[JackSpratts]

Music Sharing Services To Start Washington Lobby

“It takes a lot of chutzpah,” says the RIAA. They would know.

Weary of being cast as the Internet's black marketeers, proprietors of free online music and file-sharing services are coming to Washington to launch a formal lobbying campaign to convince Congress of their legitimacy.
David McGuire

Grokster, a West Indies-based firm, and the New York-based Lime Wire will join with several other unnamed services in a trade association to defend the rights of free "peer-to-peer" -- or P2P -- file traders, Grokster's president, Wayne Rosso, said today.

The coalition, which plans to launch in the next 60 days, has not announced its name or hired a lobbyist. The group probably will work out of the office of whatever representative or lobby firm it hires, Rosso said.

It also is honing what its message and core values will be, but the primary aim is to dispel the belief that online file sharing is at best seedy and at worst illegal.

"The problem is that legislators have just been pumped full of so much misinformation," Rosso said. "They think that we're all back-alley smut peddlers and identity thieves, and that's just not the case."

The misinformation, he said, comes from the entertainment industry, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The groups represent the biggest film studios and recording companies, which say they are losing money because of free, easily available copies of their music and movies on the Internet.

File-sharing services, such as Kazaa, BearShare and Morpheus, became popular after the pioneering Napster closed its doors in 2001. They accounted for 5 billion music downloads in 2002, and there are 57 million users in the United States alone, according to the Yankee Group, a Boston- based research firm. Kazaa says that its file sharing software has been downloaded more than 200 million times.

Music industry revenues, meanwhile, have seen an 11 percent drop in sales in 2002, according to analyst firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. More than half of lost music sales are due to file sharing, the Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group says.

Rosso said file sharers are not trying to deprive the recording industry of its deserved cash.

"Copyright owners need to be paid and we certainly believe in copyright law," he said. "We just don't want it to be abused and don't want the rights of users to be trampled."

File sharing also has many legitimate uses, such as sharing information quickly and efficiently over long distances, said Greg Bildson, Lime Wire's chief operating officer.

"The media companies that are pushing their end of the issue have been tying file sharing [to] anything bad they can think of -- first it was child pornography then it was homeland security [threats]," Bildson said.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy scorned the new lobby's goals.

"It takes a lot of chutzpah for companies that purposefully facilitate illegal copyright theft to turn around and lobby the nation's lawmakers," he said. "This is apparently a reaction to the interest of Congress in the rampant piracy, security and privacy concerns that these networks are responsible for."

"We welcome any debate that's based on facts," said MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor.

Gigi Sohn, president of D.C.-based Public Knowledge, a group that supports fair-use rights, said the voice of P2P proprietors has been absent from the copyright debate for too long. Nevertheless, she fears they will have a "tough row to hoe."

"If they just go in there and say peer-to-peer is good, without recognizing [the piracy problem], I think they'll just get blown out of the water," Sohn said.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), who co-chairs a recently formed intellectual property and online piracy caucus, said she is eager to debate online copyright issues with the file sharing industry, but warned that it might get a chilly reception.

"If they start legitimizing piracy, they're in for a fight," said Bono.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jun24.html


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“Note to the RIAA: It's not the pirates, it's the music.”

Lawmakers Prove They Are Clueless About The World
David Hayes

It's no wonder the youth of America are turned off by politics.

Housed in Washington, the land of martinis, vodka gimlets and self-importance, the leaders of this nation too often show us they don't have a clue about what's going on in the rest of the country.

That was painfully apparent last week. Sen. Orrin Hatch, the 69-year-old Republican from Utah, suggested during a congressional hearing that using a virus to destroy the hard drives of those accused of downloading music illegally would be a splendid way to stop the problem.

Hatch, whose position in the Senate has given him enough notoriety to produce and sell Christian music of his own, said damaging an accused music pirate's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator, who later tried to qualify his statement by saying he didn't favor extreme measures, was just parroting a proposal the music industry first floated several years ago.

Let's forget, for one moment, the basic legal issues here -- those niggling little things like due process, fair trial and the variety of laws that would have to be broken to do what Hatch suggests. The senator should know these things. He leads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Instead, let's look at the basics. Perhaps the only people more clueless on this issue than Hatch are those in the music industry who see digital downloading as a threat to their future.

The highly profitable music industry has been crying the economic blues for years now. Digital piracy is just killing the industry, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Note to the RIAA: It's not the pirates, it's the music. There just hasn't been as much music worth buying in the past few years.

Undoubtedly, business is down a bit. But consider: The music industry is comparing sales today with the blockbuster late 1990s. That's like comparing apples with really sour oranges.

At least six of the top 40 selling "albums" of all time were produced between 1997 and 1999. The numbers the RIAA uses for comparison were skewed by the golden (to the music industry) Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears phenomenon. Garth Brooks, Santana and Shania Twain produced their biggest-selling albums during the period.

So here we are in 2003. There's still good music being produced. But there hasn't been a teen phenom -- or two or three as there were in the late 1990s -- to drive sales.

And then there's that other minor issue the association fails to look at. The economy is not what it was during the late '90s, when the high- tech boom was running uncontrolled. With unemployment above 6 percent, consumers aren't buying as much of anything anymore. Music sales were down 9 percent in 2002. If you're working for a telecom company, those sound like pretty good numbers.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...ss/6154390.htm


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321 Studios Updates Controversial DVD Copy Software
Gillian Law

321 Studios LLC has released an upgrade to its DVD copying software despite still being embroiled in a court case over the software's legality.

The company announced last Friday that DVD X Copy Gold, an improved version of the software that includes all of the features of two previous products, DVD X Copy and DVD X Copy XPRESS, is now available. New features in DVD X Copy Gold let users copy most DVDs within an hour, and can record all features of an original CD or compress a DVD-9 to a DVD-5, fitting each backup copy onto a single DVD disk, 321 Studios said in a statement.

321 Studio's software uses a decryption technology called DeCSS to let users copy DVD movies onto recordable DVDs and CD-R discs, despite the CSS (Contents Scrambling System) encryption placed on the movies to prevent this sort of copying.

321 Studios is currently involved in a court case with MGM Studios Inc., Tristar Pictures Inc., Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., Time Warner Entertainment Co. LP, Disney Enterprises Inc., Universal City Studios LLLP and The Saul Zaentz Co. over the sale and use of its software.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, began the case by saying that she was "substantially persuaded" by the opinions of other judges in earlier cases involving the DMCA, who had ruled it illegal to distribute tools to work around copy protection technology. The new software seems unlikely to help 321 Studios case.

Terry Rose, managing director of 321 Studios in the U.K. said Friday that the company has made several changes to the software but that these are not aimed at lessening the charges against it. He was unable to comment on the court case, other than to confirm it was still ongoing, he said.

Mark Fisher, a new-media attorney with Fish and Richardson PC in Boston, said Friday that 321 Studio's announcement shows they believe in their case that their product is not illegal.

"It's not a quantum leap in features, just an improvement to the compression, so I don't think it will change the court case. (321's) position is that they have every right to do what they're doing, so there's no reason not to bring out new products," Fisher said.

According to a timeline on its own Web site, 321 Studios began a suit against the companies in April 2002, asking the judge to declare that its product, DVD Copy Plus, did not violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The companies responded with their own suit in June 2002, asking that the original case be dismissed on the grounds that there was no case or controversy.

Claim and counterclaim have continued since then, and the current case, a motion for partial summary judgement ruling that 321 Studio's products are illegal, was begun by the movie studios in January of this year, 321 Studios' site said. Judgment is expected to take 30 to 60 days from the mid-May court date in front of District Court Judge Illston, the site said.
http://www.idg.com.sg/idgwww.nsf/uni...3?OpenDocument


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From the site -

///Soulseek News///


The first version of Soulseek Isle is now available here. Here's a short Q&A to try to explain what it is we're trying to do and what you should expect:

Q: What are the differences between Soulseek Isle and the regular Soulseek client?

A: Virtually nothing, except that the Isle client logs on to the new Soulseek Isle server, which runs on separate resources from the main server, and so is expected to have considerably less users, but at the same time, it's also expected to be a lot less congested than the main server.

Q: New server? Why?

