[JackSpratts]

Blackout Edition

The whole coast is out tonight. It’s scary gorgeous. No lights. Just a blazing Moon and Mars and stars - and more than I’ve seen in years. I’m helping at the Emergency Operations Center in my city, coordinating providers with those in need. With temperatures high and the humidity index peaking there’s worry that people who don’t cope well with heat, like the aged and infirm will have a tough, maybe even fatal time of it. We’re trying to prevent that from happenning. Right now I’m dealing with a group of stranded tenants waiting on the sidewalk for a basement pump-out if they’re going to have any hope of sleeping in their own beds tonight.

In the meantime a couple of great secretaries are running a 24 hour buffet keeping the troops fed and filled with swill; so in between emergencies we’re joking around and managing to find some fun where we can, and maybe send out a dispatch or two. All in all not the worst way to spend a blackout.

Theories are fine, but every once in a while it’s good to do some hands on work, if only to remember what the theories were for.









Enjoy,

Jack.








Recording Industry's Subpoenas Met With Legal Challenges
Mike Snider

As the record industry's campaign against home music swappers expands, legal challenges are building as well.

The Recording Industry Association of America has filed more than 1,200 subpoenas since July, and court clerks are seeing more every day. The subpoenas seek identities of home users accused of copyright infringement.

Now, a Sacramento attorney plans to file a motion this week in U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of one of them — the first legal action by an individual targeted in the RIAA's campaign.

The argument is a new one in the increasingly contentious battle over the blizzard of subpoenas being served to colleges and Internet service providers: Just because a user's PC has music files stored within a peer-to- peer file-sharing program doesn't mean the user is illegally distributing copyrighted material, says attorney Daniel Ballard. Distribution implies sending, rather than leaving something where it may be taken, he says.

"It is an assumption they (the RIAA) are making," says Ballard, who will file a "Jane Doe" case for a user whose personal information has been subpoenaed.

The RIAA wouldn't comment before the motion is filed but said it asked the court to force ISP Verizon to turn over the user's information, after which it would discuss any issues with the individual.

This brings "another dimension to the fight," says Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is leading the battle against the record industry's targeting of individuals. "Actual subscribers have a perspective that has so far been absent."

The RIAA says it intends to file hundreds of lawsuits against the biggest offenders, starting later this month or in early September. A federal judge in April ordered Verizon to supply identities of customers accused of sharing copyrighted files, a ruling that set off the flurry of subpoenas. Verizon is appealing the decision; a court date is set for Sept. 16.

Other recent developments:

•A federal judge ruled late last week that RIAA subpoenas issued in Washington, D.C., to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College were invalid. Both schools argued that the subpoenas should have been issued in Massachusetts and that they did not have sufficient time to respond. Columbia University filed a similar motion last week.

•Earlier this week, the Net Coalition, a group representing dozens of ISPs, sent a letter to RIAA president Cary Sherman questioning the validity of its campaign. In addition to the cost that ISPs face in complying with the RIAA subpoena process, "we are concerned over the broad implication of turning over all this personal information," says executive director Kevin McGuiness.

•Two weeks ago, Pacific Bell sued the RIAA, differing with its interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that eases the subpoena process when used by copyright holders seeking to halt infringements.

On Friday, the RIAA filed a motion asking the court to enforce subpoenas sent to Pacific Bell and the parent corporation, SBC.

•The RIAA has sent copies of its subpoenas to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Chairman Sen. Norm Cole- man, R-Minn., demanded information about "this barrage of RIAA subpoenas," saying he was "concerned about the potential for abuse" in the subpoena process.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people who have been notified by their Net providers that their names have been subpoenaed are anxiously wondering whether, or when, the RIAA will sue them.

Heather Gillette, 23, of Revere, Mass., has removed the 3,000 songs she had on her PC. Based on the RIAA's statements, Gillette figures the group could seek more than $2 million from her.

"It's unrealistic, but I definitely freaked out," she says. "The fact that they can go see what I've downloaded bothers me to begin with, but to actually go ahead with (a lawsuit), I really hope not."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...-follow_x.htm#


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Subpoena contested in piracy ID case
Verizon Customer Fights For Anonymity
Jon Healey

After serving Internet providers with more than 1,000 subpoenas demanding the names and addresses of people who share pirated music and video online, the Recording Industry Association of America has run into someone who wants to fight for her anonymity.

The unidentified woman is a Verizon Internet Services customer accused of offering copyrighted songs on a file-sharing network for others to download free. The woman, who has hired a lawyer to contest a subpoena, apparently is the first to try to prevent her identity from being disclosed to the record companies' trade association.

People identified through the subpoenas will be prime targets for the copyright-infringement lawsuits the RIAA plans to file in its campaign against online music piracy. The trade group's subpoenas have been resisted by some Internet providers but not, until now, by the customers whose anonymity the RIAA wants to penetrate. Since Internet providers aren't required to notify customers about subpoenas, many might not be aware they're targeted.

Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel for Verizon Communications, said the company -- which challenged in federal court the subpoenas with which it has been served, and lost -- has notified all customers whose names have been sought by the RIAA. One of them retained an attorney, Daniel Ballard of McDonough Holland & Allen in Sacramento, who asked Verizon last month not to comply with the subpoena because he planned to contest it.

Verizon informed the RIAA of Ballard's request, then waited for the two sides to resolve the dispute themselves, Deutsch said. Last week, the RIAA asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to compel Verizon to release the woman's name, she said.

Ballard said he planned to file a motion this week to quash the subpoena. He said he would challenge the constitutionality of the RIAA subpoena process on grounds that it has violated people's rights to privacy and due process.

Verizon made the same case when it tried to block the RIAA subpoenas earlier this year, and U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington rejected the argument. The RIAA motion to force Verizon to honor the subpoena demanding the woman's name raises new questions about whether individuals have the right to intervene to protect privacy, Deutsch said.

``This type of issue will go beyond pure copyright law to important questions of due process and consumer rights,'' Deutsch said.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/6528816.htm


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Ads Ape Apple's Air Guitarists
Danit Lidor

A potbellied, middle-aged man stands against a white background. He's listening to a portable music device and singing The Who's classic "My Generation" out loud. Change the channel. A stout, middle-aged woman stands against a white background. She's listening to a portable music device and singing the Sugarhill Gang classic "Rapper's Delight."

Both ads are for Apple's new iTunes paid music download service, right? Think different. The fat lady is hawking BuyMusic's new music service. The similarities between the BuyMusic commercials -- which feature other out- of-tune crooners -- and the iTunes ads have escaped no one's notice.


"When I saw the BuyMusic.com ad, the first thing I thought was, 'Huh, Apple got some more people to dance and sing in front of a white background while they kill their favorite songs,'" Mac News Network forum poster keekeeree wrote. "Then the voice-over started and I realized it wasn't an Apple ad at all."

It's no coincidence that the ads look alike. BuyMusic.com is intentionally mimicking its successful competitor's campaign.

"Yes, there is a similarity between the ads," BuyMusic spokeswoman Stacey Doherty said. "It was meant to be a compliment to Apple."

Since Apple introduced its iTunes Music Store in late April and reported opening-day downloads of 200,000, companies have been scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. It was only a matter of time, considering the aggressive tactics the Recording Industry Association of America is using in its war against peer-to-peer file sharing.

What's more, iTunes only works on Macs for now, and Macs make up only about 3 percent of the personal computer market.

Doherty says the point of the commercials is to entice people who own PCs, which happens to be almost everyone. "'Music for the rest of us' (BuyMusic.com's slogan) means everyone who doesn't have a Mac, which accounts for about 150 million PC users," she said.

"I think there is imitation that is meant to be homage. There is imitation that is meant to be parody," MacNN forum user thunderous_funker wrote in a post. "In this case, it appears to be simply predatory."

Apple could choose to fight back, certainly. Copyright law provides protection for an expression of an idea, but not for the idea itself. However, there is "substantial similarity" between the two ads that could be used "at least as a valuable argument" for a copyright-infringement lawsuit, said Robyn Crowther, an intellectual property attorney at Caldwell, Leslie, Newcombe & Pettit.

"The fair-use doctrine does provide a defense to copyright- and trademark-infringement claims," Crowther said. "The critical issue will be whether the BuyMusic.com is a parody of the Apple ads."

"When the second work just borrows from the first work to get attention or to avoid having to develop something new or fresh and does not make fun of the original work … it is not a parody and may not have protection," Crowther said.

Parody or not, a copyright-infringement suit wouldn't necessarily be an open-and-shut case. "The dichotomy between 'ideas' and 'expression' is hard to get across," said Blaney Harper, an intellectual property attorney at Jones Day.

"Showing average people air guitaring their way through a song against a white background" is not enough to show BuyMusic is copying Apple's expression, he said.

Tighter copyright restrictions could have potentially far-reaching results. Big corporations and single individuals are held to the same laws.

"We have to be very careful about how strongly we enforce copyright law to prevent any kind of chilling effect on artists and others that rely on the First Amendment," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Apple declined to comment, but iTunes fans haven't. They are ticked off at both the commercials and the ads' creator.

BuyMusic parody sites such as DontBuyMusic.com and BoycottBuyMusic.com have appeared in protest.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59958,00.html


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Recording Industry Campaign Faces Scrutiny
Bill Holland

A top Republican senator wants to bring the recording industry before his subcommittee next month to answer questions about its campaign to root out and sue Internet music swappers.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., is the first Republican to voice apprehension about the Recording Industry Assn. of America's campaign, which could end up targeting teens.

