[JackSpratts]

Poll: Lower CD Prices Will Curb Downloading
Billboard

Bringing down the consumer's cost of music CDs will stem the tide of illegal downloading, according to a Billboard.com poll. Of 13,180 voters, 73% said lower prices will encourage fans to purchase new releases rather than seek out the songs illegally online.

On the other side of the coin, 27% opined that if the same music that's on the CD is available for free, why pay for it?

As previously reported, Universal Music Group announced in September that it will drop its frontline pricing in the U.S. to $12.98 from $18.98.

A new poll about legal download sites is already underway in The Voting Booth. Stop by and register your opinion today!
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/ar...ent_id=2010376


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Two-Day DVDs a Slow Sale

Disposable DVDs have been on store shelves for a little over a month and, for the most part, they seem to be staying there.
Katie Dean

Four states are serving as test markets for the 48-hour DVDs, called EZ-Ds. The product is vacuum-packed; once opened, the disc will play for two days before a resin on the DVD reacts with the atmosphere, rendering it unplayable.

Flexplay Technologies, which manufactures the EZ-D, touts the product as the "no return, no late fee movie rental" on its website. The company markets the EZ-D to movie enthusiasts who want to avoid rushing back to the video store to meet a deadline. Instead, customers can choose to throw the disc away or recycle it.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of Disney, is testing the market for the format in Illinois, Texas, South Carolina and Kansas at grocery and convenience stores and electronics retailers.

A Buena Vista official had no comment on sales of EZ-Ds, but a survey of stores that sell the new product reveals that the EZ-Ds are not appealing to many customers.

"They haven't sold very well yet," said Tom Mullen, the store manager for Cub Foods in Peoria, Illinois. "We've got them up front in a prime location right by the check-out lanes."

In more than one month's time, the store has sold around 15 to 20 of the EZ-Ds, he said.

"I think the biggest reason is the price. It's a tad bit too high," he said.

Cub Foods sells the EZ-Ds for $7 and offers about 10 titles, including Sweet Home Alabama, The Hot Chick and Shanghai Knights.

"Too expensive," said Tom Tow, who manages the Cub Foods 40 miles away in Bloomington. "That's the most echoed comment I've heard."

Customers aren't interested in paying more than $6 for a limited-play DVD when they can pay $2 at the video store. Even with a $2 late fee, it's cheaper than buying a disposable DVD, Tow said.

"I don't think they like the idea that it self-destructs in 48 hours," he said. "I think a lot of them are worried about the quality of the DVD for that price. Seeing as how it self-destructs, can it really be that good?"

Tow said the cardboard display is still full of EZ-Ds, and that less than an eighth of the movies in stock have been sold.

In Charleston, South Carolina, one Winn-Dixie store has also had trouble getting customers to buy the disposable movies.

"They think it's ridiculous," said Joseph Pellegrino Jr., manager of the Rivers Avenue store in Charleston. "They won't pay that type of money for something that's going to vaporize."

Pellegrino said the company made a mistake when it chose to sell EZ-Ds at his store because it's located in a low-income, inner-city area, and his customers are very price-conscious.

"Probably in a yuppie market it would do excellent," he said.

Pellegrino said he hasn't seen one customer purchase an EZ-D, though some of them have been shoplifted out of the store.

"The good thing is that they tear them out of the packages and they don't realize that they've started (the EZ-D's) disintegration," he said.

Susan Ghertner, environmental manager of H-E-B, a grocery chain in Texas, said that response to the EZ-Ds is mixed: Some stores report the product is selling "fairly well," and in others, the EZ-D is "not selling so well."

"That could be the product or it could be because there's not that much of a selection," she said.

An October article in Video Business surveyed several retailers in Austin and found that customers gave the EZ-D movies a look but were hesitant to plunk down their money.

One Kansas electronics store reported that the titles are selling steadily and a handful of customers asked about the limited-play DVDs even before they had arrived in the store.

"People are grasping the concept and think it's a good idea," said Shane Pohlman, manager of media at Nebraska Furniture Mart in Kansas City. "It's convenient for the customer."

Convenient perhaps, but environmentalists are angry that the product even exists, as DVDs can be re-used multiple times anyway. They see this limited-play DVD as a sure-fire way to create more junk for landfills.

Environmental groups have vigorously protested the EZ-D since it was first introduced. In August, volunteers staged a phone protest and dialed Disney CEO Michael Eisner to complain about the product. The Texas Campaign for the Environment has also mailed over 1,000 postcards to Eisner and local retailers to urge them to stop selling the EZ-D.

"We want to send a clear message from our organization to the community that this is a product that is wasteful and we don't want it in our community," said Eleanor Whitmore, a spokeswoman for the Texas Campaign for the Environment.

The EZ-D website lists four options for recycling the old EZ-Ds: bring the used DVD to a local collection point, request a postage- paid mailer or print a prepaid postage label to send the EZ-Ds to a recycler, or participate in an incentive program. The incentive program awards a free EZ-D to those who mail back six expired EZ-Ds.

GreenDisk is handling the recycling for Flexplay. GreenDisk founder David Beschen would not reveal how many EZ-Ds have been mailed back.

Instructions to mail back the EZ-D are included on the package. However, several of the retailers selling the EZ-Ds did not know the name of a local collection point for the obsolete EZ-Ds.

"If they included an envelope, and you could drop it in the mail when you get done, that would definitely be an improvement for the environment, anyway," said Cub Foods' Mullen. "If you don't make it easy for (the customer), they won't do it."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,60983,00.html


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Court OKs Death For Analog TVs

Appeals court upholds rule requiring digital tuners by July 2007

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a government rule requiring all but the smallest new televisions to have tuners that can receive digital TV signals by July 2007.

The makers of TVs, VCRs and DVD players tried to block the Federal Communications Commission rule, saying it would make sets more expensive and is unnecessary because cable and satellite viewers don't need the tuners.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the FCC, which said the requirement was needed because the industry was not moving quickly enough to make tuners available.

The tuners, either inside a TV or in a separate box used with the TV, will be needed to receive broadcasts over the airwaves after the nation switches from analog to digital signals. Congress has set a goal of December 2006 for the switchover.

The FCC wants to ensure that anyone who buys a TV can take it home, plug it in and receive local stations without subscribing to a cable service or buying an extra tuner box for digital signals.