A: We've reached a roadblock. The main server already simultaneously supports more than sixty thousand users and we just can't figure out any other ways to make it take more without becoming congested. This in turn affects the server's ability to process new logins, and probably even worse, severly restricts its ability to distribute searches. Testing and profiling the server software is extremely difficult because it's very busy 24 hours a day. So the next natural choice would be to start branching out, start creating new servers. Soulseek Isle is the very first step in that direction. While it is only a tiny patch over the original Soulseek client, we're hoping it would prove useful in starting the separation process.

Q: Wasn't the new server hardware supposed to take care of this?

A: Yes. It didn't. We're not sure why but even if it had, the solution would've only been temporary.

Q: So is this going to be like Napster, where people can't find each other because every person is on a different server?

A: Only to a lesser degree. Soulseek's always aimed to group users by areas of interest. When we started out, the system revolved entirely around the subject of electronic music. Everyone was interested in more or less the same thing, and on the whole the environment felt friendlier and more accommodating. As Soulseek became more popular, much of that was gone. That's something that we're hoping to have back once we successfully branch out.

Q: You said you wanted each server to be topic-specific. What's the "Isle" supposed to be specific to?

A: Nothing at the moment. Again, this is just the very first step in our branching out process. Personally we hope it would become the server of choice for people interested in electronic music, but there's no telling how things would turn out for the Isle. Once the Isle takes in a more specific direction, we'll designate it as such. In the meanwhile we're planning on taking advantage of the smaller, more manageable Soulseek environment to develop new features to better support a multiple server environment.

Q: Didn't Soulseek use to have multiple server support?

A: Yes, and it's going to be a lot like that again pretty soon.

Q: What if I'm not interested in anything specific, but just like to get files files files?

A: You would eventually be able to switch between servers as you wish. Besides that, Soulseek's generic selection of files was never its strong side.

Q: Can I run the Isle client at the same time I'm running the regular client?

A: Yes. The Isle client uses its own folder and registry settings. That also means you'd have to reenter your information into the Isle client once you install it, as it uses its own configuration files. Or, you can copy all *.cfg files from c:\program files\soulseek to c:\program files\SoulseekIsle before running the Isle client.

Q: Isn't the Isle client just the test client with a slightly different tray icon?

A: Yes.

Nir 7:24 PM

http://slsk.blogspot.com/


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i've been on isle now about an hour and it's just like the regular version. literally. there's no indication you're on another network, except that at this moment none of my contacts are here. i dropped my soulseek .cfg files into the isle folder which kept my prefs identical - nick, buddies etc. and i guess i've beaten them to it. i'm way ahead of them, but that's what happens when you make p2p-zone.com a regular stop on your p2p tour.

- js.

10:55pm, wed.


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Are You in RIAA's Cross Hairs?
Katie Dean

When the recording industry said Wednesday it would sue heavy music sharers, it left one unnerving question unanswered: Just who would they consider to be a heavy sharer?

In a conference call with reporters, the Recording Industry Association of America's President Cary Sherman said the group will begin collecting evidence against those who offer "substantial" amounts of music online to others over peer-to-peer networks, then will file hundreds of copyright- infringement lawsuits beginning in August. But he declined to say specifically what "substantial" means.

"They may go after people who are on really large pipes and seem to be uploading a lot," said Bram Cohen, a P2P programmer who developed BitTorrent. Or, the RIAA could "find someone who is unimportant but typical of everybody out there, and just sue them to make their life miserable to send a message."

The vagueness seems to be a deliberate move by the RIAA to strike fear in anyone who trades, experts said. The intent is to scare everyone from prototypical pirates who share hundreds of ripped CDs through T-1 lines to teens who trade a handful of pop tunes.

Still, the heaviest sharers are a distinct bunch relatively easy to pick out in a crowd.

There are no definitive statistics about usage patterns on P2P services like Kazaa and Morpheus. But a Xerox PARC study about Gnutella in 2000 discovered that a tiny portion of users accounted for an overwhelming majority of file-sharing traffic. For example, 50 percent of the responses for music searches came from just 1 percent of Gnutella's users. The researchers also found that 70 percent of the users shared no files. In other words, most people who use P2P networks tend to download, not supply, music, a phenomenon dubbed "free riding."

There is no current study of modern P2P networks, but experts believe that the same patterns persist.

If the RIAA truly begins by pursuing the heaviest music suppliers, the first people they net likely will be those who have a high-bandwidth connection like a T-1 line, hoard thousands of files and keep their computer on all the time, said Kevin Lai, a scientist who studies P2P systems at Hewlett Packard Laboratories.

"The people who are sharing the most are generally people at universities," Lai said. "If you're living on campus you'll have something … that's between 100 and 1,000 times greater than your average DSL capability."

In addition, if the RIAA wants to pack the most debilitating punch to the network, it will target the "supernode" users who pass along the most files. On services like Kazaa, some users can agree to have their computers serve as supernodes, which are hubs that distribute files to people close to them on the physical network. Generally, these users have access to very fast telecom lines.

"If you want to cripple a network, you go for the nodes, which are highly connected and responsible for most of the traffic," said Bernardo Huberman, director of the Systems Research Center at HP Labs. "You would target the most active nodes. You wouldn't target those who are downloading every month or so."

Or, to freak everyone out, the RIAA could choose to sue a smaller offender.

To sue people somewhat indiscriminately would "scare the bejesus out of everybody else," Cohen said.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59392,00.html


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Music Industry's Next Piracy Targets: Ordinary Folks
Stanley A. Miller II

The music industry raised the stakes in its war on piracy Wednesday, threatening to sue "everyday people" for as much as $150,000 for each song they illegally share online.

The search for individual computer users shifts the piracy focus away from file-sharing computer networks sites such as Kazaa, WinMX and Gnutella, which have proved difficult to shut down.

The Recording Industry Association of America will begin gathering evidence against individuals today, and the public should expect the first round of lawsuits in eight to 10 weeks, according to Matthew Oppenheim, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for the organization.

The association plans to seek damages set by U.S. copyright laws, which allow for awards of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer.

"We have engaged in a significant education campaign," Oppenheim said, from artists' ads saying "Don't steal music" to "instant- messaging millions of users to tell them they are not anonymous. We have been ramping up that message. People engaged in this behavior need to be deterred."

The industry has warned businesses that they could be held responsible if they let employees use their high-speed Internet connections for copyright infringement. And it has sued Internet service providers and the makers of popular file-sharing programs, which let millions of people freely trade files online.

This year, the association sued four college students who ran advanced, Napster-like systems over their schools' local area networks, indexing millions of files for downloading. All of those suits have been settled.

Now the industry is opening the field to everyone, a tactic that some legal experts and consumer advocates said is doomed to fail.
http://www.jsonline.com/bym/tech/news/jun03/150853.asp


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Piracy Dragnet
Cynthia L. Webb

Fresh off recent victories in the courtroom, the recording industry is out to tighten the vise on music pirates through legal action against the individual computer users the industry believes are responsible for facilitating online music theft.

The Recording Industry Association of America yesterday announced that it will start patrolling the Internet today for evidence to use against individual peer-to-peer network users and other file swappers suspected of trading "substantial" amounts of copyrighted music online. Expect users of KaZaa, Morpheus and Grokster, three of the most popular file-swapping sites, to be prime targets.

"We certainly will file at least several hundred lawsuits to start, but that's only the beginning," RIAA President Cary Sherman said, as quoted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We intend to keep filing lawsuits on a regular basis until people get the message."
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Music Industry To Play Hardball

Call it a major scare tactic, but the RIAA has already had success with its campaign against digital piracy. College students targeted by the group for trading songs online settled their cases, paying thousands of dollars in fines and penalties. "Until a year ago, the industry's main strategy had centered on suing companies, such as the defunct Napster Inc. of Redwood City, that distributed file-sharing software. But as those suits bogged down in the courts, the industry began concentrating on individual file sharers," The San Francisco Chronicle said in its coverage today.
• The San Francisco Chronicle: RIAA To Sue Individual File Sharers

The RIAA is hoping its online sweep and legal actions will put the brakes on rampant file sharing. The music industry claims to have lost millions of dollars in CD sales to file swapping from the Internet. "We'd much rather spend time making music then dealing with legal issues in courtrooms. But we cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry," Sherman said in a statement yesterday.