"It raised a concern," says Coleman, who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "On the one hand, I recognize the legitimacy of the interests of record companies, but I am worried about the response. Does the punishment fit the crime?"

For the moment, there are no signs that Coleman's action could lead to a GOP backlash against the RIAA on Capitol Hill. But Coleman told Billboard magazine that he might introduce a bill to curb the RIAA's campaign if it proves to be "overbroad."

Billboard also has learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a hearing on the subpoena process this fall. "The issue falls squarely in our jurisdiction," says a spokesperson for chairman Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah. "We will be monitoring Sen. Coleman's involvement in this issue, and should the occasion seem appropriate, we would hold a hearing."

The involvement of the Hatch committee may be rooted in the deep-seated reluctance of committee chairmen to relinquish "turf" jurisdiction. Hatch is already on record as saying he would consider going farther than the RIAA and call for even more drastic measures.

Because Coleman is a Republican, insiders say his potential reform bill, if written as a pro-consumer measure, might find majority support in Congress. Such a development would be the first big test for incoming RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Bainwol.

Coleman says he knows Bainwol from Republican political fundraising circles and trusts him "to do the right thing."

Coleman, elected in 2002 after the death of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, says he decided to pursue the inquiry "after reading news reports of 'broad sweeping action by the record industry' and 'making criminals out of 14-year-olds.' "

Coleman says he believes the record industry is "so freaked out" about Internet piracy that it felt it had to do something really tough.

"I'm an ex-prosecutor, and I worry about that mentality that if you make an example of somebody, you're going to change somebody's behavior," he says.

The RIAA has complied with Coleman's request to forward copies of the subpoenas by Aug. 14. It will also provide answers to Coleman's questions concerning the methodology used to find infringers and safeguards to protect innocent consumers.

The subpoena program is one of several tools, including public education, that the RIAA is using to counter peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy.

"This is a program of deterrence," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "We've made it clear from the beginning that for individuals interested in settling out of court, we're certainly prepared to discuss ."

Leading up to Coleman's move, leading Republican lawmakers have given the RIAA the green light to pursue individuals who have been making copyrighted music files available to others over the Internet.

Hatch suggested in a June 17 hearing on piracy that he supported destroying the computers of copyright infringers if it were the only way to control the problem.

In June, after the RIAA began to send subpoenas to Internet service providers (ISPs), the Republican chairman of the House panel that oversees copyright issues also released a statement of support.

"Illegal fire sharing on peer-to-peer networks has reached unacceptable levels," wrote Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. "Music companies have laid off thousands of employees, music stores have closed and artists are not signing contracts. Today's action is an appropriate and reasonable step."

Earlier this year, Democrats on Smith's subcommittee also voiced support and introduced bills to help the RIAA deal with P2P infringers.

Coleman says that other senators who have shown interest in the issue have contacted him.

His call for a hearing on the subpoenas caught his colleagues by surprise, say sources close to the subcommittee, and did not allow other members the opportunity to study the issue beforehand.

The RIAA claims that its authority to obtain subpoenas is granted by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If the RIAA's campaign is overbroad, Coleman says he would consider changing the DMCA provision.

Reuters/Billboard http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=3249096


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Free P2P Data Within Your State On Netspace
Dan Warne

Netspace has improved its ADSL plans by offering free peer-to-peer data within users' local states.

"Netspace is pleased to announce that traffic to and from another Netspace HomeADSL customer in your state is now considered free usage. This only applies to traffic within the state in which you are located. This is also applicable only if your proxy settings are correct (as per all other free traffic sites)."

One industry insider said he thought the deal was likely to cause Netspace problems due to the way Telstra requires ISPs to route data.

"Telstra requires all peer to peer traffic to go into Telstra's network, back to the ISP and then back out to Telstra's network again. If users take advantage of this, the ISP will find its links to Telstra becoming saturated."

"The deal has probably been introduced because Netspace has been getting a lot of heat lately, since iiNet came onto the scene and started taking a lot of the 'word of mouth business'" he said. (The source was not from iiNet).
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/942


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Paying To Play

Industry spreads subpoenas and fear over music copying.
David Hechler and Aaron Lauchheimer

When singer-songwriter John Hiatt performed with his band in Westbury, N.Y., this month, he did what every performer on a promotional tour does: He announced that his new CD was available in stores.

"Or," he added with an impish grin, "you could download it from a friend." As his audience laughed knowingly, he wagged his finger. "But be careful!"

What Hiatt was referring to, of course, was the sharing of music files over the Internet, and the controversial response of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Since June, it has sent Internet service providers and a handful of colleges more than a thousand subpoenas demanding information about individuals who allegedly infringed on copyrights. The association has said it will begin suing violators this month, and expects in time that there will be thousands of lawsuits.

Some lawyers see this as long overdue, an initiative both legally and morally correct. Others see a strategy built on suing your own customers—a measure so drastic it's almost an admission of failure. On one point, several lawyers on both sides agree: The law in this area is hard-pressed to keep pace with technology.

"We're trying to get the message out to people that this is not a victimless crime, and it's not a crime you can engage in without fear of consequences," said Matt Oppenheim, the RIAA's senior vice president for business and legal affairs.

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law, wrote an article posted on the legal Web site FindLaw supporting this position. For a couple of years, Hamilton said in an interview, no one seemed to know what to do about file-sharing.

"I'm not the RIAA's biggest fan," she said, "but I think somebody has to start imposing the law on the Web. And I think the RIAA is in a good position to do it now."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has led the opposition. A San Francisco-based legal organization, it has defended companies that produce file-sharing software and has assisted Internet service providers (ISPs) resisting subpoenas.

"Artists should be paid," said Fred von Lohmann, the foundation's senior intellectual property attorney. "Let's develop a mechanism to accomplish that goal and make file-sharing legal." The obvious solution, he said, is some form of licensing—preferably adopted by the industry or, if necessary, imposed by Congress. Branding customers as criminals isn't the answer, he said.

News of the subpoenas came just a few weeks after the RIAA sued four college students who used their personal computers to create informal networks from which fellow students could download music for free.

Though file-sharing programs operate differently, all allow users to designate files that others, using the same program, can download to their computers. The software also permits users to view all files available at any given time. Estimates of the number of file-sharers have been slippery. Last month the Pew Internet and American Life Project announced that its survey found that 26 million Americans share music files.

In a manner designed to maximize publicity, the RIAA announced in April that four students had violated copyright laws, and it claimed thousands of dollars in damages. The students could have been penalized $150,000 for each infringement, and the complaints alleged that there had been thousands of infringements.

In May, the music association announced that the suits had been settled. The students had agreed to pay the association amounts ranging from $12,000 to $17,000.

In this context, the subpoenas evoked more than a little apprehension. The message board has been buzzing at Zeropaid.com, a site devoted to file sharing. There were expressions of fear and anger and suggestions of ways to avoid detection.

Wrote one nervous file-sharer: "Im just going to have to cancel my DSL [Internet service], and get the dsl in my dogs name, so his personal info of what kind of dog food he likes can be obtained."
http://www.nlj.com/news/081103music.shtml


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Internet Providers Question Subpoenas to Stop File Swapping
Amy Harmon

Arguing that the record industry is trying to force its members to become the "police of the Internet," a group representing over 100 Internet service providers plans to deliver a letter to the industry's trade association today. The letter asks a series of pointed questions about plans to sue people suspected of illegally trading music files online.

The letter from NetCoalition is the latest objection from Internet service providers to a flood of subpoenas from the record industry seeking the identities of Internet subscribers suspected of swapping files.

"There are understandable fears among many in the Internet community that the real purpose of this legal campaign is to achieve in court what the association has not yet been able to accomplish in Congress — to make Internet companies legally responsible for the conduct of individuals who use their systems," the NetCoalition letter says.

The group includes the Internet service provider associations of Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, as well as several companies, including Bway.net in New York.

Record industry officials said they could not comment on the specifics of the letter because they had not yet received it.

But Matt Oppenheim, a lawyer for the record industry group, said Internet providers were protesting the subpoenas because file-swapping attracts customers, now accounting for more than half of the traffic over broadband cable networks. "We're not asking them to police the Internet," Mr. Oppenheim said. "We're asking them to comply with the law. If they were policing we wouldn't have this problem."

A 1998 copyright law sought to limit the liability of Internet providers over how subscribers use their resources, while making it easier for copyright holders to pursue online infringers. The law allows copyright holders to obtain subpoenas from court clerks, without first filing a lawsuit or going before a judge, compelling Internet providers to release subscriber contact information.

The record industry has taken advantage of that in recent weeks as it seeks to crack down on Internet piracy. Verizon and SBC Communications, two major Internet providers, have argued in court filings that the subpoena provision is unconstitutional because it violates the due process rights of its subscribers.

The NetCoalition letter instead focuses on the details of how the record industry is carrying out its goal of filing thousands of subpoenas in the coming months. It asks for a meeting to discuss how the industry trade group ensures the accuracy of the subpoenas, how it decides whom to target, and it raises concerns over the cost of compliance.

"There has to be a better answer than litigation," the letter says.

On Friday, a federal judge granted a request by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College not to comply with the subpoenas they had received because the record industry group had filed them in a Washington court.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/11/te...rtne r=GOOGLE


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'Big bang' To Jolt Microsoft Users
John Fontana

Microsoft might be hyping its next-generation Longhorn software as a "big bang" event, but the company is being quiet about the fact that the products will require corporate customers to perform multiple, carefully planned upgrades reminiscent of the difficult migration from Windows NT to 2000.