The first phase of the tuner requirement begins next year, when half of all TV sets 36 inches or larger are required to have the tuners. By July 1, 2007, all TVs 13 inches or larger, and all VCRs and DVD players, must meet the new standard.

Unlike traditional analog television, digital TV signals use the language of computers, allowing for sharper pictures and potential features such as Internet access, video games and multiple programs on one channel. Digital signals can be sent with satellites, by cable or as over-the-air broadcasts.

High-definition television, or HDTV, is another possible feature of digital television. Sets designed for HDTV signals offer more lifelike pictures and sound. The sets cost from about $800 to many thousands of dollars, but prices are dropping.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html


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Who Needs Radio Anymore?

TV talent shows, Internet give musicians new access to fans
Carolyn Brown

All the big names were there. P. Diddy, Beyonce, Justin, Jewel, Avril, Tim McGraw, and yes, even old-timer Tom Petty, to name a few, came out Monday night for the Radio Music Awards. The obligatory awards were given out, with many “thank yous” to radio deejays across the country for their support. There was even a relatively “normal” appearance by Michael Jackson.

ALL SEEMED WELL in the radio industry on its special night. But, at a time when reality TV shows create pop stars, music is downloadable from the Internet with a click of the mouse and Carson Daly is arguably the most important deejay (vee-jay?) around — is radio even relevant anymore?

With Apple’s Internet downloading service, iTunes, now available for PC users, and Napster back up and running, there is a library of music available out in cyberspace, that has nothing to do with AM or FM or what you hear while channel surfing in your car. With a virtual jukebox of music at your fingertips why would anyone tune in to their local radio station, where a limited play list, abundance of commercials and cookie-cutter deejays flood the airwaves.

Well, with the exception of being stuck in your car, without a CD or cassette player, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to tune in. There was a time when deejays could play whatever they wanted, and the radio was the place to go to hear a variety of music and discover new artists. But, as the play lists shrink and become more of the same, the Internet is quickly becoming the place to go for music lovers of all kinds. Many big radio stations have even caught on, and have started streaming on the Internet. Who would have ever thought that there would be a time when people would listen to the radio on their computer?

Maybe the same people who believed in a crazy idea call MTV.

Which brings us back to his weirdness, Michael Jackson, one of the first artists to extend music to new mediums (think “Thriller”). Maybe Napster and TV talent shows are part of an inevitable music revolution that began way back when Elvis first shook his hipbones so provocatively. Music and image are completely inseparable, and with the advent of reality TV and the Internet, music consumers aren’t about to relinquish power to a solitary deejay and squirm at the fickle whims of their radio reception.

Do artists trying to make it in the music industry even need radio? With a new stream of talent shows out there, “American Idol,” “Star Search” and even “Nashville Star” for the country music lovers, it turns out television could be all it takes to become a successful recording artist. Take a look at “American Idol,” the wildly popular Fox talent show. Its first winner, Kelly Clarkson, strutted her stuff at Monday’s Radio Music Awards. After turning herself into a Christina Aguilera clone, the radio industry embraced her, playing her first single “Miss Independent” incessantly on Top 40 stations this summer. From TV star to pop-diva, Clarkson has taken her place among the ranks of pop’s biggest stars, at least for now.

But the heir to her throne, runner-up but reigning king, Clay Aiken, didn’t have as much luck with radio. Deejays across the country mocked him, didn’t take him seriously, and often refused to play his music. Well the joke just might be on them. Despite little radio play, Aiken’s debut album went double platinum in its first week of release, out-selling Clarkson’s album by a landslide. Aiken’s success serves as a shining example of the power television now has over the music industry, and the arguably insignificant power radio has these days.

NBC’s “Today” show has even taken a stab at its own version of “American Idol.” The morning show’s “Today’s Superstar” is in its second installment. The singing contestants get national exposure and the winner gets a recording session with Warner Bros. Records. Only time will tell if the current crop of TV-made artists have staying power.

So will radio still be around in 15 years? It is still one of the only places where you can discover new music for free. Although it’s minimal, Napster has started to charge for downloading music. Big market, Top 40 stations are still a prime place for exposure for up-and-coming artists. They just might not need that exposure as much as they would have 10 years ago.

And, the fact of the matter is most people stuck in traffic are tuning in to the radio, for the traffic report if nothing else.

Now back to the Radio Music Awards. It begs asking, would anyone have really “listened” or cared about the awards if they were broadcast on radio not television?

People watched the show because they wanted to see what Michael Jackson looked like, how tight Tim McGraw’s jeans were going to be, if there would be a girl- girl kiss and if Justin Timberlake was indeed growing out his hair.

It is telling that perhaps the most recognizable deejay on radio, Casey Kasem, received the first-ever Radio Icon award Monday night.

Sorry Carson Daly, Kasem might be the first and the last to get that award.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/986050.asp?cp1=1


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Half of UK Homes Are Online

The telecoms regulator says half of all households in the UK now have a connection to the internet. An Oftel study has found that 12.5 million British homes are online, with 750,000 connecting to the web in the last three months alone. And efforts to promote broadband - which speeds up connection times dramatically by giving customers a permanent link to the web - also appear to be paying off.

The regulator estimates that around one million dial-up customers are likely to upgrade to broadband within the next year.

Oftel also compared prices for internet services across Europe and found that the cost of both dial-up and broadband connections were cheaper in the UK than in other countries. David Edmonds, director general of telecommunications, said: "Growth in internet access, coupled with some of the lowest prices in Europe, is excellent news.

"Oftel's policy of creating competitive markets for internet access continues to drive the growth in internet access."
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology

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Net's Dark Side Dents Broadband
BBC

People are so fed up with spam, porn and viruses that they are put off high-speed broadband, says a study.

The telecoms industry could do more to help users avoid the "dark side" of the net and pitfalls, says the study by think tank the Work Foundation

They also need to do more to understand what people want to do with broadband to encourage take-up.

The UK is still only seventh in global broadband take-up, despite the official push to be a world leader.

'Misunderstood'

"Ordinary people are promised that broadband makes the internet better," said one of the report's authors James Crabtree from The Work Foundation's iSociety project.

"In fact it sometimes leads to a disaster on the desktop which makes people consider stopping using the net altogether."

During the year in which the research was conducted, these problems became a huge concern for people, particularly after a summer of viruses.

Companies need to help people find new ways to create and share
James Crabtree, iSociety

The broadband industry largely misunderstands what people actually want out of their broadband connection too, the report suggests.

