service system. Although a state interoperability proposal calls for patching technology, Norris said, that will take some time to implement.

Officials said the initial deployment will cost about $700,000, much of it covered by a $500,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Doug Townsend, the city's technology services director, said Medford officials have researched the technology and planned the system for more than a year. The system addresses the need for higher bandwidth to transfer mug shots and other rich data to public safety users. Public workers, building inspectors and other civilian agencies will also benefit from productivity gains, he said.

Townsend estimated a payback in eight months from the city's investment. Norris said law enforcement would save thousands of dollars a month by eliminating cellular phone charges and other fees.

"If it's as successful as I perceive it to be, it could be a true model for a lot of other agencies, and we will be available at the time to assist them if they want to move into it," Norris said.

Viasys Corp. is implementing MeshNetwork's system in the city. City officials said they're actively seeking additional homeland security funding to expand the system throughout the county, which covers more than 2,800 square miles and has a population of 187,000.
http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2004...d-02-23-04.asp


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If It's Nano, It's Big
Justin Gillis & Jonathan Krim

For several years, government leaders have referred to nanotechnology as the "next industrial revolution," and predicted that products based on it could be worth $1 trillion in a decade. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has become a big booster. The Bush administration is pouring billions into nanotech research.

Indeed, a few products have already trickled out of the laboratory into the marketplace -- stain- resistant trousers, deeper-penetrating lotions and longer-lasting tennis balls -- and companies say more are on the way. Exceedingly spacious computer hard disks based on nanotechnology have already made a huge splash -- in fact, they are roiling entire industries.

Yet even many people who believe in the potential of the technology are sounding warning bells about hyped predictions and the rush of investor enthusiasm.

"You're buying the equivalent of an Internet stock a couple of years ago," said Thomas Theis, head of physical science research at International Business Machines Corp., one of the biggest sponsors of nanotech work. "If you think you're smart enough to get out before that bubble bursts, good luck."

Is the nanotech trend something the average investor needs to jump on? Or is there a danger, instead, that average investors will be drawn in by rapid market gains -- and then burned in the inevitable crash?

Big Blue Blockbuster

Despite the slow pace of commercialization, one blockbuster nanotech product has already come to market. And the brief history of that product illustrates how nanotechnology could eventually upend the world's marketplace.

In late 1988, Stuart S.P. Parkin, a scientist at IBM picked up on a strange new finding related to magnetism in an obscure physics journal. The work had been done at exceedingly cold temperatures, but Parkin soon achieved the same effect at room temperature.

IBM launched a huge commercial push. In the late 1990s, the company brought out computer disk drives that could store many gigabytes of information in a small space. This was true nanotechnology, for it depended on a new magnetic detector made of incredibly thin layers of metals, including a layer of ruthenium less than one-third of a nanometer thick. "We really are building these structures atomic layer by atomic layer," Parkin said.

The extreme sensitivity of the detector meant that IBM could squeeze many, many more units of information onto a computer disk. IBM's success threw the world of computer disk makers into turmoil. "The technology was so superior that everyone else had to start buying parts from IBM, because they couldn't manufacture competitive drives," said Theis, the IBM research executive.

Ripple Effect

Disk makers weren't the only industry roiled by this discovery, though.

The capacious disk drives, now able to store hundreds of gigabytes of data, are the critical piece of technology that has made it possible to download huge amounts of music from the Internet onto a computer, or to turn a massive collection of compact discs into a digital library that fits on a device like an iPod. The key component of an iPod is a tiny computer disk based on IBM's breakthrough.

Record companies, their business plummeting as illegal file sharing has risen, are scrambling to find a new business model that works in a world of spacious disk drives. Many people have stopped buying compact discs, and record stores are going down the tubes. Movie companies are fighting frenzied court battles to keep from falling victim to the same fate as the music companies.

Film and camera companies have been thrown into turmoil, too, for the big disk drives make it possible to store tens of thousands of pictures electronically, rendering digital photography cheap and convenient. The film business is sinking, and Eastman Kodak Corp., one of the icons of American business, is reeling.

Parkin said the drives can even be credited with making the Internet in its present form possible. The World Wide Web pages that companies and universities create are all stored on computer disks, and if IBM or somebody else had not made the breakthrough, Parkin said, there would be no place to keep such a huge amount of digital information.

IBM recently sold its computer disk business, but its scientists, including Parkin, are back in the lab, using nanotechnology to look for new data storage techniques that will render their last one obsolete.

"There isn't any human artifact that we manufacture that won't eventually be dependent on the kinds of discoveries being made in laboratories now," Theis said. "The long-term consequences of this technology are going to be truly transforming. The trouble is, you can't predict the details of what that world will be like."
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32932.html#

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Picasa Wins Prestigious DIMA Innovative Digital Product Award at PMA For Second Consecutive Year

Hello Chosen by Industry Experts as an Influence on the Future of Digital Imaging
Press Release

Picasa, Inc., the leading developer of software which enables photographers to effortlessly organize, manage and share digital photos, has been awarded the prestigious 2004 "DIMA Innovative Digital Product Award" for the second consecutive year. This year the award went to Picasa's Hello, an instant photo sharing application that enables users to share images securely over a peer-to-peer network and chat about them in real time. Last year the honor went to the company's flagship photo organizing software, Picasa.

Hello was among only ten products chosen out of the hundreds on display at the PMA 2004 Show, the photo industry's premier trade show held in Las Vegas February 12-15. Winners were determined by digital imaging industry editors and writers based on the utilization of new technologies and/or applications in such a way as to make it either unique or the first of its kind. The high quality products must show themselves to be an influence on the future of digital imaging.

"We are thrilled to once again be recognized by the digital imaging experts at DIMA for developing technology that is transforming digital imaging," said Lars Perkins, CEO of Picasa. "Since launching Hello in October, we have been overwhelmed by the response to the program and are excited to already have more than 150,000 registered users of Hello. These people are now enjoying how simple it is to send lots of pictures to their family and friends without the need to attach files or upload to web sites. We are more convinced than ever that Hello is the future of picture sharing."

Hello is offered as a free download at www.hello.com and can be used with or without Picasa, the company's award-winning digital photo organizing software. For consumers who have Picasa, Hello is automatically integrated, allowing one-click photo sharing. Users can see which pictures their friend is viewing and can chat about them in real-time. Hello makes it simple to share single photos or hundreds at a time without the need for attachments or uploading to Web sites. Consumers who do not have Picasa can use Windows Explorer to select pictures to share. Any pictures received via Hello are automatically organized and stored in a Picasa album, organized by the sender's name. To print high-quality prints at home, Hello automatically retrieves the high- resolution version of a picture from the sender, eliminating the need to send email requests back and forth.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0402/04...innovation.asp


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Coming Soon, Again
Bob Parks

Last weekend we went on a family outing to the movies. Little did I know the trip would, in part, inspire a column. Then again, what doesn’t…?

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I remember the days when at most we had maybe seven or eight television channels. Obviously the variety of programming was limited, so whatever was on most people watched. There were some good shows: “The Fugitive”, “Mission: Impossible”, “Star Trek”, as well as the classic “Little Rascals” shorts. However there was a lot of accepted mediocrity to behold like “The Mod Squad”, “Lost in Space”, “Zorro”, “The Beverly Hillbillies”, “S.W.A.T.”, “Charlie’s Angels”, and “The Wild, Wild West”; all of which were later remade into big screen faire.

So while getting psyched to see the “best comedy of the year” Barbershop 2, we were treated to the customary trailers.

First was the re-invent Ben Stiller vehicle “Starsky And Hutch”; a 70’s era cop drama now the latest to join the ranks of the Hollywood soggy remake parade, and probably coming in a close second in the class of the hideous behind “I, Spy”. Additional shame on the original “Starsky” Paul Michael Glaser and “Hutchinson” David Soul for appearing as a “car seller” and “car seller's friend”.

Why the new S&H, turned comedy, was necessary is beyond me, but I have to reiterate my revulsion for the entertainment industry and their sheer laziness.

After sitting through that silliness complete with Snoop Dog as “Huggy Bear”, the next trailer started up featuring The Rock.

After about a minute of absorbing the implied plot line, it seemed a lot like ‘Walking Tall’.” Sure enough, it was. Just another remake out of the bowels of Tinseltown.

As for the feature presentation “Barbershop 2”, it wasn’t as fresh or funny as the original, then again it just might be the funniest movie of the year if they put subtitles on the screen so you can understand Cedric’s over-mumbled deliveries….

In fact, if you check out the roster of “new” old movies on the horizon, you’ll see I’m not exaggerating. Coming soon to a theater near you, we have “The Punisher”, “The Stepford Wives“, “Van Helsing” (Dracula spin-off), “The Alamo“, and “Dawn Of The Dead”. The series of incoming sequels are even more ominous: “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights”, “Alien vs. Predator” (two for the price of one), “Shrek 2”, “Agent Cody Banks 2”, “Beauty Shop” (Barbershop spin-off), “Jeepers Creepers 2”, “Kill Bill: Vol. II”, “The Son of The Mask”, “Resident Evil: Apocalypse”, “Spider-Man 2”, “The Chronicles Of Riddick” (Pitch Black spin-off), “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, and “Scooby Doo 2”.

While I may chance watching a couple of these, where’s all the so-called “creative genius” in Los Angeles? Cocaine make you stupid?

As if to mimic the disaster that is a certain genre in the music industry, it seems that when one can’t sample, one remakes. I know that some of today’s young people feel if a movie was made before 1980 it isn’t worth their time, but I’ve heard a lot of youngsters, after watching the full-of-itself remake “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, went out and rented the original which they ultimately found better. Seems to me Hollywood’s strategy backfired.

Whether it’s those insolent Spy Kids or Cody Banks, some of what Hollywood deems children’s entertainment is hardly valuable. Immediately coming to mind is that new “Catch That Kid” flick where kids are taught if you need the money bad enough, rob a bank.

Sometimes I wish I were still in Hollywood. It doesn’t seem one need to work that hard on the creative end to be paid handsomely.

In fact, when the congressional campaign is over, I may even take a few weeks, go to L.A., and finish my album with some studio musician friends of mine. Given my political leanings, I’ll probably not be nominated for any kind of award, but I’ll be proud in the knowledge that every note on that album will be one I wrote and not lifted from a Rhino Records 70’s compilation CD set.

Now while the Recording Industry Association of America’s president Cary Sherman said, "We are sending a clear message that downloading or 'sharing' music from a peer-to-peer network without authorization is illegal", their lawsuits may have pissed off the wrong person.

New Jersey’s own Michele Scimeca, who was one of hundreds sued for downloading songs by the RIAA, has countersued the music industry, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal anti-racketeering act.

You go, girl!

Her attorneys contend that by suing downloaders for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that gangsters and organized crime did when they perfected the “shakedown”.

"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting. These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."

- Scimeca's attorney Bart Lombardo in documents filed in a New Jersey federal court.