Just how extensive will the RIAA campaign be? "We have no hard and fast rules about how many files you have to be distributing" to be targeted in the RIAA sweep, Sherman said, according to washingtonpost.com. "Any individual computer user who continues to steal music will face the very real risk of having to face the music." The Washington Post provided details of how the RIAA plans to play detective online: "The RIAA said it would use the public directories of peer-to-peer software programs and issue subpoenas to Internet service providers to track down people trading music files." A number of media outlets noted that the RIAA said it will begin filing suits within the next two months.
• washingtonpost.com: RIAA Plans Lawsuits Against File Traders
• The Washington Post: RIAA Plans to Sue Music Swappers

RIAA's Legal Ammunition

The San Jose Mercury News fills in the background on how the RIAA has gathered some legal ammunition for its ramped-up fight: "A recent federal district court ruling all but assured the strategy to target individuals, after a judge in Los Angeles found that the companies behind popular file-sharing software like Morpheus and Grokster could not be held liable for illegal activities of their users," the paper said. "That April ruling is under appeal. The recording industry has been laying the legal groundwork for this new, more personal assault on Internet music piracy for more than a year. It subpoenaed Verizon Internet Services in July for the name of a individual subscriber accused of downloading more than 600 songs via Kazaa. When Verizon refused, the RIAA successfully compelled the disclosure through federal court. That case, while still under appeal, established the recording industry's right to use subpoena power granted under federal copyright law to identify suspected copyright infringers."
• The San Jose Mercury News: Music Labels Plan Web Dragnet

A Strategy Bound to Backfire?

Even as the RIAA steps up its fight, a few cracks might be forming in the entertainment industry coalition against piracy. "Although RIAA represents the record industry -- and its action Wednesday was supported by acts as diverse as the Dixie Chicks and Shakira -- a number of record-label and online-music executives quietly questioned whether a legal offensive addresses the industry's fundamental problems," The Los Angeles Times said. "The labels, they said, need to stop focusing on lawsuits and start concentrating on the new market that is emerging online. "There is no positive message coming out, no coordinated, positive message coming out in support of the online services," one unnamed critic said, according to the paper.
• The Los Angeles Times: Labels Will See Music File Sharers In Court (Registration required)

Critics in the Internet service provider industry aren't happy either. "ISPs are bracing for what Verizon Vice President Sarah Deutsch called 'an avalanche of subpoenas,' as the labels turn to service providers to help them identify file swappers," CNET's News.com reported. "She said there's no mechanism in place under the subpoena process to ensure that customers aren't mistakenly targeted or that their personal information is only used for the purposes of the lawsuit. She also worries that other copyright holders might follow the RIAA's lead, putting ISPs in the middle of the copyright debate and forcing them to spend time and money processing thousands of requests to identify subscribers who haven't been proven guilty of anything."
• CNET's News.com: Labels Aim Big Guns At Small File Swappers

Fred von Lohmann, a civil liberties lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the New York Times that the RIAA's efforts could target minors, one of the recording industry's biggest customer base, a move that the paper paraphrased Lohmann as saying "could result in a backlash from angry consumers during a time of economic hardship." Von Lohmann: "We think it's a particularly outrageous and ill-advised strategy. Suing your best customer is always a bad idea. What we need is a way to better pay artists and to make file sharing legal." On EFF's Web site, the group calls for action -- against the RIAA's legal dragnet. "At a time when more Americans are using file-sharing software than voted for President Bush, more lawsuits are simply not the answer. It's time to get artists paid and make file-sharing legal. EFF calls on Congress to hold hearings immediately on alternatives to the RIAA's litigation campaign against the American public," Lohmann said in a statement.
• The New York Times: Recording Industry To Sue Internet Music Swappers (Registration required)

Meanwhile, the RIAA is getting support from at least one ally in the intellectual property business. The Business Software Alliance, which represents a number of tech firms and has a tagline that it supports a "safe and legal digital world," offered its praise. BSA chief Robert Holleyman: "P2P is an impressive technology and nothing should make us lose sight of its potential. Yet, there are illegal uses of this technology that necessitate actions such as the strategy announced today by the RIAA. BSA supports RIAA's ability to protect their members' works online. The strategy announced today is consistent with the joint principles announced in January by the IT and music industries where we agreed that private and government enforcement actions against infringers is critical to stemming the growth of piracy."
• BSA Press Release: IT Industry Execs Support RIAA Efforts to Protect Music On-Line

High-Tech Arms Race

Some people are so intent on finding ways to download music online for free, they are using hardball tactics of their own. A washingtonpost.com report today, part of a series on digital piracy and copyrights, explains how file-swappers are going stealth as the popularity of P2P networks grows. "Swapping files online, by all accounts, is more popular than ever. In the past six months alone, no fewer than 50 new versions of 'peer-to-peer,' or P2P file-trading software programs have emerged on the Internet. Unlike some of the most popular services like Kazaa and Grokster, many of them try to shield the identities of their users with password-protected networks, encryption and other tools," the article said, many in an effort to thwart the RIAA. "People who prefer downloading illegally copied files are jumping ship from the big-name networks in favor of these tightly knit communities, said Jorge Gonzalez, co-founder of Zeropaid.com, a Web forum for P2P enthusiasts."
• washingtonpost.com: Online Piracy Spurs High-Tech Arms Race

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that many business are cracking down on employees' use of P2P networks in the workplace. According to the newspaper, companies "are prodded by growing use of these file-sharing applications, which allow people to grab free but largely illicit versions of their favorite songs and movies. Besides distracting workers from their jobs, companies say, the applications can plug up computer networks and may pose security risks by spreading viruses -- not to mention opening up corporate hard drives to outsiders through peer-to-peer sharing."
• The Wall Street Journal: Thanks for Not Sharing (Subscription required)

A Spruced-UP AOL

America Online will unveil a new version of its Internet service later this summer, and the revamped version will feature better e-mail features and faster Web connection capabilities, Reuters said today. "The version -- AOL 9.0 Optimized -- emerges as the online division of AOL Time Warner Inc. tries to stem the shrinkage in its dial-up base and attract high-speed subscribers with more programming and services, including those targeted at advanced Internet users, to recharge growth."
• Reuters via washingtonpost.com: AOL Offers Peek At New Version

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that AOL has been getting some raves recently from analysts -– even as its accounting practices are being vetted by investigators. "The bullish reports from analysts in recent days are giving a boost to the multimedia giant, which counts Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting System and CNN among its properties. On Wednesday, Salomon Smith Barney raised its rating on the company's stock to 'in-line' from 'underperforming' relative to the sector," the paper said. "Analyst Lanny Baker said consumers' accelerating migration from dial-up to broadband Internet service still threatens to erode America Online's U.S. subscriber base. But 'we believe that a combination of cost cuts, falling telecommunications network costs and stabilizing ad dollars will put a floor under the AOL unit cash flows in the near term,' he said in a research note."
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Analysts Give Thumbs Up To AOL

Not The Headline Most Companies Want: 'Merger From Hell'

Speaking of AOL, America Online's merger with Time Warner is the featured theme of a new book by Alec Klein, a reporter at The Washington Post. Klein was on CNBC yesterday to tout his book, "Stealing Time," and explained that the two mammoth companies were not able to execute their merger plan properly and got tangled in a war of egos. Klein's book grabbed some reviews this past weekend in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. An excerpt from the Times review: "Mr. Klein does add a contemporary interview with Gerald M. Levin, the former chairman and chief executive of Time Warner who agreed to the deal. 'I'm the one who got up and said -- and there are people who play this back all the time, when we announced the deal -- 'I believe in the Internet and, therefore, I believe in these values,' Mr. Levin tells Mr. Klein. 'Well, that was a terrible thing. Well, at that time, it made sense, and over time, I still think it will.'"
• The New York Times: AOL Merger: Dissecting A Deal That Soured (Registration required)

And from The Wall Street Journal's review: "AOL did much to stimulate interest in the Web, but its all-elbows business practices also helped strangle the goose laying the golden eggs. Mr. Klein notes that AOL had a goal of extracting, in advertising fees, at least half of the venture-capital funding of the dot-coms with which it did business, leaving them starved of operating capital. At the end of one especially tough quarter, AOL executives forced Spanish-language ads onto the AOL home page so that they could bill the advertisers for page impressions," L. Gordon Crovitz, senior vice president of Dow Jones and president of its electronic-publishing division, wrote. "In the interest of full disclosure -- and with gratitude for an early lesson -- I should note that AOL executives back in 1997 introduced me to the fever swamp of Internet business models. My Dow Jones electronic-publishing colleagues were negotiating to renew an agreement under which we provided a selection of our news for use on AOL. But instead of AOL continuing to pay us for our brands and content, its executives informed us that they now expected publishers like us to pay AOL to give away our content, without any licensing revenue. We scratched our heads at this economic logic and walked away."
• The Wall Street Journal: Merger From Hell (Subscription required)

Don't forget. A fun excerpt from Klein's book is available on washingtonpost.com.