The Longhorn lineup also will wreak havoc with the hardware and software plans of corporate executives, especially those now running Windows 2000 Server, which could reach its early 2007 end-of-support life cycle before the Longhorn server is released.

Longhorn is an umbrella term that Microsoft uses to define its collection of infrastructure software. It's the first step toward integrating all that software around .Net and Web services and requires overhauling the client and server operating systems, Office and everything that runs on top. The integration effort to create a "software stack" aligns with similar efforts by competitors such as IBM with WebSphere and Sun with Project Orion.

"All the desktop products will have Longhorn dependencies," says Peter Pawlak, an analyst with Directions of Microsoft, an independent research firm. It's akin to the Active Directory upgrade, "Microsoft didn't think it would be smooth and it wasn't. With Longhorn, it is going to be one of those unavoidable things. It will make people stop, but to move the technology forward they have to do it."

The Longhorn "wave" (as Microsoft calls the set of products) will include a dramatically new client, with integrated universal data storage called WinFS. It also will include a chip-based security model formerly called Palladium; a user interface overhaul; a new application model built around an API called Avalon that supersedes Win32; and improved communication and collaboration features based on a Web services framework code-named Indigo.

Longhorn also will have a corresponding server to support WinFS and new management capabilities, among other features. It will include an Office upgrade built to take advantage of the new API; upgrades to Microsoft's CRM and ERP applications; new versions of Visual Studio .Net development tools, code-named Orcas; and a range of server software from collaboration to electronic commerce, Microsoft says.

Details about those products are sketchy because Microsoft is still trying to define their feature sets.

However, sources say Longhorn will include a full-scale, identity management infrastructure, which Microsoft started to preview in July and is expected to expand upon in October at its Professional Developers Conference.

Also expected is integrated peer-to-peer technology in the client and server that will support patch- and virus-update distribution, and real-time project tracking. It is also expected that Longhorn will enable collaboration and secure document sharing outside the firewall. Integration of IPv6 to enhance security also is planned.

Early efforts with peer to peer and IPv6 are being bolted onto Windows XP and offer a glimpse of the type of feature packs and piecemeal upgrades that Microsoft plans, before and during the Longhorn upgrade to jump-start migration. Microsoft did a similar jump-start with Windows Server 2003 by releasing early public-key infrastructure and Exchange 2003 schema changes that were needed in Active Directory.

In a forthcoming report, Gartner says it expects Microsoft to deliver at least three, and possibly five or more, "server feature packs" and limited-edition offerings between Windows Server 2003 and the Longhorn server.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0811longhorn.html


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Rio Reveals 20GB Ogg Vorbis Network Music Player
Tony Smith

Rio has announced its first raft of MP3-based portable music players since it was acquired by consumer electronics company D&M Holdings in April following the collapse of Sonic Blue. Today, the company unveiled seven players under five brands, including its first hard disk/Flash combo unit, the Rio Nitrus.

Said player is an iPod-sized 1.5GB machine that runs off a built-in Li-ion rechargeable battery. Connectivity is provided by a USB 2.0 link.

An IDC rent-a-quote announces the devices a "pioneer in an important new MP3 player category", but we're not convinced - there seems little need to bring the Flash and HDD player markets together. The Nitro isn't capacious enough to challenge the iPod, iRiver's iHP-100 or Creative's Zen, or small enough to match the convenience of most modern Flash-based players. At $299 it's not particularly cheap, either - you can get a 10GB iPod for that.

Of the latter category, Rio announced the Chiba, Fuse and Cali players, the latter essentially Rio Sport S30S with more memory - up to 128MB (which retails for $169)and 256MB ($99) from 64MB - and with an improved play time: 18 hours off a single AAA battery over the S30S' 15 hours.

The Chiba and Fuse are new models, both offering the same play time as the Cali. The Chiba appears to have the same spec. as the Cali - it's available in $169 128MB and $199 256MB models, both with FM tuner, five-band equaliser and backlit LCD, as per the Cali.

The Fuse is a 128MB device designed to plug straight into a USB port - music files can be dragged and dropped onto its icon. It too sports a backlit LCD and an adjustable equaliser. Fuse costs $129.

The $399 Rio Karma is a 20GB HDD-based player. Its built-in Li-ion battery provides 15 hours of play time. Like the iPod, it ships with a docking cradle, which serves as the PC connection point and battery charger.

Unlike the iPod, the Karma connects to its host via an Ethernet connection. Can it be networked? Rio doesn't say. However, the Karnas does offer Ogg Vorbis support. Users can create playlists on the fly, crossfade from one song to another, and adjust the output using a five-band equaliser.

All seven models will go on sale in the US this month.

Creative will begin shipping its tiny Nomad MuVo NX 128MB Flash MP3 player in the UK this month.

The NX is the successor to the original MuVo, and adds a backlit LCD, a scroll wheel controller and an eight-hour voice recording facility, courtesy of a built-in microphone. Like Rio's Fuse (see above), the NX connects directly to a PC's USB 1.1 port, allowing MP3 and WMA files to be copied directly to the device. The NX contains 128MB of Flash memory.

Creative claims 11 hours' of MP3 play time from a single alkaline AAA battery, less if you're playing back more decode-intensive WMA files.

The MuVo NX will cost £119.99
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/32273.html


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The Secrets Of Free P2P
Dan Warne

File sharing tutorial

Forget download limits — Dan Warne shows how to tap into free peer-to-peer file sharing over almost any broadband connection.

This article is featured in APC July 2003
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Download limits are the bane of the Australian broadband enthusiast. Broadband provides the speed for file sharing at a fantastic clip, but this usually comes with a strict limit on downloads, and the risk of an excess usage bill if you exceed it.

Fortunately, many broadband ISPs in this ferociously competitive market are taking advantage of the minimal cost of transferring data within their networks by offering free peer-to-peer connections between users.

The key to harnessing these free downloads is to get a P2P file-sharing program that can be configured to download only from other users your ISP deems eligible for free P2P.
Once you’re set up, you’ll find customers sharing the same huge range of files as on open P2P networks, but with higher speeds and no fear of passing your download cap.

The first step is to determine if your ISP offers free P2P, and to what extent. Some offer free services only to customers in the same state and others across their entire network. Some providers even let you download from customers on other ISPs connected through the same Internet exchange — the central points where ISPs connect to share data directly at a lower cost than sending it out via the Internet at large.

We can’t stress enough how important it is to check your ISP’s P2P arrangements. Different ISPs have very different restrictions. Check broadbandchoice.com.au for details or contact your ISP.

The most popular file-sharing programs Australian broadband file swappers use are eMule (an open source program based on eDonkey2000) and DC++ (an open source program based on DirectConnect). Unlike KaZaA, these allow you to specify which server or network you’ll be joining, which is the key to free ISP-based P2P. Both are included on this month’s cover CDs.

eMule and DC++ use different file-sharing networks, so it’s worth running both to get access to the maximum number of shared files. The jury is out over which is better. DC++ can find files faster because it connects to a central hub that lists both users and files being shared, while eMule discovers only users sharing from a central server and gets file lists directly from them.

However, DC++ lets you download a file from only one user at a time whereas eMule can fetch the same file from several users at once by breaking it into fragments.

The effect is to reduce the traffic on any single user and boosts the overall download speed for everyone.

Setting up eMule

eMule is fairly easy to use. The challenge is ensuring it downloads only from other users your ISP deems eligible for free P2P. This involves modifying eMule’s IP filter file, and it’s tricky to manually set up.

You need to research which IP ranges are “free” on your ISP and get the format of the IP filter file just right so that eMule can understand it.

Fortunately, in most cases, someone else has already done the hard work. Several community sites let you download the correct config files and drop them into your eMule program folder. The files you need to snag are:

ipfilter.dat: includes a list of IP address ranges for free P2P. This list can change daily as ISPs change their commercial arrangements, and users find mistakes in the file, so update it often.
preferences.ini: includes optimal eMule settings for your ISP (including the local chat server).
staticservers.dat: lists servers run by users on a particular Internet exchange (for example, West Australian Internet Exchange). These servers provide a constantly updating list of users sharing files at any one time so eMule knows where to search.

To get the files, first you need to identify which Internet exchange your ISP is connected to in your state (assuming your ISP offers free P2P to other users on the same exchange in the state).

For example, NSW customers of iiNet and Netspace peer through the PIPE Internet exchange — netspace.net.au/~pfarac provides all the files you need to get started. Victorian customers of Netspace, iiNet, Alphalink or Comindico-based ISPs nationally peer through the VIX/AUSIX Internet exchange, and can find the files they need at DIY.vixmule.net.

There are also user-maintained sites and config files for SA and WA. Some allow you to download eMule with the files already in place.

Once eMule is running with the modified files, if you have a firewall, open port 4662 (TCP) and port 4672 (UDP). If you’re using NAT connection sharing, forward the ports to the correct IP address on your local network.

Even when correctly configured, ZoneAlarm is known to cause eMule problems. eMule uses a credit system to encourage users to share files. When you allow a fellow user to download files from your PC, eMule records it at the other end.

When you go to download files from that same user, you’ll get a higher priority than other people. Over time this amounts to credit with other users and results in faster downloads.