Now that some smell possible RIAA blood, the bevy of countersuits that may come is really going to be fun to watch.
http://www.americandaily.com/item/4849


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Overheard

Whoa

Holy cow. I never thought I'd see the day when some friends would show up on Yahoo! News' Photos without the words "indicted", "charged with fraud" or "conspiracy" attached to their descriptions.
http://a.wholelottanothing.org/archives.blah/007705


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Australian Judge Questions Kazaa Raids

The Australian judge who authorized raids on Kazaa's peer-to-peer offices two weeks ago is taking a closer look at the copyright infringement case.

“I'm not saying I was misled, but I do have the feeling that there was a lot more to the story than I was told,” said Judge Murray Wilcox in court last Friday.

A key issue before the court is whether the Australian action is substantially the same as a case being contested in U.S. courts between the recording industry and Kazaa's owner, Sharman Networks.

The recording industry's lawyers have argued that the Australian case is different than the U.S. action, while Sharman's attorneys stated that the cases are essentially the same, making the Australian case superfluous.

In making the plea for the recording industry that the case should go forward, recording industry attorney Tony Bannon said in court: “There is no comparison between the evidence here and that which has been produced in the United States.”

The recording industry has taken an aggressive stance against peer-to-peer music swapping, which it maintains is illegal.

Earlier this month, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued 531 computer users for what it claims is online copyright infringement.

Because the RIAA lost a case earlier this year with Verizon--which withheld the names of users on privacy protection grounds--the RIAA identified the music swappers by numerical Internet addresses. The RIAA is issuing subpoenas in hopes of identifying the people behind the Web addresses.

In the Australian proceeding, Sharman claimed that the case there should be set aside because the recording industry and its agents did not make a complete disclosure of all the pertinent information in the case.

In a statement, Sharman Networks said: “The record labels seem intent on throwing their full weight behind litigation, all the while refusing to license their content to us which would allow secure distribution through peer-to-peer technology.”

Judge Wilcox has indicated he will make a decision in the case next week.

While music swapping has been cited as the root cause of declining album sales, a recent report on album sales by Nielsen SoundScan reveals that sales in 2004 are up more than 10 percent from a similar period last year.
http://www.cmpnetasia.com/ViewArt.cf...d=3&subcat=235


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MyDoom Variant Targets RIAA
Press Release

Today, Global Hauri assigned a medium risk to a new, fast spreading variant of MyDoom, a.k.a. MyDoomf. The new variant of the MyDoom worm is spreading through e-mail attachments and P2P file-sharing networks it randomly changes senders' ("spoofs") names and modifies the registry of infected computers. The new worm is designed to perform a DoS attack, this time targeting the Recording Industry Association of America www.RIAA.com.

MyDoom.f, a direct code copy of a previous MyDoom variant, shows up as a short message with an attached file that pretends to be a Zip archive. It is a destructive worm with its own SMTP engine and spreads via email by mailing itself to addresses found on the victim's machine.

"Despite the recent wave of viruses, email users still like to trust emails they apparently receive from a friend or colleague. We recommend users taking the habit of writing very precise subject lines. That makes it easier to distinguish between virus mails and real mails and also avoids deleting good email," said Global Hauri's CEO, Mr. Eric Kwon. "Just make sure your antivirus solution is updated with the latest definitions and set to repair automatically, then this 'My.Doom' should not be a problem."

Emails users should be prepared to receive virus mails, spoofing the email address of a friend or colleague. Emails with the following subject line should be immediately deleted:

- Re: Approved
- Attention
- Your request is being processed
- (Blank)
- Please read
- Re: Thank You
- Recent news
- IMPORTANT
- Please reply
- Read this
- Your credit card
- Unknown
- EXPIRED ACCOUNT
- Your request was registered
- automatic responder
- Recent news
- Readme
- Bug
- You have 1 day left
- ApprovedNews
- Read it immediately
- Announcement
- =P Announcement
- hi, it's me
- You use illegal File Sharing... Your IP was logged
- Your account is about to be expired
- Love is Love is...
- Undeliverable message
- Re:
- Your order was registered
- Your order is being processed
- Current Status
- read now!
- Something for you
- For your information
- Information Warning
- hello
- hi


And attachment: (Varies [.cmd, .bat, .pif, .com, .scr, .exe] -- often arrives in a zip archive) (34,686 bytes)

- paypal.zip
- creditcard.bat
- creditcard.zip
- website.zip
- textfile.zip
- photo.zip
- part1.zip
- notes.zip
- mail.zip
- vpf.zip
- details.zip

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...lease_id=63585

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SCO's Year Of Living Litigiously
The company is following the RIAA's lead and taking aim at users. Will it work?

Eric Hellweg

It's never a good sign for the tech sector when some of its biggest news involves lawyers, but that's been the situation so far this year.

The Recording Industry Association of America is leading the way again with a fresh round of lawsuits against 531 individuals accused of uploading music files to file-sharing services.

This time around, though, the RIAA isn't going it alone. Other companies -- most notably Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) and SCO Group -- are pulling pages from the RIAA's legal playbook and sending threatening letters to individuals they allege have infringed on their intellectual property rights.

The RIAA and Microsoft are getting the headlines right now (especially with the RIAA itself being countersued under federal racketeering laws), but from what I've heard, the biggest lawsuit of the year thus far is about to be filed.

This lawsuit could happen as early as this week, and it could be the tech sector's biggest suit since the first rounds of the RIAA lawsuits. That's because this time SCO is targeting Linux users -- not a Linux distributor or reseller.

Here's what we know: SCO will stand behind the plaintiff's podium, ably represented by David Boies, himself no stranger to the RIAA's playbook, having been on the losing side of the RIAA/Napster lawsuits. But the big question is, Who will be behind the defendant's stand?

SCO, with its lawsuits against IBM (IBM: Research, Estimates), Novell (NOVL: Research, Estimates), Red Hat (RHAT: Research, Estimates), and others, clearly likes to make a name for itself through its legal actions. Detractors say the company's legal strategy is little more than a gambit to boost its previously sagging stock price. And SCO's stock sure looks as if it hinges in large part on the outcome of its legal strategy. Need evidence? How's this: The low analyst price target on this stock for the year is $5, while the high target is $45.

One potential defendant is said to be Google -- a company with at least 10,000 servers running Linux, according to SCO spokesman Blake Stowell. Stowell says he can't comment on which companies SCO will sue, but that "you can expect something from us soon."

But does SCO really want to replicate the RIAA model? I'm not so sure that the RIAA's campaign has been all that effective, and furthermore, the RIAA has an advantage over SCO in this arena.

Whereas the RIAA could point to services such as Apple's (AAPL: Research, Estimates) iTunes Music Store and RealNetworks's Rhapsody as legitimate means for downloading songs, SCO's "legal" alternative -- persuading users to pay for licensing -- is untested in a court of law. It's not clear that Linux users are in fact breaking any intellectual property laws.

Stowell says only, "We hope people will take us seriously as well and will compensate us."

SCO's threats of a user lawsuit are "part of an extremely carefully planned process of intimidation," says George Weiss, a VP at Gartner Research. "No one wants to be called into court, so users need to make a judgment. It's a major gamble for SCO."

SCO has already incurred the wrath of the open-source community; its servers bore the brunt of a recent virus attack, and its CEO now travels with bodyguards when he makes public speeches.

SCO also faces another critical disadvantage vis-à-vis the RIAA: Despite the music industry's lawsuits, people are still buying music and Apple's iTunes is going gangbusters. But if SCO's legal strategy is shot down in the courts, do you really think companies will rush to buy its products? I think not.

It's the year of living dangerously for SCO, and its decision to borrow the RIAA's tactics and sue users -- before its case is proven in court -- could be the company's undoing.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/24/tech...estor/hellweg/


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Downloading Event Defies The Music Industry On ‘Grey Tuesday’
tferan

When you mix black and white, you get gray. There's nothing complicated about it, unless you try it the way Brian Burton did.

His blend of black and white turned today, Fat Tuesday, into "Grey Tuesday" in the world of hip-hop. To the music industry and its lawyers, however, he created something that still looks black and white.

Burton is a 26-year-old New Yorker who now lives in Los Angeles and is known professionally as DJ Danger Mouse. In December, he got the idea of remixing the Beatles' 1968 "White Album" with a vocals-only version of "The Black Album," which was released last fall as the retirement work of rapper Jay-Z.

Why not? The a cappella version of "Black" invited remixing with new musical backing. The 30 tracks on the double "White" offered plenty of music to sample. The albums' names inspired putting them together.

Burton spent hundreds of hours listening and lifting, doing things like matching Jay-Z's "What More Can I Say" to George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and backing the hit "Change Clothes" with the harpsichord of the Beatles' "Piggies."

Naturally, he called the result "The Grey Album" and sent CD copies to friends. They played it and passed it around, and it became an instant underground hit, a sensation spread by Internet file-sharing and even sold in a few stores.

Why not? It's a highly inventive, high-concept novelty that also makes interesting and enjoyable listening. Copies obtained through file-sharing networks won critical notice and acclaim.

But here's why not, or at least why "The Grey Album" was limited to underground status: Burton didn't get legal clearance to use the Beatles' tracks. He didn't expect his project to be released commercially. He mainly hoped Jay-Z, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr would like it.

While there is no word about that, EMI Group - the label that owns the copyright to "White Album" recordings - didn't like it. Sampling classic hooks is standard practice in hip-hop, but EMI is known for keeping the Beatles off-limits.

Even though "Grey" has fueled new interest in "White," the company sent cease-and-desist orders two weeks ago to Burton and anyone stocking his album, demanding it be destroyed and removed from circulation.

Sensing too much danger even for Danger Mouse, Burton is not fighting. But his album became a rallying point for activists who see major record labels using copyrights inflexibly in a way that exploits artists and stifles creativity.

Downhill Battle, a 7-month-old music activism project that tweaks the industry at www.downhillbattle.org, declared today "Grey Tuesday." At www.greytuesday.org, it organized what it calls "an act of civil disobedience" - an online protest, the first of its kind, involving hundreds of sites that are offering free downloads of the album for 24 hours.

A major point, Downhill Battle co-founder Nicholas Reville told me Monday, is that EMI is not seeking compensation, but to ban a work of art.

"Just as the Beatles built on and reinterpreted music that came before them, sample-based artists and DJs need the freedom to create," he said. "This work devalues neither of the originals. There is no legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this record - this is just arbitrary exertion of control. There is no indication at all that EMI wants to license The Grey Album,' There is literally no way for Danger Mouse to make this recording legally."

Response has been "incredible," Reville said, crediting "a huge amount of pent-up anger about the way the music industry has been manipulating radio, musicians and the public for decades." But he has heard nothing yet from EMI about "Black," "White" and "Grey."

If he does, the question is whether copyright restrictions will permit a colorful answer from the song McCartney wrote with Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory," where the colors "live together in perfect harmony."

Of course, that's "on my piano keyboard." Anyplace else, and they'll see you in court.
http://www.cleveland.com/living/plai...8966232531.xml


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iTunes-Pepsi Ad Slammed
Macworld staf

The Apple/iTunes/Pepsi ad screened at the SuperBowl has been widely criticized for its use of successfully sued teenage downloaders.

