[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"Summer box office hits a high." – New York Times


"It's a great summer for us, our third record year in a row." – Fox spokesman Geoffrey Godsick


"BMI posts record year." – Arstechnica











Artist’s royalties

BMI Posts Record Year, Despite Music Industry Doom And Gloom
Ken "Caesar" Fisher

Everyone knows that piracy can affect an artist's bottom line, and very few people would argue that artists, programmers, and the like, should work for free in all instances. Indeed, while there is a lot of hostility to lobbying groups like the RIAA, most folks do want to support the bands and songwriters that they like. That's why the RIAA (and sister organization, the MPAA) often use the notion of the starving artist to justify their attacks on piracy-it plays at the heart strings and gives a sense of imminent doom. The groups routinely claim that their business is not just suffering, but even eroding on account of piracy. One result, we're told, is that artists are suffering everywhere, and this could have dire effects on the entire industry.

Such claims seem rather silly though when the actual financial results are published. Most recently we have the example of BMI, one of the largest music companies in the world which represents artists directly (songwriters, performers, composers, etc.), has posted a record-breaking fiscal year.

BMI reported revenues of $673 million for the 2004 fiscal year, an increase of nearly $43 million, 6.8% over the prior year. The performing rights organization generated royalties of more than $573 million for its songwriters, composers and music publishers. Royalties increased by $40 million or 7.5% from the previous year. BMI President and CEO Frances W. Preston said both the revenues and royalty distributions were the largest in the company's history.

Such results are confusing when we're told every month that the industry as a whole is on the verge of destruction, mostly on account of piracy. We're told that the industry, and artists are suffering (just ask Senator Hatch). Surely, one might think, that this year is an exception, but for BMI, they've seen a 9% average growth every year for the last 10 years. The songwriters and performers represented by BMI, it would seem, are doing rather well. No one wants to say that they're doing too well or that they shouldn't be doing well. No, that misses the point. The point is very simple, and rather subtle: when the industry as a whole is posting great numbers (and sometimes trying to conceal them), and in the case of BMI they're posting record numbers, it's simply disingenuous to pretend that the threat against the industry as a whole is nearly so serious as to justify the argument that artists are actually suffering immensely.

Of course, we don't live in a binary world, no matter how much dichotomies such as "good vs. evil" are attractive to those with public voices and private aims. Piracy undoubtedly diminishes profits, but the extent to which this this represents a state of emergency is debatable. If BMI is breaking its own profit records, and if BMI represents songwriters, performers, and composers, how can it be said that those same people are on the verge of economic disaster?

We have the right and responsibility to ask: why is civil law being revised when the industry as a whole is seeing all time highs? Not only has BMI posted record results, signaling strong economic stability for the artists themselves, but the record companies are making more money, too. Why is there an open and vicious attack on Fair Use when record companies are making more than ever, as are artists' representation groups?

Why do they want to spare themselves the cost of civil lawsuits against infringers by goading the Department of Justice to bring civil cases themselves? Why is it that relatively no one is discussing how the RIAA bends its statistics to wrangle for more and more support for their business model? Why is it that the RIAA and friends want legal rights and powers that are not even available to law enforcement? Fair Use, that's why. It's the content industry's #1 enemy.
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040903-4156.html


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P2P Jail Bill Moves Forward
Andrew Orlowski

HR.4077 (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...mp/~c108JUxVww), the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, has been approved by the United States' House Judiciary Committee.

The bill specifies up to five years' jail for anyone making over a thousand copyrighted works available for download. That's if the infringer is profiting from the action: ordinary P2P users would face up to three years simply for making their collections available.

Thwarted by the courts, copyright holders and their lobby groups, notably the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA), have been forced to file "John Doe" suits against infringers. But HR.4077 brings the full power of the state to their aid:

The FBI will be required to serve as propaganda ministry, or in the words of the bill, "develop a program based on providing of information and notice to deter members of the public from committing acts of copyright infringement through the Internet," and enforcer.

The Feds must "facilitate the sharing among law enforcement agencies, Internet service providers, and copyright owners of information concerning acts of copyright infringement described in paragraph".

The committee asks Congress to discourage the P2P networks from deploying the "guns don't kill people" defence.

"Publicly available peer-to-peer file-sharing services can and should adopt reasonable business practices and use technology in the marketplace to address the existing risks posed to consumers by their services and facilitate the legitimate use of peer-to-peer file sharing technology and software."

The bill also makes it illegal to use a video recorder in a cinema to capture a movie.

The chairman of the House Committee which nodded through the measure, Rep James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis), was paid $18,000 by the Recording Industry Ass. of America to make a trip to Taiwan and Thailand in January 2003, a breach of the House ethics rules, say critics. [WaPo (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/ A57306-2003Apr29) | Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/17/ congressman_pocketed/)] Sensenbrenner said it was a "fact-finding mission", even though his schedule was arranged by the State Department.

But the distinction between State and corporate interests are now so close as to be indistinguishable.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09...bill_approved/


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Evil’s average face?

Record Labels' Man In Washington
Declan McCullagh

Mitch Glazier is one of the most influential lobbyists you've never heard of.

Glazier, 38, is responsible for persuading Congress to heed what the Recording Industry Association of America wants. His latest project is to seek support for a slew of bills, some with criminal penalties, that the RIAA hopes will prompt Americans to think twice before sharing music on peer-to-peer networks.

Before joining the RIAA in February 2000, Glazier was an aide to the very committees he's now targeting as the music trade association's senior vice president for government relations. Glazier
previously worked at the Chicago law firm Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg and went to law school at Vanderbilt University.

CNET News.com spoke with Glazier at a recent conference here about the Republican National Convention, outlawing the iPod, his rocky relationship with open-source activists and what new laws are imminent.

Q: You've been busy suing thousands of individuals. Do you have any regrets?
A: No, it's worked. For mainstream users, it was absolutely necessary to educate them that this kind of intangible theft is theft and causes real damage. Sometimes the only way to do that is to enforce your rights.

Do you ever read open-source or free-software advocacy sites like Slashdot?
I don't personally, unless it's forwarded to me by our news guys.

Do you think that in those circles, you or the Motion Picture Association of America is disliked more?
Certain folks in the grassroots part of the tech community see the Internet as a revolutionary tool in a manner that will completely upset any kind of institutional organization that has existed in the past, and anything short of that utopian revolutionary result will be viewed as a failure. The music
We're very open- minded in supporting any alternative that successfully targets the bad actors and successfully does not target legitimate actors-- period.
industry happens to be the industry that was the first hit because of bit size. We have been the first poster children. If you had to compare by focus, we probably win only because movies take a lot longer to download so they haven't been victimized as much as we have been.

Do you ever feel personally attacked?
Generally, I don't. I do when I speak on campuses around the country or when I speak in front of certain audiences. I don't take it personally, because anyone else would be equally attacked. It's the position that I hold. I'm an advocate. In that position, I'm going to suffer some attacks.

You've been a big fan of the Induce Act, which was supposed to outlaw file-swapping networks and any other products that "induce" piracy. What do you think of one proposed alternative to the Induce Act, which is more narrow?
As drafted, I don't think that it achieves the purpose set out. I'm not sure that a business that utilizes peer-to-peer in order to profit by encouraging mass infringement would actually be held liable. But I think the Consumer Electronics Association should be commended for putting on the table a serious proposal that contains a very interesting idea, intended to separate legitimate manufacturers from illegitimate pirates.

What are the odds of getting some version of the Induce Act enacted this year?
I think they're good. You couldn't tell by just talking to each of the parties. But if you look at where everybody is now, (they're talking about) isolating the bad actors in a manner that doesn't require any technological mandates, has no functional specifications and has the goal of assuring that no legitimate actor gets caught in the net.

You preferred the original Induce Act. How far are you willing to go?
There's no way that a company that produces great digital rights management for a licensed product is ever going to be shown to want to profit from piracy.
We're very open-minded in supporting any alternative that successfully targets the bad actors and successfully does not target legitimate actors--period. The original Induce Act, we support, because it had the element of intent, which was meant to draw the line between the good guys and the bad guys. The sensitivities about this legislation don't come from us. Really, they come from the IT community, which has very legitimate concerns.

There has been speculation that the original Induce Act could make Apple Computer liable for selling like the iPod. Could it?
No.

Why not?
The original Induce Act focused on the totality of the circumstances. There's no way that a company that produces great digital rights management for a licensed product is ever going to be shown to want to profit from piracy.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation drafted a faux complaint that said the iPod could be at risk.
They forgot the word "intent." It's a key element. State of mind is the key element of the Induce Act. Overt acts that show state of mind for purposes of proof are key elements of the Induce Act. That said, we understand that in this atmosphere, corporations would like assurances that they're able to continue the legitimate activities that they're in the business of conducting.

You're also backing the Pirate Act, which encourages the Department of Justice to sue file traders. The Senate has approved it, but what are its prospects in the House of Representatives?
The House and Senate staff work well together, and when they get together to make recommendations about what an intellectual-property package should look like this year, they'll take a look at each of those pieces and try to figure out what best meets the goal of each chairman.

An intellectual property package? Are you going to be pushing for that by the end of the year?
I don't know. It's worked different ways in past Congresses. For example, on the Pirate Act, which the House hasn't considered, the House could say, "With the following changes, we think that the Pirate Act achieves the goals of this committee." The Senate could then approve those changes.

You envision this happening, even with no hearings on the Pirate Act in the House?
I think that each committee has to determine whether there has been enough process on each bill. There have been no hearings on the Piracy Deterrence bill--that the House is about to move--in the Senate. There have been no hearings on the Induce bill in the House. Only the committees can determine whether there's been enough process on each bill.

Are you thinking of an end-of-2004 appropriations bill as a way to get this legislation through?
We're not thinking anything -- it's (up to the committees). But no, I don't think so.

How big of a threat to you is the legislation to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "anti-circumvention" section?
We're concerned by it. We think it's a terrible precedent. I don't think there's a chance that it goes into law this year. I don't know what (House Commerce Chairman Joe Barton's) plans are for September. I hope that we've done effective advocacy so that the members of the committee don't push it to the floor.

The 9th Circuit handed you a bitter defeat by protecting Grokster and Morpheus. What's next?
No decision's been made. If the record companies decide to appeal to the Supreme Court, the Grokster decision directly contradicts what Judge Posner ruled upon in the 7th Circuit in the Aimster case. There is a clear split in the circuits on the issue of willful blindness, of pulling down the shade in your architecture so you're not aware of any specific infringement, even though you're well aware that you're producing mass infringement. It's ripe for review.

Has the RIAA changed what it's hoping to accomplish against file-trading networks through legislation or litigation?
The overall policy hasn't changed. The ultimate goal is still the same, which is to produce the most investment in the creative process. We signed (a peace accord with the computer industry) agreeing that tech mandates are not the way to go. But coming up with an actual implementation of how you will target Kazaa (is more difficult).