Gates On George Orwell And Other Lofty Topics

This has been a spam-bashing week for Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. He wrote how his e-mail in-box is ravaged by awful junk e-mail in a The Wall Street Journal op-ed and in a letter to Microsoft users. Then yesterday, he spoke at a Washington conference on IT and homeland security. "In a 23-minute speech that ranged from George Orwell to spam, Gates focused on the need for government and industry to collaborate, to devise common security standards that can be used to block unwanted attacks. Protecting computer systems, he said, is as important to homeland security as finding weapons of mass destruction," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said. "We worry not only about weapons of mass destruction, but also about weapons of mass disruption, ways to bring down our government, financial, military and other computer systems," Gates said yesterday, according to the paper.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Gates: Security Vital At Microsoft, Even If It Delays Products
• The Seattle Times: Gates: Essential To Keep Security, Privacy In Balance

Filter is designed for hard-core techies, news junkies and technology professionals alike. Have suggestions, cool links or interesting tales to share? Send your tips and feedback to cindy.webb@washingtonpost.com.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jun26.html

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How Hulk Crushed The Online Pirate

New Jersey man pleads guilty to posting bootlegged movie on the Internet
P.J. Huffstutter

When Karen Randall received a phone call late one night and learned that an early, rough version of "The Hulk" had been pirated and posted on the Internet, one thought came to her mind.

"We are going to get them. We are going to get them, crush them, stop them," said Randall, Vivendi Universal Entertainment's general counsel.

On Wednesday, Randall got her wish.

Kerry Gonzalez, a 24-year-old New Jersey insurance underwriter, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to criminal charges of posting the bootlegged movie on the Internet. He could face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $250,000 when he is sentenced Sept. 26 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The winding trail leading to Gonzalez's plea began in early June at a Manhattan advertising agency that was working on the marketing campaign for the Ang Lee movie, studio sources said Wednesday.

An acquaintance told Gonzalez that he had seen a copy of "The Hulk," thanks to a friend who worked at the agency. The acquaintance asked Gonzalez whether he wanted to check it out, said Matthew Portella, Gonzalez's defense attorney.

Gonzalez said that he did and soon had a videotaped copy of "The Hulk" work print. Officials with the FBI, who said the case remains open, declined to name the ad agency or the man who gave Gonzalez the tape.

At his home in Hamilton, N.J., Gonzalez slipped the tape into a digital scanner and made an electronic copy, according to court documents.

The two-hour work print — the term used for such early copies of a movie in postproduction — is dark in spots, shows details of the digital wires used to create the virtual Hulk and lacks a soundtrack. It also includes security tags — unique markers on the top and bottom right-hand corners of the screen, as well as numerical strings embedded in the videotape.

Different markers are used each time studio officials make a copy of the work print. "That way, we can tell who's got what copy," said Rick Finkelstein, president and chief operating officer of Universal Pictures.

That information ultimately would help lead law enforcement officials to Gonzalez.

There were only a few early copies of "The Hulk." Some were in the hands of the director and film editors, who were piecing together the movie. At least one was sent to the ad agency to be used as a basis for figuring out how to market the film, law enforcement officials said.

Gonzalez, who knew about the security tags, used a software program in an attempt to black them out. On June 6, he logged on to a Web site based in the Netherlands and, according to court records, allowed people to download the work print.

Within hours, the movie files had spread from the Netherlands, reaching peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and also Internet Relay Chat, a computer protocol that allows users to copy files from other computers at high speeds.

By the time Randall's phone rang about 11:30 that same night, the damage had been done — and it was spreading, as many fans and Internet movie viewers reacted negatively to an unfinished film.
http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-...ness-headlines


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RIAA Goes After The Little Guys
Jefferson Graham

When Karol Franks, a mother of two teens in Pasadena, Calif., heard Wednesday that the music industry was threatening to sue average folks who swap music online — like her kids — she posed a question that must have been on many minds: "How can there be a lawsuit when there are tens of thousands of people who use file- sharing programs?"

Because the Recording Industry Association of America, flush with recent court wins in its fight against digital piracy, can now move from suing the companies that facilitate the free swapping of music files to targeting some of the 57 million computers users who regularly swap. (Related item: Facts about file sharing.)

By the numbers

People who use file-sharing services in the USA: 57 million

Number of times Kazaa's software has been downloaded worldwide: 230 million

Users sharing files Wednesday afternoon on Kazaa: 4.2 million

Files being shared on Kazaa Wednesday afternoon: 900 million

Songs sold in two months at Apple Music Store: 5 million

Percentage of ages 12 to 18 who say they'd download a new song they like: 35%

Percentage of ages 12 to 18 who say they'd buy a new song they like: 10%

Source: The Yankee Group, RIAA, USA TODAY research

Going after home users is the industry's best chance to slow the growth of file-swapping services, which have boomed since Napster's demise in 2001.

And the record labels, suffering a drop of 20% in album sales since 2000 according to unreleased Nielsen SoundScan figures, feel they need to take action.

But for parents such as Franks, "these are kids who I believe are the majority of the thieves," she says. "To what extent would they be able to make financial amends if these minors can be held liable?"

In practical terms, not much. Four college students were sued in April, and settled shortly after for $12,000 to $17,500 each. But potential fines are a whopping $150,000 a song, which would make a person who shares as few as 10 songs online accountable for $1.5 million.

Attorney Whitney Broussard calls the copyright fines astronomical. "The penalty far outweighs the actual harm," he says. "When the reality of the size of these damages sinks in, when the parents of a 15-year-old downloader are sued for millions, people are going to be stunned."

Few expect that even legal action against users will end online piracy. But the industry hopes to at least give breathing room to some of the legal services starting to gain traction.

"It's very difficult to compete with free," says Bob Ohlweiler of MusicMatch, which has the largest subscriber base of any legitimate subscription service — 145,000 users for its listen- only MX Radio — and hopes to start selling song downloads by summer's end. "The injection of personal responsibility is a sensible approach. It's like a speeding ticket. Everybody doesn't get one, but a few people do, and a lot of people slow down."

Others see the offensive against fans as another wrongheaded move by an industry that could have handled the situation with vision years ago.

"Can you imagine Wal-Mart spending time to collect evidence, file lawsuits against its customers together and clog up the courts?" says Gale Daikoku, retail analyst with market research firm GartnerG2. She calls this kind of assault on a customer base "unprecedented." Theft in the $2.7 trillion retail industry is 2% of sales, she says, but stores like Macy's and Nordstrom "focus on making the customer experience better and having people return to the stores, not on chasing them away."

Not everyone buys into piracy as the sole cause of the industry's slump. "Digital copying, whether file sharing or CD burning, is definitely a factor, but it's not the only culprit," says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts. "Music is not necessarily a recession-proof product. ... When you're not certain of your job status or how much money you have in the bank, it's easy to put off buying music, especially if you're not a kid."

"Has a theater ever sued a kid for sneaking into a movie without paying?" Karol Franks says. "I think the music industry will spend a lot of money for little reward."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/n...-25-riaa_x.htm


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New RIAA Chief Should Name Digital Advisors, Says CEO of Leading File Sharing Company
Press Release

The new chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, when named, should empanel a group of advisors from the Internet music community to help identify areas of cooperation between the recording industry, artists, lawmakers and the global community that accesses music via the Web, says Elan Oren, CEO of iMesh (www.imesh.com), a leading peer-to-peer file-sharing company with 40 million users worldwide.