"The industry has this impression broadband allows computers to be like clever TV and that people want to sit there consuming content," Mr Crabtree told BBC News Online.

"But we have no evidence this is really true yet."

Instead, the report showed people like to interact socially and do creative things with broadband, instead of being passive.

People need to be shown the social and community benefits that broadband can offer which can enrich their everyday lives, according to co- producers of the report, the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG).

"What we have been doing so far is selling broadband to people who have clear idea what they want it for," said Anthony Walker from the BSG.

"If we want to maintain the rate of growth for broadband, we need to get a new message across that makes broadband relevant to people who aren't already heavy net users."

Sharing, caring

The broadband industry needs to listen more to people about what they want to do online so they can give them ways to get the best out of broadband, the report suggest.

Activities which have little to do with fast download speeds, but more about sharing and getting family and friends talking really showed the true benefits of such a connection.

"In a world where there isn't much to do but shop, you look for a thing that allows you to be creative," said Mr Crabtree.

"Broadband was at its best when it allowed people to create things for themselves."

The report, Fat Pipes, Connected People, suggests some of the best example of this included downloading and sending friends and family digital pictures and competing to see who could get the best deal on net auction sites.

"Companies need to help people find new ways to create and share," said Mr Crabtree.

They also need to get better at supporting users when things go wrong with their broadband, during the installation process for example.

But they also need to be more efficient in helping people avoid "the dark side of the net", like spam and chatroom dangers.

The Fat Pipes, Connected People research was presented at the BSG annual conference in London this week.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3217487.stm


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Ratings

Hip-Hop Radio Leads Digital Race

The BBC's black music radio station 1Xtra has been the most successful of the BBC's four new digital stations, listening figures have revealed.

1Xtra, which broadcasts hip-hop, R&B and garage, averaged 313,000 listeners per week during the last three months, official Rajar ratings showed.

BBC Radio 2 is still the UK's most popular station but its audience slipped 500,000 to 12.5 million.

In London, long-term number one station Capital has been overtaken by Heart.

BBC DIGITAL-ONLY RADIO STATIONS, WEEKLY AUDIENCE

1Xtra - 331,000
Five Live Sports Extra - 312,000
BBC7 - 236,000
6Music - 154,000
Source: Rajar

The Rajar figures, which cover three months from July to September, are the first to track the audiences of the BBC's digital stations.

The BBC launched 1Xtra, BBC7, Five Live Sports Extra, and 6Music last year - to complement digital broadcasts of its existing stations.

The ratings put 1Xtra ahead of Five Live Sports Extra, which broadcasts sports commentaries and had 312,000 listeners per week.

BBC7, which includes children's shows plus spoken word comedy and drama, had an audience of 236,000.

And 6Music, specialising in classic rock and alternative music, had 154,000 per week, the figures showed.

BBC MAINSTREAM RADIO, WEEKLY AUDIENCE

Radio 1 - 9.9 million
Radio 2 - 12.5million
Radio 3 - 2.2million
Radio 4 - 9.5m
Five Live - 5.7m
Source: Rajar

But 6Music's audience was the most dedicated, the BBC said, tuning in for about five hours a week each - longer than listeners to its three sister stations.

BBC director of Radio and Music, Jenny Abramsky, said they were "very encouraging figures".

"The age of digital radio has come at last and the BBC has played a crucial role in getting us there," she said.

Earlier this week, she warned that the first digital figures would be "modest", but stressed that "these are very early days".

London change

The BBC's digital stations are still behind other digital broadcasters, especially those based on magazines such as Smash Hits, Kerrang! and Q.

In mainstream listening, Radio 2 slipped further from the record high of 13.3 million it recorded at the start of this year, while Radio 1 and Radio 4 also dropped slightly.

Capital's flagship 95.8 FM London station, which had been the top commercial broadcaster in the city for 30 years, saw its share of the market drop from 8.9% to 7% in the last three months.

Heart 106.2 rose from 6.7% to 7.2% in the same period.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...io/3207435.stm


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Speed 'Tempts Dial-Up Net Users'

A million Britons will swap dial-up for broadband in the next year, says the telecoms watchdog Oftel.

More are signing up to broadband, an always-on connection 10 times faster than dial-up, as it gets cheaper.

Oftel's latest figures show half of all households in the UK are online, with 750,000 new web users in the last three months.

Both dial-up and broadband net access is cheaper in the UK than other European countries.

"Growth in internet access, coupled with some of the lowest prices in Europe is excellent news," said David Edmonds, Oftel's Director General of Telecommunications.

"Oftel's policy of creating competitive markets for internet access continues to drive the growth in internet access," he added.

There are now 12.5 million households online in the country.

The push towards broadband, which offers a much faster, permanent connection of 512Kbps, has also proved successful, the research suggests.

The UK Government is aiming to make the UK one of the most competitive broadband markets in Europe, with more people connecting to high-speed net than in Germany and France.

About 80% of the UK is now able to get broadband access through ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line), while about 40% of the country is covered by cable broadband connections.

The figures from the watchdog's quarterly research comparing consumer use of net services with other European countries, also show 90% of households are happy with their net services overall.

"We look forward to these trends continuing," said Mr Edmonds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3216973.stm


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Conference To Promote The Value Of Patents And Patent Information

A conference to promote the value of patents and patent information will take place from 10 to 12 November in Kirchberg, Luxembourg.

The European Commission and the European Patent Office, in close association with the Luxembourg Patent Office, are joining forces and combining the events PATINNOVA '03 and EPIDOS in order to highlight issues surrounding patents.

PATINNOVA '03 will consist of two parallel sessions and will address the interface between intellectual property and innovation. The EPIDOS event will focus on the latest developments in the retrieval of patent information, the Internet and other tools available on the market.

Key players from the patent community, including patent offices, patent information suppliers, universities and information brokers, will be present at the parallel exhibition on current trends in the world of patents and innovation
http://www.cordis.lu/express/summary.htm#aaa


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Walruses Revealed As 'Right-Flippered' Creatures

Walruses are ‘right-flippered’, according the first study of walrus feeding behaviour in the wild. Researchers from Denmark, Greenland and Sweden have showed that the animals preferentially use their right flipper to remove sediment from buried food. This is the first time that any aquatic animal has been shown to prefer using one flipper to the other when foraging.