Apple's seeming alliance with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the ads' condemnation of file sharing has irked independent filmmaker Brian Flemming.

Flemming believes that by promoting the RIAA's position, Apple has moved away from its core philosophy as expressed in its last SuperBowl ad, '1984'.

Flemming sat down with his Mac and made a remix of the commercial, adding the text: "Fear is a primary means used by The Party to maintain control over expression in '1984'. Fear also is a potent weapon used by the RIAA to exert control over the behaviour of music fans." He saw 10,000 visits to the site displaying the parody within two days, the report claims.

The Chicago Tribune reports the appearance of a series of parodies of the ad – James Saldana's take was: "The recording industry cheats artists, screws consumers. Who is the real criminal?"
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=8002


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ESV throws up more chaff.

Techno-Rebels in West Bank?

File Swapping Firm Claims Odd Hide-Out
John Ward Anderson

Somewhere in this beleaguered town, Palestinian computer whizzes from a company called Earth Station V have launched a high-tech assault on the U.S. entertainment industry, with a defiant message for those trying to stop the downloading of music and movies: "Resistance is futile."

That, at least, is what the company wants people to believe, and it has cooked up an elaborate ruse that has made Earth Station V and its claim to hide downloaders' identities the buzz of the moment in the online universe.

But seemingly no one in this town of 34,000 -- the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the three-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- has heard of Earth Station V. Computer salesmen and technicians, Internet providers, Internet cafe workers and customers and community and Palestinian militant leaders said they knew of no one who works for the company. Questions about its founder and president, who calls himself Ras Kabir -- Arabic for "Big Head" -- drew laughter.

Yet someone has gone to enormous trouble and expense to create complicated software programs and a sophisticated Web site that offers X- rated movies, long-distance calling, a dating service, the downloading of music, first-run movies and computer software -- all free and all supposedly augmented with stealth technology that hides a user's identity. And all with no advertisements or other visible means of generating revenue, despite monthly operating costs that the company says amount to $1.5 million.

In recent years, downloading music has become one of the biggest and most controversial activities on the Internet -- one that many computer experts say could transform the U.S. entertainment industry. Even if laws could be written fast enough to keep up with changing technology, experts say, online file swapping and downloading are virtually unstoppable.

With entertainment industry agencies -- particularly the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- using tough U.S. laws to shut down other Internet platforms used for copying music, most Web sites that specialize in music downloads have gone low-profile. But Earth Station V is openly rallying people to engage in digital music and movie swapping. Its operators have crafted a finely honed bad-boy image that seems to taunt officials to discover who they are and to catch 'em if they can.

The company claims to have its headquarters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to take advantage of loose Palestinian copyright and intellectual property laws that it says can keep U.S. legal hounds at bay.

No Paper Trail

The real boon for Earth Station V, however, seems to be the publicity bonanza that comes from claiming that such a cutting-edge Internet company is being run by a multiethnic band of techno-rebels in besieged and impoverished Palestinian refugee camps.

But the company's business and Internet paper trails don't support that claim. The West Bank and Gaza addresses the company lists for its offices don't exist, the telephone numbers don't answer, company officials refuse to meet with reporters and they communicate only by e-mails and call-backs. Reporters are not allowed to visit Earth Station V offices or talk to workers.

In several telephone interviews, a spokesman for Earth Station V, Steve Taylor, said the company has about 100 employees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But he declined a reporter's request to visit their work sites, saying that Palestinian militant groups did not approve of Earth Station V's activities -- particularly its broadcast of pornographic movies -- and were threatening the company's operations and employees. Militants also were angry, he claimed, that the company had Jewish partners.

Computer sleuths have traced some of Earth Station V's Internet providers to Israel; computer experts agree that from there, the service could be routed into the Palestinian territories. But even if that is the case, experts agree, the electronic veil offered by the Internet is so impermeable that the company's employees could be sitting at desks almost anywhere in the world, while using the West Bank as their electronic address.

"They are making it very difficult for anyone to find who they are, where they are and how they operate," said Ghassan Anabtawi, marketing director for Paltel, the monopoly telephone company in the Palestinian territories. Paltel has no record of providing voice or Internet service to Earth Station V. "It's something fishy and weird -- they are very professional in conning people," Anabtawi said.

The company might be receiving Internet service from a Palestinian provider, he said, but none had claimed it as a client.

In addition to Jenin and Gaza, said Taylor, the Earth Station V spokesman, the company has offices in the West Bank towns of Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem. Computer specialists in each town said they were not familiar with Earth Station V.

"I've never heard of the company, and I should have heard of it," said Yahya Salqan, general secretary of the Palestinian Information Technology Association. He said he sent e-mails to the 75 members of his association asking if any knew of Earth Station V, and "nobody had."

Business registration papers filed with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and other company documents reviewed by The Washington Post list an Internet pornography king, Stephen Michael Cohen, as the "sole director" of Earth Station V. Taylor said Cohen was a "consultant" who "brings a lot to the table because of his expertise."

Cohen has been listed as a fugitive from the United States since 2001 for failing to appear in a court case in which he was ordered to pay $65 million in damages for stealing the Internet domain sex.com. According to the judgment, in 1995 Cohen forged a letter by the real owner of sex.com instructing the agency that registered domains to transfer ownership to him. Cohen controlled the domain name for five years, building sex.com into what reportedly was one of world's most visited and profitable Web sites.

Taylor said Earth Station V had about $1.5 million per month in operating costs but no revenues. He said the company's investors, whom he declined to name, were willing to lose money in the short term to attract users but planned to add potentially huge money-making ventures to the Web site in the near future, including online auctioning and gambling.

A Widespread Practice

But its biggest draw is offering a platform for Internet users to download music, a practice that has become so widespread that many experts expect it to revolutionize the

relationship between Americans and the performing arts. Internet experts estimate that 60 million Americans swap files online. A report in August by the Internet technology firm Forrester Research found that 49 percent of 12- to 22-year-olds had downloaded music in the previous month.

In September, the RIAA filed lawsuits against 261 people for copying music over the Internet, saying the practice violated U.S. copyright laws. According to the RIAA, about 2.6 billion copyrighted files, mostly songs, are downloaded over the Internet per month, which the organization says is the leading cause of the worldwide decline in music industry sales from $40 billion in 2000 to $26 billion in 2002.

Marc Andreessen, who helped create the Netscape Web browser and is considered one of the fathers of the Internet, said at a conference in Palm Beach in November that Earth Station V and file-sharing companies like it were on the verge of making the downloading of music and other intellectual property virtually unstoppable, no matter the law.

Such predictions hinge on whether Earth Station V really has found a way for users to conduct online music swapping with impunity. Computer experts and music industry officials scoff at the company's claim that it can hide the identities of the site's users.

"It's a sophisticated protocol, but it's not set up for all the claims they make," said Mark Ishikawa, the head of BayTSP, an Internet security company that investigates piracy for record companies and other high-tech industries. "We looked at them, and the people who were downloading files were not anonymous."

"We can easily target infringers on their network," said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of the RIAA. He said Earth Station V "was throwing stones at us because that's how they get more press and grow their pirate network."

'At War' With Associations

Taylor, the company spokesman, said Earth Station V has roughly 710 employees in several countries, including Russia. Their software is available in 28 languages, he said, although the Web site listed only about 15, and none was Arabic, the language spoken by Palestinians.

Business registration documents filed in June with the Palestinian Economy Ministry said Earth Station V had $2.75 million in start-up capital and was established to conduct "transactions in financial documents." The papers listed Rony Hanouna, the owner of several cellular telephone stores in the West Bank, as the company's representative in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Hanouna said in an interview that he had no knowledge of Earth Station V's activities and expressed surprise that the company was conducting business, saying that as far as he knew, it existed only on paper.

Hanouna said he was approached by several people about 10 months ago and asked to open an office for Earth Station V. But after filling out the paperwork, Hanouna said, he never heard back from the people.

Initially, much of the publicity about the Earth Station V Web site came from company statements distributed by PR Newswire, a public relations firm. In one such statement, Earth Station V declared it was "at war" with the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), asserting that "resistance is futile and we are in control now."

The Earth Station V Web site asserts that the RIAA and MPAA "have absolutely no jurisdiction" over the company because "Palestine is not a signee of the Intellectual Property Agreements."

"In other words, the RIAA uses local laws of Western countries to hurt people," the Web site says. "In contrast, ES5 uses local laws of Palestine to help people."

"That is an outrageous statement," said Hiba Husseini, a Palestinian attorney who is helping draft new intellectual property laws for the Palestinian Authority. While current laws are about 50 years old and do not specifically address issues of using computers and the Internet to violate copyrights, she said, the Palestinian ministers of culture and economy can and have issued administrative rules and regulations to combat copyright violations and piracy.

"The ministries can by directives or orders shut an operation of this nature down, if they get an official complaint," she said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer


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Smiles Fade At Napster

Music service is losing money and executives
Dawn C. Chmielewski

It was a breakthrough deal that would have put the Napster kitty on millions of Hewlett-Packard computers.

But in the days leading up to Napster's re-launch in late October, HP suddenly -- and without explanation -- returned Napster's $250,000 check and canceled the agreement to install a link to Napster's online music service on its computers. Worse, in January HP announced a surprise partnership with Napster rival Apple Computer to feature the iTunes Music store on HP computers and sell Hewlett-Packard branded iPod music players.

Neither HP nor Napster's parent company, Roxio, would comment on the soured deal, whose details were confirmed by sources familiar with the agreement. But its collapse was one of several setbacks since the reintroduction of Napster, the pioneering song-swapping renegade, as a paid music service.

Napster is losing money, and top executives have left the company, including its president, chief financial officer, vice president of programming and head of corporate communications as well a key board member. On Wednesday, Roxio began laying off people at its Napster division. A Roxio spokeswoman said the company was ``eliminating redundancies in the organization'' but declined to say how many people lost their jobs.

And while Napster can legitimately claim it's the second most popular online music service, information provided by insiders at two of the major music labels shows it sells only about a quarter the number of downloads from their artists as Apple's market-leading iTunes store. Napster refused to release download figures.
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunhera...gy/7988684.htm


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Napster: 5 Million Songs Sold
John Borland

Napster, the digital song store and subscription service launched by Roxio in late October, said Monday that it passed the 5 million mark in online song sales. Although that keeps it ahead of other only-on-PC services' announced sales figures, it remains far behind Apple Computer's iTunes, which serves both PCs and Macintosh computers.

Napster has experienced some rough waters in recent weeks with company head Mike Bebel leaving last month.
http://news.com.com/2110-1027-5163722.html


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E-Commerce Sales Hit Record Level
Reuters

U.S. retail sales over the Internet and other electronic networks surged in the fourth quarter, making up a record share--almost 2 percent--of total retail sales, the Commerce Department said Monday.

E-commerce sales--purchases over the Internet, e-mail or other electronic networks--rose to $17.23 billion in the last quarter, a 29.7 percent increase over the third quarter. Overall retail sales rose 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter.