Setting up DC++

DC++ is simpler to configure than eMule. Instead of having to get setup files for an IP filter, all that’s required is the address of a DirectConnect “hub” run by a customer on the Internet exchange your ISP uses.

The downside is that server names change; users take servers down and new ones spring up. A good place to find current DC hub addresses is Whirlpool’s peer-to-peer discussion forum at forums.whirlpool.net.au.

Armed with the DC hub address for your ISP, state and Internet exchange, start DC++, click the Favourite Hubs button on the toolbar, click New, enter a name and the address for the hub, click OK and you’re away.

In general, DC++ hubs require you to share a minimum quantity of files or you can’t download from other users.

To get started with sharing your own files, click Settings (in the File menu), and select the Sharing tab, click Add Folder and then browse to the folder you want to share.

When you’re downloading with DC++ you’ll have to wait for a “download slot” to become free on the other user’s PC. Because all residential connections have quite limited upload speeds, most users set a maximum of two or three concurrent uploads at once to ensure that files can be sent in acceptable amounts of time.

Some people like to use a modified version of the DC++ client, which is known as Black Claw DC++ or BCDC++. This boasts extra features, such as the ability to limit your upload speeds to prevent your Net connection becoming so congested that you can’t send network requests.

BCDC++ requires DC++ to be installed first. Then extract the files from the BCDC++ archive into the DC++ directory, overwriting some of the original files. You’ll find many additions under the program settings, especially a new tab for bandwidth limiting. You should set your upload limit a few KB below your connection’s maximum upload speed.
http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/F...256D80001E3B1C


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Internet Trade Group, Colleges Fight RIAA's Anti-Piracy Campaign
The Newshour

NetCoalition, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing over 100 Internet Service Providers (ISP) and other Web companies, sent a letter late Monday to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), to express concerns over the RIAA's online enforcement methods.

The letter is the latest round in the ISPs' efforts to fight numerous subpoenas from the RIAA. The recording industry has issued hundreds of subpoenas seeking information on Internet users suspected of illegally downloading copyrighted songs through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-swapping networks, such as Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus.

"There are understandable fears among many in the Internet community that the real purpose of this legal campaign is to achieve in court what the association has not yet been able to accomplish in Congress -- to make Internet companies legally responsible for the conduct of individuals who use their systems," the trade group wrote in the letter addressed to Cary Sherman, the acting president of the RIAA.

In the six-page letter, NetCoalition Executive Director Kevin McGuiness expressed support for the music industry's right to protect its copyrighted material, but raised questions about the RIAA's tactics.

"Very little is known or understood about this initiative, how individuals are being targeted, what's being done with the information, who pays for compliance, or how this information is protected,'' McGuiness wrote.

McGuiness contended the RIAA's enforcement tactics would essentially force its members, such as EarthLink and America Online, to act as the "police of the Internet" for the recording industry's interests.

NetCoalition asked the RIAA whether it intends to compensate ISPs for costs stemming from identifying subscribers cited in subpoenas, and if the subpoenaed information would be used exclusively for the RIAA's lawsuits against individuals, or if the RIAA would share the information with other entities.

The trade group's letter comes a month after the RIAA -- which represents music companies like Sony Music and Warner Music, among many others -- launched a massive anti- piracy campaign to track down alleged violators of digital copyright laws.

Earlier this summer, the RIAA filed more than 1,000 subpoenas in the U.S. District Court in D.C., demanding that ISPs -- such as Comcast Cable Communications, Verizon, SBC and its Pacific Bell Internet division, and EarthLink -- and dozens of colleges turn over personal information of Web users suspected of copyright infringement.

NetCoalition is not the only group to challenge the RIAA's campaign.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston College earlier this month requested a Massachusetts district court reject the RIAA subpoenas on the argument the recording trade group improperly filed the subpoenas. The two universities have refused to reveal the names of students accused of illegally downloading music from the Internet.

On Aug. 8, Massachusetts District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled in favor of MIT and Boston College, saying the subpoenas were invalid because the RIAA filed them with a court in Washington, D.C. The recording industry group in a press release called Tauro's decision a "minor procedural issue," but has not yet said whether it would resubmit the subpoenas in a Massachusetts court.

Commercial ISPs, like Verizon and SBC's Pacific Bell Internet, have also taken legal action against the RIAA. According to court documents, the companies contend that the RIAA's use of the "expedited subpoena" process -- allowed under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- is unconstitutional and threatens individual privacy rights.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/me..._08-12-03.html


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Service Providers Seek To Extend ADSL
Warwick Ashford

The greatest dissatisfaction with SA's asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL) service has been with the monthly download limit of 3GB. Local Internet service providers (ISPs) have responded by extending the Telkom service by introducing a variety of solutions involving load balancing and utilising additional user names. Telkom's corporate communications senior manager Hans Van der Groenendaal says ADSL is aimed at providing fast Internet access for the residential and small business market and is optimised for that. “However, for those who wish to use ADSL for peer-to-peer connections, Telkom is investigating the possibility of introducing an additional ADSL service.” He says such a service will require expensive international bandwidth and will therefore cost more. Meanwhile, ISPs like Tiscali are making additional user names available to subscribers, effectively increasing the download limit by 3GB with each additional user name or ADSL plug-in purchased. Tiscali's business-to-consumer manager Michelle Branco says although Telkom aimed the ADSL at the small business market, up to 70% of ADSL users are online gamers and downloaders of MP3 and video. She says Tiscali decided to offer additional “raw plugs” after Telkom conceded it was “powerless to block this method of bypassing the 3GB cap”.Telkom says although this approach may increase the cap, it does not increase the capacity of peer-to-peer communication required by those who are most dissatisfied with the initial ADSL offering. For small businesses wishing to make the best use of what ADSL provides within the constraints set by Telkom, some business solution providers have introduced the necessary load balancing between up to five simultaneous ADSL links. Network Sentinel Solutions director Gregory Nietsky says his company is offering server-based software that manages the connectivity. “Each additional ADSL link from a client's ISP is dedicated to a specific service and allocated a service level to ensure the 3GB limit is not reached before month-end.” Nietsky says to achieve the benchmark of downloading 20GB a month, a user would need about seven ADSL links, and although this will cost around R3 000 each month, “it's a lot cheaper than the R5 000 to R6 000 it would cost for a leased-line”.
http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/inte...1254.asp?O=FPT


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Avalanche of New Music Players

New players try to keep up with online download services.
Tech Live staff

The iTunes Music Store has launched, BuyMusic.com is live, and you're swimming in legitimate, paid-for MP3s, right?

And since you wouldn't dare trade them on certain peer-to-peer networks, you'd best lock down those tunes in a stylish portable music player. If you don't already own one, or if you're ready to upgrade, now's your chance.

Perhaps piggybacking on the new, pay-for-play download services, gadget makers are lining up to showcase their latest digital-music gadgets.

Lucky for you, we've found the hottest of the bunch from Rio and Gateway. Yes, even traditional PC makers are jumping into the fray. Just when you thought the selection of players was longer than a California gubernatorial recall election ballot, we've taken some of the guesswork out of choosing a player by helping you decide which player fits your digital lifestyle.

Rio

Rio has introduced a new line of MP3 players, including the Rio Karma, Rio Nitrus, Rio Cali, Rio Chiba, and Rio Fuse.

Rio Karma
Rio's going for the iPod's throat with this sleek, black, 20GB player. The Karma is tiny at just 2.7 inches by 3 inches by 0.9 inches, but it packs some groundbreaking features. It includes cross-fading between songs, a five-band equalizer, and a backlit display that lets you create animated menus in 16 shades of gray. Rio claims it'll play for 15 hours on its rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Cost is $399.99.

Rio Cali
Designed for sport use, the Rio Cali features two models: one a 128MB player and the other a 256MB player. The 256MB model, however, comes with an expansion slot, so it can hold up to 512MB of memory. The players come in a variety of colors and work with PCs and Macs via USB. According to Rio, the Cali will run on a single AAA battery for 18 continuous hours. The 256MB Cali costs $199.99.

Rio Nitrus
The Nitrus could be the answer for people looking for a smaller player that fits somewhere between a 10GB jukebox and a 256MB player. The Nitrus comes with 1.5GB of memory, which still lets users pack songs on. This stylish black player is affordable at $299. It's also small at just 3 inches by 2.4 inches by 0.6 inches.

Rio Chiba
The Chiba -- at 128MB or 256MB -- is a simple, small, cool-looking player that features a five- band equalizer, 18 hours of playback on a single AAA battery, and compatibility with PCs and Macs. The $199.99 256MB model also features a 512MB expansion slot.

Rio Fuse
The 128MB Fuse is Rio's smallest player but comes loaded with features such as separate bass and treble adjustments. The LCD lets you see what's playing. And, like all of Rio's players, the Fuse works with Macs and PCs. Rio says one AAA battery powers the Fuse for 18 hours. Costs $129.99

The downside

None of the Rio players is available yet, but Rio's website is taking preorders on its entire selection.

Gateway

Gateway 128MB Digital Music Player
This is Gateway's first foray into digital music. The company has offered players made by third parties, but it has never offered a player under its own brand name. The 128MB player is small and sleek at 3 inches by 0.5 inches by 1.4 inches. It only works with Windows-based PCs, and it plays MPEG-3 and WMA files. The Gateway doesn't require any software. You can plug it in via USB and drag and drop audio files to the player. You can also use the player as a digital voice recorder and external storage drive. Cost is $129.99.
http://www.techtv.com/news/products/...497862,00.html


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Labels To Take Fingerprints
John Borland

Digital song-tracking company Audible Magic is striking a deal with Universal Music Group for song information, getting another leg up in its quest to be able to identify--and potentially block--music as it is transferred online.