"After years of acrimony -- and now new action by the RIAA -- a digital panel appointed to advise the new RIAA chief will enable the music industry, artists and Internet users to meet a common goal of legal and mutually beneficial music distribution worldwide," Mr. Oren said. "Peer to peer companies do not infringe copyrights; users do. (The RIAA lawsuit threat against users implicitly supports this view.) Furthermore, users download noncopyright-protected material because the music industry does not make copyrighted material broadly available on the Web."
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...lease_id=54972


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Adds P2P Support

Windows Releases Windows 2000 SP4, Preps Windows XP SP2
Paula Rooney

Microsoft has released its fourth service pack for Windows 2000 and plans an update for Windows XP this summer.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, an update for the three-year-old operating system that supports USB 2.0 and 802.1X wireless support on the desktop.

It also offers increased security and an easier set up, according to a statement issued by Microsoft.

The service pack, which is designed for Windows 2000 Professional desktop and Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server, also offers updated application and hardware compatibility, better reliability and an updated End User License Agreement that reportedly gives customers added control.

As part of the change to the "Automatic Internet-Based Services" licensing, for instance, users can turn off features they don't want enabled.

Meanwhile, Microsoft plans to release an update for Windows XP this summer that offers support for peer-to-peer technology, a Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed. One source, however, said the Windows XP Service Pack 2 will offer low level support for P2P calls.
http://www.crn.com/sections/Breaking...rticleID=42907


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Aural Intercourse: The Case For Legal Downloads
Mike Prevatt

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't visit Rollingstone.com. As far as music websites go, it's varied and updated frequently enough for anyone passionate about pop music to check out at least a few times a week. This is nearly ironic, as watching the print version of the institution endure its post-Maxim identity crisis has been both saddening and frustrating. On the site, I can see a majority of what's in the magazine with minimal "American Idol" invasion--as well as experience a wealth of supplemental features that includes the best music column found anywhere, "Well Hung at Dawn," and several audio and video clips for downloading or streaming.

The real boon to music-related websites of late has been what bonus features it can provide for the fan unfulfilled by the traditional media (broadcast radio, MTV, magazines) and seeking new musical blood. From VH1.com and Grooveradio.com, to Antimusic.com and the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" page at the website for Santa Monica, Calif.-based KCRW-FM, there is no end to the listening opportunities on the Net, something not lost on the online community and passionate music fan bases craving both hit singles and new discoveries. And it's good for the conscience because it's legal.

Now, I'm not going to badmouth file-sharing and its arguable illegitimacy. It's hard to fault the insatiable music fan who refuses to pay $19 for a CD, or wants more than that product and artist can commercially provide. But we all know one or two or maybe more cheapskates who have now pretty much substituted buying records because they now can obtain anything they could ever want for free through file-sharing. There shall be no crying for overplayed superstars like Shania Twain if she loses sales to this phenomenon, but until the industry undergoes some serious reform, I'll continue to worry about artists like Ed Harcourt and Black Eyed Peas--talented newcomers and slipstream acts that need sales to maintain recording contracts and the exposure their labels can provide, not to mention unsigned and underground acts needing to find an audience outside the local dive bar.

MP3.com, once a trailblazing site for amateur acts the world 'round until Universal bought it and emphasized its more popular artists, still provides an insane catalog of unsigned material. MTV.com has made catching particular videos easy with its numerous multimedia offerings, including the rookie and MTV2 tracks often broadcast after midnight. NME.com, the online home of revered British music weekly New Music Express, gave its devoted a week-long sneak of the entire new Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief, before its June 10 release, and offers newcomer clips, too.

There are smaller, lesser-known sites as well giving away music files, most of which can be saved onto your iTunes or WinAmp desktop players, and transferred to MP3 players like iPod and Rio, for unlimited use. Check out the likes of Epitonic.com, Trancedomain.com and Punkplanet.com--all featuring lesser- known artists--but watch for dead links when going the search engine route. Googling for music is as tricky as finding uncorrupted files on Kazaa.

"Aural" is going to now regularly feature a Legit Download of the Week of some artist bubbling somewhere under breakthrough status as a way of introducing new talent that may be unfamiliar to you. For the inaugural tip, Pitchforkmedia.com--an exceptional indie/CMJ-esque music site--gives us "Ratso Rizzo" by Laptop, an indie-electronic project consisting of one Jesse Hartman. It's a sublime `80s throwback befitting of any any electroclash party or alternative disco. Go to the site's MP3 area, look for the June 17 updates and double-click/right-click the song's link.
http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2003/.../21591297.html


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"If 50 Cent was a rapper in Australia," says one local club DJ caustically, "he'd have been arrested rather than making the record industry $50 million.”

Crazy Remixed-Up Kids!

One minute you're mixing CDs in your bedroom, the next, the federal police are knocking on your door. And if you're a DJ, you can expect a visit, too. Richard Guilliatt reports on the music industry's all-out war on piracy.

If DJ Ace ever abandons music - which is possible, given that the multinational record companies had him arrested recently - he could probably make a living as a stand-up comic. The self-styled "Pimp Daddy" of Sydney's hip-hop scene was once a perennial clown on late-night internet chat sites, where he entertained fellow DJs by showing his flair for sexual braggadocio, inventing fictitious episodes of The Jerry Springer Show or uploading photos from his 19th birthday party at the Mercure Hotel in Sydney - the party that featured a Spider-Man cake and a fat-a-gram stripper who pinned Ace to the carpet while his friends laughed riotously in the background.

Which is not to belittle Ace's DJ-ing skills, for his remixes of popular rap and club tunes proliferated across the web, as did his mix CDs - Blazin' Up, Club Ace and Spades. Like a lot of young DJs, Ace compiled them on his home computer, in a bedroom at his parents' house in the south-western suburbs of Sydney (because even a Pimp Daddy can have trouble paying his own rent). He'd sample a song, pull it apart and put it back together with different beats, new vocal lines or whacked-out samples of dialogue, then send it out on the internet and invite comments. In the virtual music community that Ace and his peers inhabit, it's the way you show your skills; it's a scene in which guitar and drums have been replaced by CD-ROM and Pro Tools, where even the lingo has its own jump-cut rhythm in which gangsta slang is spliced with techie jargon.

"'Sup people!" Ace announced cheerfully at the beginning of this year. "My new CD, DJ Ace - Pimpology has been completed and will be available for downloading on March 17 on two web servers, FTPs and MIRC channels. Details will be available on my website. In the meantime, visit the website and vote for your favourite Pimpology cover design."

What DJ Ace surely never imagined was that the Australian federal police were monitoring his online antics as part of Operation Mezn, an investigation into music piracy launched by the record industry. And on April 23, Ace's parents answered a knock on the door and found themselves face-to-face with a contingent of cops armed with a search warrant. They came into the house, took Ace's computer and arrested him, taking him to police headquarters where he was charged with copyright violations for which he could face five years in jail.

When Ace appeared in court at Sydney's Downing Centre on May 13, he was plain old Tommy Le of Punchbowl, a clean-cut, spikey-haired, sober-looking teenage student in a dark suit and tie, hands clasped in front of him as if waiting for handcuffs. His co-defendants - Charles Kok Hau Ng and Peter Tran, both 20-year-old information technology students - were similarly attired. The trio have been accused of setting up an internet site, Mp3WmaLand, which allegedly enabled the world's computer users to illegally download $60 million worth of music.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...220597879.html


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Digital Piracy: Jack Valenti

Jack Valenti is the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's industry association and chief lobbying arm in Washington.

Valenti was online to talk about the threat online piracy poses to the enterainment industry, and the legal and legislative solutions his organization would like to see enacted.

washingtonpost.com tech policy reporter David McGuire moderated the discussion.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

________________________________________________

David McGuire: Hi Jack, thanks for joining us. Your industry has an interesting perspective on Internet piracy. It hasn't done serious damage to your bottom line yet, but learning from the experiences of the record industry, you know the threat it poses. What's the MPAA doing to get out ahead of the problem?

Jack Valenti:We are meeting with the computer makers, chip makers, consumer electronic manufacturers to see if we can together forge technical solutions to the increasing peril of video piracy. We are also in contact with some of the best brains in the high tech industry to see if we can find technilogical solutions on our own. We know that technilogical magic that we find so amazing today will seem primitive a year to 18 months from now. So that is why we have a sense of urgency. We are also involved in Internet delivery of movies at a fair and reasonable price as an alternative to stealing.