The increase in e-commerce purchases was the third straight quarterly rise but was less than the 31.6 percent gain seen in the final quarter of 2002.

Online shopping for the holidays was already known to have surged.

Analysts closely watch retail sales as they make up nearly 40 percent of overall personal spending, which itself comprises about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

In Monday's report, the share of total retail sales accounted for by e-commerce reached its highest level since the Commerce Department began tracking it in 1999--1.9 percent, up from 1.5 percent in third quarter of 2003.

Compared to the fourth quarter of 2002, e-commerce purchases rose by 25.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2003, while overall retail sales gained a smaller 6.2 percent.

The report, unlike most data compiled by the Commerce Department, is not adjusted for seasonal or holiday-related variations, sharply limiting its usefulness to analysts.
http://news.com.com/2100-1030-5163316.html


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Governors Press for Limits on Internet Tax Ban
Andy Sullivan

Several U.S. governors said Monday they would seek to scale back a congressional effort to ban taxes on Internet access, saying it would cost them billions of dollars in annual revenue.

At a conference in Washington, three U.S. governors said their budgets could be devastated by a bill that would prevent them from taxing the monthly fees that Internet providers like EarthLink Inc. charge customers.

Though few states currently tax Internet access, the bill could end up eating into revenues from telephone service, music sales and other activities that are already migrating to the Internet and could be bundled with access fees in the future, they said.

The bill amounts to "putting a federal stop sign onto a state road," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican.

Huckabee was joined by Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, both Democrats, who said the ban could force them to raise other taxes and fees.

A better approach would be to simply extend the more limited, temporary ban that expired last year so policymakers can figure out how to handle new services like Internet telephony, they said.

Congress sought to make a temporary ban on access taxes permanent last year and widen it to include high-speed cable and DSL service.

That version, backed by a long list of business groups, would also eliminate access taxes that were in place in some states before the temporary ban first took effect in 1998.

The bill passed the House of Representatives last year but stalled in the Senate, and the temporary ban expired in October.

Aides said any action in the Senate was unlikely for several weeks.

Two former governors now serving in the Senate, Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, said they were picking up support for a renewal of the temporary ban.

Virginia Sen. George Allen, a sponsor of the permanent tax ban, would be willing to consider ways to focus the ban exclusively on access fees, an aide said.

But opponents are seeking to make the issue more complicated than it needs to be, said Allen aide Heidi Frederickson.

"This is an issue that deals with consumers, and that's where Sen. Allen's focus is," Frederickson said. "Sen. Alexander is clearly focused on the governors, as this press conference today reveals."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Feb23.html


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Interview with Pablo Soto of the Manolito P2P Network
Thomas Mennecke

The Manolito P2P network, spearheaded by the popular Piolet client, has long been one of the more efficient ways to trade information. Piolet, with its sister clients Blubster and RockItNet, connect to the mp3-only Manolito network. Although it averages about 200,000-250,000 users at any given time, it has proven to be a viable, and safer, alternative to the FastTrack network.

However, the Manolito network has stagnated recently, with no noticeable increase or decrease in its population (considering the current P2P landscape, this may not be such a bad sign.) In addition, the file-sharing community has not seen a new release in over half a year, which has many concerned.

To discover the latest with the Manolito Network, we spoke with Pablo Soto, lead programmer behind this community.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=396


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Covering Tracks: New Privacy Hope For P2P
John Borland

Jason Rohrer was battling an insect invasion last year when he hit on an idea that he hoped would help file swappers hide from the copyright police.

As ants marched with impunity through the Santa Cruz, Calif., home of the programmer, frustration turned to inspiration and Mute was born. The program, which seeks to hide the source of downloads by passing files between computers along twisting pathways, is gaining attention as an interesting solution to file swapping's hottest problem: privacy.

"If you're going to be anonymous, you can not use direct connections," Rohrer said.

Rohrer isn't alone in developing peer-to-peer privacy tools. In the past six months, the quest for anonymity on file-swapping networks has become the equivalent of a technological holy grail, thanks to a wave of lawsuits filed against individual file swappers by the Recording Industry Association of America.

So far, the RIAA, tracing digital fingerprints back to individual names, has sued almost 1,500 people it claims stole music over file-swapping networks.

Peer-to-peer network developers have been working on improving privacy ever since Napster was first targeted by a skittish record industry, but the results have been decidedly imperfect.

That's because most peer-to-peer systems require some degree of openness to work at all. In order to download a song from another computer online, a file swapper's computer must make some kind of connection to it. That leaves a digital record that can be traced back to a person's Internet service provider, and from there to the account holder.

At the very least, adding anonymity to peer-to-peer systems involves a trade-off in efficiency, creating performance headaches that bring a network to its knees. Some security experts go further, arguing that privacy is impossible to achieve in a peer-to-peer network, given that the technology requires creating direct connections between computers.

"The bottom line is that you just can't be anonymous on the Internet if you're going to have some kind of peer transaction," said Mark Ishikawa, chief executive officer of BayTSP, a company that tracks and identifies file swappers for music labels and Hollywood studios. "There is this myth that you can be anonymous. You can hide, but we can get you."

Proxies, keys and privacy
Most of the newest generation of file-swapping hopefuls use some kind of encryption, scrambling files so that they become impenetrable strings of data as they are transferred online. This helps keep out some prying eyes, but most monitoring services, such as BayTSP, simply pretend to be an ordinary file-swapper, searching and downloading files instead of trying to break into the network from outside. No matter how powerful the encryption in the network, that digital handshake is required, Net experts say.

Many of the services are also moving toward Internet "proxies" as a way to mask identities. Under this model, the direct handshake between uploaders and downloaders is interrupted by a digital middleman. Instead of being downloaded directly, a file is handed off to another Web server, or passed through another set of computers, before finding its way to the downloader.

The latest version of Streamcast Networks' Morpheus, as well as the smaller Earthstation V software , allow their users to connect to these online proxy servers, send search requests and upload and download through them.

Rohrer's Mute is a more extreme version of this proxy idea, in which every computer on the file-swapping network becomes a middleman, passing on search queries and actual files that are on their way elsewhere in the network. This makes it nearly impossible to determine who is uploading or downloading what information–-but the model has a cost.

Ordinary file-swapping networks work quickly, because only small bits of information–-search queries and background data--are relayed between most of the computers. In Mute's model, each computer potentially serves as a courier for vastly larger multimedia files. That can quickly clog people's Net connections, slowing or stalling the network altogether.

Rohrer says this is the natural trade-off between speed and perfect anonymity. What has been surprising is how many people have been willing to use the network even though it takes as much as an hour to download a song, he said. At last count, his software had been downloaded nearly 80,000 times, according to his host site.

"People seem to be willing to deal with it given the privacy issues involved," Rohrer said.

Spanish developer Pablo Soto, whose Blubster and Piolet software have attracted several hundred thousand users, is taking a decidedly different tack. While including strong encryption and some privacy-enhancing features in a new version of the software expected to be released in the next few weeks, he's also changing the way files are downloaded.

Information such as an MP3 song will still be downloaded from its original source, he said. But a song will be scrambled, and downloaded simply as raw, unintelligible data. This means that no actual copy of a song is being exchanged, he contends.

If downloaders want to turn that data into useable music, their software must seek elsewhere on the file-swapping network for the encryption "keys" that will unlock the data, transforming it back into an MP3. Separating the download of the data and the keys may help protect file sharers from lawsuits, making it more difficult for courts to say exactly which party is responsible for copyright infringement, Soto said.

"Our developments have always been a result of feature requests," Soto said in an instant message interview. "We are lately getting from our users hundreds of requests and ideas to enhance privacy, so it looked like the natural step to take, development-wise. If users want decentralized networks, there we go. If users want anonymity, there we go."

The RIAA remains as unimpressed by the latest generation of privacy seekers as with the rest. File swapping is file swapping, no matter how programmers change the way their networks function, the group's attorneys have argued in court. Moreover, the RIAA has already sued people who had used Blubster and other privacy-focused networks before, investigators note.

"File sharers need to take these types of claims with a grain of salt," an RIAA representative said. "Copyright owners can enforce their rights on these types of networks. Our investigators are well-versed in what these technologies do and how they work."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5164413.html


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California Lawmaker Introduces RFID Bill
Alorie Gilbert

A California state lawmaker introduced a bill on Tuesday meant to address consumer privacy concerns related to the commercial use of radio frequency identification technology.

Senate Bill 1834 would apply to any business or state government agency using radio frequency identification (RFID) systems to track merchandize or people--an activity that's on the rise. According to people familiar with the technology, state Sen. Debra Bowen is the first legislator in the nation to introduce a bill that seeks to govern the use of RFID, a technology that has sparked controversy since retailers began experiments last year.

The bill proposes that businesses and agencies be required to notify people that they're using an RFID system that can track and collect information about them. It would also require consumers to give express consent before businesses or agencies could track and collect information about them via RFID. Lastly, the legislation requires retailers to detach or destroy RFID "tags" on merchandize before consumers leave the store with it.

"The privacy impact of letting manufacturers and stores put RFID chips in the clothes, groceries and everything else you buy is enormous," Bowen said in a statement. "There's no reason to let RFID sneak up on us when we have the ability to put some privacy protections in place before the genie's out of the bottle."

Privacy concerns over RFID began to surface last year when retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores and British grocery chain Tesco, began testing the technology in stores, often in trials that involved unwitting consumers. The so-called smart-shelf trials were designed to help retailers monitor inventory and detect theft, but consumer advocates fear such systems could lead to surveillance on an unprecedented scale. Facing criticism, Wal-Mart discontinued the in-store testing and said it planned to use RFID to improve its distribution process instead.
http://news.com.com/2100-1014-5164457.html


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RSA Polishes RFID Shield
Matt Hines

Computer security software maker RSA Security on Tuesday introduced a new technology for protecting information emitted by radio frequency identification tags.

The RFID cloaking system is intended to guard proprietary data located on chips used to carry product information. The RSA Blocker Tag technology uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent those devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries.

RFID tags, whose descriptive information is read via radio frequency technology, are expected to allow manufacturers and retailers to greatly improve inventory tracking. Considered a more advanced replacement for existing bar code technology, the systems have created a significant buzz among businesses looking to cut overhead through more intelligent management of products and supply chains. But a major obstacle threatening widespread adoption of RFID is concern that the chips might allow unsolicited collection of product data, creating a privacy risk for consumers.

At its security conference taking place this week in San Francisco, RSA is offering demonstrations of the RFID-blocking tool in a mock pharmacy setting. In that scenario, the pharmacy would provide customers with special bags armed with the RSA Blocker Tags in order to keep RFID readers from gathering data.

The blocker tags work by emitting radio frequencies designed to trick RFID readers into believing that they are being presented with unwanted data, or spam, causing the information collection devices to shun the incoming transmission. RSA claims that by placing an RFID-loaded product into a parcel bearing one of the blocker tags, the system would cause RFID readers to miss any information carried by the product in the bag, thereby protecting consumers.

