[JackSpratts]

MPAA studio ripped off film director for $100,000,000, suit alleges

The Lawsuit of the Rings
Ross Johnson

What if Frodo Baggins, instead of confronting the evil empire in "The Lord of the Rings," just got himself a lawyer and sued?

The real-life corollary is going on now in Hollywood where Peter Jackson, one of the film industry's most powerful and popular directors, is suing New Line Cinema, the subsidiary of Time Warner that financed and distributed his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.

In his lawsuit, Mr. Jackson claimed that New Line committed fraud in its handling of the revenues generated by 2001's "The Fellowship of the Ring," and as a result, he was underpaid by millions.

The suit does not specify a damage award. But in an interview last week, his lawyers said that, after New Line applied its contract interpretation from "Fellowship" to the other two movies, Mr. Jackson was underpaid by as much as $100 million for the trilogy.

Lawsuits in Hollywood are as common as hobbits in Middle Earth. What makes Mr. Jackson's suit draw such widespread interest here, other than his clout in the industry and the amount at stake, is one specific allegation about New Line's behavior. The suit charges that the company used pre-emptive bidding (meaning a process closed to external parties) rather than open bidding for subsidiary rights to such things as "Lord of the Rings" books, DVD's and merchandise. Therefore, New Line received far less than market value for these rights, the suit says.

Most of those rights went to other companies in the New Line family or under the Time Warner corporate umbrella, like Warner Brothers International, Warner Records and Warner Books. So while the deals would not hurt Time Warner's bottom line, they would lower the overall gross revenues related to the film, which is the figure Mr. Jackson's percentage is based on.

According to people on both sides of Mr. Jackson's lawsuit, the claim strikes at the heart of the modern vertically integrated media company. One of the apparent - though largely unproven - benefits of media integration is the ability of conglomerates like the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, the News Corporation, Viacom, Sony and General Electric to sell subsidiary rights to the many divisions within the company.

By painting this corporate synergy as "self-dealing," Mr. Jackson's lawsuit and similar suits filed in the last few years, called vertical integration lawsuits, argue that the idea of the media conglomerate is at odds with the interests of the creative minds behind the content.

If that idea was not enough to make studio heads very nervous, Mr. Jackson's status in the business could encourage other directors and stars who take a percentage of gross revenues to look more carefully at the accounting on their films. And because deals between corporate siblings are approved at the highest levels, vertical integration lawsuits often focus on senior division executives and their sales chiefs..

Since no studio head or corporate executive wants to be subpoenaed in a lawsuit over accounting, vertical integration lawsuits are almost always settled before reaching open court.

Citing corporate policy, Richard Socarides, a New Line spokesman, declined to comment on details of the litigation, but released a statement that said, "We don't agree with plaintiff's claims, and will defend ourselves vigorously." A litigator for New Line, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is working on this lawsuit, said the money paid to Mr. Jackson so far is in line with the contract he signed.

"Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on 'Lord of the Rings,' " this lawyer said. "But there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."

Mr. Jackson's suit was filed on Feb. 28. In an April 29 court filing, New Line categorically denied all of his claims. Currently, both sides are sending out deposition notices, and Mr. Jackson's lawyers are preparing discovery demands allowing them to see detailed financial statements of New Line and its corporate sibling, Warner Brothers.

According to Peter Hoffman, a tax lawyer for leading Hollywood producers in the 1980's and a former chief executive of Carolco Pictures, all the legal saber rattling around claims of self-dealing and pre-emptive bidding could be avoided if studios turned the clock back and compensated stars based on net profits, not gross revenues.

"Once upon a time, Hollywood studios paid a lot of money to net profit participants, and it was a fair deal," said Mr. Hoffman, who is known in Hollywood for his knowledge of arcane deal making. "Then the studios got greedy and stopped paying, and now we have gross players who used to be net players fighting over vertical integration. The studios brought this problem on themselves."

Time Warner does not break out the revenue of feature films from total entertainment revenue in its statements, and a spokesman for New Line declined to comment on financial numbers. Mr. Jackson, who is directing a remake of "King Kong" for Universal Pictures with a budget of $150 million that includes a $20 million advance to Mr. Jackson to be applied against his share of gross revenue, was also not available for comment.

John Schulman, who since 1984 has been general counsel at Warner Brothers Entertainment, the sublicensee of many of the rights of the "Rings" film trilogy, said that the studio has never used self-dealing to cheat profit participants, and always sets any pre-emptive bid at market rates. "We value our relationship with talent, and it is in our interest to maximize profits to our participants."

The "Rings" film trilogy, produced for an aggregate $281 million, has made more than $4 billion in retail sales from worldwide film exhibition, home video, soundtracks, merchandise and television showings, and cleared more than $1 billion for New Line after payments to profit participants, according to one of Mr. Jackson's lawyers, Peter Nelson.

Thanks to escalators in the contract Mr. Jackson signed to serve as director, co-writer and co-producer of the trilogy, he reportedly receives about 20 percent of the gross revenue realized by New Line for the trilogy, minus expenses such as taxes.

Mr. Nelson declined to confirm the terms of the deal he negotiated for his client, but did state that Mr. Jackson had received almost $200 million to date from New Line for the trilogy.

One thing is certain: if it were not for Stanton Stein of the Santa Monica firm of Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan, life would be much easier for studio accountants.

Mr. Stein, the litigation lawyer who filed Mr. Jackson's suit against New Line, first brought a vertical integration action for the producers of the "Home Improvement" television series against Disney in 1997.

Mr. Stein, known as Larry, would later file similar suits against the Fox Television, a division of the News Corporation, for the producers of the show "Cops," and for Alan Alda and David Duchovny, the stars of the shows "M.A.S.H." and "The X-Files."

Mr. Stein's legal strategy in these lawsuits was to use a "top down" theory of insider conspiracy. According to Mr. Stein, there was only one place to point the finger of blame. "The foot soldiers inside a studio can't do this self-dealing," he said, "without the people at the top knowing what's going on."

Mr. Stein has sought to depose the News Corporation chairman, Rupert Murdoch, in all of his vertical integration lawsuits against Fox. All the suits, as well as the "Home Improvement" suit, were settled before Mr. Stein could depose a company chairman or chief executive.

"It's true I don't do trials, because if you have a good lawyer, you don't have to go to trial," Mr. Stein said. "A lot of attorneys think what I do on vertical integration litigation is easy, and they take a run at it. But if you don't know a hell of a lot about studio accounting and intellectual property law, it's amateur hour."

In the "Rings" matter, home video, television and merchandising were handled by divisions of New Line, except for certain foreign rights, which were handled by Warner Brothers. Soundtrack sales were handled by Warner Records, a Time Warner subsidiary that was recently sold to an investor group led by Edgar Bronfman.

But Mr. Socarides said some lucrative rights did not go to Time Warner companies. The pay television deal went to Starz, not Time Warner's HBO. He added that the "Rings" book trilogy remains with Houghton Mifflin, which is not a Time Warner subsidiary (although editions related to the films were released by Warner Books).

To defend itself, New Line has hired Robert Schwartz, the head of entertainment litigation at O'Melveny & Myers, who has gone against Mr. Stein in many profit participation cases.

Mr. Schwartz declined to comment on the specifics of Mr. Jackson's claims, except to say that he is accustomed to dealing with litigants "who say they're not going to settle for anything less than 100 cents on every dollar in dispute." He added that "in my experience, these are the guys who in the end walk away with a nickel on every dollar."

When told of Mr. Schwartz's comment, Mr. Nelson replied, "I'm confident that after we see all the financial records from New Line and Warner Brothers that we're trying to get to, every dollar in dispute will become four dollars."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/bu...a/27movie.html






IPTV

SBC's TV Project Isn't Happening at 'Lightspeed'
Matt Richtel and Ken Belson

SBC, the telecommunications giant, calls its planned television service, "Project Lightspeed."

Unfortunately, its introduction is not living up to the name.

Technical, legal and programming stumbling blocks have disrupted SBC's ambitious plan to sell television programming over high-speed lines. The first limited commercial roll-out of the service planned for later this year may be modest at best. And SBC is unlikely now to meet its timetable for offering the service over its 13-state region in the next three years.

The service, known as IPTV, sends video streams over the Internet. The technology allows users to get an endless number of television channels while offering new functions like displaying caller ID on televisions. For SBC and other Bell companies, offering television services is crucial in their fight to compete with cable providers like Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, which are invading the Bells' domain with their digital phone services.

But getting the SBC service up and running has proved to be an enormous challenge. Some overseas carriers that are using Microsoft's software in their networks have run into deployment problems, which could hint at future problems for SBC. In recent months, SBC, based in San Antonio, has also been unable to win battles in state legislatures that would speed up the process for gaining local approval to sell its television service. Reaching agreements with the program providers in Hollywood has been slow, too.

For Microsoft, which signed a 10-year, $400 million deal last year to supply SBC with the complex software needed to deliver television via broadband lines, the technical problems have been an blow to its longstanding effort to break into the home entertainment business.

SBC and Microsoft said that any delays would not hamper the ultimate success of the service. But Lea Ann Champion, the executive in charge of SBC's television service, said the company now planned to make it available to 18 million homes, or half its customers, by the end of 2008, six months later than previously announced. Ms. Champion said SBC had pushed back its target date because of problems installing high-speed lines, not because of problems with the Microsoft software.

Wall Street analysts have taken note of the delays, but said they were not surprised given the scope of SBC's undertaking; regardless, the television service would not make up a significant piece of the company's revenue for years to come.

"You can expect delays given the size and scale" of the project, said John Hodulik, who covers SBC for UBS Securities. "They're focusing on getting all the technology in place. Once they get the infrastructure in place, they will be able to accelerate quickly."

SBC said that it began testing the software in its labs several months ago and that it recently finished a trial of the service with company employees. It plans to expand the testing this summer.

Ms. Champion said SBC and Microsoft were now fine-tuning the software for the tests. Ed Graczyk, director of marketing for Microsoft TV, said the company was on schedule to publish a commercial version of its software by the fall. "We're confident we can support the full feature set our customers want," he said.

Analysts, however, say Microsoft may be encountering problems substantial enough to affect SBC's plans.