By suing Morpheus, might you drive other networks further underground?
By suing Kazaa, you might force more people to go to eDonkey. But there's always going to be companies that are willing to do this, despite the risks. Our job is to make the risks high enough that fewer companies are interested in taking those risks.

What are your plans regarding open-source or free software that facilitates file sharing, which tends to be hosted at sites like SourceForge?
I don't know yet. We have dealt with the individual development of peer-to-peer systems on college campuses when the OpenNap systems were being developed. We have stopped college students from developing independent networks and exporting those to other colleges. My guess is that we would have to proceed the same way. But no decision has been made in antipiracy strategy for open source yet.

When will you decide?
We're thinking about it now. Our antipiracy department, headed by Brad Buckles, is constantly searching for how people are pirating our materials. There are lots of ways of trying to deal with it. Some include litigation.

You've failed to persuade the Justice Department to prosecute P2P users using the Net Act. What happens next?
The department realizes that under the Net Act, as it exists, it is possible to prosecute people. But the thresholds written in the Net Act are not an exact fit with the type of piracy. Does that mean uploading a thousand files? Does it mean downloading a thousand files? Does it mean 99 cents a file? If you put up one file that's downloaded a thousand times? Is making it available in your shared folder enough, when it's impossible to prove how many times it's downloaded?

Even if the bill passes, will prosecutors seeking career advancement target college kids over terrorists?
The Department of Justice would never--and we would never ask them to--go after a college kid for copyright piracy in lieu of going after terrorists. Zero money dedicated to the Department of Justice's counterterrorism unit would ever go after someone accused of copyright piracy.

So you think they'll be willing to go after big-time P2P pirates?
They might. We think it's important to prosecute, for deterrence reasons, end users so that a message is sent and people understand that this is criminal activity. Sometimes when a case is prosecuted, people will understand that it isn't right. This is stealing. I don't think anyone is asking the Department of Justice to commit all of its resources to bringing millions of cases against end users. But there are legitimate cases that should be pursued.

Sen. Orrin Hatch has talked about prosecutors filing "tens of thousands" of lawsuits. Is that what you'd like?
We would want the Department of Justice to use its best judgment in prosecuting serious infringers.

You wouldn't object?
No, of course not. But we wouldn't propose it, either.

What's your take on Canada, where it's perfectly legal to download as much music as you can fit on your hard drive?
Canadian law was written a long time ago with the idea of getting material out to the hinterlands, to the northern territories, to the Yukon. I think that its legislature is going to have to grapple with laws written for a good purpose in a different time, when things like P2P weren't available at all.

I hear that you threw a wild party at the Democratic National Convention.
It wasn't a wild party. We threw a great party at the Democratic convention; we're going to throw a great party at the Republican convention. Our goal is to get some of the music that our artists create to our policymakers. Music is a great tool, because it speaks by itself.

What artists will you have?
We had the Black Eyed Peas. At the Republican convention, we'll have Kid Rock.

Does that say anything about their respective political views?
Actually, they're both really cool, hip artists. The nice thing about our parties at the convention is that they're much more about music than politics. There's no stress on politics. (We're co-sponsoring) the party with Intel, TechNet and the Consumer Electronics Association.

At the business level, we're all partners. Our companies and the technology companies are cutting deals every day on new distribution methods. Sometimes, we get too hung up in the policy debate, where it looks like content versus tech. Only in Washington are we sitting on opposite sides of the table.

Rep. Howard Berman didn't re-introduce his bill that would allow copyright holders to disrupt P2P networks. Were you disappointed?

We didn't ask him to introduce it the first time. We thought the intent behind the bill was terrific. We thought the bill, as drafted, didn't come near the kinds of activities that its critics said it did.

It created such a controversy by those who misinterpreted it, focusing on those technological (countermeasures). Given the controversy, I think that it's not a big enough piece of the puzzle to justify the effort, even though it's right.
http://news.com.com/2008-1028-5345853.html


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Copyright Proposal Induces Worry
Katie Dean

Copyright officials recommended on Thursday that U.S. law be amended so that companies that rely on copyright infringement to make a profit can be held liable for their actions.

The U.S. Copyright Office delivered its recommendations to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had asked for advice in developing proper language for the proposed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (SB2560). The initial version of the bill, which would hold technology companies liable if they make products that encourage people to infringe copyrights, generated a firestorm of criticism from technology and consumer groups alike.

But while the copyright office -- which released its recommendations publicly on Friday -- clearly made a good- faith effort to address the concerns of the music and movie industries, technology companies and consumers, critics said the bill would take copyright law in a dangerous direction.

"The copyright office is now suggesting the exploration of a new and radically unprecedented approach to copyright law," said Bob Schwartz, counsel for the Consumer Electronics Association and the Home Recording Rights Coalition. "It would not require that a defendant in a copyright suit have any knowledge of infringing conduct, any relationship with a particular infringer or any intent to commit a violation of the law."

The copyright office proposed that a company that makes technologies that help individuals digitally transmit copyright materials to the public will be liable if the firm relies on such infringing activities to make money or attract people to its service.

In a memorandum to the Senate Judiciary Committee, officials from the Copyright Office wrote that they believe their recommendation is the best approach to catch current P2P services built on copyright infringement and is flexible enough to target future "bad actors" as well.

But critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the Copyright Office's proposal would undo protections provided in the landmark 1984 Supreme Court ruling establishing the legality of the Sony Betamax video recorder. In that ruling, which an appeals court referred to when it upheld the legality of P2P networks like Grokster, judges held that companies are not liable for copyright infringement if the device they make is capable of substantial non-infringing uses.

But that decision predated the spread of the internet. The copyright office contends that the Betamax ruling addresses personal copying technology, not applications that can be used to distribute copyright materials to a wide audience, such as online peer-to-peer networks.

"This draft is scary," said Will Rodger, director of public policy for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, regarding the copyright office's recommendations.

For the first time ever, Rodger wrote in an e-mail, it would make it possible for someone who has not infringed to be liable for others' infringement.

"They want to reach anyone who creates a product that turns out to be used for infringements -- how do you know that in advance?" said Mike Godwin, legal director for Public Knowledge. "You could have the noblest motives in the world and still be liable under this proposal."

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America -- both of which support the Induce Act -- said Friday that they were still reviewing the recommendations and did not have any immediate comment.

Introduced in June by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the Induce Act would hold technology companies liable if they manufacture products that could encourage people to infringe copyright. At a heated hearing on the bill in July, both senators made it clear that they want to address the P2P issue quickly to stop massive infringement that plagues the entertainment industry, and asked for help from the copyright office and other witnesses.

In response, other groups have proposed their own versions of the Induce Act. CEA and Public Knowledge, among other technology and consumer groups, last month submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee a more narrow form of the bill that targets only those who distribute products designed for wide-scale piracy on digital networks.

Godwin said that with so many different proposals to consider, the committee should hold more hearings on the Induce bill before proceeding.

The EFF, which is opposed to the Induce legislation in any form, said the copyright office's recommendations will do nothing to stop peer-to-peer file sharing.

"It will allow the RIAA to beat up on specific companies like Kazaa or Grokster or folks who are making money off of particular P2P applications," said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the EFF, "but with over 130 applications already available, you're never going to shut them all down, especially ones that don't make any money."

"It's still going to wreak havoc on all kinds of industries that have nothing to do with peer to peer," he said.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64870,00.html


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Software Pirates Not Safe At Home
Richard Pamatatau

New Zealand software pirates risk extradition to the United States following a ground-breaking ruling against an Australian man accused of pirating software, games and music worth up to US$50 million.

Mark Kelly, senior associate at Auckland's Simpson Grierson, said the Hew Raymond Griffiths case in Australia confirmed that people based in one country and accused of software piracy could be brought to justice in another under extradition law.

Locally, Microsoft has led the charge against software piracy and brought prosecutions against individuals infringing its copyright.

The largest software piracy cases involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kelly said the United States was on an international hunt for internet pirates.

US crime agencies fought hard to obtain an order to extradite Griffiths following an unsuccessful attempt where an Australian magistrate denied their extradition request.

The US appealed against that decision and has now won the right to try Griffiths in the US.

Kelly said that ringleader Griffiths, who went under the online name BanDiDo, was an Australian who had never been to the US.

He said the case was making Australian legal history because it was the first extradition case under copyright law.

"This case confirms that internet pirates based in one country are not always safe from the laws of other countries."

Griffiths has been charged in the US with conspiracy to infringe copyright and copyright infringement, for reproducing without authority and distributing software protected by copyright on the internet.

The US alleges that Griffiths was the ringleader of an internet group called DrinkorDie which allegedly worked from a computer network at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Griffiths helped to control access to the network, though it is not alleged that he made money from his activities.

Eleven DrinkOrDie members already have been convicted in the US.

Kelly said Griffiths' alleged infringements all took place on his home computer in Australia.

Should the extradition and trial proceed he faced up to 10 years in an American jail and a fine of up to US$500,000.

Wayne Hudson, Software Exporters Association president, said his organisation would watch the developments with interest.

He said the issue of software piracy might have increasing significance in free trade agreements.

Copyright infringement was a huge issue globally but especially in China, he said, so the case might have implications there as well.

While the copyright offences were "found to have occurred in the US", Griffiths had never been to the US and was not a "fugitive" in the sense that he was fleeing and hiding from the extradition-seeking country, Hudson said.

Kelly said: "It means technically that a software pirate in Grey Lynn could end up in an American court, even though copyright infringement or conspiracy to do so are not the usual offences that come before the court."

He said It could also mean that Australians infringing New Zealand copyright could be extradited and vice versa.

Under New Zealand law, if a person accused or convicted of an "extradition offence" is suspected of being in another country, or on his or her way to another country, New Zealand may request that country to surrender the person under the Extradition Act 1999. The maximum penalty is jail for at least a year.

Kelly said New Zealand could seek extradition of copyright pirates and trademark counterfeiters if the actions of those offenders fell within the relevant New Zealand legislation such as the Copyright Act, which carries a five-year maximum prison sentence.

Microsoft spokeswoman Carol Leishman said her company preferred to take action in the local jurisdiction. It had already brought successful actions around the world.

She said Microsoft would continue to watch developments.

Maarten Kleintjes, national manager for the NZ Police electronic crime laboratory, said his group would look at cases of copyright infringement if they were sufficiently serious.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydispl...toryID=3589541


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DotPH Releases 'Anonymous' Domain

The Domain Registry of the Philippines, DotPH, is releasing a personalized domain for end-users and bloggers.

i.ph will be made available for individuals who want to establish a presence on the World Wide Web at low cost. It will be pegged at $5.00 a year, slightly higher than the wholesale price of $3.75.

Once fully marketed, i.ph will an anonymous domain, requiring only a mobile phone and an electronic mail address to activate.

i.ph is also one of the first domains to support Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next generation Internet Protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force to replace the current version Internet Protocol IP version 4 (IPv4).

IPv6 is a transition standard that improves on the existing number of available IPv4 addresses and develops routing and network auto configuration.

According to DoPH, i.ph is geared to support blogging and individual use of electronic publishing.