On a part of Northeast Greenland, scuba-diving researchers filmed male Atlantic walruses while they ate. Walruses eat invertebrate animals that live on the seabed and are particularly fond of clams. They suck out the soft part of the clam, and discard the empty shells. As clams can be buried up to 40 cm deep, the walruses must remove sediment to find them.

Video recordings made by the research team show that the walruses have four different types of foraging behaviour. They remove sediment by beating their right flipper, beating their left flipper, or using a water-jet from their mouth. They also root through the sediment using their muzzle – almost like pigs in the ground.

Reviewing the videos, the researchers found that walruses used the right flipper 66 per cent of the time. They used the left flipper only 4 per cent of the time, the muzzle 29 per cent of the time and the water-jet 1 per cent of the time. When considering flipper use only, the walruses used their right flipper 89% of the time.

Right-handed people tend to have longer bones in their right arm than their left, probably because they use it more often. To see if the same was true for walruses, the researchers compared the lengths of the right and left scapula, humerus and ulna from 23 walrus skeletons. They found that walruses did indeed have longer bones in their right flipper.

The findings of this study were published recently in the online journal, BMC Ecology.


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New Ways to Skirt DMCA … Legally!
By Katie Dean

Busting open a digital lock to get hold of copyright works normally is forbidden, but the Librarian of Congress ruled Tuesday that there are exceptions.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, prohibits, among other things, bypassing any technology that controls access to copyright material. This provision is criticized frequently by digital-rights groups because they say it stifles many legitimate activities in the process, including academic research, competition and innovation.


But the controversial law also recognizes that there are certain cases when circumvention should be permitted. Thus, it mandates that every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress review and grant exceptions to the anti-circumvention provision.

Those who are exempt from the rule are those who are "adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make non-infringing uses of that particular class of works," according to the DMCA.

Basically, those who have a non-infringing, fair-use reason to circumvent copy protections should be allowed to do so.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Copyright Office released the four "classes of works" exempted from the anti- circumvention rule. People may bypass a digital lock to access lists of websites blocked by commercial filtering companies, circumvent obsolete dongles to access computer programs, access computer programs and video games in obsolete formats, and access e-books where the text-to-speech function has been disabled.

One programmer who testified at the Copyright Office rule-making proceedings in April was jubilant that the filtering exemption was renewed.

"How sweet it is," said Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and anticensorship activist. "Without the exemption, the DMCA would make it a violation to decrypt the blacklist to find out what (filtering companies) are actually censoring. The actual contents of these blacklists are an important censorship issue.

"The Copyright Office has recognized the importance of fair use in this area affected by the DMCA," Finkelstein said. "It's not a blanket declaration of being legal, but it's an ability to argue fair use."

Filtering advocates had hoped the exemption would be dropped.

"I'm disappointed because I thought we had made it clear that the exemption is unnecessary to conduct meaningful evaluations of filters," said David Burt, a spokesman for Secure Computing, which purchased N2H2, a filtering company.

He cited extensive studies from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Consumer Reports and the Department of Justice, among others, in his testimony and said that "these methods are adequate for evaluating filters."

Gwen Hinze, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the group was pleased that the Librarian of Congress renewed and granted important exemptions, but was disappointed that exemptions the EFF proposed on behalf of consumers were not granted.

The digital-rights group asked that the Copyright Office allow consumers to do the following:

defeat copy-protection technology on CDs that do not play in certain devices, like PCs, in order to make them play;
circumvent region coding on DVDs from outside the United States so they play on U.S. DVD players;
circumvent Content Scrambling System protection on DVDs to access public-domain motion pictures, and skip advertising on DVDs they own.

"There are millions of Americans who are affected by copy protections in digital media," Hinze said. "We're disappointed that those people aren't going to get any benefits out of this rule-making process."

"This underscores the need for legislative reform of the DMCA," she said.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60996,00.html


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Copyright Law Catches Up With UK Surfers
Dinah Greek

Just copying one CD or DVD for personal use can make you a criminal under EU directive

UK users of peer-to- peer (P2P) websites could soon find themselves running the same legal gauntlet as their US counterparts.

The European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) comes into force today, making uploading to P2P sites such as Kazaa and Grokster illegal.

The EUCD, or Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003, amends the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 and is the EU's attempt to update copyright protection to the digital age and combat software piracy.

Indivuals who make a copy of a copyrighted DVD, CD or music file, whether for back-up or for use on another device such as an MP3 player, are committing a crime.

Even if this is for personal use they theoretically face up to two years in jail or an unlimited fine, and possible civil action from copyright holders.

It will also be illegal for anyone to break anti-copying technologies and publish their findings, as in the 'DVD Jon' case, in which Norwegian encryption cracker Jon Lech Johanson was prosecuted for distributing DVD encryption-cracking software.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK equivalent of the litigious Recording Industry Association of America, has always said it would wait for the EUCD before deciding whether to take legal action against UK users of P2P sites. It is still deliberating.

Peter Jamieson, the BPI's executive chairman, said in a statement given to vnunet.com: "Once we have digested the implications of the revised copyright legislation and communicated this to our members we will consider the need for a wider awareness campaign and, as and when this is carried out, assess its impact and effectiveness before taking further steps."

But the EUCD has been severely criticised by civil liberties groups and lawyers for following too closely the controversial and much criticised 1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and infringing human rights.

"Why shouldn't I be allowed to make a copy of a CD I have paid for so I can listen to it on my computer or put it on an MP3 player? This shows that the law can be an ass," said George Gardiner, technology lawyer and partner at law firm Stephenson Harwood.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1146800


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Three Minutes With RIAA Chief Cary Sherman

New music industry leader wants to embrace online opportunity as well as quash piracy.
Tom Spring

To millions of people, Cary Sherman is about as popular as the New York Yankees are in Boston. As president of the Recording Industry Association of America, Sherman has vigorously prosecuted online music pirates, as the archenemy of popular file-swapping services from Napster to Kazaa.

Sherman, 55, coordinates the RIAA's legal, policy, and business objectives. Before joining the RIAA in 1997, Sherman worked at the Washington D.C. law firm of Arnold & Porter, where he headed the firm's Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group. Sherman not only represents musicians and songwriters, he is one as well.

His challenges today are daunting. He wants to wean millions of people off freewheeling file-swapping networks and steer them toward legitimate online music services. Sherman also says he aims to lead the music industry into wholeheartedly embracing the Internet and uploading its entire repertoire for legal online distribution.