The new arrangement, expected to be announced Tuesday, will see Universal give Audible Magic a "fingerprint," or digital identification tool, for each song it releases, before albums are shipped to retailers. The company uses those fingerprints to identify copyrighted songs online or in other venues such as CD-manufacturing plants to help guard against unauthorized copying.

Audible Magic already has information from Universal and other labels in its databases, but getting the songs directly from the label before release will help make the identification business more efficient, Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye said.

"What it does is accelerate the time to get music into our database," Ikezoye said. "That's when piracy is the biggest problem--right around the release date."

Audible Magic is one of a handful of companies that are creating increasingly ambitious systems that are aimed at identifying and potentially blocking music as it is swapped though peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa or other online services.

The company has created a library of audio fingerprints that it said allows it to identify close to 3.7 million songs on the fly, essentially by comparing the audio characteristics of a digital music file to the files it has on record.

Today, that system is largely used in CD-manufacturing plants to help the pressing plants make sure their customers aren't ordering batches of counterfeit compact discs. The deal with Universal is initially geared at preventing that kind of physical reproduction of unauthorized copies.

"With the growing concern about the physical piracy of copyrighted material, we believe (Audible Magic's technology) offers an accurate and reliable solution to verify the use of copyrighted content," David Benjamin, senior vice president of antipiracy at Universal Music, said in a statement.

But Audible Magic also is building a system it said will help identify copyrighted songs being traded on file-swapping networks and potentially even block the trades. The company recently tested an early version of this network-monitoring tool at the University of Wyoming, where the software watched the traffic flowing through the college network to the outside world.

A public release of that file-swapping monitor software likely will be available by the end of September or early October, Ikezoye said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5062517.html


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Group Warns Of Europe's 'DMCA On Steroids'
Matthew Broersma

A coalition of 38 civil liberties organisations is the latest to attack proposed EU legislation on intellectual property enforcement, which has also come under fire from the recording industry and a British Internet policy think tank.

The groups argue that the proposed IP Enforcement Directive, is a "DMCA on steroids" that would hand broad anti-competitive powers to large foreign companies, limit competition, and erode the traditional rights of consumers to use the products they purchase as they see fit. The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a controversial US law being used by the US recording industry to sue users of peer-to-peer networks.

In a letter to the EU Committee on Legal Affairs and Internal Market (Juri) issued on Monday, they urged the parliament to reject the proposal in its current form when it comes up for voting on 11 September. The groups launched the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (Code) to raise awareness of the problems raised by the draft legislation.

"One can think of the EU IP Enforcement Directive as a 'DMCA on steroids' since any industrial property right that can be licensed will be enforced through technical devices that it will be absolutely illegal to circumvent throughout Europe," stated Robin Gross, executive director of US-based IP Justice.

Code's letter focused its criticism on two of the directive's measures: Article 9, which allows intellectual property holders to subpoena data on alleged infringers without jumping through the usual legal hoops, and Article 21, which forbids technology capable of bypassing intellectual property restrictions. Both articles have counterparts in the DMCA.

Of Article 9, Code wrote that it violates consumer privacy rights and "unreasonably burdens universities, Internet service providers, and other innocent third-party intermediaries who must respond to massive numbers of subpoenas and turn in customers for prosecution."

The coalition wrote that Article 21 "erodes the public's fair use (fair dealing) and freedom of expression rights by outlawing all technologies, including software, that are capable of bypassing technical restrictions."

Code argued the article would also allow companies that already dominate a market to extend their dominance by prohibiting the sale of compatible, competing technologies.

Ville Oksanen, a lawyer and vice chairman of Electronic Frontier Finland, said that a slew of incoming legislation, including the IP Enforcement Directive, the EU Copyright Directive and the EU Software Patent Directive, threatened to create disruptions in the European intellectual property system that would end up being worked out in court. Contrary to what the Enforcement Directive claims, Member States are already obliged by international treaties like Trips to protect intellectual property rights," Oksanen stated.

Code is urging voters to contact Juri about their concerns over the directive.

The group includes three British organisations, the Campaign for Digital Rights (CDR), Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties, and the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), as well as organisations from Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, Bulgaria, Spain and the US.

When the draft directive appeared early this year, it was criticised by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry as too lenient toward individual infringers.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9115624,00.htm


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MeshNetworks to Provide Position-Location and Personnel Tracking Solution to Orange County Fire and Rescue
Press Release

MeshNetworks Inc., an industry leader in the development and commercialization of location-aware mobile broadband networking solutions today announced that Orange County Fire and Rescue (OCFRD) has begun a field trial of the company's Mesh Enabled Architecture (MEA(TM)) technology. OCFRD is actively working with MeshNetworks to accelerate the development of a rapid-deployment, in-building personnel tracking system for use by first responders. IBM Corporation is acting as the systems integrator for the OCFRD project. Since its launch in December 2002, MeshNetworks' MEA solution has gained wide acceptance in Public Safety, Intelligent Transportation and other markets.

OCFRD, the department responsible for all fire, emergency medical and rescue services in Orange County, Florida, will conduct an extensive evaluation under real- world first responder conditions. Feedback from the evaluation will be incorporated into future commercial versions of the product. The MEA system being evaluated is also capable of supporting voice, video and megabit data communications in addition to its location and tracking capabilities.

"Protecting the community and our firefighters is priority one. Sometimes things go wrong. When they do, knowing the exact location of firefighters in a building is the difference between going home to family - or not," said Bill Godfrey, Deputy Chief of Orange County Fire and Rescue. "MeshNetworks has put on the table the technology for real-time location of first responders in a building, and Orange County Fire Rescue is committed to validating that technology. This may save firefighters' lives, and we couldn't be more excited."

When deployed as part of a wide area MEA mobile broadband network, incident commanders can monitor and direct their units via voice, video, and data-enhanced communications either at the scene or remotely. Automatic vehicle location (AVL) and asset tracking are also available throughout the MEA network.

"First responders have a clear need for the position location and incident communications solutions offered by MeshNetworks," said Chris Couper, IBM Distinguished Engineer and a retired firefighter. "The technology is also suited for a wide variety of Homeland Security and Public Safety initiatives because of its ability to support voice, video, data and position-location from a single integrated, and interoperable mobile broadband network."

The self-forming, self-healing networking technology developed by MeshNetworks enables emergency personnel to instantly communicate with each other, to public safety networks, the Internet and other state and federal systems. This coupled with its end-to-end support for industry standard Internet Protocol (IP), ensures transparency between a wide variety of devices, databases and interagency networks. The result is a robust, tactical communications system for first responders, even in the most remote or adverse emergency situations.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/...m&footer_file=


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Seeing Past The Hype
Michael.Hoch

I had hoped our industry would have learned something in the past year. Companies large and small are experiencing real, significant benefits from IP- delivered audio and video. Proof points are everywhere. This column and Streaming Magazine features have profiled many case studies, not just in the typical innovation hot beds of education (City of New York, August Streaming), government (U.S. Navy, November), oil and gas (ChevronTexaco, October) and automotive (Mercedes Benz, April).
Why, then, isn’t rich media rapidly ascending the technology adoption curve? Only executive communications and distance learning are showing expanding usage. Apparently, we still need a bridge to cross Moore’s chasm.

Hesitation Dance
Part of the problem is the overall economy. IT budgets in 2002 were frozen or shrinking, with only the top three IT priorities getting funding. Rich media succeeded only as part of a higher priority, as seen in the example of Palm’s customer service portal (December). It’s not yet clear whether 2003 will be a better year.
The second huge hurdle is our old enemy, FUD: IT managers categorically shut media out of their networks due to Fear that it would overwhelm the network, Uncertainty of how to deploy and manage it, and Doubt that vendors’ solutions would perform as advertised.
I can’t fault their caution. You’d think that, with growing customer references, vendors could clearly articulate the value that audio and video add to mission- critical applications. You’d also think vendors could accurately characterize the trade-offs between various delivery strategies. Customers should be able to evaluate their options based on a vendor’s proven value to a small but growing customer base.
Yet, surprisingly few vendors risk telling customers the truth about what they do and what they don’t do. Here are some common claims that should cause anyone to pause when evaluating a potential supplier for rich media needs:

“Live is much more difficult than on-demand.”
A favorite claim of some peer-to-peer providers, this statement is partly true. It is very difficult to enable 500 or 50,000 people to simultaneously watch an event over a private network. The claim is generally used when competing for an executive communication project (“egocast”) driven by a high-level exec. The error, though, is assuming that building your own streaming systems is the best option. Deploying a high-volume, simultaneous live streaming infrastructure has limited cross-purpose uses and high ongoing management costs. “Live,” it turns out, is simple when you don’t do it yourself. Consider using media service providers for large, company-wide events. Also, there are other alternatives for small group communications. Some Web conferencing products, for example, are quicker to deploy, easier to manage, and cheaper to use than many streaming options available today.

“On-demand is much more difficult than live.”
Suppliers of on-demand products always claim that their pain is greater than their live-focused competitors. In one sense, they’re right: Delivery of truly on- demand media with VCR-like interactivity to users when and where they want it is a very difficult problem — if the content is remotely hosted and served. However, recent advances in digital rights management and download-then- play technologies have significantly cut cost and complexity of on-demand solutions.