A blog is a journal available on the web while blogging is the process of updating a blog. Bloggers are people who maintain blogs and use them for personal purposes. Blogs are typically updated daily using software suited for people with little or no technical training. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order.

Frequently, bloggers choose to expound their ideas without revealing their identity. i.ph will allow this, while protecting trademarks and intellectual property concerns by providing a means to resolve domain name disputes by a neutral 3rd party.

DotPH will apply international standard of Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy in settling possible disputes related to i.ph.

The company initially polled users about a domain for individuals at the end of 2002. The feedback gathered was overwhelmingly positive, as long as the price was affordable to individuals

"People have also told us that a low-cost domain is essential for the promotion of Internet usage in the Philippines. We're hoping that i.ph, affordable and perfect for blogging, will encourage people to establish an Internet presence," said PH ccTLD manager Jose Emmanuel Disini.

The i.ph domain will initially be available from accredited DotPH registrars only.
http://www.itmatters.com.ph/news/news_09082004h.html


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Sorry, E.T., But Parcel Post May Beat Phoning Home
Dennis Overbye

Ever since 1960, when a Cornell astronomer named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at a pair of nearby stars on the chance that he might hear a cosmic "howdy" from extraterrestrial beings, astronomers have persevered in the notion that radio or light waves could bridge the unbridgeable gulfs marooning civilizations in space and time.

So far there has been only silence, but in their wildest, most romantic moments, astronomers dream of tapping into a kind of galactic library in which the knowledge and records of long-dead civilizations are beamed across the galaxy.

Now, however, it appears that E.T. might be better off using snail mail.

According to new calculations being published by a physicist and an electrical engineer today in the journal Nature, it is enormously more efficient to send a long message as a physical package, a cosmic FedEx, than as radio wave or laser pulse. As a result, say the authors, Dr. Christopher Rose, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Rutgers, and Dr. Gregory Wright, a physicist at Antipodes Associates in Fair Haven, N.J., searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence should pay more attention to how messages could be inscribed and delivered and where they might be found.

"Our results suggest that carefully searching our own planetary backyard may be as likely to reveal evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations as studying distant stars through telescopes," they wrote.

In an accompanying commentary, Dr. Woodruff T. Sullivan of the University of Washington said that although this was not a new idea, the new paper was the first quantitative analysis of the comparative costs of the ways of delivering information between the stars. He compared the notion of a message in a bottle to the monolith left as a calling card by aliens in "2001: A Space Odyssey," adding, "If astroarchaeologists were to find such, it would hardly be the first time that science fiction had become science fact."

Although the result sounds counterintuitive, the problem will be familiar to anyone who ever spent time shrinking a digital photograph before trying to send it over the Internet through a dial-up connection. It would be much easier to drive a truck of photo albums across town or put them in an overnight-mail box than to go through the process of scanning and shrinking each photo.

The paper, Nature's cover article, is being received with bemusement by veterans of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI.

Dr. Paul Horowitz, a Harvard physicist and SETI expert, called it "a fun and an enjoyable read, but I wouldn't turn off my radio telescope and go out with my butterfly net."

The new argument is based on a simple observation. The farther a light beam or radio wave is sent, the more it spreads out, and the smaller fraction of its energy is recaptured at the other end. Moreover, if the recipients are not looking in the right direction at the right frequency when the signal arrives, it will shoot past and be lost. A letter, by contrast, does not disperse in transit, and waits at its destination until it is read.

And with modern nanotechnology, the authors point out, that letter can contain quite a lot. Some 1022 bits of information - much more than the sum of all the written and electronic information on Earth - can be encoded into a cube weighing about 2.2 pounds, Dr. Rose and Dr. Wright say.

Even allowing for thousands of pounds of lead to protect the message from cosmic rays and the weight of fuel, they calculated that it would take 100 million times as much energy to radiate those bits from the world's largest radio telescope to an antenna 10,000 light-years away as to send it them in a "letter."

The hitch is that the package could not travel as fast as radio waves. At only one-thousandth the speed of light, it could take 20 million or 30 million years to reach distant stars, but that is still a blink compared with the galaxy's age, 10 billion years.

The main advantage of radio waves, the authors argue, is the possibility of two-way communication. But other beings could be so far away - hundreds or thousands of light-years - that even at the speed of light a reply would be impossible.

"If you're simply trying to say, 'Here we are,' a radio wave is the best way to do it," Dr. Rose said in an interview. But he added that any detailed information would require a long message. Still, he acknowledged that someone out there might be trying to communicate that way.

"We'd be goofy not to keep looking for radio waves," he said.

Dr. Jill Tarter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, intends to keep on doing just that. "We've always reserved the right to get smarter and add new search strategies to our arsenals," she said. "For me personally, I'm sticking with radio."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/02/na...02message.html


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Back up, back up, back up

Literary Treasures Lost in Fire at German Library


The director of the Anna Amalia Library, Michael Knoche, with a damaged book.
Sascha Fromm/Thüringer Allgemeine

Kirsten Grieshaber

BERLIN, Sept. 3. - Up to 30,000 irreplaceable books were destroyed in a fire on Thursday night at one of Germany's most historic libraries, in the eastern city of Weimar, officials said on Friday.

Among the literary treasures lost at the Anna Amalia Library were thousands of works from the 16th to 18th centuries belonging to the collection of the first Weimar librarian, Daniel Schurzfleisch, and the sheet music archive of the library's patron, Anna Amalia (1739-1807), the duchess of Saxony-Weimar. Another 40,000 books were damaged by smoke and the water used by the firefighters, and are being frozen in an effort to preserve them so they can be sent to Leipzig for restoration. The cause of the blaze was unclear.

"The literary memory of Germany has suffered severe damage," German Culture Minister Christina Weiss said after she inspected the scene. "A piece of the world's cultural heritage has been lost forever." Ms. Weiss promised that the federal government would offer major assistance in restoring the books and the library, which is in a 16th-century rococo palace.

The cost of the damage will probably be in the millions of dollars, said Hellmut Seemann, the president of the Weimar Classics Foundation, which manages the library. In a statement, the Weimar City Council said the market value of the books damaged and destroyed could not be estimated exactly, because they were unique and not insured.

The fire, which broke out in the attic of the building and then reached the Rococo Hall, which held much of the collection, raged for two hours before more than 300 firefighters brought it under control.

Some 120,000 books, including a 1534 Bible owned by Martin Luther, were saved when firefighters and Weimar residents formed a human chain to rescue them. Among the works that survived was the world's largest collection of copies of Goethe's "Faust." The library was founded in 1691 and has a collection, in several locations in Weimar, of about one million books, focusing on German literature from 1750 to 1850. The collection includes some 2,000 handwritten documents, 8,400 maps and many historic copies of the Bible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/books/04libr.html


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Return of the Customer
John Newton

p2pnet.net Opinion

"Consumers may not be getting what they think when they pay to download music. After years of resisting the inevitable, the music industry has responded to the music download phenomenon by offering music in digital formats through online stores.

"Meanwhile, the popularity of file-trading software, which allows users to download music and video for free, continues to grow. The music industry has made great efforts to stop peer-to-peer music sharing. Those efforts include suing individuals in the U.S., the attempt to do so in Canada and lobbying efforts to lawmakers. The music industry is trying to use the law to prop up an outdated business model. This is no surprise as the entertainment industry has a history of trying to prevent new technology. They tried to stop the VCR (the Sony Betamax case) because they feared it would cost them revenue, but quite the opposite has proven to be true."

The above quotes come from David Canton, a Canadian freelancer in London, Ontario, whose piece, Pay music services have limits, appears in the London Free Press business section.

Canton has the picture firmly in frame but what's equally interesting is the fact his story appears not so much when it does, but where it does.

You could almost call the London Free Press a grass-roots daily and when stories such as this start turning up in this kind of media outlet, you know the writing is on the wall.

Through its RIAA (Recording Industry Association) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association) enforcement units, the entertainment industry has been riding rough-shod over consumers ever since Napster - the original, not the ghastly Napster II travesty - showed up online.

Its appearance represented the first act in a commercial revolution which pits ordinary people against the huge corporate interests who've been in firm control ever since the first movie first recording cylinder were made.

'Consumers' got what they were given. They liked it or lumped it.

But that's not the case any more.

'Consumers' are 'customers' again and they're exercising their choices and hitherto blocked-off rights in ways never before available to them.

Entertainment industry 'product' is out there in all its glory. But people are deciding for themselves whether or not they want it.

It used to be that you bought a single, or an LP or a CD or DVD knowing you were shelling out for two or three decent tracks - if you were lucky. The remaining 85% were probably garbage.

Or you went to a movie hyped by the hype and trailers, only to find it had two good scenes - if you were lucky. You either walked or suffered through 90 minutes of dross.

Thanks to p2p, in the 21st century, you can sample the entertainment industry's goods - all of them, not just catchy bits with hooks - and then decide if you want them. Or not.

The Big Music cartel - with only four members - and the Major Studios claim their businesses are being devasted by file sharing. But this is pure nonsense.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was the most-posted movie on the p2p networks in April. But it's just achieved another record. It's the best-selling R movie ever and after doing gang-busters in the theatres, p2p networks notwithstanding, it's so far sold 4.1 million copies on DVD.

Janis Ian's career saw an upturn when she decided to put her music online.

These are just two examples of what's happening,. There are hundreds more.

The days of wine and roses are over for the entertainment industry. It can no longer charge whatever it wants for shoddy, shabby product and get away with it.

Sooner or later, it'll have to start using p2p as a marketing, distribution and sales vehicle, tapping the hundreds of millions of people who'd be more than happy to buy product once again.

And in the process they'd be taking a large step towards dealing with the 'pirates' - the true, hard-core professional criminals, not the moms-and-pops, who are making their fortunes by copying and distributing entertainment industry product on- and offline.

The Counterfeit Crooks would find it difficult, if not impossible, to compete head-to-head with readily available, non-physical product carried online at reasonable prices.

Big Music continues to pursue its bloody-minded sue 'em all campaign, attempting to terrorize people into buying 'product'. And having been soundly whipped in the courts through the recent Grokster / Morpheus decision, the MPAA will probably try to do the same, using Hollywood conceived and promoted legislation such INDUCE as its primary weapon of mass-destruction.

However, they're both beating a dead horse.

P2p is the competition. It's forcing the entertainment industry to think about what they're offering and how they're offering it. Garbage is no longer the acceptable norm.

And an old maxim the movie and music moguls thought they'd succeeded in burying is staging a re-appearance ...

... The Customer is Always Right.