When a product is taken out of a bag armed with the blocking system, readers would again be able to scan the RFID tag accurately, the company said. Using the pharmacy example, RSA said a prescription bottle could not be scanned when protected but when unshielded could provide useful prescription information.

The company also promised that its cloaking system would not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks.

"The promise of RFID will require infrastructure and process changes, and it will also present huge security and privacy challenges," Burt Kaliski, chief scientist of RSA Laboratories, said in a statement.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029-5164014.html


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AT&T To Launch VoIP Nationwide
Ben Charny

AT&T will begin selling unlimited local and long-distance Internet phone calling next month, as it guns to become the nation's "premier provider" of these less expensive dialing plans, the company said Wednesday.

The company expects to have 1 million businesses and homes signed up by the end of 2005, said Cathy Martine, AT&T senior vice president of voice Internet services and consumer product management.

The leading incumbent Internet phone service provider that AT&T will challenge is Vonage, which has about 150,000 subscribers paying about $35 a month for unlimited local and long-distance calling throughout North America. A Vonage representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

The forthcoming AT&T service, called AT&T CallVantage, will cost between $30 and $40 a month, Martine said. Features will include the ability to forward voicemail to anyone on the Internet and a "locate me" service to let users forward calls to any or all of their phones, the company said Wednesday. AT&T had previously announced that its Internet phone service would include unlimited local and long-distance calling and international calling for a per-minute fee.

Following several start-up's leads, AT&T and other traditional telephone companies have begun letting businesses and consumers place calls that travel over the Internet rather than traditional phone networks, at a greatly reduced cost.

Called voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, this technology is already being embraced by carriers as a way to cut traffic costs on international and long-distance calls, and it is expected eventually to replace the public switched telephone network as big phone companies convert to IP-based fiber-optic networks. Currently, about 10 percent of all voice traffic is classified as VoIP, although fewer than 1 percent of those calls are initiated on a VoIP phone.

CallVantage plays a central role in AT&T's effort to shrug off its stodgy Ma Bell image by embracing hot new technologies.
http://news.com.com/2100-1037-5164973.html


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Hitachi Puts New Twist On Small Drives
Ed Frauenheim

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is putting a new spin on its tiny hard drives.

Hitachi said this week that it is developing a version of its 1- inch "Microdrive" designed to be built directly into the guts of devices such as digital music players. So far, the hard drive maker has sold a Microdrive that can be removed from devices similar to the way flash memory cards can slip into and out of digital cameras.

"We're working on a version of the Microdrive that will be fully embedded; nonremovable," said Bill Healy, Hitachi's senior vice president for consumer and commercial hard drives.

The Microdrive, which would be similar to a drive start-up firm Cornice offers, could let manufacturers create smaller consumer electronics products, Healy said. There is also the potential for lower costs, he added.

Hard drives have been taking on a greater role in consumer electronics devices such as digital video recorders, which record live programming and allow viewers to pause broadcasts temporarily. Small-size drives have been a particular hit as the storage component of digital music players.

Hitachi's 4GB Microdrive, for example, is being used in Apple Computer's new iPod Mini, according to sources close to Hitachi. Although the Microdrive is designed to be removable, the new iPod does not take advantage of that feature.

An embedded drive would offer manufacturers more flexibility, Healy said. In particular, the connection between drive and device could be smaller, which would translate into more compact designs. Also, not having to put a prominent label on the drive would trim costs, Healy suggested.

Cornice makes 1.5GB and 2GB embedded drives. Cornice drives are built into consumer electronics products from companies such as Digital Networks North America and Thomson, according to the company.

GS Magicstor and Toshiba also are making small drives.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5164...l?tag=nefd_top


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Eminem Sues Over iTunes Ad
Reuters

Rap superstar Eminem, who claims that he could fetch more than $10 million for endorsing a product, is suing Apple Computer on grounds that it used one of his hit songs in a TV advertisement without permission.

Eight Mile Style, music publisher of the artist, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, filed the copyright infringement lawsuit last Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. It also names Viacom, its MTV subsidiary and TBWA/Chiat/Day advertising agency as plaintiffs.

Spokesmen for Apple and Viacom were not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit claims that Apple, in a television ad for its iTunes pay-per-download music store aired on MTV last year, featured a young boy with an iPod portable music player singing the lyrics to "Lose Yourself," the theme song for his hit movie "8 Mile," released in 2003.

The ad was also posted on Apple's Web site, the suit says.

"At no time did Apple, Chiat/Day or MTV receive authorization or permission to record, reproduce, perform, transmit, copy, use or otherwise exploit the composition ("Lose Yourself") for any purpose," it says.

"Defendants have acted intentionally, recklessly, willfully and in bad faith," it adds.

The suit does not spell out any specific damage claims. But it says Eminem, a Detroit native, is entitled to "exemplary damages" for the alleged use of a song it touts has achieved "iconic stature" among hip-hop fans worldwide. Eminem and his co-writers won an Academy Award for the song.

Eminem has never nationally endorsed any commercial products, the 15-page suit said, adding that "even if he were interested in endorsing a product, any endorsement deal would require a significant amount of money, possibly in excess of $10 million."
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5164307.html


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Is Broadband Set To Make Power Lines Sing?
Jim Hu

Technical limitations have long frustrated attempts to deliver broadband Internet access over power lines, but the idea is once again sparking interest as its backers tout improvements.

Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission proposed rules for utility companies that seek to offer Internet access through their electricity grids. The FCC hopes its rules for broadband over power line (BPL) will help jump-start the use of the grid network to deliver high-speed Net access to U.S. households, especially in hard-to-reach rural areas.

"One major objective of Chairman (Michael) Powell is to find ways to encourage broadband for the entire United States," said Ed Thomas, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC. "The more options that are available, and the more capabilities provided, and the more diverse the entry vehicles, the better off we are."

The proposed BPL rules are limited and notably do not address major policy issues affecting the electricity industry that are under the remit of local public utilities commissions. Still, broadband providers and power companies reacted positively to the FCC move, seeing it as a critical first step toward making BPL a reality.

Less than a week after the FCC released its proposal, Internet service provider EarthLink announced it would begin testing a broadband service using power lines leased from Progress Energy, an electricity company that serves the Carolinas and central Florida.

EarthLink's test, announced last Wednesday, involves 500 homes in Wake County, N.C., and could set a major precedent for the nascent BPL industry. In the trial, Progress Energy will deliver a packet-based broadband signal through its power lines and then broadcast the signal using Wi-Fi equipment from Amperion. Test customers access the network using wireless broadband routers installed in their homes.

"This might give us the ability to have coverage where DSL (digital subscriber line) and cable might not be," said Kevin Brand, a vice president of product management at EarthLink. "We're in the very early stages now, but we see the ability for the technology to evolve to be quite competitive with DSL and cable."
http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5163739.html


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2004
CONTACT: ADAM EISGRAU

P2P UNITED COMMENDS BIPARTISAN FILE-SHARING FACT-FINDING FORUM

Releases Written Request to Recording Industry to Tell the “Technological Truth” and to Make Suspect Software “Solution” Available for Real-World Scrutiny

Washington (Feb. 24) -- P2P United, the trade association representing the developers of Morpheus, Grokster and other leading peer-to-peer file-sharing software programs, today commended Senators Ensign and Wyden -- co-chairs of the Council on Competitiveness’ bipartisan Forum on Innovation & Technology -- for devoting the Forum’s next boxed lunch session on February 26 to “a discussion on peer-to-peer networks, the technology behind them, and the potential they hold for legitimate business and consumer applications.”

“Senators Ensign and Wyden are right, right and right again,” said P2P United Executive Director, Adam Eisgrau. ‘How can we build a fair and viable marketplace in which P2P technology plays a central and legitimate role,’ is exactly the right question to ask. It’s being posed in a productively neutral and open-ended manner, and it’s being asked at the right time to have a profound impact. This is a don’t-miss event for anyone interested in moving beyond sound bites to sound policy.”

P2P United today also released a February 24 letter, delivered to both RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol and Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye, requesting that they refrain from “promotional propagandizing” about the “warrantless wiretap” software recently touted as a means of thwarting allegedly illegal activity by some peer-to-peer software users.

In its letter, P2P United specifically calls upon the industry to stop characterizing software designed to divert and privately inspect every file of any kind requested by P2P users as an “innocuous ‘filter’” because it would be neither innocuous nor a mere filter.

The letter, attached in full, also pointedly notes that neither the RIAA nor Audible Magic has provided either P2P or any of its five members with a demonstration copy of software that the industry and its vendor have widely demonstrated for policy makers. Accordingly, P2P United requests immediate access to “the program and all appropriate databases so that it may independently be evaluated by governmental and private experts.”

Persons interested in attending Thursday’s program may contact the Council on Competitiveness by fax at 202.682.5150 or by email at forum@compete.org. P2P United, which is unaffiliated with the Council, is a Washington-based 501(c)(6) trade association representing the peer-to-peer software and allied industries. For more information, please consult www.p2punited.org
http://www.slyck.com/misc/P2P_Press_Release.html


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My baby, she wrote me a letter.


By Hand
Mr. Mitch Bainwol, Chairman
Recording Industry Association of America
1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036


Dear Mr. Bainwol:

Thank you for your recent offer, extended through the pages of last Friday’s Hollywood Reporter, to provide P2P United and its members with contact information for Audible Magic’s CEO Vance Ikezoye. We needn’t impose on you, however, to make that effort having furnished Mr. Ikezoye with a copy of this correspondence directly.

We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to evaluate the product that you have widely mischaracterized as “filtering” software, particularly given that an integral part of its intended application appears to require the redesign of the software developed by the members of P2P United. Please consider this a formal request for immediate access to the program and to all appropriate demonstration databases so that we may arrange for it to be independently evaluated by both governmental and private experts.

In the interim, P2P United also respectfully requests that you, other industry representatives, and representatives of Audible Magic abandon the promotional propagandizing in which the industry has been engaged in favor of beginning to tell the technological truth about the system you have endorsed. Specifically, based upon published reports, the members of P2P United are deeply concerned that the technology your industry has endorsed is not only not an innocuous “filter,” but actually is more fairly understood as a warrantless wiretap designed to divert and privately inspect potentially every file requested by a P2P user.

Moreover, given that peer-to-peer software has been found as a matter of uncontested fact in federal court to be used substantially for purposes that do not implicate recorded music (or, indeed, copyrighted material at all), we believe that lawmakers and the public are due a clear explanation as to why the public should be required to subject their electronic communications to ungoverned surveillance by an understandably parochial industry collective.

We also ask that you be clear regarding whether you also propose to subject the other principal means of distributing copyrighted material without authorization to similarly mandated surveillance? These means, as identified by the US Department of Justice before Congress, of course include popular e-mail and instant messaging programs like those developed by AOL/Time Warner and the internet, itself.