“Ours is an end-to-end solution.”
If you hear a vendor say this, your next question should be, “What are the ‘ends’ we’re talking about?” In most cases, the vendor has a quite constricted definition in mind. Most rich media vendors focus on a particular link in the content delivery value chain. They frequently do not include such elements as content creation and production, delivery and network management, or down- to-the-desktop monitoring.

“Multicasting is the only answer to your bandwidth problem.”
While unicasting a simultaneous broadcasts to hundreds of users incurs a high bandwidth cost, multicasting is not the only — or often even the best — answer. Multicast-enabling your network requires (1) time and (2) costly hardware and software upgrades. Instead, consider whether the video or audio must be broadcast live. If it can be time shifted by even a few minutes, store- and-forward and managed-delivery strategies are a faster and cheaper option. Also, solutions that use distributed delivery or peer-to-peer can dramatically cut bandwidth costs without requiring multicast.
http://www.streamingmagazine.com/vie...s&TI=thismonth


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What's Your IP Address?

An IP address is a unique identifier used by your computer to let it communicate with other computers on the Internet. It's similar to a telephone number.

Your browser announces your computer's IP address to every web site it visits, as does file sharing software. This is how the recording industry is developing its set of targets.

You can find out what your own computer's IP address is by visiting a browser header check utility. This shows all of the information your browser reveals to sites you visit.

Note: If you're on a network, behind a firewall, or use a large ISP, your IP address may be temporary, assigned only for your current online session.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchd...le.php/2241591


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PlayStation 3 Chip Nears Completion
John G. Spooner

Collaborating engineers from IBM, Sony, and Toshiba have wrapped up the design for the inner workings of a mysterious new chip called "Cell."

The new multimedia processor, touted as a "supercomputer on a chip," is well on its way to completion, IBM says. The chip could end up inside the PlayStation 3, and elements of its design will be seen in future server chips from IBM.

Cell has nearly "taped out"--an industry term meaning that the chip's pen-

and-paper design and layout have been completed. Soon the design will be handed over to engineers in manufacturing, who will craft samples.

Meanwhile, engineers have been testing various subelements of the processor, both separately and together, before the manufacturing unit connects them inside actual Cell chips.

At this rate, commercial production of Cell could begin as soon as the end of 2004.

While details remain vague, Cell will differ from existing microprocessors in that it will have multiple personalities. The chip will not only perform the heavy computational tasks required for graphics, but it also will contain circuitry to handle high-bandwidth communication and run multiple devices, sources say.

This multifaceted approach is possible because a single chip will contain multiple processing cores (hence the name "Cell"). Communications features expected to be in the chips will also allow devices to form powerful, peer-to-peer-like networks, some analysts believe.

While the processor's design is still under wraps, the companies say Cell's capabilities will allow it to deliver 1 trillion calculations per second (teraflop) or more of floating-point calculations. It will have the ability to do north of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second, roughly 100 times more than a single Pentium 4 chip running at 2.5GHz.

Cell will likely use between four and 16 general-purpose processor cores per chip. A game console might use a chip with 16 cores, while a less complicated device like a set-top box would have a processor with fewer, said Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of influential industry newsletter Microprocessor Report.

Some of these cores might perform computational functions, while others could control audio or graphics. But not everyone thinks this approach is groundbreaking, given that some processors already use inter-chip multiprocessing. "I just don't see that Cell is revolutionary, except in its marketing impact," Glaskowsky said.

While Cell's hardware design might be difficult, it's creating software for the chip that will be the trickiest part of establishing it in the market. "It's going to take an enormous amount of software development," said Richard Doherty, analyst with Envisioneering. "We believe the chip architecture is going to be on time and ahead of the software wizardry that is going to really make it get up and dance."

Furthermore, creating an operating system and set of applications that can take advantage of the Cell's multiprocessing and peer-to-peer computing capabilities will be the key to determining if Cell will be successful, he said.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chi...2120395,00.htm


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Crackdown On Internet File Sharing

AMSTERDAM — Internet users who illegally offer en masse films, music or software for download on the internet will face fines running into the tens of thousands of euros in a crackdown announced on Tuesday by an author and artists' rights foundation.

Until now, the Brein (Brain) foundation has focused on tackling professional "pirates" who copy CDs on a large scale, but a planned prosecution of individuals is in line with a hardline stance being taken in the US, Italy and Denmark. The Dutch crackdown is set to start in the autumn.

Thousands of people in the US, Italy and Denmark have already been offered the chance to come to an out-of-court settlement if they pay a fine up to USD 10,000 (EUR 8,833). Those who refuse to pay risk a court case in which they could be sentenced to a much tougher fine.

Brein wants in particular to prosecute people who place too much material online via software such as Kazaa, Gnutella and Grokster. Other internet users can use the software to download the films, music or software without paying.

But the border between offering a "normal" and a "large" amount of material remains unclear. Despite this, Brein said anyone who is found to have a film that is not already showing at a Dutch cinema will be prosecuted. Offering music, films or software is illegal and the safest option is not to offer anything, an NOS news report said.

The music industry has suffered heavy financial losses as a result of illegal downloads, launching a precedent-setting case against MP 3-sharing industry pioneer Napster. A February 2001 court ruling eventually forced the website to shut down, but Napster recently reported it was planning to launch a paid- service comeback by Christmas.

Brein director T Kuik said preparations for the crackdown are on schedule and all involved parties will make a definitive decision after the summer.

Brein can obtain via the internet the IP number of a computer and intends to use this information to demand internet providers release the personal details of a suspected individual. But it must first obtain a legal order to obtain the personal details, after which the path is freely open to take someone to court.

If someone is tracked down, they will be first offered an out-of-court settlement that can extend into the tens of thousands of euros, Dutch associated press ANP reported.

But Kuik did not expect many people to be taken to court, saying it was only a small percentage who would be prosecuted. He hoped to make an agreement with internet providers in which suspected individuals are given several warnings. If they fail to heed the warning, their internet connection might be cut off.
http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pa...&item_id=33419


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Claim: RFID Will Stop Terrorists
Mark Baard

Facing increasing resistance and concerns about privacy, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win consumer approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists.

The companies are banding together and through an industry association are lobbying to have the Department of Homeland Security designate radio frequency identification, or RFID, as an antiterrorism technology.

In addition, they are asking members of Congress and other influential figures to portray RFID in a favorable light.

Companies like Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson see RFID technology as a godsend. By implanting tiny radio transponders in their product packaging, the companies can instantly track their goods from factory floors all the way to retailers' warehouses. What's more, retailers can get a 100 percent accurate inventory of products on their shelves instantly with RFID detectors. Taking inventory now involves countless hours of overnight work with inaccurate results.

Experts estimate industry could save billions of dollars each year in inventory and logistical costs with RFID. Trouble is, privacy advocates see RFID as a massive invasion of privacy. They say the technology would let retailers, marketers, governments or criminals scan people -- or even their houses -- and ascertain what they own. The technology hasn't been rolled out widely yet, but already it's causing controversy. Earlier this summer, Wal-Mart caved to protests and pulled radio-tagged items out of a store in Brockton, Massachusetts.

To win the hearts and minds of consumers, retailers and food and drug companies may portray the technology as an antiterrorist tool. They say the technology can help them keep precise track of all goods and help in recall efforts should their products be contaminated or laced with poison during a terrorist attack.

The Auto-ID Center, an RFID consortium, presented its technology to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in Washington, D.C., last year. In fact, many Auto-ID Center sponsors consider Ridge's blessing to be key to public acceptance. An internal presentation by Fleishman-Hillard, the powerhouse PR firm that advises the center, lists Ridge as a "top-tier opinion leader." And the minutes (PDF) of another meeting, attended by a representative of the Department of Defense, records a group statement that the technology will catch on "when the government mandates it for homeland security reasons."

The center also has targeted Sens. John McCain and Patrick Leahy, and Reps. Charles Dingell and Billy Tauzin, for recruitment to help Americans overcome their suspicions about RFID tags on consumer goods.

Members of the privacy rights group Caspian uncovered the Auto-ID Center documents, which are marked "confidential," in early July.

With Ridge's approval for RFID, the food and drug companies and retailers hope to win over a wary public. They also may get legal protection under the Safety Act of 2002 -- a tort- reform law that offers blanket lawsuit protections to makers of antiterrorism devices, should those devices fail during a terrorist attack.

"If we get a declaration from Homeland Security that this is the step we need to take to protect the food supply, that's the step it will take to move this technology forward," said Procter & Gamble supply-chain executive Larry Kellam at an RFID industry conference in June.

Procter & Gamble and other Auto-ID Center sponsors -- including Sara Lee, Kellogg, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer -- lobbied lawmakers and officials last year for the lawsuit protections that they now hope will apply to RFID technology.

"We have been working with legislators to make sure the right regulations are in place to make RFID tags commercially feasible," said Stephanie Childs, a spokeswoman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, which lobbied on behalf of the food and drug companies and retailers.

But not all legislators on Capitol Hill are buying into RFID tags, especially when they see companies playing the terrorism card to gain acceptance for the technology.

"We would never support legislation to prevent businesses from using RFID the way they want to," said Jeff Deist, a spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is a staunch privacy rights advocate. "That's a question for the marketplace. But once the Homeland Security Department gets involved, that's another story entirely."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59624,00.html


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Arcade Addicts Joust With Past
Suneel Ratan

The Electronic Entertainment Expo each May draws upward of 60,000 people to the Los Angeles Convention Center for a glimpse of the gaming industry's future.