And the customer plans to keep it that way.
http://p2pnet.net/story/2345


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Small provider scared by legal threats

ISP Blocks P2P By Default

One UK ISP named Vispa has apparently decided to block most p2p traffic by default, posting to their support board that the company had to take drastic action to avoid "possible heavy legal action". "At first we warned users by giving them a call, gave them a slap wrist, and asked them to remove software which had basically got them in trouble [but] we can't maintain this level of personal treatment, especially due to increased warnings." Yet if Vispa users call the ISP, they'll be unblocked if they apparently sign some kind of disclaimer.
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/53457


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Fifty bucks

Control Your Family's Phone Usage
Web advertisment



· Control incoming and outgoing calls
· Program 12 on/off cycles and four tables
· 911, 3 programmable emergency numbers can always be called
· Easy to install and tamper-resistant

You don't have to live with teenagers to know how high telephone bills can skyrocket. Whether you want your family to limit late-night phone calls or whether you have employees making international, long-distance, or 976 calls on your bill, the Telephone LineLok is a completely programmable telephone management system that will help your monthly phone bill reach a reasonable total. The LineLok allows you to set up when the phone and dial-up Internet can be used. Once you replace your existing phone jack with the LineLok, you can control when your telephone can be used without paying the phone company for long-distance blocking and operator-assisted calls. Use your telephone's keypad to program the LineLok; the LCD screen makes it easy. The timer allows you to set limits on when incoming and/or outgoing calls are blocked, so you can stop fighting with your kids about their late-night phone usage. You can even create your own four-digit password to bypass the LineLok. 911 calls can always be made, but you may also program three additional emergency numbers that can be called at any time. Lastly, the LineLok has a built-in dsl filter so that you can plug in a phone into one outlet (left side) and use the other (right side) for your dsl modem without the need for an external filter. Requires 2 AAA batteries (sold separately)
http://www.smarthome.com/9620.html


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In Internet Calling, Skype Is Living Up to the Hype
James Fallows

HOW big a deal will Skype turn out to be? I have no idea whether the company itself, which was founded one year ago, will someday come to epitomize and dominate a particular booming business, the way Google, eBay and Amazon now do. But I feel confident that the service it provides will be attractive to most people who give it a serious look.

Skype, a made-up term that rhymes with "tripe," is the most popular and sexiest application of VoIP, which doesn't rhyme with anything. VoIP - sometimes pronounced letter by letter, like C.I.A., and at other times as a word - stands for voice over Internet protocol. Essentially, it is a way of allowing a computer with a broadband connection to serve as a telephone.

This new form of conveying voice messages has so many advantages over traditional systems that the whole telecommunications industry is scrambling to see how fast it can shift traffic onto the Internet. AT&T, for example, is no longer recruiting new home customers, but it is offering many new VoIP services. Dozens of other companies - new ones like Vonage and established ones like Verizon - are selling VoIP services, too.

Skype's distinction is that, for now at least, it is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way for individual customers to begin using VoIP. It works this way:

First, you download free software from skype.com. Skype runs on most major operating systems, including Windows XP and 2000, Linux, Pocket PC for portable devices and, as of this summer, Mac OS. On three of the computers on which I installed it, it ran with no tweaking at all. On the fourth, I had to change one setting for the sound card, following easy instructions on the site.

While running, Skype sits in a little window, like an instant-messenger program, and lets you to talk with other users in two ways. If the other person has Skype installed, you can talk as long as you want, free, and with sound quality that is startlingly better than that of a normal phone connection. Over the years, I have learned to say "that's 'F' as in Frank" when spelling my last name on the phone, because normal phone lines don't carry the frequencies that distinguish "F" from "S." Listening to a conversation on Skype, by contrast, is like listening to a radio program over streaming audio. The sound comes from speakers that are built into most laptop computers or attached to most desktops.

You'll need a microphone. Most laptops come with nearly invisible but quite effective tiny microphones embedded near the keyboard. (It may look odd to be talking to your laptop while using Skype, but in the cellphone age, we've all seen worse.) At either a desktop or a laptop computer, you can use a separate microphone or, less awkwardly, a phone handset or headset that plugs into a computer port. Skype sells headsets for $15 and up. I got the cheapest model, which works fine.

You can also reach people who don't use Skype, through a new service called SkypeOut. This allows you to dial nearly any cellular or land-line telephone number in any country and talk. Though it isn't free, it's really cheap. Skype's prices are in euros - its founders are Scandinavian, the main programmers are Estonian and its headquarters are in Luxembourg - and they average two or three American cents a minute, at any time of day. With a credit card, you buy calling time in units of 10 euros ($12.18), which are deducted automatically as you talk.

I started with 10 euros. After my wife talked to her sister in Italy for a half-hour and I made one quick call to the Philippines and five more within the United States, we still had 9.10 euros left.

Another time, I spoke from Washington simultaneously with my son in San Francisco and his business partner who was visiting Bangalore, India. (Up to five parties can participate in a Skype conference call.) All of us were at computers running Skype, so the conversation was free. The sound quality was sharp; it was about like speaking in person, and the connection had none of the satellite-bounce delay of normal transoceanic phone calls. Skype also allows file transfers and instant text messages during these computer-to-computer sessions.

There is one huge drawback: Skype works best from a fully connected computer, which runs counter to the whole trend of ever more mobile communication. At the end of Skype's first year in business, I spoke with its co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom - via SkypeOut, on his cellphone in London - about his ambitions for the second year. High on his list were partnerships with manufacturers of cellphones and personal digital assistants, to build in compatibility with Skype. The company will also sustain its push to sign up new users. Skype says it has about 10 million users in 212 countries, with an average of more than 600,000 logged on at any given time.

SKYPE illustrates network economics in the purest form: free connections within the network become more valuable to each user as more users sign up. Because of the system's peer-to-peer design, loosely related to the Kazaa file-sharing program that Mr. Zennstrom and Skype's other co-founder, Janus Friis, invented four years ago, the system scales well - that is, it doesn't bog down as more users join. The peer-to-peer design also allows it to work behind most Internet firewalls.

Skype's own economics, including its promise that it will never impose a charge for Skype-to-Skype connections, depend on maintaining its rock-bottom cost structure and slowly adding revenue, through services like SkypeOut and future voice-mail and video-call services. The drive to hold down costs is also what originally took Mr. Zennstrom, a Swede, and Mr. Friis, a Dane, to Estonia. As Mr. Zennstrom sees it, during the "bubble years" in Sweden, programmers lost some of the hungriness and hustle he could still find in the Baltics.

The risks make it hard to predict the company's future. The world's existing telecom companies, battered for more than a decade by technical, regulatory and marketing changes, will presumably want to answer this latest challenge. Mr. Zennstrom says the telecoms should view Skype as healthily "disruptive technology" and respond by reinventing their business - as I.B.M. has done since the rise of the personal computer - instead of pouting their way into decline.

From the individual user's point of view, there are also questions about whether this new form of instant access could become as oppressively intrusive as e-mail often seems. But at this moment, it's hard to resist.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/bu...ey/05tech.html


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Citing Threats, Entrepreneur Wants to Quit Caller ID Venture
Ken Belson

It may be known as caller ID spoofing, but it is evidently no laughing matter.

Three days after the start-up company Star38 began offering a service that fools caller ID systems, the founder, Jason Jepson, has decided to sell the business. Mr. Jepson said he had received harassing e-mail and phone messages and even a death threat taped to his front door - all he said from people opposed to his publicizing a commercial version of technology that until now has been mainly used by software programmers and the computer hackers' underground.

For a fee, customers using the Star38.com Web site would be able to alter the number that would appear on the caller ID screen of the recipient's phone. The technique could mask the identity of a bill collector, for example, or enable a private investigator to fool someone into answering the phone on the false belief that a friend or relative was ringing.

Mr. Jepson said yesterday that he did not yet have any paying customers for the service. But he said he had received hundreds of messages from potential customers - as well as from people concerned that his product would invade their privacy. He also said he had received inquiries from five investors who were interested in investing in or buying his company.

"It generated a lot more interest than I ever thought it would," said Mr. Jepson, who noted he had spent only $3,000 to develop his service with the company's five other employees. But he said the threats had persuaded him to get out of the caller ID spoofing business.

"I was harassed," he said. "It's too much."

Mr. Jepson, an entrepreneur who lives in a gated community in Orange County, said he had hired a private investigator familiar with hackers, both to protect himself and his family and to try to determine the source of the threats.

He said that since he did not know specifically who was threatening him, he thought it would be fruitless to seek help from the police. "I don't want to go to the cops, who might not know what a hacker is," he said.

The reaction against Star38 is the type of friction that can arise between for-profit software companies and hackers who resent the commercialization of technology they believe should remain free.

"In most countercultures, there is an aspect of selling out," said Caleb Sima, the co-founder of Spi Dynamics, an Atlanta-based online security company. "People who make money off technology are deemed to have sold out. Anyone who has a unique idea and is making money is going to get badgered."

While network security consultants and some other technology professionals are known to have a cottage industry involving the use of caller ID spoofing, Mr. Jepson said the nature of the threats he had received made him conclude they had come from so-called phishers - people who use caller ID spoofing and online techniques to trick people into handing over confidential information.

The people who threatened him, he said, had already tapped his phone calls and had obtained details about how much money he last deposited into his checking account. "Some people," he said, "are pretty fired up about this."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/04/te.../04caller.html


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Burger King, AOL Join Digital Music 'Burger War'

The "burger wars" have become digital, with Burger King and AOL Music on Tuesday becoming the latest big-brand partners to serve up free music downloads with beef patties, trying to appeal to young adults.

The deal between AOL Music, owned by Time Warner's America Online, and privately held Miami-based Burger King, the No. 2 restaurant chain, comes on the heels of a similar deal announced in June between market leader McDonald's and Sony's Sony Connect music service.

From now through Oct. 3, Burger King restaurants across the country will give away one free music download with every purchase of an Original Whopper sandwich.

Customers can enter a unique download code found on their Whopper wrappers at the www.haveityourway.com Web site to get free music downloads from AOL Music, which offers 700,000 songs through a deal with online music provider MusicNet.

Neither Sony nor McDonald's have disclosed how many downloads have been sold through their promotion, which gave customers who bought a Big Mac Extra Value meal an access code for one free song download at the Sony Connect music store.

Burger King, with 7,700 restaurants in the United States, has suffered in recent years from lack of a clear identity in consumers' minds and shaky relations with franchisees.

But the chain recently said sales at U.S. restaurants open at least a year posted their biggest gain in four and a half years, thanks to new products and a quirky advertising campaign that has resonated with young consumers.

One restaurant analyst said that while Burger King was characteristically behind McDonald's in launching a music download promotion, he expected it would help the chain in its bid to appeal to consumers in their 20s.

"A lot of the Whopper (buyers) may be under pressure with gasoline prices, so it's a good deal," said Malcolm Knapp, president of restaurant research firm Malcolm M. Knapp. "If you are kind of hurting for cash because it's all going into your tank, it's kind of like a free meal."

The promotion will also help revitalize interest in the Whopper, one of the chain's core products, Knapp added.

Online music analysts said the promotions give the new services great exposure and also provide restaurant chains with an easy, fast way to reach younger audiences.

"It's easy to move files. The technical barriers are fewer than providing free CDs with burgers," said Mike McGuire, analyst with GartnerG2.