P2P United also wishes to take this opportunity to renew its offer to meet at any mutually convenient place and time with your member companies (and other rightsholder representatives) to discuss how a new marketplace -- one that particularly permits new artists to prosper -- may be built may upon the enormous and apparently permanent popularity and power of peer-to-peer communications.

Thank you for your consideration of these issues. I look forward to discussing them personally, as you may find appropriate.

Sincerely,
/S/

Adam M. Eisgrau
Executive Director

cc: Mr. Vance Ikezoye,
CEO Audible Magic

http://www.slyck.com/misc/riaa_letter.html


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Most popular music searches across the Espotting network for the week 17 Feb 2004 - 22 Feb 2004.


1. Music

2. Hi Fi

3. Mp3

4. Audio

5. Mp3 Player

6. Music download

7. CD Player

8. Guitar

9. Amplifier

10.Radio

http://www.e-consultancy.com/newsfea...-searches.html

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Warners Sues Shanghai Website Over Downloaded Music

BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Having shut down Napster and other illegal file swapping Websites based in the United States, the global music industry is now looking to do the same in China where downloading of MP3 music files is rampant.

Warner music became the first recording company in Shanghai to take operators of a Website to court over illegal downloading of songs. The Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court began hearing the case yesterday.

Warner music, the Taiwan branch of Time Warner, is accusing Shanghai Rongshuxia Computer Co Ltd of infringing on its copyrights by allowing surfers to download 10 songs by Chinese pop star Na Ying.

Warner music is asking the court to ban Rongshuxia from allowing people to download music from its Website (www.rongshu.com) and make a public apology. It is also asking for 250,000 yuan (US$30,120) in compensation and legal fees.

The global music giant said it discovered last March that Rongshuxia was illegally allowing users to download Na Ying's songs, all of which were originally on her CD "I am not an angel."

In court yesterday, the company offered an original edition of the Chinese pop star's CD as well as a testimonial issued by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, to prove it made the disc and owned the distribution rights to the songs.

Rongshuxia said it put the songs on its site last year as part of a cooperative promotion with a local radio station and stopped offering the downloads in April.

"We are running a literature Website, not a music one. We didn't expect to earn anything from the download service," said Ji Nuo, Rongshuxia's attorney.

Compensation for the songs could play a key role in the case. Warner has suggested compensation should be set at 99 US cents per download, a number based on the price of buying songs from Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, the most successful legal song downloading site on the Internet.

"If music lovers download the songs from the Website, they surely won't buy CDs," said Liu Ping, the attorney representing Warner Music.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_1328964.htm


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Tax To Open Up Software Policy
James Riley

THE Australian Tax Office will adopt an open-source software policy for the first time, opening its Microsoft-dominated standard operating environment (SOE) to products such as Linux.

ATO second commissioner Greg Farr said an internal review of open-source software - done in conjunction with the Gartner Group - concluded that the agency should evaluate and use open-source software where appropriate.

Mr Farr told a Senate Estimates hearing last week that the review of the ATO's standard operating environment, carried out as part of the agency's substantial Change Program, would include specific consideration of open-source platforms that were not previously considered.

The cost of the Change Program is estimated to be up to $800 million.

Among the Gartner Group's key findings were that the ATO should develop an open- source policy and review procurement processes to better enable the evaluation, selection and sharing of open-source software.

"What we have done is the first draft of a policy that recognises there is an increasing maturity of open-source software and we should be starting to fully analyse and make use of open-source software where it is appropriate to do so," Mr Farr said.

"Gartner reported to us that there is some increasing maturity in some of these products and pointed to some places where we could perhaps start looking at it," he said.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html


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Controversial Government Data-Mining Research Lives On
AP

The government is still financing research to create powerful tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists despite an uproar last year over fears it might ensnare innocent Americans.

Congress eliminated a Pentagon office developing the terrorist tracking technology because of the outcry over privacy implications. But some of those projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press.

In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.

``The whole congressional action looks like a shell game,'' said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. ``There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/8022436.htm


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Homeland bureaucracy.

Decline Seen in Science Applications From Overseas
Diana Jean Schemo

Bucking a trend that dates to the end of World War II, the number of foreign students applying to graduate and doctoral programs in science at American universities is declining broadly, according to a survey of 130 such programs released here today.

The findings came as the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported that foreign students and scholars hoping to study science or certain technologies at universities in the United States must wait an average of 67 days to receive a visa. For some of them, the delays extend up to a year, the report said.

"It's really what we've been fearing all along," said Vic Johnson, associate director for public policy at the Association of International Educators. "It's the accumulation of a lot of things that is just causing a change in the attractiveness of the United States as a destination for students and scholars."

The General Accounting Office study said the nation's system for issuing visas for research in sensitive areas was unnecessarily slow and cumbersome.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/education/26VISA.html


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New Film May Harm Gibson's Career
Sharon Waxman

Mel Gibson's provocative new film, "The Passion of the Christ," is making some of Hollywood's most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson's career.

Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson's reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it is no surprise that Hollywood — Jewish and non-Jewish — has been talking about little else, at least when it's not talking about the Oscars.

Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, the principals of DreamWorks, have privately expressed anger over the film, said an executive close to the two men.

The chairmen of two other major studios said they would avoid working with Mr. Gibson because of "The Passion of the Christ" and the star's remarks surrounding its release.

Neither of the chairmen would speak for attribution, but as one explained: "It doesn't matter what I say. It'll matter what I do. I will do something. I won't hire him. I won't support anything he's part of. Personally that's all I can do."

The chairman said he was angry not just because of what he had read about the film and its portrayal of Jews in relation to the death of Jesus, but because of Mr. Gibson's remarks defending his father, Hutton Gibson. Last week in a radio interview the elder Mr. Gibson repeated his contention that the Holocaust was "all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is." Asked about his father's Holocaust denial in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, the movie star told her to "leave it alone."

The other studio chairman, whose family fled European anti-Semitism before the Holocaust, was less emphatic but said, "I think I can live without him." But others said there would be no lasting backlash against Mel Gibson. "If the movie works, I don't think it will hurt him," said John Lesher, an agent with Endeavor. "People here will work with the anti-Christ if he'll put butts in seats." Mr. Lesher added, "He put his own money where his mouth is. He invested in himself."

As Mr. Lesher implied, Hollywood is also a place of businesspeople, and Mr. Gibson is a proven movie star, popular with audiences. There are few actors with that kind of bankability, no matter their personal views. Mr. Gibson is also a capable director. So some of the initial reactions to his film may fade over time.

Mr. Gibson not only directed and helped write the $30 million film, but he also paid for it, including production and marketing costs, out of his own pocket, which Hollywood has filled.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/movies/26GIBS.html


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Women Tailor Sex Industry to Their Eyes
Mireya Navarro

Carlin Ross and Christina Head, a lawyer and a documentary filmmaker in New York, recently teamed up to plot new careers.

Among their first moves: Ms. Ross, 30, a general counsel to dot-coms, this month restarted an adult Web site that features "sex and love from a woman's perspective."

Ms. Head, 26, who has primarily covered subjects like inner-city youth, hopes to produce and direct pornographic films and television programming.

"It's all about empowering and educating women and, of course, I enjoy sex," Ms. Head said. "We're women. We enjoy sex."

Ms. Head and Ms. Ross are part of a growing cadre of women who are selling sex to other women, in this case what Ms. Ross calls "female empowered" adult entertainment — the kind with plots, foreplay and cuddling in the afterglow, the kind that is mindful of women's tastes and suggests new possibilities for women's pleasure.

Experts say demand by women — both heterosexual and lesbian — is driving the growth of all sorts of sex-related ventures, from stores, catalogs and sex toy companies to adult Web sites, pornographic films and cable television shows. At the same time, many women, they say, see the sex industry as a legitimate place to make a living.

"Women have a voice now — `This is what I want and this is how I want it,' " said Ms. Ross.

Samantha Lewis, president of Digital Playground, a DVD company in California that produces pornographic films for women and couples, estimated that women account for 40 percent of retail sales of Digital's movies, double what it was just two years ago. At trade shows, she said, half the fans are women, compared to maybe 10 percent five years ago. "Women are fueling the growth," Ms. Lewis, 42, said.

While women have long been involved in the sex industry as providers and consumers, their participation now has become more of an economic phenomenon, largely because of the Internet. In fact, experts say, the Internet has been a major factor in unleashing women's interest in all things sexual. Surveys by Nielsen/NetRatings, which measures Internet audiences, have found that women account for more than a quarter of all visitors to sites with adult content, with more than 10 million women logging on to such sites in December alone.

ComScore Media Metrix, an Internet research firm, has found even higher female demand for adult sites — 42 percent of all visitors in January — with the highest rates among women ages 18 to 34.

The Internet also helps sales for other sex-related businesses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/national/20FEM.html


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DVD's? I Don't Rent. I Own.
Wilson Rothman

VERY night at his home in Des Moines, Todd Robertson watches a couple of DVD movies. Every few months he queues up a themed marathon he says might last 24 hours. His favorite genre is Italian horror, but he's got a whole world of cinema to choose from: at last count he owned 1,462 titles, although by now the number is probably higher.

And he is not alone. According to Adams Media Research, consumers spent $14.4 billion last year on movies for the home, almost $5 billion more than they spent on theater tickets or video rentals. With more than 27,000 DVD movies to choose from, mega-collectors are building libraries of 1,000 titles or more, and some are starting Web sites and Internet databases to help fellow fans manage inventory.

On the heels of the software is new hardware, including 300- and 400-disc DVD changers. If they ever catch on, they may prove to be the key to organizing so many shiny silver discs.

"Nobody saw this coming," said Jan Saxton, Adams vice president and media analyst, who attributes the boom to several factors, from the low prices of DVD players to the higher quality of video and sound on the discs. "No one anticipated how much consumers would feel the pull of the $9.99-to-$14.99 impulse buy at Wal-Mart. They didn't anticipate how ready the American consumer was to collect films."

Alex Rosten of Los Angeles, with a collection of 542 DVD's, said that for him, it is economics. "When I rent a DVD, it costs around $4," he said. "Add to that the inevitable late fees and the hassle of having to return it, and I'm looking at a lot more than I bargained for. Most DVD's cost $10 to $20, so it makes more sense for me to purchase. And I have the option of watching it whenever I want."

The average price of a new release on DVD is $21.85, although if you know where to shop, it will be cheaper. The sale-rack titles, those older movies referred to in the business as "catalog releases," generally cost about $12. "As an option, it often compares favorably to renting," Ms. Saxton said. "Of course, there are movies you really don't want to own - that's why we don't see the rental market fading away."

Mr. Robertson has never rented a DVD. In fact, with his collection, he would be more likely to start his own rental business. He currently owns a moving company.

"For me, the whole point is to build the perfect library of films," he said. "If films came on something else, that's what I'd collect. DVD is just the format that's doing film the most justice."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/te...ts/26vide.html


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The sound is bad, the idea good.

After TiVo, Radio Rewound
David Pogue

YOU'VE heard of occupational hazards like tennis elbow, runner's knee, footballer's ankle. But those ailments pale next to the agony of the TiVo twitch.