The Classic Gaming Expo comes as close as anything to representing a Museum of Video Games, albeit one that only comes into existence for one weekend each year.

Efforts to preserve the medium's history otherwise seem to be lagging, and enjoy little support from the game business itself. That's symptomatic of a young industry that's always looking ahead, perhaps not yet aware of the importance of keeping its past alive.

"Every time I'm here on the floor of the Classic Gaming Expo, I'm transported back to the time when I was in high school and A Flock of Seagulls was playing in the background and I was playing Missile Command on a black-and-white TV set," said expo organizer Joe Santulli. "That was heaven."

But would-be preservers of classic games say they battle both time and, often, the game industry itself.

There likely will come a time when old coin-op games or consoles simply won't work -- especially since there are few institutions with museum-like resources now dedicated to preserving them.

Older games can be made widely available to today's gamers for download via the Internet, as already happens through many so-called "abandonware sites" (so named because they archive games that publishers neither sell nor support).

Standing in the way of such efforts is a gaming industry that often jealously guards its intellectual property rights.

Game companies often have blocked efforts to make older games available through downloads and emulators, even if they no longer sell and support those titles. They label such moves piracy that could undercut future efforts to reissue such games in the form of classic compilations or to update them as remakes.

"The reason people pirate older classic games is that in many cases, there's no other way to get access to these games at the moment," said Greg Costikyan, a longtime game designer who last year tried unsuccessfully to start a Museum of Gaming.

Douglas Lowenstein, head of game-industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association, said his organization focuses on immediate legal and regulatory issues such as copyrights and piracy. It simply hasn't yet put a priority on preserving the industry's history, which he said would be a huge undertaking. Nor does he know of any other efforts in the industry.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59948,00.html


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Broadband Over Power Line Is "Spectrum Pollution," Says Ham Radio Official

BPL would use low and medium-voltage lines like these in a typical residential area to distribute digital data using HF and low-VHF frequencies.

ARRL President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, says Broadband over Power Line (BPL)--if widely deployed--would represent "spectrum pollution" on a level that is "difficult to imagine." Haynie reacted after seeing videotape and early data from recent ARRL field studies in four states where BPL is undergoing testing.

"BPL is the most crucial issue facing Amateur Radio and the one that has the most devastating potential," Haynie said. In terms of interference potential on HF and low-VHF frequencies, "nothing is on the same scale as BPL."

A form of power line carrier (PLC) technology, BPL would use existing low and medium-voltage power lines to deliver broadband services to homes and businesses. Because it uses frequencies between 2 and 80 MHz, BPL could affect HF and low-VHF amateur allocations wherever it's deployed. BPL proponents--primarily electric power utilities--already are testing BPL systems in several markets, and one reportedly is already offering the service. FCC rules already allow BPL, although industry proponents want the FCC to relax radiation limits. It's feared such a change could exacerbate BPL's interference potential.

At the West Gulf Division Convention (Austin Summerfest 2003) August 1-2 in Austin, Texas, Haynie previewed a short video that covers highlights of a recent field tour by ARRL Lab Manager Ed Hare, W1RFI. The video, which will complement technical data ARRL is gathering and compiling, turned out to be a real eye-opener for many in the audience.

Walt Dubose, K5YFW--assistant chairman of the ARRL High Speed Multimedia (HSMM) Working Group--said it was about what he'd expected. "But for most attending--maybe 60 percent--it was much worse than they had imagined, and for some it was a real shocker," he reported. Dubose said a few of those viewing the video simply couldn't believe that BPL actually was causing the high noise level.

In late July, Hare traveled some 1350 miles to visit BPL trial communities in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York to take measurements over significant parts of the HF spectrum. He also took initial readings at low-VHF frequencies. Driving a specially equipped vehicle loaded with radio gear and measurement devices, Hare said he didn't need to look long or track down "a few hot spots" to find BPL interference. "The signals were all over," he said.

"The interference found ranged from moderate to extremely strong," Hare said. The video shows the S meter of an HF transceiver holding steady in excess of S9 as the speaker emits a crackling din, which one observer described as sounding like a Geiger counter. Only the very strongest amateur signals broke through on 20 and 15 meters. Hare noted that the field strengths of the various systems all were within FCC Part 15 limits for power line carrier (PLC) devices.

At a couple of points, the video shows noise continuing nearly unabated on 15 and 20 meters as the car moves down long streets lined with overhead wiring. Hare said the signal propagated for at least a couple of miles down one road.

"Signals would have been much stronger using a gain antenna," he observed. Hare's vehicle carried a roof-mounted, horizontally polarized Buddi-Pole antenna--a loaded dipole.

Each BPL system exhibited a unique sound depending upon the modulation scheme it used, and Hare said he was able to distinguish three types during his recent tour. While in most cases, the signal sounded like static or pulse noise, in one city, it resembled sort of interference a computer monitor or similar device might generate, with warbling "birdies" blanketing the bands at closely spaced intervals. "Naturally, overhead wiring was the worst," Hare said. BPL signals continued to be audible in neighborhoods with underground electrical utility wiring, although it was somewhat attenuated.

"The BPL industry and their associations have told the FCC and the world that there is no interference potential from BPL systems," Haynie said. He noted that the American Public Power Association, in its comments to the FCC, put the burden on the technology's challengers to empirically demonstrate its interference potential.

"The video presentation does just that," Haynie said. "Anyone seeing these BPL signals for megahertz after megahertz for miles along a power line should be convinced that BPL--even operating at the present FCC limits--poses a serious threat to all HF and low-VHF communications."
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/08/08/2/?nc=1


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When Is 54 Not Equal to 54? A Look at 802.11a, b, and g Throughput
Matthew Gast

Now that the 802.11g standard has been finalized, comparisons with the other standards in the 802.11 family are inevitable. One conclusion that is frequently drawn is that 802.11g offers similar speeds to 802.11a. After all, both products are advertised as having a data rate of 54 Mbps.

This article develops a simple model for the maximum TCP throughput of 802.11 networks so that a comparison can move beyond a simple comparison of nominal bit rates. According to the model, 802.11g is significantly faster than 802.11b. In a network consisting only of 802.11g clients, it is even slightly faster than 802.11a. However, "protection" mechanisms added to 802.11g to ensure backwards compatibility with legacy 802.11b clients can cut the throughput by 50 percent or more.

The basic transactional model assumed by this article is a maximum-length frame containing a single TCP segment followed by a TCP acknowledgement. To cope with the inherent unreliability of radio waves, the 802.11 MAC requires positive acknowledgement of every transmission. Each TCP packet must therefore be wrapped up in a frame exchange. The complete transaction consists of the two 802.11 data frames carrying TCP embedded in their respective exchanges:

The TCP data segment:

Distributed Interframe Space (DIFS): this interframe space indicates that an exchange has completed, and it is safe to access the medium again.
The data frame containing the TCP segment.

A Short Interframe Space (SIFS), which is a small gap between the data frame and its acknowledgement.
The 802.11 ACK frame.

The TCP ACK:

For this model, I will assume that the host operating system limits the outgoing frame size to 1,500 bytes. 802.11 permits much larger frame sizes, but this flexibility has not traditionally been used by client products. Most access points connect to existing networks with Ethernet, and therefore limit the payload size to the maximum Ethernet payload size. (In fact, this simple precaution is required to obtain Wi-Fi certification.)
http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/4085


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The Hidden Cost Of Hardware
What you don't know about licenses for the software that powers your machines could come back to haunt you
Ed Foster

Michael Tague couldn’t believe his luck. As president of Win.Net, a Louisville, Ky.-based ISP, he had purchased several Network Appliances (NetApp) data storage systems in the past and was pleased with their performance. So, when he found a used but serviceable NetApp model on eBay for a mere $4,000 — a fraction of its original cost — he was delighted.

But his delight turned to anger when he contacted NetApp to purchase a maintenance agreement for the used system. “They weren’t interested in negotiating the maintenance agreement until we paid $15,000 to relicense the operating system that came with the unit,” Tague says. “No way we were going to pay that. They got paid for the software when they originally sold the system. Why should they get paid again? So, that NetApp box is sitting in a corner — we’re not using it except for spare parts.”

Tague’s experience is increasingly common for those purchasing dedicated hardware systems secondhand. Manufacturers of systems with proprietary operating systems such as high-end routers, data storage devices, and a variety of telecommunications equipment, now generally say their software license agreements prohibit transfer of the software when the hardware is resold. It’s mostly Internet or gray- market bargain hunters who are encountering this policy, but it represents a variety of hidden costs that could eventually affect all IT customers.

Curtailing the Secondhand Market

Blanket prohibitions against license transfer have been standard language in software license agreements for many years. Only after the dot-com bust did it occur to hardware manufacturers that they could try to enforce them. IT managers report that Cisco Systems in particular has been aggressive in its demands for relicense fees.

Tague and others think the manufacturers’ restrictions are just not right. “It’s a flat out scam,” he says. “Just because it’s typical, just because the other guys are doing it too, doesn’t mean it’s OK.” It would be fair, Tague argues, for manufacturers to negotiate a maintenance agreement for their used equipment, as he was more than willing to do with NetApp. “That way, they would have a continuing revenue stream. By demanding we pay $15,000 just for the license, they get nothing.”
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/...1FEfair_1.html


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Consultation on Review of Australian Copyright Reforms

Four issues papers have been released as part of an independent analysis of the Government’s Digital Agenda copyright reforms.