But he cautioned that music services might run the risk of devaluing their product just as music purchasing has started to rebound after three years of a protracted industry-wide sales slump, due to various factors, including rampant online piracy, competition from other products like video games and general economic conditions.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5350018.html


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Bombs away

Three Minutes With Mark Cuban
Liane Cassavoy,

PCW: What is HDNet?

Cuban: HDNet is kind of a USA or TNT or TBS type network that has a wide variety of content, from sports--we have the NHL and major league soccer and auto racing--to interview shows like Roy Firestone. We just had an interview that got widely picked up that Roy did with Mike Tyson.

If you go to HD.net you'll see our whole schedule.

PCW: Is it one channel?

Cuban: It's two channels, actually. HDNet and HDNet Movies. On the movies channel we take movies that were either shot in high-def or were shot in 35 millimeter that we think are good movies and put them out there. It's just a wide variety of movies, but the key is they're all in original aspect ratio. They're all the best possible transfers because we're really fanatics about it. They were originally shot in high-def so that people are seeing really good movies, but they're seeing them for the first time in the original aspect ratio with 5.1 sound. Our tagline is "Movies Like You've Never Seen Them Before." We'll have everything from My Fair Lady to Godsend, which just came out from Lionsgate.

PCW: Can you show a 35mm movie in HD?

Cuban: You can convert it over because there's enough pixel information. But 16mm movies or stuff shot in digital video or on videotape, or movies that had their special effects done on videotape to save money look like crap. The newer movies are shot in 35mm or HD.

PCW: Who has access to HDNet?

Cuban: It's available everywhere. We have pretty much every cable company and every satellite company except for Comcast, but we're in discussions with them.

PCW: Can I access HDNet if I don't have an HDTV?

Cuban: No.

PCW: What computing devices do you use?

Cuban: I have two Sony VAIO laptops in front of me. One is a backup, one is a backup for a backup. Then I have a D-Link access point. I've got an old Snap Quantum drive, that is now like my third-level backup. I've got a removable 80GB drive that I also use as a backup. You can tell I get kind of freaky about backups. I've learned. I just bought a new Hewlett-Packard M1090n Media Center PC, which has the removable 160GB [Personal Media] drive. The reason I bought it was to do some testing, because I want to be able to take HDNet content, and see if we can distribute it on these removable drives--just jump past DVD as a distribution mechanism.

PCW: You mean distribute high-definition content on removable hard drives instead of on the next-generation DVD technologies you mentioned, HD-DVD and Blu-ray?

Cuban: Hard drives are far more efficient and more capable of storing future content than HD-DVD or Blu-ray. No question that those discs right now are smaller (physically), but they top out at a 50GB capacity. Drives don't have such limitations. They are increasing in storage and decreasing in size and price. Heck, it's not inconceivable that you could fit a 2-hour, high-definition movie on a small keychain drive within five years.

PCW: What kind of future plans do you have for HDNet?

Cuban: Right now we're just working on maximizing the opportunity there, in terms of over-the-air TV distribution. We're also looking at redistributing our content on distributable media, as I mentioned. We'll support HD-DVD, we'll support Blu-ray, we're not fans of copy protection, so everything we do is in the clear. I think that's a big joke, all the piracy concerns.

PCW: When you say redistributing your content on hard drives or other removable media, what will that mean to me as a viewer at home?

Cuban: Well hopefully you'll be able to buy or rent a hard drive with 5, 10, 20 movies on it. And you'll use your DVR, your PC, or your Media Center PC, and just through a 1394 port or a USB 2.0 port, you'll connect the hard drive. Or we might do a deal with Netflix or Wal-Mart where every month you get a new hard drive loaded with movies, and then you ship back your old ones, just like you do now with Netflix, when you ship back your DVDs when you're finished watching them. Why not just ship back the hard drive?

PCW: When do you think HDTV will be mainstream?

Cuban: Well, the one thing you need to know is you're not seeing any announcements from RCA, JVC, or any TV manufacturer announcing new analog TV plans. They're all getting out of the business. It's almost like a process of transition, like going from 286 to 386 to 486 to Pentium, in that you think what you have is good enough until you see the price points of the new stuff fall to a point where you say, why not?

PCW: And you think that will happen?

Cuban: Oh yeah, there's no question. Anybody who's buying a big-screen TV today, you can't even buy an analog TV. But I think people are waiting on plasma and I think within the next two Christmases you'll start to see plasmas under $1000.

PCW: What kinds of future technologies, not necessarily HDTV related, are you looking into?

Cuban: If you put aside biotech, because I don't really know anything about biotech, there's ultrawideband and there's some fiber-to-the-home things that I think are interesting. Right now, we're kind of in an application lull. We're at a point of diminishing returns with processor speed, so the PC industry and the technology industry have made audio/video in the home their holy grail for the next few years--whether it's faster wireless inside the home, whether it's a different distribution mechanism, whether it's HD in the PC, the media center stuff, so that's kind of the sweet spot right now.

But I think longer term, the biggest upside is going to come from mega-bandwidth to the home. When you start getting over 100 megabits [per second], it changes things; 5, 10, 20, even 30 [megabits per second] just lets you do traditional applications faster--it doesn't really open the door to new applications. But when you start getting past 100 megabits, then you can start doing things like take a consumer high-def camera or just a regular digital video camera for that matter, plug it into to a PC, and at 100 megabits you're going to get a crystal-clear resolution sending it back to your doctor.

For the elderly, I could see insurance companies investing in buying a video setup, which would enable the whole house or an apartment with cameras to keep an eye on the elderly or to set up a checkup PC where you just have a high-resolution Web cam and you have the person fill out a questionnaire online and have a doctor on the other side doing two-way video with them. If you can't get out of your house, that's the next best thing to being there.

PCW: How do you think that sort of technology would work for home entertainment?

Cuban: Well, home entertainment, you start to make all your devices wireless, which makes things a lot easier, and your home starts to look different. Just like on a mobile basis, our lives have changed because of mobile phones and two-ways and the like, I think the ability to have TVs and just place them anywhere, our homes will start to look different.

You might not necessarily have as much shelf space, you won't have the cabinets, you won't have the special media center furniture. Things will be on the wall, things will be moved. I think that will change. I think screens will get bigger and cheaper. TVs now are just PCs with remote controls instead of keyboards.

PCW: What do you think is the best thing to see in HD?

Cuban: Sports and movies and news. I think news is the best, because news right now is all about talking heads. It's "I'm in Iraq and the bombs are blowing up behind me." Whereas with our news, we have a show called HDNet World Report where we put cameras in all kinds of hot spots- -Iraq, wherever. And when we show a firefight or some sort of bombing, we don't have the reporter say anything. They just say, "We're in Iraq, we're in Baghdad, and there's a firefight going on, I'll shut up and let you watch it." And being able to see it in wide-screen high resolution with 5.1 sound, if you have a tank firing, you hear it coming out of one ear and see it leaving out of the other ear. It's just incredible. Just to be able to see it like you're actually sitting there is amazing.
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/prin...,117430,00.asp


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Internet? What Internet?

Summer Box Office Hits a High
Sharon Waxman

In a summer when many of the studios' biggest bets failed to pay off, it was familiarity in the form of sequels and low-budget comedies that resonated with movie audiences. The box office rose again in the summer of 2004 as it has in recent years, but this season it felt as if Hollywood found a way to give audiences their money's worth, industry executives said.

Epic, period, battle-heavy movies like Warner Brothers' $200 million "Troy," Universal's $140 million "Van Helsing" and Disney's similarly budgeted "King Arthur" were among the season's biggest disappointments, if only because they cost so much and were the most clearly discernable trend in moviemaking decisions.

Instead audiences seemed to want to laugh, and they rewarded movies like "Shrek 2," the biggest-grossing film of the summer, which took in a heart-stopping $436 million domestically.

Smaller-budgeted comedies also unexpectedly became major hits, including Fox's "Dodgeball," starring Ben Stiller, which made $113 million, and "Anchorman," starring Will Ferrell, which took in $84 million.

By comparison, "Van Helsing," with a budget several times that of "Dodgeball," took in $120 million domestically.

Sequels did surprisingly strong business, with the top earners including not just "Shrek 2" but also Sony's "Spider-Man 2," which got glowing reviews and took in $367 million domestically; "The Bourne Supremacy"; "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"; and "Princess Diaries 2."

Over all, the box office took in an estimated $3.986 billion between the beginning of May and Labor Day weekend this year, an increase of almost 3 percent over the 2003 total of $3.875 billion.

While industry professionals welcomed the increase, they noted that ticket prices were the main reason for it. The price of the average movie ticket rose by 3.6 percent while attendance dropped 0.76 percent, according to Exhibitor Relations, which tracks the box office.

The drop in attendance was much smaller, though, than that between the summer of 2002 and the summer of 2003, when attendance fell 1.89 percent.

The feeling within Hollywood at summer's end was that despite some uneven results, on the whole this season's movies delivered, unlike last year, when a raft of sequels like "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" came in for critical bashing and complaints during exit polls.

"Last year there were 15-plus sequels shoved down audiences' throats," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "Most left people with unsatisfied moviegoing experiences, and all I heard was complaints from people. There was nothing else to choose from."

This summer, he said, was different: "The quality was better. Box office and attendance are not the only thing. The important thing is creating good will with audiences. Last summer could've killed the future of sequels. But all was forgiven with this year's crop."

Adult-oriented movies struggled to stay afloat at the box office, among them "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Stepford Wives," which were both from Paramount and which both stalled at $59 million despite extensive marketing campaigns.

Fox Searchlight produced a bona fide indie hit in "Napoleon Dynamite," which was bought at this year's Sundance Film Festival for a few million dollars and played through half the summer, buoyed by word of mouth, taking in $22.3 million so far.

Among the studios, DreamWorks - which took criticism in the news media this summer for having a shallow production slate and an uncertain future - had the largest slice of the box office pie with "Shrek 2," "Anchorman" and "Collateral." Twentieth Century Fox also had a strong summer, with solid hits in the sci-fi Will Smith vehicle "I, Robot," the environmental disaster picture "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Dodgeball."

A Fox spokesman, Geoffrey Godsick, said the past three years had been the studio's most profitable in decades. "It's a great summer for us, our third record year in a row," he said.

Meanwhile Disney and Paramount struggled with their slates. Disney had two pricey bombs in "Around the World in 80 Days," which had a budget estimated at about $120 million but took in just $24 million, and "King Arthur," by one of the industry's most reliable producers, Jerry Bruckheimer, which had a budget of about $100 million but took in just $51 million.

Even "The Village," the thriller by the studio's pet director, M. Night Shyamalan, took in $110 million, less than anticipated.

Meanwhile, four movies opened this weekend, none of them capturing the top spots at the box office. "Paparazzi," produced by Mel Gibson, took in just $7.9 million for the four-day weekend after opening on 2,100 screens for Fox. Lions Gate's urban comedy "The Cookout" took in an estimated $6.1 million on about 1,300 screens.