Last month, Swisscom, a Swiss carrier, delayed the commercial introduction of its IPTV, which stands for internet protocol television, using the Microsoft technology until 2006, instead of the latter half of 2005. The company said that some of its technology was not ready to be delivered to a mass market, though it did not single out Microsoft as being the source of the problem.

But some industry analysts said sound and picture quality were poor on Swisscom's IPTV. Mr. Graczyk of Microsoft said that Swisscom's problems had more to do with the complexity of integrating IPTV with a variety of other products, including set-top boxes and digital video recorders.

Other industry experts, like Mauro Bonomi, the chief executive of Minerva Networks, a maker of IPTV software for small telecommunications companies that is based in Santa Clara, Calif., said that if Microsoft was having troubles, it might be the result of its efforts to deliver many sophisticated features over Internet lines that were not fast enough.

"They have very ambitious goals, which is great," Mr. Bonomi said. "But they're pursuing them in a way that may overburden the networks."

Verizon is also in the race to offer television, but it is expanding its fiber network by digging trenches to run fiber cables through the streets and then to individual homes. It is using technology that is a hybrid of traditional television and IPTV.

Another hurdle is getting licensing deals for the programming. Ms. Champion declined to say whether SBC has reached any such deals yet.

Verizon, by contrast, says it has a signed more than half a dozen agreements with programmers including NBC Universal Cable, A&E Television Networks and Showtime.

Meanwhile, both SBC and Verizon are pushing for legislation that would allow them to sign statewide franchise agreements rather than having to reach deals with hundreds of municipalities where they intend to sell television services, a process that could take years.

So far, they have been unsuccessful. The Texas legislature so far has declined to approve such a bill. In New York, the public service commission this month ruled that Verizon still had to acquire local franchise agreements.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/te...gy/27iptv.html






It Takes a Superhuman Effort to Escape Human Control
Janet Maslin

It takes outlandish nerve and whopping messianic double talk to inaugurate a new science fiction project on the scale of "The Traveler." No genre is riskier. Either the author concocts a true Orwellian synthesis of the world's ills and envisions an epic struggle to remedy them or the author cannibalizes other, more legitimate visionaries, tacks on some silly jargon and winds up sounding embarrassingly second rate.

Regardless of his abilities, such a writer is liable to prompt strong reactions from readers - provided they can find him. But the individual now known as John Twelve Hawks shows at least as much genius for publicity as for anything else. So this author's studied anonymity - he communicates with his publisher only by satellite phone or through his lawyer, which is the technological equivalent of Deep Throat's moving flower pots and meeting in shadowy garages - threatens to become the best-known thing about him. And it would have been if "The Traveler" weren't so ferocious on its own.

Amazingly, this novel sustains a new voice even when its roots show. And the list of obvious influences is long indeed. There are traces of "Star Wars," "The Matrix," "Kill Bill" and "Minority Report." There are echoes of Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Joseph Campbell, Jeremy Bentham, various samurai stories and (could it not have been thus?) "The Da Vinci Code."

Mr. Twelve Hawks may live in cyber-seclusion (or "off the Grid," as the book jacket puts it, in what may prove to be the best-known phrase associated with him), but he does not live in a vacuum. He has drawn upon both pop-cultural and literary touchstones and modified them to create a cyber-"1984."

"The Traveler" begins with a prologue in London. A 12-year-old girl named Maya finds herself caught up in a violent uproar and is forced to defend herself. This turns out to be a training exercise contrived by her father to prepare her for life as a Harlequin. That name is unfortunate (most sci-fi names are) but convenient: Harlequins signal one another with diamond-shaped drawings. These will be nicely eye-catching once the "The Traveler" blasts its way onto the screen. At least the Harlequins eschew clown clothes in favor of "dark, expensive fabrics and custom tailoring," supposedly to look inconspicuous and to be ready to fight.

Harlequins guard those rare creatures known as Travelers: mystics capable of out-of-body experiences, born to threaten the status quo. But the world is controlled by bad guys, known variously as the Brethren or the Tabula, who favor a tightly controlled society and a paramilitary look (one of their henchmen resembles "a chemical engineer who ran marathons on the weekend"). They serve all too plausibly as this book's equivalent of Big Brother.

The Tabula's tricks for high-tech invasion of privacy are frighteningly comprehensive - and not so far removed from what is actually possible today. They store and analyze data about the citizenry, to the point where even grocery shopping becomes indicative of political preferences. Their heat sensors can spot a coffee machine through a wall. Their ability to identify facial structures prompts Maya to inject herself with drugs when she travels, so as to appear puffy and avoid detection. A set of syringes and fake fingerprints take Maya to California, where she assumes a Harlequin's appointed mission: seeking out two potential Travelers and protecting them from harm.

Along come two brothers, Gabriel and Michael Corrigan, who have Traveler genes but very different personalities. Gabriel lives simply and loves motorcycles. Michael plays golf and is involved in real estate development. Please stop reading if you can't tell who will turn out to be the hero of this projected multibook series.

"The Traveler" waits for the Corrigans to discover their unusual powers, and for outside forces to begin hunting them. It doesn't take long. Michael is co-opted by a group of scientists in Westchester County, N.Y., who need a Traveler upon whom to experiment. Should their efforts be successful, world domination will, of course, ensue. Gabriel stays on the other side of the continent. But "The Traveler" will reach the point where its visionary brothers can encounter each other anywhere, regardless of where their actual bodies happen to be.

By the time it leaves the realm of the mundane and moves into eerie suspense, "The Traveler" has expanded its already large range of styles. Now ("There were four barriers that blocked his access to the other realms") it is in the world of video gamesmanship. Now it roams amid different theologies, looking for evidence of Traveler influence, from the New Testament to (yes) the cabala. Now it is positing membrane theory as an alternative to string theory in applying quantum mechanics to account for occult phenomena. The book's informed mixture of all these disciplines is trippy indeed.

"The Traveler" is written with unlikely buoyancy. The ponderousness that afflicts so many big visionary books does not take hold here. The novel's style is page-turningly swift, and its theories are delivered without pseudoscientific harrumphing. Yet for all of the futuristic details that help shape the story, what holds it together is good old- fashioned utopian sunshine.

"You know why I like snakes?" one character asks. "God created them to be clean, beautiful - and unadorned. Studying snakes, I've been inspired to get rid of all the clutter and foolishness in my life." The whole book exhorts the reader to follow this path, and to avoid the needless stress and anxiety of life amid the Grid and its resident evils. The book's main characters are en route, they hope, to a world without mortgages, credit cards, commercials, antidepressants and frightening headlines. They are guided by an ideological agenda that becomes increasingly pronounced.

But if "The Traveler" is the author's soapbox, it is also an invigorating parable, with a cliffhanger ending that cries out for future installments. When last seen, Gabriel is lying low with a group of well-drawn secondary characters. Maya is praying for guidance. And even as a Harlequin bred for life without emotions, Maya is beginning to notice what was obvious to a waitress earlier in the novel.

"You got a real cute boyfriend," the waitress told her. Stay tuned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/books/27masl.html






FTC Issues Report on Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Press Release

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology offers significant benefits but also poses risks to consumers who use it, according to a Federal Trade Commission staff report issued today. The staff report, “Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues,” analyzes the consumer protection, competition, and intellectual property issues that were discussed at the FTC’s December 2004 workshop on P2P file sharing. The report recommends that industry and government take steps so that consumers receive the many benefits from this technology while avoiding the risks that it creates.

i-Newswire, - P2P technology enables computer users to share communications, processing power, and data files with other users. Use of P2P technology can yield significant benefits, such as enhancing efficiency by allowing faster file transfers, conserving bandwidth, and reducing storage needs. Businesses, government agencies, academic institutions, and others use P2P applications for a variety of tasks. However, the most common application by far is commercial file-sharing software programs used by consumers to exchange files, such as music and movie files, with others; information presented in the FTC’s report indicates that tens of millions of individuals have used a P2P file-sharing program.

The FTC’s P2P workshop was held on December 15-16, 2004, and included seven panels, featuring representatives from the P2P file-sharing software industry, the entertainment industry, hi-tech research firms, government agencies, academic institutions, and consumer groups. The Commission also received 51 public comments concerning a variety of issues related to P2P file sharing.

The FTC staff’s report states that the workshop provided “valuable insight.” It concludes that P2P technology continues to evolve in response to market and legal forces. Consumers face risks when using commercial P2P file-sharing software programs, including risks related to data security, spyware and adware, viruses, copyright infringement, and unwanted pornography. There was little empirical evidence submitted in connection with the workshop, however, addressing whether these risks are greater with P2P file-sharing programs than with other Internet-related activities such as surfing websites, downloading software, and using e-mail or instant messaging.

The report makes recommendations concerning what industry and government should do to decrease the risks associated with the use of P2P file-sharing programs. Industry should engage in technological innovation and development, industry self-regulation ( including risk disclosures ), and consumer education. Government should investigate and bring law enforcement actions when warranted, work with industry to encourage self-regulation, and educate consumers about the risks associated with using P2P file-sharing software.

The report also presents the competition and intellectual property issues that were discussed at the workshop. The FTC staff report generally concludes that policymakers should balance the protection of intellectual property and the freedom to advance new technologies, thereby encouraging the creation of new artistic works as well as economic growth and enhanced business efficiency. Nevertheless, the report concludes that it would not be prudent at this time to make specific recommendations for policymakers about the intellectual property issues that P2P file sharing raises, because the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios v. Grokster, Ltd., expected in the near future, may have a profound effect on the future structure and impact of P2P file-sharing programs.

The Commission vote authorizing staff to issue the report was 4-0-1, with Commissioner Leibowitz not participating.

Copies of the FTC staff report are available from the FTC’s Web site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish ( bilingual counselors are available to take complaints ), or to get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP ( 1-877-382-4357 ), or use the complaint form at http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.
http://i-newswire.com/pr26885.html






U.S. Wins Chip Ruling

The Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization ruled yesterday that the United States could maintain a duty of 44 percent on memory chips made by Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea, one of the world's largest producers.

A W.T.O. panel ruled in December that the American charges were illegal, but the Appellate Body in Geneva reversed that decision yesterday. As a general matter, rulings issued at this level are final.

The United States argued that the South Korean government had unfairly subsidized Hynix by putting pressure on banks to provide loans at below-market rates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/te...y/28hynix.html






AMD's Case: Market Forces Or Manipulation?
Michael Kanellos

Coercion or circumstance--that's the big question in the antitrust case filed by Advanced Micro Devices against rival Intel.