PC World invited Sherman to weigh in on a variety of hot topics, from suing music fans to buying songs online. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

PCW: How are your efforts to protect your members' copyrights going?

Sherman: Good. People are more aware now than ever before that uploading and downloading other people's copyrighted music without permission is illegal. They're thinking twice about doing it.

Having taken the action we have--namely, going after individual infringers--it looks preliminarily as though we are seeing a beneficial impact.

PCW: How have enforcement efforts evolved over time, and how might they change in the future?

Sherman: We started with an education campaign, and have been running it for a number of years. Next we combined education with litigation against the peer-to-peer services for facilitating infringers.

But it became obvious that it would be necessary to go after the individual infringers once the courts ruled that Grokster and Morpheus couldn't be held liable for the copyright infringements.

We will continue to pursue infringers. Anything less is like telling people that there won't be anymore cops looking for speeders.

But the most significant component of our strategy is to offer legitimate alternatives. Unfortunately, some people feel they have an inalienable right to steal music.

PCW: So protecting copyrights includes offering new services like Apple ITunes.

Sherman: That's right. It's very difficult for legitimate services to compete with stolen copies of the same product. The RIAA is, in effect, taking action against a shoplifter in order to preserve the retailers' market.

PCW: Don't you risk perpetuating a decline in CD sales by suing music fans?

Sherman: People need to understand enforcement actions are intended to support the legitimate alternatives. If consumers gravitate toward those legal services, we will have done our job.

The only people who will not buy CDs because we are taking action against infringers are the people stealing music. That's not a very good customer base.

Retailers sue shoplifters. DirecTV has filed over 10,000 cases against people who steal their satellite signal. It just surprises me that when record companies do precisely the same thing, people think that it will alienate their customers.

PCW: What's the public's biggest misconception of the RIAA?

Sherman: People think the RIAA is insensitive to what consumers want and assume we are trying to preserve old business models. That couldn't be further from the reality.

The record industry has woken up to the reality of the new Internet marketplace. We are excited about the prospects that the Internet offers for an entirely new distribution mechanism for music.

We just have to bring the piracy under control to enable new business models to take root and prosper.

PCW: What kind of new business models are you talking about?

Sherman: We are already making a lot of new business models. Just look at the past month, with the opening of Apple ITunes [for Windows], Napster is launching, and BuyMusic.com is only a couple months old. The number of legal download and subscription services that are getting really good reviews right now is staggering.

PCW: When do you think consumers will embrace legitimate services? I keep trying these services out, and am disappointed because of restrictions--and I still can't find all the music I want.

Sherman: First off, artists have an obligation to support the rest of the artistic community by licensing their works. Music services have not been able to get licenses from superstar artists like the Beatles. When an artist refuses to license their work, I think that is a vote in favor of piracy instead of the legitimate marketplace.

PCW: Do you feel like you need to improve the RIAA's image with music fans?

Sherman: We aren't trying to win a popularity contest. This is about whether you're going to have a vibrant music industry and an investment to support artists' careers. If somebody has to be the heavy on this, better that it be the RIAA than the artists whose livelihoods are at stake.

PCW: Do you believe that the RIAA's interests come before the interests of Silicon Valley companies that are trying to market tools that give consumers the ability to do more with their media?

Sherman: No. This is not a question of one industry's interests being more important than another's. It's a question of finding the right balance.

We love new technologies and have inevitably prospered from them.

What we are opposed to is businesses built on infringing other people's copyrighted products. We love peer-to-peer technology; we hate businesses that are built on using peer-to-peer to sell advertising with the draw of stealing other people's works.

There are legitimate ways to use technology, and then there are abuses of technology, and just because you go after the abusers doesn't mean that you have a problem with the technology.

PCW: Do you support mandating copyright protection mechanisms in PCs, CD players, or anything else that can play, record, or manipulate data?

Sherman: We actually were not supporters of the Hollings bill that called for just such measures. We thought it was an important means of emphasizing the problem of digital piracy. But technical mandates are not the best way to fix the piracy problem. These issues are best addressed voluntarily in the marketplace.

PCW: You mean makers of computer software and devices should voluntarily put restrictions on equipment?

Sherman: Look at the DVD model, where multiple industries worked together to come up with some form of protection that was sufficient to encourage the motion picture studios to release their content on this new format, and consumer electronics and IT companies have been able to support [the medium] because they thought that these were reasonable protections.

PCW: Do you sense that your lawsuits have changed any file-swapper's attitudes?

Sherman: I believe we have. We certainly have received a large number of letters from people commenting how they hadn't thought about peer-to-peer as piracy before. They understand why we're doing what we're doing.

PCW: Senator Sam Brownback [R-Kansas] is concerned that the RIAA is overstepping its bounds, such as when you issued subpoenas for downloaders' names. He and other critics argue that you are invading people's privacy. What do you say?

Sherman: We expect to have those kinds of issues raised. We're fighting with ISPs about this issue right now. I'm not surprised that a senator or two would take the side of the ISPs.

But I think that you really have to look at the big picture. Is Senator Brownback, or any other senator, going to say we shouldn't be able to protect our interests against thieves that are decimating our industry? The answer to that is no.

PCW: In the age of digital distribution, some argue that the RIAA is obsolete. Why should the RIAA, which is composed primarily of five music companies, control 80 percent of the music?

Sherman: We have no problem with a music industry that is more diversified, that gives new opportunities for new labels and new artists. This is not about maintaining control; it's about being fair in regards to the ability of people to get paid for their work.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113133,00.asp


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Aural Intercourse: File-Sharing 2.0
Mike Prevatt

Music fans and industry people alike have every reason to cheer: This month has been a watershed one for the digital music revolution. No sooner will you be able to pick up a copy of this paper than you can also participate in the scheduled re-emergence of Napster, the O.G. file trading service that not only popularized song swapping online, but sent the message to the recording industry--namely, the Big Five record labels--that their customers were no longer content with its traditional business model.

However, Napster 2.0 is no longer the rebellious bit of technology it was in 2000-01. Since it was sued and shut down by the courts and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2001, it has gone fully legit, and its new owner is Roxio, a high-profile company in the digital music business. When it launches Napster 2.0 on Thursday (you can pre-register at Napster.com), it will give patrons the choice of downloading individual songs (99 cents) and albums (averaging $10), or any of the 500,000 songs the service offers through a monthly subscription (though you lose the files once you cancel).