Focus Features' Oscar-season costume drama, "Vanity Fair," starring Reese Witherspoon, took in $6.1 million on about 1,000 screens, while the MGM thriller "Wicker Park" had an even more disappointing performance, taking in just $6.8 million on 2,600 screens. None of the new films were able to dislodge Miramax's Chinese martial-arts film, "Hero," which remained No. 1, taking in $11.5 million over the weekend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/07/mo...oxo.html?8hpib


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Digital Music's Next Big Battle

The arrival of software that lets you search for and record digital music off the airwaves could raise legal issues that will make the P2P skirmishes look quaint by comparison.
Eric Hellweg

If you follow technology long enough, every once in awhile you’ll get a jolt—the sudden This Is Big realization when you see something new and grasp its potential to change the way you go about your life. I’ve received these jolts when first hearing of voice over IP (VoIP), when I first set up a home wireless network, and when I used Napster and Gnutella for the first time.

Last week, I received another jolt. This time, the shock of realizing amazing promise came when I checked out a new piece of software called TimeTrax. Created by 35-year-old Canadian programmer Scott MacLean, TimeTrax allows subscribers of XM Radio's satellite radio service to record music off the radio, appending track title and artist information to each song. Fans of indie rock could, for example, cue their satellite radio receivers to an indie rock station, click on Record in the TimeTrax software, go to sleep, and wake up the next day with eight hours' worth of music by the likes of The Fiery Furnaces and Spoon.

What's more, users can schedule the software to record a certain channel at a certain time, much the same way people can program a VCR or a TiVo to record a TV show while they're on vacation or at work. Right now the service only works with XM Radio on a device called the PCR, which the company sold so users could listen to satellite radio in their homes instead of just in their cars. Since TimeTrax came out, XM Radio discontinued the device, creating a lucrative market on eBay where the $49 retail units are selling for more than $350. MacLean says that the program has been downloaded about 7,000 times in the two weeks that it has been available.

TimeTrax is on the forefront of what will likely be the music and technology industry's next world war: the recording of broadcast digital audio. "We're at the beginning of the next P2P," says Jim Griffin, CEO of Cherry Lane Digital, a music and technology consultancy. "Peer-to-peer is small by comparison." What has Griffin and others interested is the concept that when radios all broadcast digital music signals, programs such as TimeTrax will allow users to search for and capture songs similar to how they do it today with programs such as Kazaa. Instead of grabbing a song from someone's hard drive, users will pluck it from the air via a digital radio signal. It's a new situation, which in part is what makes TimeTrax such an interesting case.

Already in Europe, devices have hit the market that allow users to do exactly what TimeTrax does through software, but have other built-in functionality such as the ability to rewind live radio for as long as 10 seconds so the beginning of a song a user likes can be recorded. These devices have taken off in Europe because the standard for digital radio is already in place. In the United States, by contrast, the standard is still being ratified and the rollout hasn't really started, with only satellite radio offering digital quality over the air. European radio stations broadcasting digitally use a standard called DAB, which stands for Digital Audio Broadcasting. The standard being considered in the United States is known as IBOC, for In-Band On Channel. Currently, the Federal Communications Commission is in its rule-making phase with the technology and is expected to issue a digital audio deadline mandate soon, similar to how it ordered all television stations to broadcast digitally by the end of 2006. Once the FCC makes its decision, radio stations will begin their march toward digital broadcasts, which programs such as TimeTrax can record.

As more U.S. radio stations go digital, and as more people sign up for satellite radio, the interest in these time-shifting recording programs will grow. TimeTrax creator MacLean is optimistic about digital radio recording's future: "It's gathering speed," he says. "I've had interest from a few companies to partner and move TimeTrax into other satellite programs and streaming audio." If such partnerships come about, consumers might be able to use TimeTrax on other satellite radio providers such as Sirius, and on the car stereo instead of just a device hooked up to a PC.

It's safe to say XM Radio isn't one of those companies. XM Radio has come out against the software, and the music industry is "reviewing" the situation. XM Radio issued MacLean a cease-and-desist letter, citing him for posting unauthorized copyrighted photos of the XM Radio PCR device, and demanded that he turn over the personal information of the people who have downloaded the program. MacLean promptly consulted a lawyer and refused both the requests. "I don't think they like the fact that it saves the stream as an MP3 file," says MacLean, who says he chose that file format because he needed strong compression.

TimeTrax and the emergence of digital radio recording tools in Europe are harbingers of the new concerns for the music and technology industries that digital radio will introduce. MacLean, for one, sees benefits from allowing people to record music off the radio. "I wrote XM after I received the cease-and-desist and told them I'm helping them out, that people are writing me telling me they're subscribing to XM now because of my tool," he says.
http://www.technologyreview.com/arti...lweg090704.asp


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The Digital Copyright Crisis
John Palfrey

TECHNOLOGIES don't infringe copyright; people do.

Napster hit the Internet in 1999, and within months every college student knew what "downloading" meant. It meant "free music," and many graduated college with hard- drives full of illegally copied songs.

Since then, the music industry has been in a life-and-death struggle against illegal downloading. And Hollywood sees the same freight train coming its way.

Napster, in its original form, couldn't survive. Not because it wasn't popular; to the contrary, it was a huge hit. But a federal court in California found that Napster could be held responsible for the copyright infringements of those millions of people around the world who illegally downloaded music.

Last month, a federal court in California reversed the trend by deciding a case called MGM v. Grokster. At issue is the legality of new types of Napster-like software, such as KaZaA, Morpheus, and Grokster. These technologies are a bit different from Napster because they are truly "peer-to-peer," or P2P, and have no central server coordinating the sharing of the music files. This time, the court ruled that the providers of the computer programs are not necessarily liable for the illegal copying of their users.

Given that so many people break the law every day using these networks by copying music files, how can this possibly be a good decision? Indeed, in the short term, the decision appears to be bad for many people who own copyrights -- the record companies, some of the artists who write and sing the songs, and the movie studios. The solution to the problem, though, is not to ban a new technology because it can be used to make illegal copies. Such logic would have left us in a world without VCRs, tape recorders, or photocopy machines. Such logic might even extend to computers themselves. After all, in a digital age, every time we surf the Internet, save a file to our hard drives, or share files on a network, we make copies. Copyright law is out of date.Most users embrace KaZaA and the like to access free music, mostly illegally. But these networks are used for legal purposes, too. The musician Wilco gathered a grassroots fan base by distributing some of his songs over P2P networks. P2P Congress recently distributed video footage of Senate Judiciary Hearings via these networks. The fact that programs like Grokster can be used for virtually limitless legal, creative, beneficial purposes helped prove their legitimacy to the court.This decision underscores a larger point: Rather than fight the emerging technologies, we'd be better served to find new ways to embrace them.The success of Apple's iTunes-iPod combination demonstrates that, when given the choice of going legit or continuing to cheat, many people will go legit -- particularly if the option is easy and cool enough. We should figure out how to offer legitimate services that enable people to be accountable to one another online, using innovations like Creative Commons licenses, which make sharing legitimately much easier.Others argue for even more fundamental changes in the way copyright works. William W. Fisher, an intellectual property law professor at Harvard Law School, favors replacing the copyright regime with an alternative system of compensation. Internet users would pay a monthly fee -- about $5 per month -- that would be pooled and then paid to artists based on how often consumers listened to their works. Fisher's model suggests that it's possible to provide unlimited music, and eventually movies, online for approximately the price of your Blockbuster late fee.

While it's unlikely that the US Congress will tackle copyright overhaul anytime soon, other countries are moving more quickly. Brazil is likely to debut new voluntary music "co-ops" in the coming months. We have options for resolving the digital media crisis. The Grokster decision was far-sighted in responding to the copyright gridlock. Let's focus on giving people ways to enjoy digital entertainment and on becoming a more creative culture, not on shutting down innovation.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...yright_crisis/


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Recording Off The Radio Goes Hi-Tech

Industry worries new software allows piracy
Alex Veiga

Technologies that let people digitally record satellite and Internet radio broadcasts are opening a new front in the recording industry's war on music piracy.

Until recently, the music industry focused its efforts on the widespread sharing of music files online. But a proliferation of software that makes recording radio streams a breeze now has recording companies worried.

The latest trouble comes of a hardware/software combination that has catalyzed a new type of backdoor recording:

A program called TimeTrax, developed to record broadcasts from XM Satellite Radio's PCR receiver, spurred huge demand for the receiver from XM subscribers.

And for that reason the PCR appears to have been discontinued.

TimeTrax lets users store XM broadcasts, channeled through the PCR receiver, on a computer as individual tracks in the MP3 or WAV formats. Recordings can be scheduled at different times over multiple broadcasts.

Since the TimeTrax program debuted on the Internet recently, XM retailers like St. Louis' XMFan.com saw a big wave of demand for the PCR units, which first hit the market about a year ago for under $50.

PCR receivers have been selling for upwards of $300 on eBay, and the founder of the company that distributes TimeTrax said XM's lawyers had written him asking that he stop selling the program.

XMFan.com's manager, Tim Morris, said XM officials canceled his order this month for more PCRs. He said he'd been inundated with requests from interested buyers.

"If we had 5,000 in the last two days we could have sold all of them," he said.

Morris said the company told him it would not be distributing PCRs to him or anyone else.

Spokesmen for Washington-based XM Radio did not respond to telephone calls or e-mails.

Scott MacLean, founder of Toronto-based NeroSoft.com, which distributes the $29.95 TimeTrax, said he received a notice from XM's lawyers to stop selling it but, after consulting with his own attorneys, decided not to heed the request. He's made between $7,000 and $8,000 from sales of the software since he began distributing it Aug. 13.

"I have had many people say they actually bought XM because of this application," said MacLean, 35.

MacLean said all his software does is simply record music off the analog XM signal.

"It's exactly the same as running it off a cassette recorder," he said, speculating that XM was pressured by the recording industry.

Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major recording companies, said the trade group did not ask XM to discontinue selling the PCR unit.

Marks also distinguished between the manual recording of radio done for decades on a cassette player and the systematic, mass recording of digital radio broadcasts.

"What we're concerned about are programs that essentially transform what are intended to be performances of music into a music library for somebody," Marks said.

The trade group already considers the widespread recording of Internet radio as a threat to both digital radio broadcasters and the burgeoning legal music-downloading business.

Software that can track the data stream from Internet radio and split it into individual song files that are then stored on the computer user's hard drive are widely available - many at little or no cost.

One such program, StationRipper, is available free of charge and has been downloaded more than 44,000 times on Download.com. Other popular recording programs include TotalRecorder and ReplayRadio.

In postings on Download.com, several users hailed StationRipper as a better alternative to peer-to-peer networks, which are often mined with decoy files and are monitored by recording industry sleuths.

One user said that the program made it possible to download nearly 3,000 songs in a 20-hour period from multiple Internet radio stations simultaneously.

The recording industry has yet to devise a way to block such methods of copying music, so it has mostly concentrated its enforcement campaign on people who distribute song files. Still, in June, the recording industry trade group submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission, asking the panel to enact new rules to safeguard music played through digital radio receivers from being pirated.