The suit, filed late Monday, provides a fairly detailed and lengthy laundry list of alleged misdeeds by Intel. The complaint alleges that in 2002, for instance, Intel agreed to pay NEC more than 300 million yen per quarter in exchange for caps on purchasing from AMD. AMD's share of NEC's consumer business went from 84 percent to virtually zero in six months, the complaint says. It also states that NEC constrained sales efforts around Opteron-based servers.

HP even turned down free microprocessors from AMD in 2002 and threatened to fire an executive because of threats from Intel, the complaint states.

"There is no reason, other than Intel's chokehold on the OEMs, for AMD's inability to exploit its products in important sectors, particularly commercial desktops," paragraph 58 of the complaint states.

AMD, though, will also likely have to counter assertions that its success or failure comes as a result of demand, product delays or customer inertia. Simply put, larger chipmakers typically can produce products for less money than smaller ones, and price and familiarity often trump technology.

"The question is, 'can AMD find the smoking gun?'" said Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report. "There is some circumstantial evidence that something is not right."

The complaint, for example, alleges that in late 2000, then-Compaq CEO Michael Capellas stopped buying AMD desktop processors because Intel "had a gun to his head."

AMD further alleges that it was negotiating with IBM on a commercial PC business partnership, which ended after Intel offered IBM "millions" in market development funds.

But in late 2000, the PC market was in a free fall. Jerry Sanders, then-CEO of AMD, said at the time that the company's goal of getting IBM, HP or Compaq to adopt an AMD chip for a business PC that year was being pushed out because of sluggish demand.

Corporate customers are also notoriously conservative, said Krewell, adding that having only one type of chip (versus chips from two companies) can reduce support costs. For AMD, getting that close to a corporate desktop deal was, in fact, a milestone for the company. The company had suffered through five years of financial losses and several product delays from 1995 to 1999. The situation began to turn in late 1999 when Intel began to falter and benchmarks testers said that its Athlon chip bested Intel's desktop parts.

Another opportunity to surge ahead in desktops came in 2003 when AMD came out with a 64-bit desktop chip. While this move could have beat Intel handily, Microsoft had to delay its Windows for 64-bit chips so many times that AMD's potential advantage became ameliorated.

Other parts of the complaint allege that bundling discounts offered as part of the Centrino chip package for notebooks, which debuted in 2003, have also harmed AMD.

But, at the same time, AMD has put most of its efforts in the past few years into breaking into the server market and expanding its reach in the desktop market. The company only came out with a product, Turion, that more directly competes against Centrino notebooks a few months ago. HP has adopted it.

Servers present another likely AMD said/Intel said situation. Paragraph 83 of the complaint alleges that Intel tried to intimidate Fujitsu-Siemens into backing out of supporting AMD's Opteron chip at its April 2003 launch, and said that the European manufacturer would be the only major computer maker present.

As it turned out, IBM showed its support for Opteron at launch. Through Opteron, AMD has also gone from having virtually zero market share in servers to more than 6 percent and contracts with HP, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.

Overall, AMD tends to do well in years where Intel is suffering through problems of its own, such as in 2000 and 2004. When Intel recovers, AMD's opportunities fade, even if it is still scoring better on benchmarks. Still, the growing acceptance of AMD and its track record should, logically, let the company succeed even if Intel is not flailing.

If anything, the complaint will likely be pored over in minute detail by the legal departments of PC makers. So far, PC makers have adamantly refused to comment on the cases. Nonetheless, executives from many of those companies, including the alleged executive HP almost fired for making overtures to AMD, may be compelled to testify.
http://news.com.com/AMDs+case+market...3-5766776.html






Windows 2000 Moves To The Back Burner
Ina Fried

Microsoft on Tuesday issued what is expected to be its last significant revision of Windows 2000.

The software maker released what it calls an Update Rollup for the 5-year-old operating system, which is due to shift at the end of this month from receiving mainstream support to extended support. Microsoft does not generally add features to a product under extended support, and the Update Rollup is largely a collection of previously released patches as opposed to a batch of new features.

In addition to already released fixes, the collection "may contain fixes for non-public low- and moderate-level security issues that did not warrant individual security bulletins," a Microsoft representative said.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker said last November that it would release the Update Rollup rather than offer a fifth service pack. As a result, the final service pack for Windows 2000 becomes the SP4 release that came out in March 2003.

Although Windows 2000 has been followed by several other Windows versions, the software remains extremely popular in corporations and small businesses. It still accounts for nearly half of all Windows-based business desktops, according to a recent survey by AssetMetrix.
http://news.com.com/Windows+2000+mov...3-5766696.html






Bagle Shanghais PCs For Zombie Army
Joris Evers

A new version of the Bagle virus is attempting to turn PCs into zombies for use in cyberattack networks.

The variant surfaced over the weekend and was spammed to tens of thousands of Internet users, Ero Carrera, a researcher at F-Secure, said Tuesday. The antivirus software maker is calling the offshoot Mitglieder.CN, but it is known by other names, such as Bagle.BQ or Tooso.J, at other security companies.

The latest Bagle behaves in a similar way to its predecessors that don't self-propagate. It arrives in an e-mail with a attachment. When the file is executed, the malicious program tries to disable firewalls and antivirus software. It then attempts to download and run a Trojan horse that hijacks the infected PC for use as part of a botnet.

Botnets are groups of compromised PCs, often numbering in the thousands per network, that are rented out to relay spam, to launch denial-of- service attacks, or to perform other malicious acts.

"Compromised PCs could be used to send out new variants of Bagle," for example, Carrera said.

Bagle has spawned at least 70 variants since the virus emerged in January 2004. Some iterations have been more sophisticated than others, blending mass-mailing and Trojan horse techniques.

Most antivirus companies updated their products over the weekend to protect customers against the new virus. "It is not going to be a major issue," Mikko Hypponen, director of research at F-Secure, said Monday.

Symantec rates the new variant a low risk because it has not spread much. "Our rate of submissions is slowing down on that variant, so we don't consider it to be a significant threat," a Symantec representative said Monday.
http://news.com.com/Bagle+shanghais+...3-5766772.html






More Magazines Report Profitable Web Sites

A little more than half the world's consumer magazines said their Web sites are profitable, up from about a quarter two years ago, according to the results of a small survey released on Tuesday by a trade group.

Another 17 percent said they were losing money, down from 38 percent in 2003, the magazine publishing group International Federation of the Periodical Press reported.

The study comes at a time when advertisers are shifting more of their spending from television to the Internet.

About two-thirds of consumer magazine Web site revenues came from display advertising, the study found. The rest was from sponsorship, e-commerce, subscriptions and syndication.

"Most publishers of successful magazine Web sites have gained new advertisers on the Web who do not advertise in the print products," the report said.

The survey was based on information from only 71 Web sites, but represented some of the world's biggest publishers including magazines owned by Conde Nast, Emap, Axel Springer, Reader's Digest, Hachette Filipachi, IPC and Time Out Group.
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jh...toryID=8918698






Live 8 Rock Stars 'Need To See The Real Africa'

The Live 8 rock concerts highlighting Africa's woes should have been staged in the world's poorest continent with global stars performing alongside

local acts, organizers of the Johannesburg gig said Tuesday.

Nine Live 8 gigs featuring top acts like U2, Elton John and Madonna will be held on July 2, but critics have lambasted Irish rocker Bob Geldof, mastermind of Live 8, for shunning African stars in an event meant to underline the continent's problems.

"If we had a collaboration with these European and U.S. stars, if we stood on stage with them, that would have had a bigger impact," said South African star Zola, who will perform at a concert in Johannesburg endorsed by Live 8 Saturday.

"It would have been nice for them to come here ... they need to see the real Africa," he told reporters.

Live 8 organizers, under pressure to mount an African effort, approached local campaigners at the 11th hour to suggest a local concert with a link to the bigger gigs.

Hassen Lorgat, South Africa spokesman for the Global Call to Action against Poverty, one of the organizing groups, said he was thrilled Africa would be given the global exposure that comes with being affiliated to Live 8, but said he would have done things differently if he had been in Geldof's shoes.

"Sometimes he worries about the prize, so the idea is to raise the maximum amount of funds. Geldof is not a bad guy, but I would do it differently," he told a news conference.

There is a chance that former South African President and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela might appear at the Johannesburg concert, although this had not been confirmed, organizers said.

The Live 8 gigs will call for more aid for Africa, debt cancellation and fairer trade ahead of a July 6-8 meeting of the G8 group of seven industrialized nations and Russia in Scotland.

Concerts are being held in London, Berlin, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Tokyo, Moscow and near Toronto.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...EESBURG-DC.XML






What Supreme Court Copyright Case Means For Real Estate

Experts discuss possible impact on property listings
Glenn Roberts Jr.

While a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relating to online file-sharing networks may not have any direct repercussions on the sharing of real estate property listings, it does appear to be a victory for Internet content providers, said a lawyer who specializes in information technology issues.

J.T. "Jay" Westermeier, a partner with the DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary LLP law firm, said the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. decision appears to give copyright owners more legal authority to pursue technology providers that somehow encourage users to engage in copyright infringement.

"One could conceivably extend that to real estate listings," he said. For example, providers of real estate listings might have a legal claim against a company that encourages people to use its technology to make copies of online real estate listings and to display those listings on another site, he said.

"Conceivably, the Grokster (decision) would give the copyright owner more legal authority to go after them," he said.

Protection of property listings information is an important question for the real estate industry, with a lot at stake. Legal questions over ownership, control and protection of computerized information are relevant and pressing for real estate organizations in this Internet era.

Brian N. Larson, a former multiple-listing service executive who now serves MLS clients and real estate brokerage firms as a lawyer, said he doesn't see any immediate impacts from the Grokster decision on the real estate industry. Larson said he's not aware of any company that advocates wholesale duplication of online property listings.

The entertainment industry, in the Grokster case, had sought to stop copyright infringement that they claimed was facilitated by a type of file- sharing network known as a peer-to-peer network. While that case centered on copyright infringement, Larson said that some information in property listings tend to be protected in two ways: by contract law and by copyright law.