Napster 2.0 is predicted to be the biggest challenger to Apple's successful iTunes Music Store, which has been live for Mac users since April, and PC users since Oct. 16. The service--which offers almost 400,000 individual songs and albums--sold a million files in its first week of operation for Mac users. Apple beat its own record last week when PC users bought over a million tunes in the first three days the Windows version was available. Steve Jobs has opened his big gob once again and made it a goal to sell 100 million recordings by next April 28.

This, to say nothing of virtual record shops like RealNetwork's Rhapsody, which is label-sanctioned, as well as BuyMusic.com, Emusic.com, Musicmatch.com and Musicnet.com--all of which means nothing to the millions of file- sharing loyalists who still fiercely believe the exchanging of music online should be free, or protest the music industry's campaign against those using Kazaa, Grokster and the like. Last month, the RIAA sued almost 300 people, and aims to start a second wave of litigation in November--though, this time the alleged criminals get a chance to settle before the lobbyists' lawyers can launch into their opening statements about how Beyoncé needs to get paid.

But copyright-snubbing downloading through the file-sharing networks may have already peaked. Before the RIAA was handing subpoenas out at school playgrounds and retirement homes, between 60 and 100 million online pirates were trading Dashboard Confessional and Ludacris bootlegs. Now that the RIAA is in litigation mode, traffic at Kazaa is down 40 percent, and those still cherrypicking there have stopped making their own music library available, so the number of files up for grabs is down considerably, too. So, it's back to Sam Goody for the kids, right?

Not exactly. Though the fall season has seen a slew of best-selling new releases--propelled mostly by the likes of Clay Aiken, OutKast, Dave Matthews and Dido--some vocal music fans have flooded message boards online to decry the RIAA, some going as far as boycotting anything the Big Five releases. Most of them ask why they should support a business that's suing their target demographic. Meanwhile, the industry is still hemorrhaging, most visibly in the human resources department. Universal, which owns imprints such as Interscope and Island/Def Jam, announced plans to layoff some 1,350 employees by early 2004.

And, just in from Associated Press, two MIT grad students recently managed to circumvent the record labels--while operating within the confines of copyright and licensing--by creating a cost-efficient system through the school's cable TV network to hear analog recordings from the school's 3,500-album library. The RIAA has yet to comment, but experts say the "LAMP" system devised by Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel might be one alternative to Kazaa.

Or maybe not. A lot has happened since Napster irreversibly altered the music industry in 2000, but music fans remain impatient for a music service that has none of the petty limits of the newer, industry-sanctioned ones. Once someone launches a legit outlet as boundless as the file-sharing services the focus will go back from lawsuits to discovering new favorite tunes.

Legit download of the week

Amazon.com has brief snippets of almost all its albums for you to stream and sample, but it also has a sizeable section of free MP3s, too. Most of the pickins are of the emerging artist variety--yay--but this week, we're recommending 1997's "Between the Bars," in honor of revered singer/songwriter Elliott Smith, who died at 34 last Tuesday from an apparent suicide. Just go to Amazon's free music downloads page and type in a search for Smith or the track title.
http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2003/.../22466236.html


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Music Industry ‘Must Change Business Model’
Macworld staff

The future of the music industry remains uncertain, despite the success of Apple's iTunes Music Store.

Music-industry insiders are more optimistic right now than they have been for some time, The Economist reports, but face pressure to force them to change their business model.

"iTunes has won customers in far greater numbers than once seemed possible," the report explains, but warns that despite consumer acceptance of digital music services, peer-to-peer file sharing will take $4.7 billion in lost revenues.

"Paying 99 cents for a song on iTunes, says one British teen, is unappealing because at that price she may as well buy the CD in a shop. Nor do the new services yet come close to matching the libraries of nearly all music ever recorded that the peer-to-peers boast," The Economist writes.

Recording artist Moby says the industry is going to have to reduce its prices and move toward a new business model, that will be more- favourable to the artists.

In related news, the Recording Industry Association of America filed an additional 80 lawsuits against individual file sharers last night.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=7192


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Justice Department As Antipiracy Shill?
Rick Boucher

In response to peer-to-peer file swappers, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would place the Department of Justice at the head of a public education campaign about the niceties of copyright law.

While I applaud effective deterrence against the use of peer-to-peer technology to commit piracy, I find this proposed legislative response severely misguided on numerous levels.

The job of the Justice Department is to prosecute crimes--not give lectures and educate the public. In order to launch an effective campaign on the proper use of copyrighted material, the department would first have to educate itself. Given its crime-fighting orientation, I have little confidence that it would ever adequately explain public doctrines such as "fair use" or other proper uses of copyrighted material.

Under the proposed bill, the Justice Department would be under no obligation to ensure that consumers are informed of their fair-use rights to view, excerpt, and copy digital newspaper articles, music clips and other media in the privacy of their homes. At a minimum, it should be required to balance its presentation by emphasizing consumer rights. Otherwise, the education campaign would likely frighten users and chill the exercise of their historically protected rights.

For example, an aggressive antipiracy campaign could have the unintended effect of discouraging positive uses of peer-to-peer systems--such as the interchange of ideas for scientific research and the sharing of family recipes--out of the fear of criminal prosecution. Just as likely, the campaign would scare students away from legally downloading a music or video excerpt for use as part of a school project.

We have already seen a 12-year-old honors student sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which mistakenly thought that she was using her computer as an Internet-accessible digital jukebox. In addition, we have seen the threat of lawsuits deterring professors and scientists from engaging in legitimate scientific research. We don't need to make things worse by putting FBI agents on TV, waving handcuffs.

An aggressive antipiracy campaign could have the unintended effect of discouraging positive uses of peer-to-peer systems.

The Justice Department has more pressing matters to attend to--such as helping in the war against terrorism. Unfortunately, given tight budgets in Washington, D.C., any funds that are used for this new education campaign would almost certainly divert resources from these more urgent priorities.

Finally, if the Justice Department, at public expense, decides to educate the public about respect for copyright laws, an indefensible precedent will have been set. It would be very difficult for Congress to draw the line and say "no" to the next powerful interest group that wants a tax-funded education campaign to promote respect for another criminal statute in furtherance of its commercial interests. There is no need to start down a slippery slope of having law enforcers become educators, depleting the department's limited resources or redirecting it from its principle responsibility of enforcing the law.