"Digital audio broadcasting without content protection is the perfect storm facing the music industry," the group wrote to the FCC.

The trade group suggested the FCC require digital radio broadcasters to encrypt their content or use an audio protection flag - bits of data that would travel with the stream or satellite radio signal to denote that the content was under copyright. Digital players or receivers would be equipped to recognize the flag and, ultimately, restrict whether the content could be copied or distributed.
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjo...ingoffthe.html


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Copyright Office Jumps Into P2P Fray
Roy Mark

Negotiations over Sen. Orrin Hatch's peer-to-peer (P2P) legislation are expected to continue this afternoon when the Senate Judiciary Committee staff holds a private meeting to consider alternatives to the controversial bill.

The bill would allow P2P networks and others to be sued for encouraging children and teenagers to commit copyright infringement via their P2P networks. Some interpretations of the legislation claim the liability portion of the legislation could be extended to hardware manufacturers and Internet service providers.

One alternative sure to be on the table Tuesday is a "discussion draft" of a revision prepared by the U.S. Copyright office attempting to more narrowly define who could get sued under Hatch's legislation. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC) have also proposed alternatives to the bill.

The CEA/HRRC proposal specifically supports Hatch's original intent to single out file-sharing networks for liability while rewriting the language to exempt hardware manufacturers who make MP3 and other music players.

"Although we note that the Copyright Office has attempted in this discussion draft to address some of the concerns various stakeholders raised about the original version of S. 2560, we have upon reflection determined that the CEA/HRRC language more precisely addresses the issues," Mike Godwin, legal director of the digital rights group Public Knowledge, wrote to the Copyright Office Tuesday.

Godwin said the Copyright Office's version of the bill suffers from vague language and being too "broad in scope." He added that the CEA/HRRC version, which is still being finalized, would make the legislation more technology neutral.

"[The CEA/HRRC proposal] focuses ... on those who act with the intent to cause infringement, and who endeavor to profit from the infringement committed by others," Godwin wrote. "By contrast, the Copyright Office discussion draft appears to us to be much less narrowly crafted."

Public Knowledge thinks the Copyright Office version would "sweep up virtually all communications -- from e-mail to Web browsers to Internet routers -- then appears to exempt from liability some types of 'good' technology."

Godwin claims the Copyright Office approach seems to be "backwards," as it leads to "over breadth of potential liability even as it departs from the useful notion of focusing on the potential defendants' intentions."

Frustrated over the apparent inability of the P2P companies like Morpheus and Grokster and copyright holders to work out an equitable music distribution plan through the file-swapping networks, Hatch introduced in June his Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004.

He further inflamed the situation by saying his bill should go directly to the Senate floor for a vote without the usual hearing process. He later relented and held a hearing on the controversial measure in July.

Hatch is a longtime critic of the P2P networks. In 2003, he suggested he might favor technology that can remotely destroy the computers of those who illegally download music from the Internet. The proposal was never acted upon.

Several weeks after Hatch proposed his bill, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled P2P technology is legal even if the software itself is used for illegal purposes. The court decision may prompt Congress into action after several years of threatening to pass anti-P2P legislation.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...le.php/3404461


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BearShare File-sharing Service Registers Voters through the Your Vote Matters.org Online Voter Registration Service
Press Release

BearShare - http://www.bearshare.com -, the world's leading file-sharing client and Your Vote Matters - http://www.yourvotematters.org - , Working Assets' non partisan voter registration website, launched a partnership to register BearShare's massive audience US userbase to vote if they aren't already registered. This innovative partnership marks the first time a file-sharing client has been used to register voters in the US and the world.

"Our users are passionate and opinionated about BearShare. We are encouraging them to get as passionate about the community and country as they are about BearShare by voting. Regardless of whether they vote Democrat, Republican or independent or some other party, it's vital for them to participate in the political process," explained Vincent Falco, BearShare's Chief Executive Officer.

BearShare users can register by clicking on a link located on a web page only accessible to BearShare users. The link takes them out to the online voter registration site hosted by Your Vote Matters.org. In the short time this program has been live, we have seen great success which we hope will continue through the voter registration deadline.

Working Assets and Your Vote Matters.org have helped over 800,000 new voters get registered in a few easy steps. And, with the efforts of its nonpartisan affiliate organizations such as BearShare, Working Assets hopes to meet its goal of registering 1 million new voters before the November 2 election.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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Site announcement

Slyck's List of File-Sharing Programs
Thomas Mennecke

We have been working on developing an all encompassing list of important software that the file-sharing community depends on. The list is broken down into distinct categories, which includes: P2P clients, News Readers, Codecs, Codec Utilities, IRC/FTP clients, adware/spyware removal and much more.

Unlike our old system of user guides, this system will allow full user interaction. With the involvement of the Slyck community, Slyck's insight into the resources of file sharing will be more comprehensive than ever before. Users will be able to rate software, submit change logs, download locations, comments and tips. The File Sharing Programs page will be fully integrated into our guides, allowing them to be continuously updated.

For example, when one chooses a network guide, the individual will be presented with the comments and ratings for all clients that connect to that community. This will ensure that the individual will select the best client for that network with the most relevant information.

And this is only the beginning - the first step really. Soon, users will be able to submit their own guides and guide sections making our guides to file-sharing the ultimate resource to file-sharing.

Check it out HERE.

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=559


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System Alert: Web Meltdown

Just when you thought it was safe to do all your business online comes another warning that the internet is about to crash. Wendy Grossman talks to the doomsayers

" Internet due to collapse - clueless users and networks blamed." You could have written that headline at any time in the 20 years since the internet began, as a collection of networks connecting five regional supercomputing centres in the US, and it would always have been half true: it's always been on the verge of not quite working. Equally, it has never really failed, not even on September 11, 2001, when terrorist attacks took out a key New York telecommunications node.

And yet, last month, in a back room in a scruffy Los Angeles hotel, three of the most respected internet pioneers convened a meeting to talk about how to prevent "internet meltdown".

One of them was Peter Neumann, who for decades has tracked the risks of our increasing reliance on computing systems. "Security, reliability, and accountability are going down the rathole," he said. "Good software engineering is not happening for critical systems." Yet we are increasingly basing critical infrastructures - banking, government, voting - on the internet, still barely out of its cradle.

Neumann's co-conveners were Dave Farber, professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and Lauren Weinstein, whose online presence dates back to the earliest days of networking.

But what do they mean by "meltdown"? "The internet has 'melted down' when it becomes difficult or impossible for users to control their own use of it for their legitimate and legal purposes," says Weinstein. His list of threats begins with the two most in the news - viruses and spam, which are pushing some users to abandon the internet. Then there are the bandwidth caps imposed by service providers (ISPs) and download services, who are also slow to tell users exactly what usage is acceptable. (Can you share your broadband connection? Sort of... Can you run your computer as a web server, or an e-mail server? Maybe, maybe not...) There also is the fact that product liability in software is nonexistent, and that users cannot possibly keep up with the amount of patching and updating that security experts tell them is necessary.

The legal actions conducted by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are shutting down peer-to-peer networks and scaring off file-sharers (the popular file-sharing network eDonkey has died in the last couple of months). The American Library Association complains that even academic content is increasingly being locked away behind registration systems. Pop-up advertising swamps many users.

Weinstein further points to BT's "well-meaning but seemingly ad-hoc" scheme to block pornography sites, using information from the Internet Watch Foundation: without careful checks, he says, there will be a lot of "collateral damage" - sites that for users are unpredictably and unexpectedly unreachable, for no good reason.

Then there's the persistent disquiet about the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It is charged with overseeing the handing out of domain names (things like "independent.co.uk"), but its critics call its powers dangerous and uncontrolled, and say it is in charge of the only central point of failure in the internet's otherwise proven robust design - the "name servers" that translate site names into numbers computers can understand.

If these things all together aren't the meltdown, they provide the perfect conditions for one. The trigger may have just arrived, in the burgeoning use of internet telephony, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP offers huge savings; with services like Skype you can make international calls for free, piggy-backing on an existing broadband connection.

The problem with VoIP isn't, for once, bandwidth (although just wait for video to swamp all the connections we have). It's the baggage it brings with it. Telephone services around the world are, or have been, highly regulated. Some developing countries set artificially high prices for international calls and benefit from the resulting tax revenues. Undercutting that with VoIP doesn't make them happy, and so they want to regulate it to produce the same revenue; but that conflicts with (rich) users, who want lower prices, and don't care about tax benefits.

VoIP also disrupts policies about "universal access" - those which ensure rural areas can get a phone service - and structures underlying the provision of emergency services. And it is far more demanding than previous internet applications. Few users will notice if an e-mail message is delayed by an hour. The web is usable - if frustrating - when pages are delayed by minutes. But a 20-second delay is death to a phone conversation.

"The internet is becoming a utility," says Karl Auerbach, a software coder and well-known net maverick who briefly represented "the net at large" on ICANN's board. (Shortly after Auerbach's election, ICANN redesigned the body to eliminate his post.)

As a utility, the net will have to live up to different, more stringent standards than its previous uses as an academic and research playground, and then a mainstream experiment. People are building billion-dollar businesses, governments are turning themselves digital, and in the meantime there isn't so much as a service-level agreement to guarantee that the most basic level of connectivity will be there tomorrow.

When you listen to the statistics, it's a miracle the internet works as well as it does. An expert from McAfee says virus attacks have increased in frequency, scale and speed: in the mid-1990s it took a year for a known software gap to be exploited. But in July the Sasser worm exploited a hole discovered only 24 hours before. Anti-virus vendors can't keep up - knowledgeable techies can often spot that a computer is showing signs of a virus infection but lack up-to-date anti- virus software to be able to detect the culprit code.

Meanwhile, seven-eighths of some people's e-mail is spam. Denial of service (DOS) attacks don't just take out a few big e-commerce sites for a few minutes any more; BT's entire ADSL network had a slowdown one weekend earlier this year because of such attacks, and Telewest's mail server was barely usable for several days last year. The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network Dalnet was so disabled last year by similar attacks it has never recovered.

Some say the internet has been on the brink of destruction for the past 20 years. At one stage the huge growth in traffic threatened to kill it. (Telecoms companies provided more bandwidth.) Then it was people on dial-up connections leaving themselves connected permanently, tying up phone lines. (Broadband freed up the lines and speeded up the experience.)

So what about today's problem - what can 50 expert technologists do? And in what other industry could a group of people like this expect to be able to make their ideas matter?

"All revolutions start like this," says Michael Froomkin, a Miami-based law professor who specialises in internet governance.

Nonetheless, many of the assembled technologists ask plaintively how to get computer-illiterate policy makers to listen to them before making short-sighted, bad law. And that's when my personal meltdown happens.

Ten years ago, a gathering of 50 impassioned technologists like this would have been filled with happy optimism. Yes, the internet is collapsing, they'd have said, but if the problem is an internal technical one we can fix it, and if the damage is coming from external forces - regulators, censors, corporate pirates - we can route around it.