The courts have generally held, though, that factual information in such listings is generally not protected by copyright laws, while property descriptions and property photos are generally considered by industry lawyers to be creative works that can be protected.

Brian Larson
"Most people who have access to MLS data have that access under some kind of license agreement. Those license agreements usually very specifically restrict use of that data. MLSs are really better positioned to protect their content than are the publishers of music," Larson said.

If peer-to-peer networks become popular in the industry, then the Grokster case may have more relevance, he said.

Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said it's not clear to him whether the Grokster decision will actually strengthen copyright law. "This (ruling) is not what the recording industry wanted," he said.

"It puts the weight on the copyright holders to show that the technology developers have overtly and actively promoted copyright infringement." If it cannot be proven that a technology developer actually promoted copyright infringement, then copyright holders cannot succeed in their legal action, Cooper said. The Consumer Federation of America is an advocacy, research, education and service organization that works to advance pro-consumer policies.

Meanwhile, Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has provided legal assistance in defending peer-to-peer networks, said in a statement that the Grokster ruling "could impede makers of all kinds of technologies with expensive lawsuits.

"(The ruling) means that inventors and entrepreneurs will not only bear the costs of bringing new products to market, but also the costs of lawsuits if consumers start using their products for illegal purposes," Cohn stated. The foundation promotes the free exchange of information over the Internet.
http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=46830






Rejected TV Pilot Thrives on P2P
Michael Grebb

How's this for irony?

A sacked TV pilot about a large number of people who stay in touch through an underground data network has popped up on ... well, an underground data network.

The WB television network passed on the pilot for Global Frequency, a sci-fi adventure series based on the graphic novel by English scribe Warren Ellis.

But that didn't stop someone from leaking the pilot on the internet. The file eventually found its way into the BitTorrent network.

Over the last couple of weeks, enough people have downloaded and viewed the pilot online to give producers hope that TV executives might take a second look at the show.

"There's a large and growing fan base for a show that never aired," said John Rogers, the show's writer and executive producer, on Wednesday. "Now I have an extra 10,000 hits a week on my website, and I've got to figure out what to do here."

Rogers, who said he had nothing to do with the leak, has already received 350 e-mails from people praising the show. He said he would like to release the pilot as a DVD.

"If that's successful, that's a pretty good argument to pick up the show," he said.

Of course, the decision to broadcast the show is up to Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the pilot. The studio declined to comment about the future possibility of airing the show. However, it wasn't shy this week about slamming the BitTorrent leak.

"Whether the pilot was picked up or not, it is still the property of Warner Bros. Entertainment and we take the protection of all of our intellectual property seriously," said Craig Hoffman, a company spokesman. "While Warner Bros. Entertainment values feedback from consumers, copyright infringement is not a productive way to try to influence a corporate decision."

Hoffman added that the pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal ... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."

The show's plot revolves around Global Frequency, a secretive global organization comprised of 1,001 members, who each possess a special talent they use to fight bizarre world threats.

The leader of Global Frequency is the enigmatic Miranda Zero, played by actress Michelle Forbes. (Forbes is fast building a tech-geek pedigree: She's also the voice of Dr. Judith Mossman in the video game Half Life 2).

The pilot's creative team, meanwhile, is a who's who of Hollywood and TV heavyweights, including reality-show king Mark Burnett (The Apprentice), writer Diego Gutierrez (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek), and director Nelson McCormick (Alias and Third Watch).

In describing the show, blogger Chuck Lawson wrote, "imagine the X-Files has world-class sex with Alias, and produces a mutant offspring with a taste for crank that lives 20 minutes in the future."

But with the current buzz wholly the result of unauthorized peer-to-peer activity, show creators are a bit unsure how to proceed.

"I'm officially against downloading files when they violate the laws of the country you live in," Rogers said on Wednesday.

On his June 19 blog, Rogers wrote that "illegal file-sharing is a bad, bad thing, and I in no way encourage it.... All references to downloading sites will be immediately deleted from ... this website. You, despite your enthusiasm, should be ashamed of yourselves. Ashamed."

In his June 21 blog post, he asked people to "spread the word (but not the file. Bad TV audience. Baaaaaad)."

P2P advocates aren't surprised that Rogers would ask fans not to trade the file even though that very activity seems to be helping his cause.

"In Hollywood, he knows he has to say those words or get thrown off the reservation," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But we're seeing more and more of this. People are downloading things and clamoring to pay for it. It shows that fans want to support content, not just steal it."

Morpheus CEO Michael Weiss called the leak "just another positive example" of P2P.

"There have already been countless success stories on how musicians -- either aspiring or established -- have turned to P2P to build or reinvigorate their careers," he said. "It is not surprising that the same effect is now beginning to happen in film and TV."

Meanwhile, Global Frequency creator Ellis has chimed in on his own website, noting that "the TV pilot (is) all over the net right now, on that filthy BitTorrent thing which is illegal and nasty and I certainly don't use it to watch The Daily Show or anything.... I don't have the torrent link, and I haven't seen the pilot, so don't ask. But feel free to buy the book."

Whether all the internet buzz ultimately revives the show, Rogers said he has learned much from the leak and about the power of the internet.

"It changes the way I'll do my next project," said Rogers. If he owned the full rights, he said, "I would put my pilot out on the internet in a heartbeat. Want five more? Come buy the boxed set." He urged other creators to do the same.

"It's a model and a reminder to the next guy who comes along," he said.

Meanwhile, Rogers, who is currently busy writing big-budget screenplays such as the Transformers movie due out from Dreamworks in 2006, said he plans to try to set up some meetings with Warner Bros. in the coming weeks to discuss whether Global Frequency has a future.

For now, the ball remains firmly in Warner Bros.' court.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67986,00.html






Go Ask Hollywood

Why Can’t You Back Up Your DVDs? Because Entertainment Execs Don’t Want You To
Cory Doctorow

The holiday shopping guides were all atwitter over the new DVD formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD—competing systems for recording and playing back high-definition movies. Both feature hugely increased pixel counts, more bit-depth and a surfeit of storage. But here’s an important question that goes unasked in all the hype: What features won’t your next-generation DVD device have?

It won’t have a button for making a backup copy of the DVD you just bought, or for sending the movie to any portable video player. And if you put one of these long-awaited new discs in your PC, you won’t have the option to rip it to your hard drive the way you do when you insert a CD.

No matter how pretty its picture, what you’re expected to do with a DVD today is the one thing you could do in 1994: watch it on your TV. Why? Because when tech companies created the DVD, they sold you out. They let Hollywood hold its content hostage so that they could control who gets to build players and what those players can do. Tech execs have not only rolled over, they’ve joined the other side, advocating laws and restrictions that serve the entertainment conglomerates first and us second.

If that doesn’t seem like such bad news, think about the way it used to be. When Sony created the VCR in 1976, it enabled anyone to make near-perfect copies of movies. Sony did this without permission, and Hollywood went nuts. The Motion Picture Association of America launched an eight-year battle against the VCR that culminated in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision declaring the device legal and changing copyright law to address these new capabilities. That ruling is the reason you don’t get sued for recording a TV show. (During one Congressional hearing, MPAA spokesman Jack Valenti uttered this infamous hyperbole: “The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.” Today, pre-recorded media earns the studios more revenue than box-office ticket sales.)

The phonograph, radio, jukebox, cable TV—all share similar stories. New technologies inherently defy existing rules and scare the entertainment establishment. But if consumers want the devices, copyright laws adjust and profitable new business models evolve.

The DVD broke that system. The studios—by then aware of the lucre in home video—controlled the format from its inception by agreeing en masse to a patented encryption scheme for the discs; anyone who wanted to build a player or create a DVD feature had to ask them for the key. They set up a cartel in 1995, now called the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), to dole out these licenses. Anyone making players without one is breaking the law. A Fox Studios executive told me, “It’s a polite marketplace.” Sure, if polite means stagnant.

Think of all the things you can do with a track from a CD now that you couldn’t do 10 years ago: rip it to your laptop, turn it into a ring tone, send it to your friends, burn a mix. Many of these capabilities are illegal, and the recording industry has tried to stop them all, but they’re out there, challenging the old rules and feeling their place in the market. Innovators have tried to enable the same flexibility for the DVD. Last year 321 Studios released software that let you back up prerecorded DVDs, but the MPAA sued it into bankruptcy before a court could rule on whether or not the product was legal.

Just last month, this magazine gave a Best of What’s New award to a $27,000 movie jukebox from Kaleidescape, praising the maker’s efforts to appease Hollywood by locking down content on the device so it can’t be shared. Kaleidescape thinks the product is within the boundaries of its DVD-CCA license, but my Deep Throat on the cartel says the group disagrees and is currently deciding how the company will be punished. Penalties range from a stern warning to fines to lawsuits. (When I called the DVD-CCA for an official line, I got this reply: “I’ve been asked to tell you we have no comment.” “Who asked you to tell me that?” “I can’t tell you.”)

The VCR exists because a behemoth with deep pockets stood up for it. But today, only easily crushed upstarts are willing to take chances, and the big tech firms are all in the entertainment business themselves. Sony recently bought MGM to secure content for Blu-Ray. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and of the animation studio Pixar, told studio heads and tech leaders in a private meeting that studios shouldn’t release anything for the DVD-HD format until they get a promise that recorders will never appear in a PC.

We can’t rely on the vendors to act in our interest these days, dragging the entertainment execs kicking and screaming to the money tree. The irony is that the tech companies say that this is all done in your interest, that by pleasing the studios, they can give you a device for which Hollywood might make a few movies available. But it will be on their terms, not yours. With friends like that, who needs the Boston Strangler?
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/compute...006968,00.html






Now playing on Google: 'Matrix,' 'Family Guy'
John Borland

Google's new video search tool is turning out to be a little more expansive than the company planned, with users uploading copyright content ranging from the last "Matrix" movie to the "Family Guy" cartoons.

Consumers browsing the service, which was opened to the public just two days ago, have uncovered links to full versions of feature-length movies, TV shows and other content. As of Thursday morning, much of that content could be watched in its entirety on Google's site.

The company's terms of service clearly state that anyone uploading content to the search tool must have the rights to distribute the video and that copyright material is barred without the express consent of the copyright holder. However, the company's site also says that it does a preliminary review of content, looking for the most egregious "adult content or obvious copyright violations."