In short, the proposed legislation adopts a fundamentally wrong-headed approach to copyright education and piracy prevention. In my view, an effective and appropriate education campaign should come from those who would benefit most from it--the music and movie industries. In fact, certain companies have begun to do just that, and I support their efforts.

There is no need to start down a slippery slope of having law enforcers become educators.

One studio, for example, airs short clips before the main attraction in theaters that focus on the lesser-known victims of piracy: the film crew, makeup artists and others. This is a good start, but just that--a start. For affordable sums, these industries could mount a substantial TV and radio public education campaign more effectively--and appropriately--than can the Justice Department.

An effective approach to online music piracy prevention would be for record labels to put their entire inventories of recorded music on lawful sites that allow for the permanent, portable downloading of reasonably priced single tracks.

The music industry has started moving in this direction. The success of Apple Computer's iTunes demonstrates that this model works and is what consumers want. The number of downloads from iTunes has broadly exceeded expectations. Now, other Web sites are offering music on a pay-per-track basis. I am convinced that a continued movement in this direction, coupled with an industry-sponsored education campaign, is the best response to peer-to-peer abuse.
http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5099583.html


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Give It Away And Share The Weed
Bob Baker

According to Rob Lewis of WeedShare: "There is a way for artists to give away their music ... and get paid!"

"Our new Weed service turns any Windows Media file into a self-promoting asset that can spread 'like a weed.' The file can be given away by e-mail, peer-to-peer, download site, CD or any other way you can think of. Anybody who gets a copy can play it three times for fre-e. On the fourth play, they're asked to buy it (at whatever price the artist sets).

"When you buy a song, 50% of the price goes immediately to the artist. 20% goes to the person who turned you on to the song. 10% goes to the person above them, and 5% to the next person up the chain. Weed gets the remaining 15% for operating the service.

"Once you've bought a song, send it to your friends. If they buy, you get 20%. And so on."

This concept seems like it has a lot of potential. It takes advantage of the file-sharing craze while building in an automatic sales mechanism. Very cool.

I'd like to hear from any artists who use this service. I'll pass along any feedback I get.

"Reprinted from Bob Baker's The Buzz Factor, featuring fre-e marketing and self-promotion ideas for songwriters, musicians and bands on a budget. Visit www.TheBuzzFactor.com for details."
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/news/1796/#body


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South Park on Copyright

Via Furdlog, Slashdot and DigtailConsumer - A transcript of a South Park episode: "This month [Lars Ulrich] was hoping to have a gold- plated shark tank bar installed right next to the pool, but thanks to people downloading his music for free, he must now wait a few months before he can afford it. [...] Still think downloading music for free is no big deal?"
http://www.spscriptorium.com/Season7/E709script.htm


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Washington Post Confused On CD-DRM
Edward W. Felten

Today's Washington Post runs an odd, self-rebutting story about the sales of the copy-protected Anthony Hamilton CD -- the same CD that Alex Halderman wrote about, leading to SunnComm's on-again, off-again lawsuit threat.

The article begins by saying that the CD's sales had an unusually small post-release drop-off in sales. Sales fell 23% in the first week, where 40-60% is more typical. There are several reasons this might have happened: the album was heavily promoted, it was priced at $13.98, and it had good word of mouth. But the article tries to argue that the SunnComm DRM technology was a big part of the cause.

The article proceeds to rebut its own argument, by undercutting any mechanism by which the DRM could have reduced copying. Did the DRM keep the music off peer-to-peer networks? No. "Songs from Hamilton's CD appeared on unauthorized song-sharing Internet services, such as Kazaa, before the release date..." Did the DRM keep people from making CD-to-CD copies? No. "Though buyers of the Hamilton CD are allowed to make three copies, nothing prevents them from copying the copied CDs"

Was the DRM unobtrusive? Here the reporter seems to misread one of the Amazon reviews, implying that the reviewer preferred DRM to non-DRM discs:

"I give this CD four stars only because of the copyright protection," wrote one reviewer. "This CD didn't play too well on my computer until I downloaded some kind of license agreement, and was connected to the Internet. Otherwise, it's very good."

It should be clear enough from this quote (and if you're not sure, go read the full review on Amazon) that this reviewer saw the DRM as a negative. And at least two other reviewers at Amazon say flatly that the CD did not work in their players.

The topper, though, is the last paragraph, which shows a reporter or editor asleep at the switch:

A Princeton University graduate student distributed a paper on the Internet shortly after the CD's release demonstrating, he argued, how the copy-protection could be broken. But Jacobs, who initially threatened to sue the student before backing off, said his technology is meant to thwart casual copying, not determined hackers.

What's with the "he argued"? The claims in the student's paper are factual in nature, and could easily have been checked. SunnComm even admits that the claims are accurate.

And how can the reporter let pass the statement by Jacobs implying that only "determined hackers" would be able to thwart the technology? We're talking about pressing the shift key, which is hardly beyond the capabilities of casual users.

We've come to expect this kind of distortion from SunnComm's press releases. Why are we reading it in the Washington Post?
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000467.html


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Latest DMCA Takedown Victim: The Election Process
Ed Foster

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press ... except as needed to allow trademark and copyright holders complete power to control discussions about their brands."

Forgive my minor editing of the First Amendment, but I wanted to illustrate just where we are in the era of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Nothing has made it clearer just how fundamentally the DMCA threatens our most basic rights than the current flap about electronic voting machines from Diebold, Inc.

Just as a capsule summary in case you've missed it, over the last several months there has been a rising tide of concern regarding the verifiability of electronic voting machines in general and the security, reliability, and integrity of Diebold's technology in particular. Adding fuel to the fire is the leaking of a large cache of internal Diebold documents and e-mails that have been circulating on the Internet. Critics pointed to memos that they said demonstrated Diebold's technology was buggy, badly tested, and vulnerable to backdoor manipulation. Some even claim to see evidence that outcomes of elections have already been influenced.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Diebold's first response was to begin cease-and-desist letterings to websites that had posted its internal memos, threatening to have those sites taken down under Section 512 of the DMCA. Section 512 provides a very big hammer to copyright holders because it requires Internet service providers to either quickly remove any allegedly infringing material they are hosting or face liability for the infringement themselves. If the ISP refuses, the copyright holder can go to the ISP's upstream provider and ask them to pull the plug. To protect themselves and their other customers, therefore, most ISPs will automatically and immediately take down their client's site upon receiving a 512 notification.