________________________________________________

Washington, D.C.: What incentives do you think can be offered to keep people from turning to online bootlegs of movies? I think to some people it is just a novel way to catch a sneak-peek at films, but they still are likely going to their local theater to see feature-length films too.

Jack Valenti:I do not see the theatrical experience diminishing. To watch a movie in a theater with staduim seating, huge screen and state of the art sound is an epic viewing adventure that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. But 40% of the total revenues that come to the major studios emerges from home video. Therefore, if people have stolen a movie there is no need for them to rent or buy it at a local video store. Moreover, as the quality of Internet downloads improves expontentially it could have a decaying effect not only on the post-theatrical market but on the theatrical market as well. Movie theft on the Internet is not a casual issue. It puts to hazzard the future of the film industry.

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Pittsburgh, PA: Is your association planning to lob a massive attack of lawsuits and other action against online movie pirates, similar to what the RIAA announced yesterday?

Jack Valenti:We have no such firm plans at this time. But I don't rule out any options if the occasion requires it.

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Rockville, Maryland: Regarding DVD Movie copy rights, If a person can't make a archive copy of a DVD movie, shouldn't the price of the DVD be lowered?

Jack Valenti:If you allow people to make copies of a DVD then everyone can break the code and the DVD is no longer protected. My judgment is that the prices for DVDs at Wal-Mart type stores and other places are quite fair and reasonable.

________________________________________________

Kansas City: File-sharing isn't anywhere near as dangerous to you as it is to record companies. We're still a long way from having the technological means to download high-quality movie files in a reasonable amount of time. Aren't you exaggerating these fears to get more control over the computer industry?

Jack Valenti:I suggest that you keep in touch with experiments now going on which forcast an incredible increase in the speed of Internet delivery. In an experience at Cal-Tech a high quality DVD movie was downloaded in 5 seconds. This experiment is labeled FAST. In another experiement 6.7 gigabytes was hurled half way around the world in one minute. A movie has 4.6 gigabytes to give you some idea of the future rapidity with which we wil be confronted.

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“Music sales are falling but they are still at record levels compared with a decade ago.”

Music Industry 'Slow To Change'
Darren Waters

The music industry is threatening to sue individual computer users who download songs from the internet without paying for copyright.

But some people believe it is the industry's fault for failing to meet consumers' needs and adapting too slowly to new technologies.

Gerd Leonhard, founder and former chief executive officer of licensemusic.com and founder of digmarketing.com, told BBC News Online that the industry is clinging on to the past.

"The industry has always opposed new technology," he said.

"They are following a system that has worked for the last 50 years."

The industry says it is a facing a global crisis as sales continue to drop worldwide year on year.

Earlier this year the global music industry reported that album sales had dropped by 6%.

The industry frequently paints a picture of crisis as it tries to stop music sales haemorrhaging away through online piracy and CD copying.

Anthony Morgan, strategy director of music business and marketing agency Frukt, said the industry was trying to change.

"It's more accurate to say that the industry is evolving into a new structure," he told BBC News Online.

Music sales are falling but they are still at record levels compared with a decade ago, he said.

He added: "Globally there is a decrease in sales - but from some of the highest sales of all time.

"Sales are possibly dropping to something which is more realistic."

Worldwide music sales amounted to $32bn (£20.5bn), according to recent figures.

"Music is bigger than ever," said Mr Leonhard.

"When you look at the numbers - 250 million downloads from [online music service] Kazaa for example.

"People are enjoying more music more than ever before. That points to a great potential."

Mr Leonhard argues that the industry is reacting slowly to change because it does not want to abandon business practices that have brought it great success over the last half a century.

"The problem for the industry is: Who makes the money in the future?"

He added: "The people who are making the money now are much less interested in making these changes."

Mr Morgan said: "It is not an industry that has had to change much.

"Traditionally the music industry has been about selling product on a piece of plastic.

"The industry has been clinging to CDs for too long."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3019948.stm


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The Copyright Cage

Bars can't have TVs bigger than 55 inches. Teddy bears can't include tape decks. Girl Scouts who sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" owe royalties. Copyright law needs to change.
Jonathan Zittrain

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I WAS TALKING WITH A LAW SCHOOL COLLEAGUE about cyberlaw and the people who study it. "I've always wondered," he said, "why all the cyberprofs hate copyright."

I don't actually hate copyright, and yet I knew just what he meant. Almost all of us who study and write about the law of cyberspace agree that copyright law is a big mess. As far as I can tell, federal courts experts don't reject our system of federal courts, and criminal law experts split every which way on the overall virtue of the criminal justice system. So what's with our uniform discontent about copyright?

I think an answer can be gleaned from tax scholars. Without decrying the concept of taxation, every tax professor I've met regards the U.S. tax code with a kind of benign contempt, explaining it more often as a product of diverse interests shaped from the bottom up than as an elegant set of rules crafted by legal artisans to align with high-level principles.

Copyright is like that, too. While I hate its Platonic form no more than the typical tax maven hates Tax, I find myself struggling to maintain the benign part of my contempt for its ever- expanding 21st-century American incarnation. A gerrymandered tax code primarily costs the public money—measured by overall inefficiency or extra taxes unfairly levied on those without political capital. But copyright's cost is measured by the more important if inchoate currency of thoughts and ideas.

We live today under two copyright regimes: the law on the one hand and reality as experienced by the public on the other. The law—Title 17 of the federal code—proscribes such acts as the public performance of music without payment to the composer or the copying of books without permission of the author (or more likely the company to whom the author long ago assigned rights).

The limits on behavior enumerated in Title 17 have gone far beyond the wholesale copying of books, maps, and charts covered by the first copyright act of 1790. They extend to computer software, dances, boat hulls (delineated in a 1998 amendment as "the frame or body of a vessel including the deck of a vessel, exclusive of masts, sails, yards, and rigging"), and music—Congress covered performances in 1909 and copies of sound recordings in 1971. What the public can and can't do is described at a level of detail worthy of the most byzantine tax code.

For example, bars and restaurants that measure no more than 3,750 square feet (not including the parking lot, as long as the parking lot is used exclusively for parking purposes) can contain no more than four TVs (of no more than 55 inches diagonally) for their patrons to watch, as long as there is only one TV per room. The radio can be played through no more than six loudspeakers, with a limit of four per room, unless the restaurant in question is run by "a governmental body or a nonprofit agricultural or horticultural organization, in the course of an annual agricultural or horticultural fair or exhibition conducted by such body or organization." Then it's OK to use more speakers.
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/J..._julaug03.html


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European iTunes Delayed By Up To A Year
David Minto

Apple Computer’s plan to launch a European version of its prodigiously successful online music store, iTunes, faces a delay of up to year after European branches of record labels have proved even less amenable to digital technology than their US counterparts.

Actually, in this case it’s not entirely fair to pin all the blame of the record companies. The problem has primarily arisen because of the complexity of Europe’s legal environment, where artists often have different arrangements in each country for how much they are paid per digital download. Whereas in the US federal law meant that Apple was able to push licence agreements fairly easily once it had dealt with security issues, in Europe it faces a more difficult challenge to sell a ‘one-price-fits-all’ system.

After the infectious success of it US iTunes store, initial reports had expected Apple to launch a European counterpart as early as September. Now, most industry sources indicate the launch will be held back until well into 2004.

It is, as has become apparent with iTunes, in the record labels’ own interests to find a pay-download format that works. Current download and subscription services have attracted a minimal following amongst consumers, even when they have received support from the record companies. Meanwhile, the popularity of illicit downloads, the major source of digital paranoia in the music industry, shows no sign of abating.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16866


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QnA

What's on the Menu? Command Shortcuts
J. D. Biersdorfer

What is a contextual menu? How does it differ from the regular menu bar at the top of the computer screen?

A. Menus - lists of options, commands and controls - are a common part of operating systems, like Microsoft Windows and Apple Computer's Mac OS, that use a graphical interface and a pointing device like a mouse.

But menus are not limited to the top of the screen; often one will pop up wherever your mouse is pointing when you right-click. These hidden menus are called contextual menus because they appear in the context of what you are doing. They can provide an efficient way to execute common commands that might be buried in the program's menu bar.