This recently diagnosed condition is exhibited by owners of digital video recorders like TiVo and ReplayTV. Having become addicted to the seven-second replay button - an essential movie-watching tool in this era of special effects and mumbled dialogue - TiVo twitch sufferers are often seen reflexively pressing a nonexistent seven-second replay button, even when they're not in front of the television. Their brains helplessly fire the deeply ingrained "Let me catch that again" command when they're listening to the car radio, enduring a flaky cellphone connection or savoring a hard-won apology from a spouse.

Truth is, you can't blame the brain for misfiring. It's bizarre that five years into the digital video-recorder era, you still can't buy a digital VCR for radio. Why has the electronics industry developed so many machines that let us time-shift Dr. Phil and "Saturday Night Live," but so few that do so for Dr. Joy Browne and "Science Friday"?

Actually, there is one such device. Radio YourWay (pogoproducts.com) looks at first glance like a pocket-size (2.2 by 3.9 by 0.7 inches) AM-FM transistor radio, which, in part, it is. But it also contains a built-in timer, so that you can set up a schedule for recording radio broadcasts. Programming it is exactly as easy - or as difficult - as programming a VCR, except that it uses a military-style 24-hour clock instead of AM and PM designations.

At the specified time, the radio turns itself on. It tunes in the station, records for the requested interval and then turns off.

Once you've captured a show, you can play it back at a more convenient time (or in an area with no reception), pause it while you take a shower or a meeting, fast- forward through the ads, or even archive it to a Windows PC using a U.S.B. cable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/te...ts/26stat.html


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For Peace of Mind, the One-Button Backup
Thomas J. Fitzgerald

PERSONAL computers have simplified life in many ways, but there is a price to pay in the form of a little drudgery. One of the most obvious examples is the need to back up files: everyone knows they should do it, but the task is often put off. After all, the chances of suddenly losing important data seem so remote. And with a million other distractions, who has time to delve into the complexities of backup software and hardware?

On that last point, at least, there are signs of change. Several recently introduced all-in-one devices can back up the contents of a computer at the push of a button or perpetually, and they can do it in the background, as you work. What's more, these devices are generally easy to set up and demand little in the way of attention or maintenance once they are up and running.

The time may be right. As expanding hard disks allow users to accumulate ever more digital photos, music files, e-mail messages and personal documents, the value of that data increases, and the need for an effective backup strategy grows.

One of the easiest options is a dedicated "one touch" backup unit. Such devices, roughly the size of a hardcover book, are large-capacity external drives that connect to a computer's U.S.B. or FireWire port. They come with backup software that goes into action at the touch of a button, and once configured, they can back up the contents of a computer quickly and easily.

One such device, the Western Digital Media Center With Dual-Option Backup, works with both PC's and Macintosh computers and comes with a backup program from Dantz called Retrospect Express. A backup can be initiated either manually, by pressing a button, or automatically, according to a schedule.

After the software is installed, pressing the backup button for the first time summons a wizard to the screen that prompts the user through a series of choices about what to back up (all files - the elephant-gun-to-swat-a-fly approach - or just documents, from images to e-mail to music files). After you have completed the wizard setup, the first backup begins automatically and the settings are stored as the default. A second button, for scheduling daily or weekly backups, calls up a setup wizard with a different series of questions for that option.

The speed of a backup depends on a computer's processing power, the size of the files to be backed up (one large file can be backed up faster than a batch of smaller files that occupy the same amount of hard-disk space), and whether the connection is the faster U.S.B. 2.0, the older U.S.B. 1.1, or FireWire. With a U.S.B. 2.0 connection, it took me 14 minutes and 42 seconds to back up 12,954 files totaling 1.6 gigabytes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/te...ts/26basi.html


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DJ Danger Mouse Did A Logical Thing...
Hank Mohaski

DJ Danger Mouse did a logical thing...no doubt a quick idea, cuz Jay-Z's Black Album is only a few months old...

And I'm sure he wasn't the only one who considered the idea - mashing Jay-Z's latest and supposedly last longplayer with The Beatle's White Album...Hindsight is 20-20, but it's still a good and logical idea, and he pulled it off rather well in a short period of time...here we are in mid-February and EMI is already issuing Cease and Desist letters left and right...

It's interesting (or not) that Jay-Z hasn't really said anything about The Grey Album...or Paul or Ringo for that matter...I'm sure it's only a matter of time, and my guess is that all three are cool with Danger Mouse's project...

I think many musicians understand the fluid nature of music and art...They recognize how self-referential it is, and how the progress and growth of any art happens mostly through small deviations from the norm, and that a complete paradigm shift - a wholly new form or style - is awfully rare...We're all products of our influences...It's our nature...

I think most lawyers and label executives don't understand any of that...

They also don't understand the simpler thrills of doing what Danger Mouse did here - having fun with music, testing the limits of the gear and one's own creativity...He challenged himself with a specific idea, and he sat down and worked it out, and it turned out pretty damn cool, and he's rightfully proud of it...but I bet he's done tons of stuff since this...

Keep moving on, ya know? That's the nature of an artist too...

The Grey Album is out here in the world now...It will be written about in popular music books twenty years from now, and for those who care, we'll remember it as a fun and interesting "event", and a fine album to have on our harddrives and iPods...EMI can't really stop those who care from hearing it, and sharing it, and sometimes ya gotta believe that those same lawyers and label executives really don't understand business either...Sales of Beatle records will not suffer in the least from this...If anything, this is going to help them sell more White Albums...And even if they don't, who cares? They've sold plenty already...

The ideal solution would be for labels like EMI to pay artists like DJ Danger Mouse to do exactly what he did...Blue Note opened their catalog to Madlib last year, and it was an artistic and commercial success for everyone involved...Labels ought to be proud of the many great albums they've financed and distributed over the years, and rather than profit solely from pointless re- issues and greatest hits packages, they could do something positive for music by allowing for deviations like this...

Kudos to DJ Danger Mouse, Illegal-Arts.com, downhillbattle.org and greytuesday.org for making Grey Tuesday possible...A little something for us true believers of sampling to rally around...
http://www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com/GREY-ALBUM.htm


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Technology Meets Music: An Interview with Composer-Singer Paul Korda
Kirk L. Kroeker

As the writer for several top-20 MP3.com hits last year, Paul Korda's perspective on the convergence of technology and music comes from many years of working as a musician and songwriter -- not to mention being a producer at EMI in the late 1960s. He has seen the old technology meet the new -- and witnessed the transformation of monolithic Big Music into a distributed network of thousands of peer-to-peer enthusiasts.

In general, the technology press -- while reporting regularly on the convergence of technology and entertainment -- has paid attention to the file-sharing issue largely from a technological standpoint. For example, TechNewsWorld has given voice to the leaders of the peer-to-peer file- sharing movement, from CTO Phil Morle of Sharman Networks (the maker of Kazaa) to CEO Michael Weiss of StreamCast Networks (the maker of Morpheus). But in focusing on the clear-cut technological benefits of distributed computing and the future of worldwide peer-to-peer networks, the IT press has largely ignored artists' perspectives.

In what could be one of the first interviews of its kind in the IT industry, Paul Korda talked with TechNewsWorld about the RIAA, the music industry, the onset of distributed networks and the convergence of technology and music.

His opinions -- while wryly informed by many years working as an artist -- resonate strongly with beliefs held by proponents of the file-sharing movement. "As organized religion must change with the times, so must the traditional record industry and its representative, the RIAA," Korda told TechNewsWorld. The RIAA, he argued, must learn to adapt to social changes and be generous to its future public. Taking legal action against customers, he said, only drives them to greater independence.

But at that point, Korda deviates from sharing any affinity with leaders of the peer-to-peer movement. After all, Korda is a writer who holds copyright on much music -- digital and otherwise. That's what he does for a living. His perspective, as revealed in the interview, walks a careful line between both sides of the debate. The opinions expressed here, informed by what could be called a sort of postmodern neo-1960s viewpoint, are a manifestation of his attitudes toward music, technology and humanity.

TechNewsWorld: Given that you are walking such a fine line between warring factions in the file-sharing versus Big Music debate, what do you think of the original emergence of file sharing? And what of its effect on music?

Paul Korda: File-sharing's effect on music for me, as an artist, is currency. If I record a song today about a current subject, people can hear it tomorrow, given the wide-reaching effects of the Internet. But to a songwriter, currency isn't money. It's the richness of the here and now, bringing new ideas to life, producing them and releasing them to the people. Currency is what technology is all about, and you either move into the future with the here and now, or you live in the past.

TNW: In terms of the music industry -- culturally and politically -- what does this mean?

Korda: File-sharing has helped bring more people around the globe a taste for a wider variety of music -- which, in the long term, will increase overall sales, just as the transistor radio brought the Beatles to the nomads of the Saharan desert. Did any label say to ban the transistor radio or sue the nomads because they could hear a record without paying for it?

It means the new heads of the big music companies may have to think more deeply than their materialism. The music industry, in other words, needs to understand that the future of music is being formed right now. Don't get me wrong. Both artists and business should be paid, but it takes time to lay the groundwork when a new format emerges.

TNW: Do you think, then, that there's any way for the music industry -- Big Music -- to accommodate the increasingly wide-ranging tastes of current fans?

Korda: The big question for media monopolies is how to answer the public's desire to access diverse media. Media monopolies narrow the amount of access. That's their nature -- to protect their business. But they have to remember that we're the customers. It's what the public wants that counts. If this new form of digital media is being widely embraced by the public, the record industry must learn to adapt.

What they should be doing is creating many independent Internet outlets for streaming and paid- for downloads, as well as automated -- and perhaps even customized -- HiFi CD production. It can all be handled online. Give the jobs in signing new artists back to the musicians and songwriters -- as it always used to be until the early 1970s. And let the accountants and lawyers go back to accounting and lawyering.

In this kind of world, the music labels should sign the successful Internet artists who already have a following. It makes their job easier. Instead of spending enormous amounts on promotion -- amounts that the artist generally shoulders -- they can sign artists that already have an Internet following. That's embracing the new form from the perspective of the recording industry. So much has been made of the technology issues in light of the RIAA's lawsuits, but to transform the system, you have to be asking systemic questions and offering systemic solutions.

TNW: What of the users? Are they at fault for distributing "illegal" copies of music in digital form?

Korda: Yes, they are at fault, but they are the unwitting victims of their love of music. The RIAA should reconsider its strategy and focus on helping people realize that to create and produce the music takes the sweat and talent of both creative and industry people alike. What the RIAA should think about is a pro-music -- or even pro-digital -- campaign instead of an anti-fan inquisition. The RIAA does endorse iTunes and other legit services, but its latest strategy to sue the fans is counterproductive.

TNW: What about the file-sharing networks themselves? Not counting online music sources like iTunes, Rhapsody, MusicMatch and Napster, all of which do pay artists, do you think good can come of the file-sharing technology realized in applications like Kazaa, Morpheus and others?