Diebold went the typical DMCA takedown one better, though. Not only did it go after the ISPs whose clients were posting the Diebold memos, it also began sending cease-and-desist letters to secondary sites that were reporting the controversy and merely contained hyperlinks to sites that were hosting the Diebold material. One such website and its ISP refused to accede to the DMCA takedown order and are being defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In other words, not only are you subject to DMCA takedown for what's on your own site, but you and your ISP are responsible for what might be on a site you link to. From a journalist's point of view, this raises some interesting questions about how one can fairly report this story and provide readers with resources for making up their own minds without incurring Diebold's wrath.

When I asked Diebold spokesman Mike Jacobsen whether I could provide links to Diebold-targeted sites as Blackbox Voting or Why-War, he acknowledged I could but said that it was possible I could get a cease-and-desist notice. "I'm not saying we're going to do it, but you would be at risk for getting a letter," he said. "Anyone that's hosting a direct link to someone hosting those files, we want them to understand this is our stolen property and we want those links to be removed. Looking at it from a legal perspective, we were advised the DMCA was the best resource for getting that done. All we're really requesting that the links be removed from the site, although it does seem that the ISPs wind up taking down the whole site."

Of course, I'm probably going to have a long wait for my cease-and-desist letter, because Diebold's actions have backfired in a number of ways. A mushrooming number of sites are now mirroring the entire set of memos, and by claiming intellectual property rights to them, Diebold has given backhanded authentication to the material. But in using the DMCA to try to suppress the debate about its voting machines, Diebold has made another tactical error - it's closed off the discussion to all but its most virulent detractors. Academicians or journalists who might find evidence in the memos to debunk the more sensational claims about stolen elections are going to feel their hands are tied.

The Diebold controversy has raised a number of troubling questions that can only be answered by an unbiased, transparent examination of the facts. Trying to avoid that examination through questionable intellectual property will only leave a lingering cloud of suspicion hanging over the electoral process. And it proves yet again that the DMCA is in practice totally antithetical to everything Americans believe about how a democracy is supposed to work.
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/...0/30/9197/8110


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Hollywood Takes Its’ Propaganda To School, Students Give It Right Back
AP

SAN FRANCISCO -- As part of its campaign to thwart online music and movie piracy, Hollywood is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces file-sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about Internet theft.

The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business sector.

Civil libertarians object that the movie industry is presenting a tainted version of a complex legal issue -- while the country's largest teachers' lobby is concerned about the incentives the program offers.

"What's the Diff?: A Guide to Digital Citizenship" launched last week with a lesson plan that aims to keep kids away from Internet services like Kazaa that let users trade digital songs and film clips: "If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it."

"We think it's a critical group to be having this conversation with," said MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor, suggesting online piracy may not have yet peaked. "If we sit idly by and we don't have a conversation with the general public of all ages, we could one day look back at October of 2003 as the good old days of piracy."

The effort doesn't stop in the classroom. Beginning Friday, public service announcements are being released to approximately 5,000 theaters nationwide, profiling people in the movie industry and arguing that digital piracy threatens their livelihoods.

Indeed, Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, told Penn State University faculty and students this week that his industry is in "a state of crisis" over digital theft.

But some copyright law experts aren't pleased that the MPAA is the only sponsor for such classroom discussions. They worry that the lesson plans don't address "fair use" constitutional protections for digital copying for personal or educational use.

"This is really sounding like Soviet-style education. First they're indoctrinating the students and then having students indoctrinate their peers," said Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The takeaway message has got to be more nuanced. Copyright is a complicated subject."

Melinda Anderson, a spokeswoman for the National Education Association, says it's unsettling when corporate presence in the classroom is tethered to sponsored incentive programs.

In this case, Junior Achievement is offering students DVD players, DVD movies, theater tickets and all-expenses-paid trips to Hollywood for winning essays about the illegalities of file-sharing. Teachers, too, can win prizes for effectively communicating the approved message in class.

"What it speaks to is kind of a new era in commercialism emerging in classrooms where the attempts to connect with students are becoming more and more sophisticated. Schools that are often strapped for cash are more tempted to partner with these organizations," Anderson said.

"Coming from school, these companies are getting a tacit endorsement for their product," Anderson said. "That's not a school's role -- to be the purveyors."

The program got a rocky start during its first presentation, to some relatively cyber-savvy teens at Raoul Wallenberg High School in San Francisco.

Andrew Irgens-Moller, 14, buried his head into a backpack on his desk and rolled his eyes as the guest teacher warned of computer viruses and hackers that could take control of a user's desktop via file-sharing programs. He objected that antivirus software could scan downloaded files and only sophisticated hackers could pull off the remote desktop computer takeover.

Then the teacher cut him off.

Bret Balonick, a tax accountant on loan from PricewaterhouseCoopers to teach the anti-piracy class, was arguing that some downloaders have been affected by malicious activity. Besides, he said, it's illegal to upload and download unauthorized content online.

"If it's illegal in America, host it in Uzbekistan," snapped the 14-year-old.

Balonick then had the freshmen role-play as singers, actors, producers, computer users. But even the "producers" quietly acknowledged that they too share song files over the Internet.

"It's not illegal if you decide to give it away," said Wilson Cen, 13, regarding burning copies of music CDs for his friends. "They don't want you selling them. It's a gift, you're not selling it."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...e/tech/2176045


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Happy Halloween, Nosferatu (No Thanks to Copyright)
Ernest Miller

Tonight, while the trick-or-treaters visit, I will be screening Nosferatu in my driveway on an 80" HDTV projection screen.

Released in silent black and white in 1922, Nosferatu is an unauthorized adaptation of the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker and is widely considered one of the classics of cinema. Certainly, many think it is the best adaptation of Dracula in film, one of the most influential horror movies of all time and a masterpiece of Expressionist filmmaking. Thanks to copyright law, however, this film was very nearly lost to us.

Florence Stoker, widow of Bram Stoker (who had died in 1912), sued the producers of Nosferatu for infringement and won. As part of the 1925 decision, all copies of Nosferatu were to be destroyed. Most were. Over the next few years, any copies that became public were also destroyed. This may have meant the end of the film, except that a few isolated copies managed to survive Florence Stoker's death in 1937.

Thank goodness for "pirates."
http://importance.typepad.com/the_im...halloween.html

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Tuesday, November 4th Is Election Day.

Don’t Forget To















Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17790 October 25th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17741 October 18th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17709 October 11th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17666 October 4th





Jack Spratts Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts at lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.