"We encourage anyone who has a copyright concern or complaint to send us a DMCA content removal notice. However, if we see content in Google Video that clearly violates copyright we will remove it," according to a company statement.

A Google spokesman said the company is in the process of removing all material that violates copyright.

Coming just days after a Supreme Court ruling that sharply strengthened Hollywood's legal hand against unauthorized movie distribution online, the incident highlights the dangers that Google is facing with its new service.

The new video search is designed not only to search what's already available on the Web, but to host video for producers that don't have the resources to post it themselves.

Web portals and Internet service providers that allow users to post their own content have been shielded from liability for copyright violations, as long as they remove violations when asked by a rights holder. However, Hollywood studios and record labels have been unhappy with the increasing ability of automated technology such as search engines and peer-to-peer technology to provide access to copyright material under these rules.

Much of the content uploaded to Google's search tool had been in the system for weeks. A watchable copy of "The Matrix Revolutions" was stamped with a June 9 upload time, and the "Family Guy" cartoons were uploaded on June 7, according to the Web page.

While the "Matrix" link was still up Thursday morning, the "play" buttons for screen captures of "The Simpsons" episodes had been removed.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5770212.html





'DVD Jon' Breaks Google Video Lock
Ryan Naraine

Norwegian hacker Jon Lech Johansen has cracked the lock on Google's new in-browser video player.

Johansen, also known as 'DVD Jon' for his work on decrypting DVD security codes, has created a patch for
the Google Video Viewer—less than 24 hours after the search giant shipped the video playback plug-in, a tool based on the open-source VideoLAN media player. ADVERTISEMENT

The patch, released on Johansen's 'So Sue Me' blog, effectively disables a modification Google made to the VideoLAN code to prevent users from playing videos that are not hosted on Google's servers.

Johansen said the patch, which requires the .Net run-time framework, will remove Google's restriction and allow the playback of video files that aren't on the video.google.com server.

The 21-year-old hacker, who faced two trials in Norway in 2002 and 2003 for his role in the release of the DeCSS decryption software, is a hero to many for his efforts to defeat DRM (digital rights management) mechanisms built into media player technology.

He has been involved in a public cat-and-mouse game with Apple Inc., releasing several tools to bypass the DRM software used to encrypt music sold on the iTunes Music Store. LINK TO: PyMusique Unlocks iTunes Copy Protection. Again. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1779526,00.asp

Johansen has also cracked Apple's AirPort Express's encryption and released a proof-of-concept program that allows Linux users to play video encoded with Microsoft's proprietary WMV9 codec. The proof-of-concept is based on the VideoLan code.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1832464,00.asp






Senate Punts On Broadcast Flag Option
Declan McCullagh

A key U.S. Senate panel on Thursday decided not to intervene in a long-simmering dispute over the "broadcast flag," a form of copy prevention technology for digital TV broadcasts.

At a meeting reserved for voting on spending bills, not one member of the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed an amendment authorizing federal regulators to mandate the broadcast flag.

Consumer groups had predicted that such an amendment would be offered at the 11 a.m. PDT meeting and had asked their supporters to contact senators in opposition to the idea. Their worry: The broadcast flag could be injected into an appropriations bill for the Federal Communications Commission.

The strategy seems to have worked. "The broadcast flag amendment was not included in the bill," said Virginia Davis, press secretary for Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

"That appears to be a good sign," said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge. Brodsky warned, though, that the requirement could be inserted when the appropriations bill heads to the Senate floor for a final vote. The broadcast flag would curb consumers' rights to make fair use of digital TV content, Public Knowledge says.

At the meeting, which lasted about 75 minutes, committee members unanimously approved a spending bill--which in part funded the FCC--without any major amendments.

In November 2003, the FCC voted unanimously to adopt the broadcast flag rule, which required manufacturers of digital TVs and computer HDTV tuners to abide by a complex set of regulations designed to limit Internet redistribution of video clips. Manufacturers that did not comply would be subject to government sanctions.

But a federal appeals court in May tossed out the FCC's rule, saying the agency had exceeded what Congress had permitted. The court did, however, note that Congress had the power to authorize the broadcast flag if it chose.

Since then, politicking over the broadcast flag has shifted to Congress. Motion Picture Association of America chief Dan Glickman said in an opinion article last month that the rule is necessary "to assure a continued supply of high-value programming to off-air digital television consumers," and a copy of draft legislation has surfaced.
http://news.com.com/Senate+punts+on+...3-5759807.html






BitTorrent May Be Next Target for Copyright Cops

LONDON -- U.S. content companies are riding high this week after their courtroom victory over illicit file-sharing networks, and the popular BitTorrent software may be next in their crosshairs.

BitTorrent, created by programmer Bram Cohen, is a file-sharing program that distributes large files quickly by breaking them into many pieces, sharing the pieces among a large number of users, and reassembling them upon delivery.

Like Grokster, which ended up on the losing side of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Monday, BitTorrent is widely used to trade copyrighted materials such as movies and television shows. But it also has many non-infringing uses, and legal experts say it may fare better than Grokster under the freshly minted legal precedent handed down this week.

Uncertain Legal Ground

"BitTorrent has a more realistic case for non-infringing users than Grokster or the others ever had," said Mark Schultz, an associate law professor at Southern Illinois University who has studied the software. "(Cohen) didn't set out to trade Ammonium or Britney Spears. But we have to be realistic because we know it's used for massive illegal filesharing."

The Supreme Court verdict centered on intent, with the court concluding that Grokster was liable because it induced users to illegally download copyrighted material.

Since Cohen has repeatedly counselled people against using BitTorrent for illicit means, there is little evidence that he has behaved in a similar fashion, Schultz said.

However, there are several factors that could put BitTorrent at legal risk.

Cohen recently created a search engine on the BitTorrent home page, which could be seen as encouraging piracy. And in a manifesto on his Web site from several years ago, he stated that one of his goals was to "commit digital piracy."

In an preface added this week, he has said the item -- which also stated a desire to "synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously, and secure machines and homes" -- was intended as a parody.

Cohen declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Hollywood on the Offensive

Regardless of BitTorrent's legal standing, Hollywood is not standing idly by while thousands of movies and TV shows are traded illegally.

Fearful of suffering the same fate as its peers in the piracy-plagued music industry, the Motion Picture Association of America began its BitTorrent offensive in December with a round of lawsuits against Web sites that posted special "tracker" files that enable BitTorrent downloads.

Similar lawsuits have followed, and in May U.S. federal agents shut down a computer network that was distributing pirated copies of "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" before the movie even hit theaters.

There are also signs that Hollywood has hired technology companies to impede BitTorrent downloads.

Users on several discussion boards say that unknown third parties are sabotaging downloads of copyrighted material, flooding the network with fake data and gathering information that could be used in future lawsuits against individual users.

"To screw up BitTorrent it's relatively straightforward," said Andrew Parker, chief executive of CacheLogic, a UK firm that measures BitTorrent usage. "The big weakness is ... it's only after you download the entire file that you find out it's corrupt."

Parker said that any strategy to impede BitTorrent downloads would probably not last for long.

"It's a bit of an arms race," he said. "You have a bunch of smart people looking to get access to content, then a much smaller number of smart people working for content owners to block this stuff."
http://www.rednova.com/news/technolo...opyright_cops/






Perfect for ice beer

Coming In Out Of The Cold: Cold Fusion, For Real
Michelle Thaller

For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around scientists (myself included) has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or UFO sightings.

After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle, so to speak, and the subsequent retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But that's all about to change.

A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing.

Before going into their specific experiment, it's probably a good idea to define exactly what nuclear fusion is, and why we're so interested in understanding the process. This also gives me an excuse to talk about how things work deep inside the nuclei of atoms, a topic near and dear to most astronomers (more on that later).

Simply put, nuclear fusion means ramming protons and neutrons together so hard that they stick, and form a single, larger nucleus. When this happens with small nuclei (like hydrogen, which has only one proton or helium, which has two), you get a lot of energy out of the reaction. This specific reaction, fusing two hydrogen nuclei together to get helium, famously powers our sun (good), as well as hydrogen bombs (bad).

Fusion is a tremendous source of energy; the reason we're not using it to meet our everyday energy needs is that it's very hard to get a fusion reaction going. The reason is simple: protons don't want to get close to other protons.

Do you remember learning about electricity in high school? I sure do - I dreaded it whenever that topic came around. I had a series of well- meaning science teachers that thought it would be fun for everyone to hold hands and feel a mild electric shock pass their arms. Every time my fists clenched and jerked and I had nothing consciously do with it, my stomach turned.

In addition, I have long, fine hair, and was often made a victim of the Van de Graf generator - the little metal ball with a rubber belt inside it that creates enough static electricity to make your hair stand on end. Yeesh.

Anyway, hopefully you remember the lesson that two objects having different electrical charges (positive and negative) attract one another, while those with the same charge repel. It's a basic law of electricity, and it definitely holds true when two protons try to get close together. Protons have positive charges, and they repel each other. Somehow, in order for fusion to work, you've got to overcome this repulsive electrical force and get the things to stick together.

Here's where an amazing and mysterious force comes in that, although we don't think about it in our day-to-day lives, literally holds our matter together. There are four universal forces of nature, two of which you're probably familiar with: gravity and electromagnetism.

But there are two other forces that really only come in to play inside atomic nuclei: the strong and weak nuclear forces (and yes, the strong force is the stronger of the two, the weak is weaker. Scientists really have a way with names, dont they?) I'm going to focus on the strong force, as that's the one responsible for nuclear fusion.

The strong force is an attractive force between protons and neutrons - it wants to stick them together. If the strong force had its way, the entire universe would be one big super-dense ball of protons and neutrons, one big atomic nucleus, in fact.

Fortunately, the strong force only becomes strong at very small scales: about one millionth billionth of a meter. Yes, that's 0.000000000000001 meters. Any farther away, and the strong force loses its grip. But if you can get protons and neutrons that close together, the strong force becomes stronger than any other force in nature, including electricity.

That's important- all protons have the same charge, so they'd like to fly away from each other. But if you can get them close together, inside the volume of an atomic nucleus, the strong force will bind them together.