Korda: Although I believe that original artistry involves chance, and that no robot can or should try to supersede nature, binary technology relates to musical theory. Measurement is equivalent in both elements. Heavy and light and all the shades between. Our character and physical nature were made for measurement.

So, in terms of the digital format, there is a relationship between the notes and the system that delivers them. If people share pirate files online, if they feel they have a unique point of view -- which I'm sure they do have -- they should form bands, write songs, and share those songs with the public.

TNW: From one perspective, the open-source software community has advanced the claim that information wants to be free, that thousands of programmers working collectively and producing great software -- much like a band producing great music -- are actually sharing their work around the world for "free." How do you think the open- source community is different from the community of artists?

Korda: I'm a Mac fan, but I've been following some of the debates going on in the Linux community. The open-source concept is great, and there are actually companies making money in this industry. They're doing it through services. And here's where the concept of the album enters into the picture.

The album -- a legitimately purchased musical work -- is a kind of service to the fan because it is the whole concept that the artist has intended to create. A single is akin to watching only one scene of the movie, and file-sharing single downloads will always generate an incomplete part of the story.

TNW: So you think the concept of the album could be at the heart of this debate?

Korda: When you pirate files on Kazaa, the fact is you're also getting hit-or-miss quality, not to mention exposing yourself to viruses. Even if you download a "complete" album from a peer-to- peer network, you might later discover the album to be completely varying in bitrate quality. Anyone who loves music will want to hear it at its best -- maximum bitrate, CD-quality, or vinyl on HiFi. What the RIAA is behind on is the movement of people's attitude to the future.

TNW: How do you think the RIAA -- or the music industry -- could embrace the concept of the album more completely? After all, Apple has just partnered with Pepsi to give away something like 3 million digital songs. Doesn't this kind of single-song strategy fragment the notion of the album altogether? On a logistical level, how can the artist fight against the fragmentation of the album?

Korda: Give away 3 million songs? Without knowing the terms and the payment of royalties to the artists that are part of this deal, it would be hard to pass judgment on it. If the RIAA supports this move, then I wonder why they would prosecute file-sharers who are giving music away. Let's face it, in these promotional giveaways, the corporations running these things usually are the greatest beneficiaries of the results.

The artists are in such a vulnerable position that they are happy to get their music continuing to be heard. If these single tracks will help lead the fans to the artists' albums, then it would be acceptable to allow a song to be promotional. I would suggest that a commercial for the album be edited as a cross-fade at the end of every track that mentions the CD album so that the free track cannot be listened to without the cross fade.

Television is currently using that technique. If a fan has to listen to the commercial enough times, they'll want to pay for the music without the voiceover.

TNW: What do you think of the current social or cultural climate -- which is now so influenced by technology -- in contrast to, say, the 1960s, when music was perhaps the main transformational cultural power?

Korda: The '60s would have never seen such an outburst of creativity if music was just a commodity. Individuality in the '60s did not come about by fashion-setting or manipulative media gimmicks. I remember when the VP of A&R at EMI played me the first pressing of Sgt. Pepper and tapped his foot, completely out of time, trying to find out what my 18-year-old head thought about the record. The RIAA are somewhat like that VP. They know change is coming, but they are a little out of time.

TNW: Then it seems, in the current climate, that all parties will remain dissatisfied until something changes. Is there hope for this situation? What do you think the industry will look like 10 years from now?

Korda: Doctors will be selling CDs that have been tested by the FDA for curative value once we've found the mechanisms for measuring the energies that are given off by notes. Let's just hope they're good singers, and that dentists stay out of the game. Seriously, though, I hope we all live in musical utopia, download bliss or just a world at peace with itself. The Earth is now a very turbulent place, and meaningful music plays a vital role in grounding people.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32952.html


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P2P, RIAA Go Face-to-Face
Roy Mark

Peer-to-peer networks (P2P) move into the Washington policy spotlight today as representatives of the music industry and a new trade group for file-swapping companies sit down at a lunch forum.

U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and John Ensign (R-NV) called the meeting in hopes that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and P2P United can reach some agreement in a contentious copyright battle.

The music industry has been relentless in opposing P2P networks facilitating the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted music. The RIAA legally forced the original Napster out of business, and it continues to ask courts to declare Napster's successors, such as Grokster, Morpheus and Bearshare, illegal.

The RIAA has also filed more a thousand lawsuits against alleged music pirates operating through P2P networks and lobbied Congress for legislative relief.

Although bills aimed at curbing P2P music piracy have been introduced, lawmakers have so far resisted taking action in hopes that the music industry and file-sharing businesses can privately settle their differences.

"Congress can play a role by using its big, booming voice to tell all the parties to get to the table and work it out," P2P United Executive Director Adam Eisgrau told internetnews.com.

To that end, Wyden and Ensign, co-chairs of the Forum on Technology & Innovation, invited the RIAA and P2P United to discuss the legitimate business and consumer applications of P2P.

How to build a "fair and viable marketplace" in which P2P technology plays a central role is "exactly the right question" to ask, according to Eisgrau. "It's being posed in a productively neutral and open- ended manner and it's being asked at the right time to have a profound impact," he said.

The most pressing P2P issue is a compensation scheme for artists and copyright holders and the technology to implement it.

The RIAA is particularly keen on filtering software developed by Audible Magic. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based developer of content management and identification services calls its filtering system a "breakthrough in P2P management."

The Audible Magic solution hooks into a network to identify copyrighted files matched against a company developed database. It can block all P2P transfers or only copyrighted material. The RIAA calls the Magic Audible scheme an "innocuous filter."

Eisgrau calls it a "warrantless wiretap," and notes that neither the RIAA nor Audible Magic has provided either P2P United or any of its five members with a demonstration copy of the software that Audible Magic was demonstrating at a high profile congressional gathering earlier this month.

"It is privately administered surveillance software," Eisgrau said.

In an e-mail response to internetnews.com, an RIAA spokesperson wrote, "We are delighted to work with anyone to show them that filtering is a viable option."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3318341


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Actions Of Joyce Estate Highlight Problems With Copyright Law
Andrew Baoill

According to an article in the Irish Times (registration required) the Joyce estate has informed the Irish government that it intends to sue for copyright infringement if there are any public readings of Joyce's works during the festival commemorating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday this June.

James Joyce died in 1941 and the copyright in his work expired in 1991. Then the EU extended terms to life+70 years, and the work went back into copyright in July 1995. The estate has been very active in enforcing their copyright, suing regularly. While some of their actions have been aimed at issues such as protecting the memory of Joyce's daughter Lucia from scrutiny, other suits have been against non-commercial uses of the works by fans. As such, they seem solely concerned with the financial health of the estate [admittedly one of their roles] having no concern for nurturing the greater cultural legacy of Joyce.

The Irish Times notes that "In 1998, the Joyce estate objected to readings of Ulysses live over the Internet, which was facilitated by Ireland.com. The case was settled out of court." Now the estate has issued a letter to the Irish government warning that all use must be cleared with the estate - which means that there can be no public reading during the festival, and a planned production of Joyce's Exiles by the Abbey theatre must be cancelled.

Public readings do not displace commercialised use of Joyce's work, so the estate does not lose income from their occurrence. Of course, the estate is technically within its 'rights' (though this does indicate reasons for reforming European copyright law) but such vigorous enforcement is unnecessary and distasteful.
http://funferal.org/mt-archive/000514.html


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Aftermath

Defiant Downloads Rise From Underground
Bill Werde

More than 300 Web sites and blogs staged a 24-hour online protest yesterday over a record company's efforts to stop them from offering downloadable copies of "The Grey Album." A popular underground collection of music, "The Grey Album" mixes tracks from the Beatles' classic White Album with raps from Jay-Z's latest release, "The Black Album."

The protesters billed the event as "Grey Tuesday," calling it "a day of coordinated civil disobedience," during which more than 150 sites offered the album for download. Recording industry lawyers saw it as 24 hours of mass copyright infringement and sent letters to the Web sites demanding that they not follow through on the protest.

"The Grey Album" is a critically praised collection of tracks created by Brian Burton, a Los Angeles D.J. who records as Danger Mouse. Mr. Burton created the album by layering Jay-Z's a cappella raps from "The Black Album," released on Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella label, over music he arranged using melodies and rhythms from "The Beatles," commonly known as the White Album.

Mr. Burton did not seek permission from EMI, which owns the publishing rights to the White Album. When EMI learned that Mr. Burton was distributing "The Grey Album" early this month, its lawyers sent him a cease-and-desist letter, and Mr. Burton complied.

EMI views any distribution, reproduction or public performance of "The Grey Album" to be a copyright violation. "They may say EMI is trying to stop an artwork," said Jeanne Meyer, an EMI spokeswoman, referring to the Web sites, "but they neglect to understand that there is a well-established market for licensing samples, and Mr. Burton didn't participate in it."

Some protesters say "The Grey Album" illustrates a need for revisions in copyright law. They say that sampling should be allowed under fair use of copyrighted material, or that a system of fair compensation should be created to allow for sampling.

"To a lot of artists and bedroom D.J.'s, who are now able to easily edit and remix digital files of their favorite songs using inexpensive computers and software, pop music has become source material for sonic collages," said Nicholas Reville, a co-founder of Downhill Battle, an organization of music industry activists who promoted Grey Tuesday.

Jonathan Zittrain, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, said the issue is indeed a gray one. "As a matter of pure legal doctrine, the Grey Tuesday protest is breaking the law, end of story," Mr. Zittrain said. "But copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and home-recording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular culture. There's no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime."

He said that under copyright law a judge can impose damages as high as $150,000 for each infringement.

To create a collection like "The Grey Album" legally, an artist would first have to get permission to use copyrighted material. Then he would have to negotiate compensation with the copyright holder. Many artists, however, like the Beatles, will not allow their music to be sampled. But even if permission is granted, it is common for a copyright holder to request more than 50 percent of publishing rights for a new song created from the copyrighted work. So if Mr. Burton had been able to get permission to make "The Grey Album" from both the Beatles and Jay-Z, he would probably have had to give away more than 100 percent of his publishing rights.

Around the same time Mr. Burton received his cease-and-desist letter, his album was receiving critical acclaim in Rolling Stone magazine. The album took on a distribution life of its own online, circulated via file-trading sites and on e-Bay, where bootleg CD's were selling for as much as $80 yesterday. Two weeks ago EMI issued cease-and- desist letters to an undisclosed number of record stores and e-Bbay sellers.

Downhill Battle went live last Wednesday with a site devoted to the protest, Greytuesday.org. In 12 hours it had more than 40 sites signed on to participate. Within two days, Greytuesday.org reached the top ranking on Blogdex and Popdex, Web sites that track which sites are being linked to from blogs.

Monday night lawyers for EMI issued cease-and-desist letters to more than 150 Web sites participating in the protest. The letter said distribution of "The Grey Album" "will subject you to serious legal remedies for willful violation of the laws."

By yesterday afternoon some of the Web masters of the protesting sites said they had served 85 to 100 copies of the album, while other reported as many as 1,000 downloads.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/25/ar...ic/25REMI.html
















Until next week,

- js.













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