If you are working in Windows and want to change your wallpaper background, for example, rather than going from the Start menu to the Control Panel area and double-clicking on the Display icon to get to the wallpaper settings in the Display Properties box, you can simply right-click on the desktop and select Properties to bring the box up.

Many programs have built-in contextual menus related to common functions that can spare you from wasting time wading around in the menu bar looking for, say, the settings box for font or paragraph formats.

If you use a computer system that has a single-button mouse (as many Macintosh systems do), you will often call up a contextual menu by clicking on the screen while holding down the Control key on the keyboard.

In the most recent version of Microsoft Word for the Mac, control-clicking on a specific word in the document will call up a contextual menu of basic editing and formatting commands, plus a shortcut to the program's thesaurus and - if the word is misspelled - to the spelling-checker dictionary. Windows Word users can call up these contextual menus by right-clicking on a word.

Q. Why does a Web page's appearance differ depending on whether I am using Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator?

A. Although they started out as simple electronic documents that could display hyperlinked text and photographs, Web pages have in the last decade grown much more sophisticated in both their design and construction. Web pages now can contain cascading style sheets, Flash animations, JavaScript and other coding that turns a page view into an interactive multimedia experience.

Not all Web browsers are designed the same way, and the appearance of some pages can be affected by which one you are using. Some versions of Netscape's browser, for example, tend to display fonts at smaller sizes than Microsoft's Internet Explorer does, which can affect a page's appearance.

There are other Web browsers, too, including Opera, Mozilla and Safari; each may display the same page slightly differently. There are also differences between the way Web browser programs for Windows interpret a Web page and how a browser on a Macintosh may render it.

To save time and money, many Web design shops optimize their pages to look best in one or two of the most commonly used browser programs. The Windows version of Internet Explorer is the most frequently used Web browser program (partly because of its integration within the Windows operating system), so most designers create Web pages that look best in that browser.

Q. Is there an easier way to take screen shots in Windows than by using the PrintScrn button and pasting it into the Paint program?

A. If you are tired of saving screen images the old-fashioned way - by creating files with your built-in Windows Paint program - you might want to consider screen-capture shareware.

Freeware programs like Gadwin PrintScreen (www.gadwin.com /printscreen) can take screen shots of the entire screen or just one window with a keystroke, and save the file into one of several common image formats. Similar programs can be found at shareware sites around the Web.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/te...ts/26askk.html


Top 10 D/Ls - Singles

BigChampagne


Bill Seeks to Loosen Copyright Law's Grip
Brian Krebs

Two members of Congress today introduced legislation they said would ensure the American public's access to the nation's intellectual and artistic heritage.

The Public Domain Enhancement Act would require the owners of copyrighted works -- such as songs, books and software -- to pay a $1 fee to maintain their copyrights once 50 years have transpired from the work's original publication. If owners failed to pay the fee, the work would enter the public domain, and the public would be free to reproduce, republish or alter it.

The legislation is aimed directly at recent changes to copyright law that extended the lifetime of copyrights from 75 to 95 years after the author of a work dies. The changes were part of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which the Supreme Court upheld in January.

The sponsors of today's bill said that the 1998 law prevents the public from building upon and preserving creative works. The Internet, they say, has made more information and creative works available to the public than ever before. It allows the public to preserve materials that their owners might forget about once they're no longer profitable, and is built on a foundation of copying, enhancing and sharing all manner of content. Perpetually extending copyright terms, they say, cuts away at what makes the Internet a vibrant and important cultural exchange.

Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig, who argued the copyright extension case before the Supreme Court last year, said that longer copyright terms give large corporations like the Walt Disney Co. a lock on material that should be readily available online.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the chief sponsors of the copyright proposal introduced today, cited Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent to the Supreme Court's January decision to uphold the Sonny Bono law. Breyer, Lofgren noted, made the point that excessive copyright lifetimes go too far to protect a small percentage of commercially valuable works. The justice wrote that only 2 percent of copyrighted works between 55 and 75 years old retain their commerical value.

"As a result, there are so many works that are no longer published, read or even seen anymore that they have effectively been orphaned," Lofgren said in an interview. "It is time to give these treasures back to the public."

Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new legislation would restore the balance between copyright law and legitimate uses of works that no longer hold commercial value.

"There are literally hundreds of millions of Web sites and other works that won't have economic value a few years from now but will continue to be copyrighted for 150 years, leaving archivists, historians and others interested in preserving these works shut out for no good reason," von Lohmann said. "As long as the author is finished exploiting the value of the work, it should fall into the public domain so that the best use can be made of it."

Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said consumers are not necessarily better off when copyrighted works lapse into the public domain.

"Especially in the case of movies, those works are more available for public consumption when their owners have an economic incentive to preserve and market them," Taylor said. "Once those works fall into the public domain, those incentives are removed and consumers end up being the losers."

Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said the legislation introduced today does not impose a severe burden on copyright owners. Instead, it requires them to take stock of their holdings to see which works still have commercial value.

"This bill simply says, 'Fine you can keep your copyright term extension, but show that you really want to exploit the work,'" Zittrain said. "If you're not willing to even invest a dollar to retain the monopoly on it, then why is there any reason to think that the monopoly will cause you to do anything with it?"

Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) joined Lofgren in introducing today's bill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jun25.html


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Content transfers “A snap.”

Pioneer Introduces World's First DVD Recorders With TiVo(R) Service
Press Release

Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., a leader in digital home entertainment products, is revolutionizing home video recording with the introduction of the world's first DVD recorders featuring the TiVo service. These new recorders offer consumers the control provided by the easy-to-use TiVo service integrated with advanced DVD recording for the option of short-term storage on a hard drive or long- term archival of broadcast programming on DVD-R/RW discs.

The Pioneer Elite DVR-57H includes a 120-gigabyte hard disc drive while the Pioneer DVR-810H boasts 80 gigabytes of storage space. Both models are powered by the TiVo service and offer the ability to:

-- Schedule and record programs while playing a DVD.
-- Play programs from the hard drive while recording from the hard drive
onto a DVD.
-- Watch a program from the beginning while the recorder simultaneously
finishes the recording.
-- Transfer content at high speeds from the hard drive to a DVD for
long-term storage.



Both DVD recorders offer DCDi(TM) by Faroudja progressive scan circuitry for outstanding image quality when watching DVD movies.

"Pioneer is setting the standard for value-added DVD recorders by including the TiVo service with these two new products. Unlike many of the original DVD recorders, we're offering effortless operation with maximum benefit," said Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing for home entertainment at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. "Consumers will not see this type of innovation from any other manufacturer in the near term."

Both the DVR-57H and the DVR-810H offer consumers the TiVo Basic(TM) service with no monthly fee upfront. Consumers will get DVR functionality such as; pausing live TV, recording from the program guide, manual repeat recording by time and date and three days of program guide data. Consumers can upgrade their TiVo service at any time, to include features such as a fourteen-day program guide, Season Pass(TM), WishList(TM) and Search by Title.

Both DVD recorders come equipped with a 181-channel cable TV tuner for instant one-touch recording to the hard drive. Once the content is stored on the hard drive, consumers can transfer the content on to a DVD-R/RW disc and navigate the DVD menus using the friendly TiVo interface. This is the first product to seamlessly integrate DVD-R/ RW and TiVo service functionality in one easy to use product.

When a disc is inserted, the recorder automatically searches for available recording space. There is no tedious process of finding blank space to begin recording as exists with today's VHS recorders. Through automatic menus and easy navigation with the sophisticated TiVo user interface, consumers can simply locate and play a desired portion of the broadcast material instead of fast-forwarding and rewinding through videotape.

By connecting a VCR via analog inputs to the DVD recorder, transferring content becomes a snap.

The DVR-810H and DVR-57H offer analog inputs, enabling consumers to connect a camcorder to the DVD recorder for basic transferring functions. Once the content from the camcorder is stored onto the hard drive, users have the ability to edit the content before burning it to DVD. The newly created DVD-R disc can be played back on most other automobile, home, portable DVD players and DVD-ROM computer drives.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030625/law044_1.html


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MPAA Applauds Newly Signed Florida Law

The Motion Picture Association of America on Wednesday applauded the decision of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to sign into law legislation that will pave the way for new communication services for the people of Florida.

The law builds on existing legal protections by covering new technology and illegal devices used to steal communication services. Specifically, it protects movies, music, games, software and other intellectual property rights from piracy by shielding the communication services that deliver that content for a charge whether by the Internet, through new wireless and broadband technologies or by conventional cable service.