The whole trick with fusion is you've got to get protons close enough together for the strong force to overcome their electrical repulsion and merge them together into a nucleus. The sun does this pretty much by brute force. The sun has over 300,000 times the mass of the Earth, which means there's a lot of gravity weighing down on its core.

That pressure gets the sun's internal temperature up to several millions of degrees, which means that particles inside the sun's core are flying around at huge velocities. Everything is moving around so fast that protons sometimes get slammed together before their charges have a chance to repel. The strong force takes hold, and a new atom (helium) is born.

In this process, some of the mass of the protons is converted into energy, powering the sun and producing the light that will eventually reach the Earth as sunlight.

Scientists have gotten fusion to occur in the laboratory before, but for the most part, they've tried to mimic conditions inside the sun by whipping hydrogen gas up to extreme temperatures or slamming atoms together in particle accelerators. Both of those options require huge energies and gigantic equipment, not the sort of stuff easily available to build a generator. Is there any way of getting protons close enough together for fusion to occur that doesnt require the energy output of a large city to make it happen?

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

Instead of using high temperatures and incredible densities to ram protons together, the scientists at UCLA cleverly used the structure of an unusual crystal.

Crystals are fascinating things; the atoms inside are all lined up in a tightly ordered lattice, which creates the beautiful structure we associate with crystals. Sometimes those orderly atoms create neat side-effects, like piezoelectricity, which is the effect of creating an electrical charge in a crystal by compressing it. Stressing the bonds between the atoms of some crystals causes electrons to build up on one side, creating a charge difference over the body of the crystal. Other crystals do this when you heat or cool them; these are called pyroelectric crystals.

The new cold fusion experiment went something like this: scientists inserted a small pyroelectric crystal (lithium tantalite) inside a chamber filled with hydrogen. Warming the crystal by about 100 degrees (from -30 F to 45F) produced a huge electrical field of about 100,000 volts across the small crystal.

The tip of a metal wire was inserted near the crystal, which concentrated the charge to a single, powerful point. Remember, hydrogen nuclei have a positive charge, so they feel the force of an electric field, and this one packed quite a wallop! The huge electric field sent the nuclei careening away, smacking into other hydrogen nuclei on their way out. Instead of using intense heat or pressure to get nuclei close enough together to fuse, this new experiment used a very powerful electric field to slam atoms together.

Unlike some previous claims of room-temperature fusion, this one makes intuitive sense: its just another way to get atoms close enough together for the strong force to take over and do the rest. Once the reaction got going, the scientists observed not only the production of helium nuclei, but other tell-tale signs of fusion such as free neutrons and high energy radiation.

This experiment has been repeated successfully and other scientists have reviewed the results: it looks like the real thing this time.

For the time being, don't expect fusion to become a readily available energy option. The current cold fusion apparatus still takes much more energy to start up than you get back out, and it may never end up breaking even. In the mean time, the crystal-fusion device might be used as a compact source of neutrons and X-rays, something that could turn out to be useful making small scanning machines. But it really may not be long until we have the first nuclear fusion-powered devices in common use.

So cold fusion is back, perhaps to stay. After many fits and starts, its finally time for everyday fusion to come in out of the cold.
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.c...5s01-stss.html






Bitchin’ Hot Fusion

EU Consortium, Japanese to build 100,000,000-degree reactor in France
Guy Faulconbridge

Science's quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to meet global energy needs took a major step forward on Tuesday when a 30-nation consortium chose France to host the world's first nuclear fusion reactor.

After months of wrangling, France defeated a bid from Japan and signed a deal to site the 10-billion-euro ($12.18-billion) experimental reactor in Cadarache, near Marseille.

The project will seek to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the sun produces energy.

Its backers say it would be cleaner than existing nuclear reactors, but critics argue it could be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built, if at all.

"We are making scientific history," Janez Potocnik, the EU's Science and Research Commissioner, told a news conference in Moscow, where the multinational partners in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project were meeting.

A nuclear fusion power station is the 'Holy Grail' for scientists trying to find a viable alternative to the world's depleting stocks of oil and gas.

Crude this week reached a record price of $60.95 a barrel in some trading and a summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations next week is to discuss climate change, widely blamed on burning fossil fuels for energy.

Decades Of Research

Unlike existing fission reactors, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by combining them. Power has been harnessed from fusion in laboratories but scientists have so far been unable to build a commercially viable reactor, despite decades of research.

The 500 megawatt ITER reactor will use deuterium, extracted from seawater, as its major fuel and a giant electromagnetic ring to fuse atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges facing scientists is to build a reactor that can sustain temperatures of about 100 million Celsius (180 million F) for long enough to generate power.

"I give it a 50:50 chance of success but the engineering is very difficult," said Ian Fells of Britain's Royal Academy of Engineering. "If we can really make this work there will be enough electricity to last the world for the next 1,000 to 2,000 years."

The ITER project began in 1985 but wrangling over the site and financing have caused repeated delays.

At their meeting in Moscow, officials from ITER partners China, the 25-nation EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States chose France over Japan.

In its long battle to host the project, the EU, backing member France, used some of the tactics of unilateralism it often criticizes in the United States, vowing to go it alone or build ITER with a "coalition of the willing" if the Japanese did not yield.

In the end, the EU made huge financial and industrial concessions to the Japanese.

The EU will fund 40 percent of the 4.6 billion euro construction cost with France paying an additional 10 percent, while each of the other five members of the consortium will pay 10 percent.

In Tokyo's case, this will be offset by contracts for up to 10 percent of the procurement, EU participation in science projects in Japan with up to 8 percent of the cost of ITER construction, and a disproportionate share of Japanese staff on the ITER organization, including the post of director-general.

"We believe that the ITER project should start as soon as possible for the sake of mankind's future," said Nariaki Nakayama, Japan's science minister.

Building the reactor is expected to take about ten years, but some scientists say it could take three times that long and the sides have yet to reach a final agreement on a number of issues, including financing, before the builders can move in.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace estimates that if the project yields any results at all, it will not be until the second half of this century.

"At a time when it is universally recognized that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Greenpeace considers it ridiculous to use resources and billions of euros on this project," it said.

France has been a big producer of nuclear energy since the oil shocks of the 1970s and has 58 nuclear reactors, the most in the world after the United States.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...NUCLEAR-DC.XML






Phorum Phunnies

LMFAO Nobody Thinks Anymore Huh?
BoaR

I borrowed one of my friends cd's from the store to see. (The frickin manager of HMV lent me a cd to pirate lol)

I bring it home, undo the shrink wrap and pop it into the comp. Hmm now I have a choice! I can play it or pirate it. Gee :rolleyes:

They really don't realise that once it is IN my computer, physically IN the drive that any sort of protection is futile??

Fire up Winamp. Mp3 Lame output pluging. Configure my LamE encoder to background automate 360Kbps stereo 5.1 surround. Activate the plugin in winamp.

Now what do I do? hit play and let the cd kick out the tunes. when I am finished listening to it start to finish, I go get my saran wrap and the blow dryer.

Re-shrink wrap the cd and put it on the table. Come back to the comp, plug in my mp3 player, and open my folder on the HD where my winamp plugin kicked the LamE ripped mp3 files.

Drag and drop, wait for it to finish, run maketorrent to churn out a .torrent file for the web, and load it to seed, then I make a run for my bus.

I am back at HMV in less than an hour, handing back the perfectly shrink wrapped cd, and the headphones to the owner.

She laughs along with me as she replaces the cd on the shelf, jamming to the tunes coming from my flawless copy already being shared on the net to hundreds.


:harhar: *Gives the middle finger to the RIAA* :harhar:

That's what I think of your new copy protection. :happy:
http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=4173






Boy of Summer

Don Henley Hails P2P Decision

The Eagles' drummer and lead singer Don Henley is applauding the US Supreme Court's decision that Internet file-sharing services can be held liable if they're used mainly to download songs and movies illegally. Henley, who is the president and cofounder of the Recordings Artists' Coalition (RAC), said, "By ruling against Grokster, the Supreme Court has vindicated the rights of artists, songwriters, and copyright owners. There is no more important case for the future of our business. These unauthorized (peer-to-peer) systems promote copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale. They make millions of dollars in advertising, but pay the artists nothing."

Henley and his Eagles bandmates Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmit all signed a brief with the Court back in January, urging that Grokster, Kazaa, and other file-sharing systems be held accountable for the copyright infringement going on on their networks. Others who signed and supported the RAC brief include: Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Grateful Dead drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman, Boz Scaggs, Elvis Costello, and Brian Wilson.

Henley told us that the reason the RAC exists in the first place is because it's important for artists to make themselves heard on the important issues that directly affect them: "The unions represent us to some degree. The AF Of M (American Federation Of Musicians), and AFTRA (TV and radio union), and the collection agencies like BMI and ASCAP have tried admirably to represent us, but the fact is, is that artists themselves need a coalition and they need a voice in Washington."
http://www.therockradio.com/2005/06/...-decision.html






ProfNet Experts Round-Up: File-Sharing Lawsuits

**1. PETER VOGEL, attorney at GARDERE WYNNE SEWELL LLP: "The Grokster ruling that Internet services may be liable for copyright infringement for setting up peer-to-peer (P2P) networks 'with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright' did not look at the technology of the P2P networks. Unlike the 1984 Supreme Court ruling, which said that although the Sony VCR could be used for copyright infringement, but was also provided consumers the convenience of 'time shifting' television broadcasts to watch at a more convenient time, the unanimous court ruling held that Grokster 'acted with a purpose to cause copyright violations by use of software suitable for illegal use.'"

**2. DAVID POST, I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Beasley Law School, co-wrote amicus brief on behalf of Grokster and Streamcast: "The High Court’s decision marks the end of life as we know it in terms of the future of file sharing and the innovation of related technology that builds upon and interacts with P2P distribution networks." A cyberlaw scholar, Post teaches IP, copyright and cyberspace law; is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute; clerked twice for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg; founded Cyberspace Law Institute and contributes to the Volokh Conspiracy blog. He is frequently asked to comment on Internet law by local and national media.

**3. SANJIV SARWATE, partner of the intellectual property litigation firm PATTISHALL, MCAULIFFE, NEWBURY, HILLARD & GERALDSON in Chicago: "The Supreme Court hewed to tradition in deciding the MGM v. Grokster case, focusing not on P2P technology, but rather on the defendants' promotion of the infringing uses of that technology. In reaffirming the common- sense rule that those who promote their technology's infringing uses should be held liable, the Supreme Court provided guidance to technology developers as well as protection for content owners."