The same people in 2004 are much more pessimistic. If the technologists no longer believe they can fix it by themselves, the internet really has hit a meltdown.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=559232


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MyTunes Returns For iTunes Song Sharing
John Borland

Tools that turn Apple Computers' iTunes software into the core of a song-sharing network are multiplying, with the re-release this week of the previously defunct MyTunes.

Like OurTunes and a handful of other software programs, "MyTunes Redux" enables computer users to download songs freely from the hard drives of other iTunes users, as long as the two machines are on the same local network.

The software takes advantage of iTunes' ability to stream songs between computers. That feature is aimed at people who want to listen on one PC to songs stored on another computer inside a home network, among other uses, but Apple does not ordinarily allow the files to be downloaded permanently.

MyTunes developer Bill Zeller, like other independent programmers, has said he is simply interested in extending the way iTunes can be used. Zeller's original software, which also enabled people to download songs from other computers, was disabled by Apple in April, and he said on Tuesday he had had trepidations about releasing the "Redux" version.

"I was worried that if Apple doesn't like it, even though they haven't said anything to me, they could turn off sharing completely--and that would be bad," Zeller said. "But OurTunes was already out, and that has the same functionality."

Apple declined to comment specifically on MyTunes.

The release of the underground software programs have been a continual thorn in Apple's side, as it has worked to balance the desires of piracy-shy record labels with the company's own desire to build new features into its popular music jukebox software.

An early version of iTunes had allowed people to stream their songs over the Internet at large, instead of just over a local network. But when people began building Internet radio stations and tools that could search other people's hard drives for songs to play at any given moment, Apple disabled the feature.

Zeller's original version of MyTunes piggybacked on top of the iTunes software itself. It mimicked iTunes' requests to access another computer user's music library in order to perform downloads instead of iTunes' own streaming. Apple took out that software in an upgrade to its jukebox and music store last April.

Both Zeller's new MyTunes and the previously released OurTunes take advantage of work done by Australian student David Hammerton, who released information last spring on how to crack through part of the encryption Apple uses inside its iTunes software.

Neither tool allows downloads of songs that have been purchased though Apple's iTunes Music Store, which are wrapped in the company's proprietary FairPlay digital rights management software.

Zeller, a student at Trinity College in Connecticut, said he has not been contacted either by Apple or the Recording Industry Association of America about his software.

A recent court decision said peer-to-peer software distributors were not legally liable if people use their tool to violate copyrights, as long as the companies have no direct control over the file trades. Zeller's software, like most file-sharing tools, notifies users that downloading copyrighted music is illegal.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5349272.html


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iPod In The Middle On Capitol Hill

Shut down in court, entertainment companies look to Congress to stop free music and movie downloads.
Krysten Crawford

As Congress got back to work after a long summer break, a battle royal threatened to erupt at a closed- door meeting scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in the offices of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On the agenda: a bipartisan bill proposed earlier this summer that aims to hold liable the companies that provide either the file-sharing service or device used for illegal downloads of music or movies, effectively shifting the blame from individuals.

"People are really stirred up about this," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group that strongly opposes the legislation, dubbed the Induce Act.

Proponents, led by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) , claim the legislation offers much-needed protection to the entertainment industry.

Just last month, the same federal appeals court in San Francisco that brought down Napster in 2001 ruled that Grokster and StreamCast Networks, the distributor of Morpheus, do not violate film and movie copyrights by operating Internet file-sharing services. The unanimous court found that Grokster, Morpheus and other so-called peer-to-peer services can't be held accountable because, unlike Napster, they have less control over what users do with their service.

Without support from the courts, the entertainment industry has turned the heat on legislators. The RIAA has also filed thousands of lawsuits against individuals in an effort to scare consumers away from illegal downloads.

"The music industry is first, the gaming industry will be next, and the movie industry will be next after that," predicted Christian Castle, an entertainment industry lawyer with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Los Angeles. "Pretty soon it will be a free-for-all."

In June, Hollywood's intense lobbying paid off when Senators Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, introduced the Induce Act.

The response from critics was fast and fierce. Led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), detractors declared the proposed legislation calamitous for the technology industry. Holding mainstream companies like Apple Computer and TiVo liable for illegal downloads using Apple's iPod or TiVo's digital video recorder would chill innovation, they said.

While Congress was in recess in July and August, opponents of the Induce Act met pressured regulators to narrow the pool of companies that can be held accountable for illegal file-sharing under a new copyright law.

Last week, however, those efforts seemed to have failed when the U.S. Copyright Office quietly came out with a revised version for legislators to consider instead.

Brodsky, the Public Knowledge spokesman, said it's unusual for the copyright office to take such an active role in the legislative process, but said that Hatch requested the agency's input after the firestorm that erupted over his earlier version.

The Copyright Office's version has not placated some of the more vocal critics. Detractors like CEA and Public Knowledge said the Copyright Office's version contained none of their proposed changes.

"Nobody on our side liked (the new version). It was basically a rewrite of the old draft," said Brodsky, the Public Knowledge spokesman. "It's obvious that the movie and the record folks think they're in the driver's seat with this one."

Brodksy said critics, who were invited to meet with legislators and regulators Tuesday afternoon, would continue to fight the bill.

"This is an election-year issue," said Brodsky. "Add it to the mix of issues that could affect people's lives down the road when they least expect it."
http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/07/tech...nduce/?cnn=yes


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Don't Change, Evolve!
Laiq Qureshi

Last week I spoke about the furore caused by the infamous P2P clients, which prompted RIAA to take action against them. And now that it has lost the legal battle against clients like Kazaa and Morpheus, it has started suing users based on the songs recovered from their hard disks. Somebody amongst our readers made a valid point about how free dissemination of an artist's work will lead to his extinction. This is not false in a way, yet far from the truth.

To be able to understand the effects of free sharing of music and its consequences, we will need to mull over the recording contracts and agreements held between an artist and a music producer or record company. However, before I go ahead, I would like my readers, who are proficient enough to comprehend the illegalities of free file-sharing dynamics, to know that artists around the world have condemned RIAA on the same issue.

Firstly if you think musicians make all the money, then it's not true. Under normal circumstances, record companies ask for a set number of albums, which means that the agreement will last as long as it takes for those many albums to be properly recorded, released and promoted. However, if a record company loses interest in an artist then the recording agreement may last twelve months or even less. If any royalties are due they are normally paid at the end of the financial year and may take as long as two years from the date of sale to the date of payment of royalties.

In any event no royalties are paid until advances, recording costs, video cost and tour support are recouped. All of these are recovered out of their royalties after deduction of the producer's royalties. This means, the producer does not contribute to video or recordings costs or for advances or tour support. Going further, the artist must record a certain number of recordings for the record company. The company will select the producer, the title and the studio. The contract will be an exclusive contract, so you may not record for anybody else nor even do session work.

In most ordinary situations, your favorite artists wallow in so much debt with the record companies for the advances and promotion activities that in most cases they only manage stumpy pay checks. To get out of which you need to be fortunate guys like Pearl Jam or Metallica, who have managed to sell millions of copies to be able to fund their own promotions.

Why do you think that non-commercial local bands in India are never able to sign a good record deal? It's not because they lack musical talent, it's because record companies don't see profits in it. The only way left then is to put music up on the Web for propagation or fund your own tiny production volumes. If it weren't for the easy downloadable dynamism of the Internet, it would have been conspicuously difficult for music to stay alive, especially in places like India. How many artists you love ever make it to the shelves in your local music store? Under these circumstances, artists will be only wading towards more visibility if they embrace the reality of downloading music.

Record companies take the view that they pay for the costs of making the recordings, take the risk and therefore will own and control the recordings. They will own them forever and will have complete marketing control so that they will decide if and when to release the recordings, how many singles will be taken from an album, what the artwork will be, how the records will be released and where they will be released.

With all the hue and cry over illegal downloading, (I Repeat) the music artist has nothing to achieve. The RIAA did not initiate these lawsuits to defend artists' rights, but to protect corporate profits. What record companies should realize is that the situation has evolved and by suing users they are only protecting an archaic system. Instead, it is advisable to evolve with the times. Take the example of Apple's iTunes Store that sells individual songs for a set price apiece to downloaders. And it's perfectly legal. They have signed up with artists (not recording companies) to legitimize their work to be sold for a consideration. File sharing is a reality; the record companies should rather incorporate it into their business model. Instead of lashing out at it, they should make use of it by letting fans download a few songs, which will make them, only go for more.

Ex-vocalist of Genesis, Peter Gabriel and musician Brian Eno are launching what they call a new musicians' alliance that would enable them to sell music online instead of only through music record labels. The Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists (MUDDA) is aimed at providing artists with more options.

With the popularity and the use of Internet how can someone regard 'free file sharing' with such overwhelming malice? Now if you still think that P2P is out killing artists, think again. It's the record companies like RIAA that have stomped on the soul of music. After all it's people like you and me who have given artists the reason to go on. You ask Wayne Coyne of the famous Flaming lips and he will say, "To me, the sympathy is unwarranted. Some of this is just the hazard of doing business. It's the nature of the world. At the end of the day, it's just rock and roll. It isn't that big of a deal."
http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp...?storyid=53742


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Dutch P2P Site vs Big Music
p2pnet.net News

The Big Four record label cartel is trying to stomp Shareconnector.com, a Dutch p2p release site.

Usually, when this happens, the site involved folds. Sometimes it re- surfaces somewhere else, sometimers it doesn't.

This time, however, Big Music has a fight on its hands.

On August 26 BREIN, Holland's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), blasted Shareconnector with a C & D notice.

BREIN is short for 'Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands' and its usual business is trying to nail the real criminals - the hard-core gangs and loners dealing in counterfeit software, CDs and movies. And more power to it in this kind of enforcement activity.

But in accordance with cartel instructions, BREIN recently turned its attentions to file sharers, specifically to sites such as Releases4u.com, even going so far as to collect data on the people behind them - with the OK of the Dutch Privacy Authorities.

However, "In an effort organized through ALLIEd2k, Shareconnector is going to fight back," reports p2pnet's Dutch correspondent Raymond Blijd.

He also says Christiaan A. Thijm, the man who defended Kazaa through Holland's high courts and won,
might be taking the case on.

If he does - and p2pnet has been told the chances are better than good that he will - it'll be a ground- breaking suit.

So far, BREIN hasn't responded, says ALLIEd2k.

Blijd says questions which which are likely to be exlored in depth could include:

· Are ed2k links legal?
· Are Hash codes, used to packages files on networks, legal?
· Are Forum sites, which present ed2k links, legal?
· Can Shareconnector's webmaster be held liable under European law for the conduct of people who use the site?

"Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll also resolve IP trace issue - that is: can a commercial entity legally trace IP addresses for the purpose of suing?" - adds Blijd, a freelance legal ICT consultant and legal knowledge system engineer.

He'll be reporting on the story as it unfolds.
http://p2pnet.net/story/2353