Supporters of the bill congratulated Bush and the Florida Legislature for "rebuffing the misinformation circulated in recent weeks by opponents of the legislation."

"Contrary to the claims of others, under this law computers, TIVOs, VCRs, multipurpose tools, including encryption software, remain perfectly legal and can be connected without committing a crime or fear of being sued by a cable operator or any communication service provider for that matter," says Vans Stevenson, senior vice president of state legislative affairs for the MPAA. "Indeed, only a deliberate thief will find this law inhospitable."
http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlan...3/daily33.html


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Latest Potter Book Scanned, Swapped
Paul Festa

People who want to read the latest Harry Potter book but don’t want to wait in line or pay for it can download a free copy.

As a result of the increasing ease and speed with which a book can be scanned and repackaged into an e-book format with common technology, the latest installment of the Harry Potter series--along with its four predecessors, movies based on the books and audio versions of the texts--can be obtained as easily as an audio file on file-swapping services such as Kazaa.

That, some predict, could be a harbinger of a nascent Napsterization of the book publishing industry.

"I think that just like MP3s, popular books will become popular downloads as more devices allow people to read with the ease of carrying the real thing," said Wayne Chang, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and systems administrator for PickATime.com, an online appointment book. "These e-books are made by users, not pros."

Many Web sites provide step-by-step instructions on how to scan books and format them for use with various software, including Microsoft's Reader. Because the books are scanned from printed copies, they evade the copy controls put on e-books that publishers produce and distribute.

Other sites aggregate shared e-books for download, much like the ill-fated Napster and a host of successors have done for audio and video files.
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1020984.html


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Canadian MPs Vow To Overturn Copyright Term Extension

The National Post reports that both government and opposition members of parliament have vowed to overturn last week's decision to approve a copyright term extension in Canadian copyright law for unpublished works for deceased authors. Opposition MP Chuck Strahl vows to tie up the Canadian parliament, threatening the entire bill, should the extension provisions not be removed. http://www.nationalpost.com/national...4379-8B74-1BFC


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Senator Presses Pentagon On Spy Plan
Declan McCullagh

A key U.S. senator expressed renewed concern about the Pentagon's data-mining project and asked the Defense Department to give more detail about how the system will collect information on Americans.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who wrote legislation requiring a report on the Total Information Awareness project, asked on Tuesday for the Pentagon to respond to 11 pointed questions about the project's scope, its implications for privacy and civil liberties, and which private-sector and government databases would be linked into the system.

"I remain very deeply concerned that TIA technology will be used to plow through large amounts of private information on individual Americans in the United States in search of hypothetical threat situations," Wyden said in a three-page letter to the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The Pentagon claims that TIA, which it has renamed to Terrorist Information Awareness in response to public criticism, is a promising collection of technologies that can track patterns in databases and provide advance warning of terrorist incidents. TIA will mine other databases but will not create a master computerized dossier on every American, DARPA says.

Earlier this year, in a triumph of privacy concerns over worries about terrorist threats, Congress required DARPA to prepare a report on what laws would cover a final implementation of TIA. In a 102-page report dated May 20, DARPA said TIA would track transactions that "would form a pattern that may be discernable in certain databases to which the U.S. government would have lawful access."

DARPA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

In his letter on Tuesday, Wyden asked for additional details about which databases would be tied to TIA. "Does it include credit card activity, ATM activity, wire transfers, loan applications, and/or credit reports?" Wyden asked.

He also asked how DARPA plans to find 1 million photographs for its planned Next Generation Face Recognition program and how much authority a newly formed privacy advisory committee would have.

The TIA project became public in early 2002 when President Bush chose Adm. John Poindexter, who had been embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal, to run DARPA's Information Awareness Office. Groups such as the U.S. Association for Computing Machinery, the professional association for computer scientists, have urged Congress to place limits on TIA.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029-1020674.html


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Library Groups Want Info On Web Filtering Technologies

American librarians plan to step up pressure on software vendors to disclose more about how their products work in the wake of this week's Supreme Court decision. Filtering vendors have historically provided few details about their criteria for blocking Web sites, arguing that the information is proprietary.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...074300,00.html


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RIAA's Rosen Departs On An Optimistic Note
Jefferson Graham

The self-described "lightning rod" of the music industry wants to have a life again.



For five years, Hilary Rosen, 44, has been the public face and voice in the industry's battle against digital piracy. CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major record companies, Rosen leaves her $1 million-a-year in-the-hot-seat post today to spend more time with the two children she shares with her partner.

"It's been an extremely rigorous job, as it needed to be, because of what the industry is going through," Rosen says over coffee on a recent Southern California visit. "But I really feel we're poised for a recovery in the next 18 months. I'm optimistic."

In August she'll begin working for CNBC as an on-air commentator, and also will consult for the RIAA.

Rosen's tenure at the association has been rocky, to say the least. It has been marked by the growth of trading free music online, the ease of CD burning, declining sales and shutdowns of major record stores. All the while, she has been the industry's often angry voice, calling for change, enforcement and reason.

"She did everything humanly possible to get the important messages across, that certain behavior is not legal and fair. And she has been relentless in her advocacy at a time when the message was not popular," says Zach Horowitz, president of Universal Music and an RIAA board member. "At the beginning, it looked like we were campaigning against progress, but there's been a sea change in that perspective, thanks to her."

In the pre-digital era, the top RIAA job was mostly about issuing gold and platinum albums for best sellers, and tending to legislative minutiae in D.C. "It was always a big job," Rosen says. "Napster turned it into a public job."

The first major file-sharing program, created in a dorm room in 1999 to make it easier to find music files on the Web, Napster appealed to music fans on their most basic level: free music, freely traded.

The RIAA sued, enlisting acts such as Metallica along the way to speak out for artists' rights. The labels won the legal battles — in court, Napster was shut down — but lost the PR war.

Rosen "received death threats. She had stalkers," Horowitz says. "The attacks were so personal, unfair and inexcusable."

Rosen insists she wasn't troubled. "They were attacking me for something I was proud of doing: enforcing the rights of copyright owners. I never felt victimized."

The music fans, who often hacked the RIAA's site and made it inaccessible, "were just being silly," she says. "People took their free music way too seriously."

And as Napster's successors have flourished — Kazaa now has more than 230 million users — the RIAA recently has trained its legal guns on users themselves. Four college students accused of online trading settled suits for thousands of dollars. The RIAA began sending 500,000 to 1 million threatening messages a week to users of Kazaa and battled Internet provider Verizon to obtain the names of several music-sharing subscribers.

The point of the ramped-up efforts is to "unveil the cloud of anonymity infringers think they have," Rosen says.

Phil Leigh, an analyst for Raymond James and a longtime critic of the record labels, says he wishes Rosen had embraced digital distribution with the passion of her attacks on digital piracy. "She always seemed one- sided," he says. "Instead of suing companies and your users, why not also try to take advantage of digital, instead of trying to hold it back?"

The upside of digital distribution is huge, he says: "No manufacturing, shipping or stocking costs or returns. From the supplier's point of view, it makes all the sense in the world."

The industry's first answers to Napster — legitimate services such as Pressplay and MusicNet — were for the most part ignored by consumers and dismissed by critics for poor selection and onerous restrictions.

Then, in April, Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, offering downloads for 99 cents a song, with few restrictions. Critics loved it, and Apple has sold 5 million downloads since. Rosen, an avid Apple user who regularly dons an iPod portable music player, says the industry's challenge is "to create as good an experience with the Windows audience."

Apple says it will do just that by year's end. AOL Music, MusicMatch, Amazon, MTV and Roxio also are working on download stores.

As for Rosen's replacement, the RIAA is currently searching for candidates. Several congressmen have been cited in speculation, as has former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The next phase in the music industry's growth won't necessarily be as combative, Rosen says. "A lot of important precedents have been set."

But anyone who thinks piracy will magically go away "is dreaming," she adds. "Right now, piracy has a 98% share. We need a better balance. And we're getting there."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/20...23-rosen_x.htm













Until next week,

- js.










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Current Week In Review.

Recent WIRs -


http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16705 June 21st
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16638 June 14th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16580 June 7th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16489 May 31st





The 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.