**4. ROBERT HOLLEYMAN, president and CEO at THE BUSINESS SOFTWARE ALLIANCE: "The Supreme Court decision in MGM Studios v. Grokster reaffirms the need for balance between innovation and deterring piracy. The opinion states clearly that the mere act of developing and distributing multipurpose technologies, such as software and computers, does not create liability. We are gratified that the opinion ensures that persons intentionally and actively engaged in encouraging others to infringe, ‘inducing infringement,’ can be held liable under the law for their acts. The application of this new standard should make a real and positive difference in combating online piracy."

**5. COLE STUART, shareholder at HELLER EHRMAN LLP: "The court's ruling should sound a warning signal to technology companies large and small, and may have a significant chilling effect on commercial speech for companies making tools that can be used by individuals to facilitate copyright infringement. With the proliferation of consumer software and hardware tools and services that may be used (or misused) to capture, store and transmit copyrighted works, companies making such tools now need to be very conscious of how their marketing is perceived in the music and film studios in Hollywood and New York."

**6. MANNY D. POKOTILOW, managing partner with the intellectual property law firm CAESAR, RIVISE, BERNSTEIN, COHEN & POKOTILOW, LTD. in Philadelphia: “Copyright owners have won a substantial victory. It means that unless a start-up company that is producing file-sharing software or P2P software has a large war chest, the music industry can stop its sale of such software in its infancy merely by filing a lawsuit for vicarious copyright infringement.”

**7. JAMES MITCHELL, attorney with the intellectual property law firm PRICE, HENEVELD, COOPER, DEWITT & LITTON LLP in Grand Rapids, Mich.: "This is an important milestone in the ongoing race between the law and rapidly advancing information technology. The remarkable advances in information technology over the past 15 years have made copyright infringement easy. Further, the average person tends to resent being told he or she cannot freely take advantage of this technology. An ongoing educational effort is required to help the average person understand that if the law does not respond to this challenge in favor of protecting copyrights, creativity will be discouraged."

**8. A. BLAIR HUGHES, attorney with MCDONNELL BOEHNEN HULBERT & BERGHOFF, LLP, an intellectual property law firm in Chicago: "While this decision allowing the recording and movie industry to sue file sharers may seem favorable, the next hurdle the industry faces in view of the Grokster decision may be insurmountable. In order to prevail in a suit against file sharers, movie and recording industry companies must prove -- as the Supreme Court decision requires -- that a file-sharing company offers its file- sharing product because they 'intend' their customers to use the software to illegally swap songs and movies. Since the software has legal purposes, it seems that all that file-sharing companies need to do is have users agree not to use the software in an illegal manner. Once that happens, the only recourse left to the big movie studios and recording companies will be to sue individuals who are using the file-sharing software illegally -- an immense and costly undertaking.”

**9. JONATHAN HUDIS, partner with the intellectual property law firm OBLON, SPIVAK, MCCLELLAND, MAIER & NEUSTADT, P.C. in Alexandra, Va.: "The Supreme Court has breathed new life into copyright law’s ability to combat infringement over peer-to-peer networks. The Supreme Court took the Ninth Circuit to task for misapplying Sony v. Universal City Studios. In this case, the defendants distributed their peer-to-peer file-sharing software with the very obvious intent to cause the users of their software to trade in copyrighted files without authorization. This, said the court, distinguishes the case from the safe harbor of Sony, and potentially subjects the defendants to contributory liability under the theory of active inducement. In the technology-driven, file-sharing era, copyright protection remains alive and well as a tool to combat active inducements to infringe.”

**10. JOSEPH V. NORVELL, chair of the copyright practice group at BRINKS HOFER GILSON & LIONE in Chicago: “This decision involved peer- to-peer file- sharing providers, but it will have much broader implications in the technology industry. Technology companies of all types that transfer digital data, including computer companies, data transfer providers and software companies will need to review their products and policies to ensure they are not exposed to potential liability for copyright infringement. The technology companies may appeal to Capitol Hill for more clarification to ensure they are insulated from liability. This is a tightening of the 1984 Sony Betamax case, where the Supreme Court held that sellers of VCRs were not liable for users' copyright infringement. See Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984). Proponents of technology will see this as a potential stifling of the innovation permitted by the Sony Betamax decision.”

**11. JEFFREY D. NEUBURGER, chair of the technology, media and communications department at BROWN RAYSMAN MILLSTEIN FELDER & STEINER LLP: “The iPod is safe under today's Supreme Court opinion in MGM v. Grokster. But technology distributors that intentionally seek profit by encouraging infringing acts are not. The court took pains to carefully detail the specific actions by the distributors from which, the court said, 'a patently illegal objective' could be inferred. On the other hand, the court made it very clear that simply manufacturing and distributing technology that can be used for infringement is not enough to result in liability, if the traditional ‘Sony Betamax’ test of a ‘substantial non-infringing use’ is met. This gives content owners an important new avenue for protecting their intellectual property rights."

**12. MICHAEL D. SMITH, assistant professor of information systems at the Tepper School of Business at CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, believes that the court’s decision in the Grokster case does little to help the recording industry eliminate or control the next generation of 'legitimate' peer-to- peer systems: “I believe a larger problem for the industry is that copyright- friendly peer-to-peer networks, and other Internet- based systems, are being developed that will make it easier for consumers to locate, evaluate and purchase content from a diverse set of artists who aren't available through traditional radio stations and record stores. If these networks sustain themselves, they will reduce the importance of record companies as an intermediary between artists and consumers.”

**13. GEORGE WHEELER, attorney with the intellectual property law firm MCANDREWS, HELD AND MALLOY in Chicago: ”The Supreme Court has extended copyright law along the same path as preexisting patent law on inducement of patent infringement, to eliminate the distribution of a ‘copyright virus’ -- software that otherwise would largely destroy the value of copyrights on mass media products by enabling anyone with a computer to gain access to, and make high-quality copies of, these works. Patent law has a specific federal statute enacted over 50 years ago, 35 USC 271(b), preventing anyone from intentionally inducing infringement of a known patent by a third party. Copyright law does not have a specific statute to this effect, although there is some pertinent case law. By adopting this principle in a copyright context, the court has recognized that prohibiting inducement of copyright infringement is necessary to prevent software vendors from profiting."

**14. DAN VENGLARIK, attorney at DAVIS MUNCK: "The most interesting question still must be resolved: can contributory copyright infringement be employed to stop the sale/distribution of file-sharing software, 'ripping' or other content-copying products capable of both infringing and non- infringing uses? It’s the genie the entertainment companies must try to put back in the bottle, and this decision offers no clear path other than to continue using litigation costs to drive vendors from the marketplace. The court declined to set a balancing point for liability based simply on the amount of non- infringing versus infringing use, so they will likely have to revisit the issue within a few years."

**15. DR. JEFF STEIN, R.J. McElroy Chair in Communication Arts and an assistant professor of electronic media at WARTBURG COLLEGE in Waverly, Iowa: "It appears from the court's ruling that if a developer could imagine a person using the software for illegal purposes -- in this case, file sharing -- then the developer is responsible for any damages that result from the criminal activity, such as stealing copyrighted material. This ruling is a bit of a change from prior court decisions, which held developers harmless for how people used their products. In other words, if a product could be used legally, the developer was not responsible if someone wound up using it for illegal purposes. If this is taken to its logical extension, one could claim that a gun manufacturer could be held liable if someone uses one of their products in committing an illegal act, such as a robbery." Stein currently serves as the political analyst for KWWL-TV in Waterloo. He is the executive secretary of the Iowa Broadcast News Association, vice president of the Northwest Broadcast News Association and author of "Making Waves: The People and Places of Iowa Broadcasting."

**16. JOHN DELANEY, partner at MORRISON & FOERSTER: "Even before this decision, the P2P industry has been moving away from the Grokster model toward models that involve working to ensure a more satisfactory experience for consumers. Over time, as content providers increasingly partner with P2P companies, I think that you will see the market providing an attractive alternative to consumers for authorized online content. In addition, I think that we're going to see this battle shift away from the courts and to Congress. Look for Congress to get more involved in finding a solution that strikes the right balance between respect for IP rights and online access to music and movies."

**17. DAVID KUSEK, co-author of "The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution": "Music piracy is not going to go away with this decision. If anything, it will become even harder to stop. The court did not outlaw P2P technology, but instead reprimanded the way that it was brought to market. This will make the P2P companies even smarter. The best news about the ruling is that both the music and technology industries can move forward with a clearer understanding of what the rules are. While the music companies may feel that they won a tremendous victory, the reality is that their customers are turning away in droves."

**18. WILLIAM ABRAMS, partner at PILLSBURY WINTHROP SHAW PITTMAN, LLP: "The court puts the spotlight on the conduct of the defendant in using peer-to- peer technology, and not on the technology itself. The justices have balanced technology development against copyright protection by examining what the promoters did in the marketplace with the technology. If someone was using a photocopier to encourage and facilitate infringement, they might have the same consequence. Grokster has another day in the trial court, and the trial court and jury has been given some guidance. We will see how the lower courts apply this as a practical matter, and what law will develop."

**19. SEAN MELVIN, assistant professor of business law and business department chair at ELIZABETHTOWN COLLEGE: "The Supreme Court’s opinion in the file-sharing cases (MGM v. Grokster) has muddied the copyright infringement standards even further. Functionally, the court created a new standard to assess culpability for infringement: 'inducement' to commit copyright infringement. However, the court gave very little guidance on how lower courts should judge whether or not 'inducement' took place. This is a recipe for disaster, and the court will likely have to give further guidance as federal courts struggle to implement this standard."

**20. ANNETTE HURST, shareholder at HELLER EHRMAN LLP: "The court left for another day the hard questions about what Sony means --how much non- infringing use is 'substantial,' and what it takes to demonstrate that such uses are likely to develop in the future when they do not exist today. The result of this opinion is to give mature technology companies an advantage over startups in the distribution of dual use technologies. Mature companies can rely upon more established business models to generate revenue from dual use technologies, and should have the marketing and legal sophistication to avoid the appearance of deliberately capitalizing upon infringement."
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/512866/

**21. EDWARD NAUGHTON, partner at HOLLAND & KNIGHT: "The Supreme Court avoided revisiting the Sony Betamax decision. It focused on the evidence that Grokster and StreamCast deliberately encouraged infringement -- by marketing to and targeting former Napster users, by not attempting to block users' infringement and by building a business based on advertising, which the court viewed as proof that the primary goal of the software was to download free music. Because of this evidence, the court ruled that the record labels should be allowed to present their case to a jury."

**22. ALFRED (FRED) C. FRAWLEY, III, partner at PRETI FLAHERTY: "Whether you download music, share movie files by e-mail, or not, the landmark MGM v. Grokster case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that distributors of file- sharing software can be held responsible for copyright infringements committed by those who use their programs, will have significant repercussions across industry as it relates to key copyright rules." Frawley can help you wade through the tidal wave of issues concerning copyright infringement and other points of law that will be affected. A partner of the firm's intellectual-property practice group, he is one of the nation's most experienced attorneys in intellectual property, antitrust, trade regulation and employment law, and has managed global trademark portfolios and represented clients in a range of Federal Communications Commission issues.

**23. SHUBHA GHOSH, professor of law at the UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO: "The Supreme Court's decision in MGM v. Grokster offers both good news and bad news for copyright law and followers of new technologies, like P2P. The good news is that the decision did not suggest that Grokster and Streamcast are clearly liable for copyright infringement. Instead, the court concluded that a trial was necessary to determine the services' liability. The bad news is the Supreme Court basically created another way for the creator of new technology to be liable for copyright infringement. If the creator intended to induce copyright infringement, then the creator can also be found liable."

**24. JAY L. COOPER, L.A., entertainment practice chair at GREENBERG TRAURIG, a signatory to one of the briefs on behalf of the movie studios and former president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences: “File- sharing companies that actively encourage illegal downloading had to be held accountable for their customers' unlawful activities if the film industry was to avoid the same dramatic sales and job losses that have plagued the music industry. Without this decision, the motion picture industry would be in the same perilous place the music industry was in 1999 when Napster hit the scene."

**25. MICHAEL GRAIF, counsel at CHADBOURNE & PARKE LLP: "This decision shows that the court is willing to look to substance over form. Although the Grokster service was technically capable of being used in a substantially non-infringing way, the fact is the Grokster service was being used substantially to infringe copyrights, with full encouragement of Grokster. 'Sony' is still good law. As long as a device is capable of non- infringing use, the manufacturer will not be liable unless the manufacturer takes active steps to encourage others to use the device in an infringing manner."

**26. WALTER HANCHUK, partner at CHADBOURNE & PARKE LLP: "A unanimous Supreme Court handed down an overwhelming victory for copyright owners. The court was clearly moved by the enormity and pervasiveness of ongoing infringement, thereby dismissing Grokster's attempts to convince the court that there were substantial non-infringing uses of its service. Grokster's attempts to solicit former Napster users, as well as Grokster's full knowledge that its service was being actively used to infringe rights of copyright owners, led to the court's decision in this matter. The court's decision could provide a significant boost to legitimate music downloading services, such as Apple's iTunes."

**27. GREGORY G. KERBER, is CEO of WURLD MEDIA, whose Peer Impact (TM) is the first legal P2P compensating both rights holders and network users: "The Grokster ruling is terrific news for those who want to harness the Web's potential while protecting artistic rights -- and terrific news for consumers. Secure in their rights, artists and copyright holders will feel more comfortable making their content available. And spurred by the decision, business models will begin to develop that offer access to high- quality, easily accessible legitimate content that is free of viruses and other unexpected dangers."

**28. TIM HEADLEY, intellectual property partner at GARDERE WYNNE SEWELL in Houston: "The Supreme Court's ruling in Grokster may have a temporary chilling effect on some technology companies, but the real effect will be positive on retailers and the entertainment industry." Headley’s intellectual property practice includes litigation of patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret disputes; patent prosecution; management of worldwide trademark programs; and software licensing. Headley is a speaker and author on intellectual-property issues affecting large and small businesses.

**29. POLK WAGNER, professor of law at the UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: "The recording industry just doesn't have the resources to sue the number of people necessary to make a dent in piracy. Instead, they need to change their general business practices and approach, including embracing various forms of online music." Wagner teaches courses about copyright, patent and trademark law. He has written and lectured about copyright issues involving online song swapping, digital television, DVDs and the Internet.

**30. KATIE DEAN, digital entertainment beat reporter at WIRED NEWS, covers digital music and media services, copyright law, digital rights management, and the clashes between the entertainment industry and consumers over file sharing. Thus, Dean can speak to the ruling and what it may mean for the future of digital content delivery, amid the increasing use of portable devices capable of playing audio and video files.

**31. VANESSA PIERCE, assistant professor of law at AVE MARIA SCHOOL OF LAW, is available to comment on the decision in MGM v. Grokster. Pierce is a copyright law expert and currently teaches courses on copyright law, intellectual property, trademark law and patent law. She is also a member of the California and Utah bars and is licensed to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Pierce gained front-line experience on intellectual property matters at two law firms in Salt Lake City, Workman, Nydegger & Seeley and Parsons Behle & Latimer, and at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner in Palo Alto, Calif.

**32. MARK MCKENNA, J.D., professor of law at SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY, came to the university in 2003 after several years of experience litigating trademark and copyright infringement cases at Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson in Chicago. About half the cases he litigated were related to the Internet and other computer technology. He also drafted and negotiated intellectual property and software licenses and counseled clients on worldwide intellectual-property issues. McKenna also is one of the nation’s leading experts on intellectual-property issues.

**33. SUSAN BRENNER, NCR Distinguished Professor of Law and Technology at the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, is a renowned cybercrime scholar, speaks internationally and writes extensively on cybercrime. Her Web site, Cybercrimes.net, was featured on "NBC Nightly News." She is a member of the American Bar Association’s International Cybercrime Project and has served on the National District Attorneys Association’s Committee on Cybercrimes. She is also a member of the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Forensic Science Technology Center Digital Evidence Project.

**34. IAN BALLON, partner and co-chair of the intellectual property and Internet practice at MANATT, PHELPS AND PHILLIPS, will be co-chair with the Honorable Marybeth Peters, registrar of copyrights for the U.S. Copyright Office, of the upcoming conference "Copyright After Grokster v. MGM: Understanding the Supreme Court's Decision and its Impact on Law and Business." Ballon is also the author of the three-volume legal treatise, "E- Commerce and Internet Law: Treatise With Forms," and serves as executive director of Stanford University Law School's Center for E- Commerce.

**35. DARREN CAHR, partner at GARDNER CARTON & DOUGLAS, counsels clients on matters ranging from trademark, patent, and copyright disputes to advertising substantiation and promotion law, and has developed a concentration in the rapidly developing area of online anti- competitive practices. He represents clients in domain name disputes, government regulation of promotion practices on the Internet, false advertising and intellectual- property theft over the Internet. Cahr is a frequent speaker on law and technology, especially on Internet file-sharing services and the impact of the Supreme Court's recent decision.

**36. DOTTI BOLLINGER, attorney with FOX ROTHSCHILD LLP, is available for comment on the MGM v. Grokster case. She can explain how a ruling in this case will have implications on the relationship between technology and copyrights. Bollinger’s practice focuses on Internet, computer and information technology law in both the private and public sectors. In her practice, she represents clients in matters related to Internet access, security, privacy, censorship, electronic evidence, electronic discovery, criminal, electronic business, Web site development, communications liability, technology and intellectual property issues.

**37. MARK RADCLIFFE, co-chair of international law firm DLA PIPER's technology and sourcing practice group, is a highly accomplished attorney who currently serves as general counsel to the Open Source Initiative. He has excellent perspective on the impact of file-swapping litigation on issues ranging from the availability of VC funding, the design of consumer electronics, First Amendment rights and the changing tide of copyright law precedent. Radcliffe is best known as being one of the first to develop legal policy surrounding domain name registry 1994, when a series of legal disputes surrounding cybersquatting issues initially arose.

**38. DOUGLAS TWEEN of COUDERT BROTHERS LLP is a member of the firm’s global antitrust and global litigation practice groups, and resides in the New York office. Tween’s primary practice focuses on the defense of white-collar criminal and regulatory investigations, as well as complex civil litigation and class action defense. He represents corporations and individuals in antitrust, fraud, tax, securities, money laundering, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related matters. He also conducts internal investigations, and assists corporations in establishing and monitoring compliance programs.

**39. BRAD WRIGHT, intellectual property attorney from BANNER & WITCOFF LTD., specializes in copyright matters in the electrical and computer industries, and is available to speak about the future of file sharing. Wright has been closely following the Grokster case, and he can address how it will impact intellectual property rights for other e-commerce and technology businesses, such as eBay or cell-phone manufacturers, for instance. Wright will also tell you what technology companies must look out for to avoid being held liable for copyright infringement, and how this case will change those legal steps for protection.

**40. LISA A. DOLAK, associate professor of law at SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY, is available to comment on file-sharing lawsuits and teaches courses on patent and trade secrets, patent prosecution, Internet law, technology transfer, civil procedure and federal courts. She has written on ethics issues for intellectual property practitioners, declaratory judgment jurisdiction in patent cases, the use of electronic records to prove invention dates and the inequitable conduct defense.

**41. JEFF ISAAC, Esq. (AKA “The Lawyer in Blue Jeans”), is a veteran attorney with over 26 years under his proverbial belt. Isaac offers down-to- earth expert perspective on both personal legal issues as well as those current events in law that affect society on a day-to-day basis. Isaac’s distinctive style of “Blue Jeans Law” is highly relatable and comforting to a public that is known to harbor negative misperceptions about attorneys- at- large.

**42. TRIS FALL, attorney with FOX ROTHSCHILD LLP specializing in intellectual property, computer law, cyberlaw and internet-related matters, is available for comment on the MGM v. Grokster case. He can discuss the issues of the case and how a ruling in this case will have implications across the United States on the relationship between technology and copyrights.

**43. ALAN GRIMALDI, co-chair of HOWREY LLP's intellectual- property practice group, is an intellectual-property expert who can discuss interplay between copyright law and historical patent law issues as defined by the Supreme Court.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/512868/