The issues papers have been prepared by law firm Phillips Fox in consultation with the Attorney- General’s Department.

Major amendments to the Copyright Act, which came into effect in March 2001, were introduced to meet the challenges posed by the Internet and other new communications technologies, and to place Australia at the forefront of international developments in online copyright law reform.

Phillips Fox were appointed on 1 April 2003 to analyse key aspects of the Government’s reforms from legal, economic and technical points of view. The analysis will form part of the Government’s broader review of these reforms.

The issues papers released today cover:

· Libraries, Archives and Educational Copying;

· Carrier and Carriage Service Providers;

· Technology and Rights;

· Circumvention Devices and Services, Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information.

The issues papers will be discussed at public forums held by Phillips Fox on August 14 in Melbourne and on September 4 in Sydney. An online discussion forum will also be held on September 9. Anyone interested in attending any of these events must register through the Phillips Fox web site. Public submissions on any of the matters raised in the issues papers must be made by September 30.

Copies of the issues papers are available from the Phillips Fox website at http://www.phillipsfox.com/whats_on/...italAgenda.asp
http://www.findlaw.com.au/news/defau...=read&id=15941


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Music-Swapping Firm Faces Financial Seizures

The Seoul District Court yesterday said that it would allow musical recording companies to temporarily seize 1.56 billion won ($1.3 million) worth of the properties of Bugs Music, a company that offers free music downloads via the Internet to users of its Web site.

Twelve major record and music production companies last month filed a request with the court to seize Bugs Music’s properties because the online music company caused losses for them by illegally copying songs for which they hold the copyrights. The songs were then posted on the Internet without royalties to the copyright owners.

The prosecution is also investigating charges of copyright violations against the company.

The court last month, however, rejected a prosecution request to detain Park Seong-hoon, the president of the company.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/20030...090409041.html


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File Swappers Face Action In The Netherlands

Dutch file swappers may face prosecution if anti-piracy group Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands (BREIN) goes ahead with its threat to sue those who share copyrighted music over networks like KaZaA, according to a report by TheRegister.co.uk yesterday.

The Dutch group is the latest in a series of anti-piracy organisations or music associations to turn their attention to individual file swappers, rather than corporate pirates or service providers.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is already in the process of serving hundreds of subpoenas on ISPs in order to identify file-sharers. It received a setback on Friday in a Massachusetts court, which rejected subpoenas from a Washington DC court as having no jurisdiction. The RIAA was told instead to file its subpoenas where it alleges the copyright infringement occurs, rather than targeting all 50 states from a single court.

Similar threats were issued in Spain last month, when legal services company Landwell announced that it was working with the Spanish Technological Investigation Brigade in order to prosecute up to 4,000 file sharers – albeit details of the legal grounds for prosecution as opposed to civil action were vague and, as yet, no cases have been filed.

Detection software

A difficulty in suing individuals who use P2P software for piracy purposes is, inevitably, the problem of identifying those involved. Organisations such as the RIAA rely on software that scans the public directories available to any user of a peer-to- peer network.

These directories, which allow users to find the material they are looking for, list all the files that other users of the network are currently offering to distribute. When the software finds a user who is offering to distribute copyrighted music files, it downloads some of the infringing files, along with the date and time it accessed the files.

Additional information that is publicly available from these systems then allows the organisation to identify the user’s ISP. ISPs are then told to reveal the user's identity.

The software is getting more sophisticated. Audible Magic Corporation, a digital audio and video identification company, is currently developing a network monitoring tool which would identify each copyrighted song on a P2P network according to its digital fingerprint, and block its transfer, according to a report on CNet News. Audible Magic announced yesterday that its system called RepliCheck is to be used by the Universal Music Group to combat piracy.
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?...9801&area=news


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Why File-Sharing Isn't Illegal

Yet the RIAA "will continue to bankrupt families"
Paul Hales

FOLLOWING ATTEMPTS by the RIAA to force universities in the US to hand over details of students using their servers to share files, we asked the Electronic Frontier Foundation - one body attempting to stand up for users' rights in the whole debacle - a few basic questions on the legality of file sharing.

Here's what the EFF Staff Attorney Jason Shultz had to say on the matter:

INQ: Surely file-sharing per se is not illegal?

EFF: File-sharing is not per se illegal. Just like a VCR or copy machine, file-sharing software has both legal and illegal uses. You can't hold a manufacturer liable for a device simply because some of its users are using it for the wrong reasons. In fact, we recently won a victory in Los Angeles this Spring when we convinced a judge there to throw out the recording industry's lawsuit against the makers of file-sharing software. The case is currently on appeal and we expect the decision to stand.

INQ: Is downloading a song from the Internet a bit like taping from the radio - inevitable and rather hard to police?

EFF: Usually, yes. However, because the recording industry was able to change the U.S. copyright law in 1998, they now have the power to subpoena Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to force them to reveal the names and addresses of users without even filing a lawsuit. Even though we require police to have a warrant to search your home, Congress has now given the recording industry permission to search your computer with little more than a guess that you're downloading their music. Colleges and ISPs have been fighting this law, but so far they have not been able to make it void.

INQ: Isn't the RIAA being a little heavy-handed?

EFF: Extremely. These lawsuits are very real for the families who are being sued. They turn their lives upside down and often bankrupt them of their life savings. The RIAA has been questioned on this and simply refuses to back down. They fully intend to keep bankrupting families until file-sharing goes away. That's hardly fair or compassionate. We need to shift the focus away from lawsuits and toward a more positive solution where file-sharing is legal and artists get paid. We have posted at least 8 or 9 different ways to make this work at www.eff.org/share/
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10999


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IBM Adds P2P Community Vehicle To alphaWorks

IBM today launched a new suite of peer-to-peer applications for community-based problem solving, available on alphaWorks, IBM's resource for emerging technology. IBM Community Tools (ICT) allows users to interact with various communities using instant and broadcast messaging, transforming the way customers and business partners interact, collaborate and respond to changing business needs.

IBM Community Tools is a dynamic messaging client that combines the highly-scalable one-to-many broadcast messaging technology in IBM MQ Event Broker[tm] with the leading enterprise instant messaging capabilities of IBM Lotus[r] Sametime[r], with Web services running under WebSphere[r] Application Server, Apache and DB2[r]. Together, these technologies can help give users the ability to locate experts, start impromptu discussions and to alert and survey large groups of people instantly, all in real time.

"By offering IBM Community Tools to the alphaWorks community, we can broaden the reach of ICT to a group that historically has proven to be a willing test bed for IBM emerging technologies - and leaps at the opportunity to experiment with the next hot tool from our labs," said Stu Feldman, Vice President, IBM Internet Technology. "ICT gives users the ability to target communities, instantly broadcast questions, polls, alerts, and ideas to thousands of other online community members and get real-time feedback from peers worldwide, who have agreed to share their skills, knowledge and opinions, which we feel is a really good fit with alphaWorks users."
http://www.ebizq.net/news/2548.html


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BNA Highlights

JUDGE RULES AGAINST FREE USE OF MOVIE TRAILERS ONLINE

A federal court judge in New Jersey has ruled that movie trailers are protected by copyright and cannot be streamed on the Internet without permission. The judge noted that the fair use doctrine did not protect a company that created their own version of a trailer after the movie studio requested that theirs be taken offline. Case name is Video Pipeline v. Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1059980453492


CHINA SHREDS MILLIONS OF CD'S

Authorities across China have shredded more than 42 million smuggled and pirated discs. The move was part of a continuing anti-counterfeiting effort aimed at silencing critics overseas.
<http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...E%5Enbv%5E1530


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DMCA Subpoenas: Technology Outracing Law?
Roy Mark

The current legal battle unfolding between Internet service providers (ISPs) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a classic case of technology outracing the best intentions of lawmakers, according to Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon.

In a case both sides readily agree is ultimately headed to the Supreme Court, Verizon is appealing a January ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia requiring Verizon to comply with a subpoena request by the RIAA to reveal the identities of customers who allegedly infringed copyrights on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems.

The subpoena was issued through a provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that allows copyright holders to issue subpoenas that have not been reviewed by a judge and requires no notice to, or opportunity to be heard by, the alleged infringer.

While promptly announcing it would appeal the decision, Verizon also asked the court to issue a stay regarding revealing the names, pending the outcome of the appeal process. The telecom giant lost that decision in April and by June the U.S. Court of Appeals also agreed Verizon had to pony up the identities of the alleged infringers prior to the actual appeal of the underlying decision.

The next round of the controversial case comes on Sept. 16, when the actual appeal will be heard in Washington by the U.S. Appeals Court.

"(The RIAA) has taken an old law and twisted it to fix new business problems," Deutsch told Internetnews. "A lot of has transpired since the original appeal. We argued then that the decision was subject to abuse and now we have proof."

The 42-year-old Deutsch is a veteran intellectual property attorney who represented Verizon in the heated negotiations over the passage of the DMCA five years ago. She also was Verizon's point person during the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty talks that ultimately led to Congress enacting the DMCA.

One of the central issues in 1998 was the liability of ISPs for the possible copyright infringements of their customers. The DMCA gives ISPs liability protections in exchange for assisting copyright owners in identifying and dealing with infringers who misuse the service providers' systems, including complying with an expedited subpoena process for copyright owners who want to pursue legal action against infringers.

Deutsch said the ISPs' understanding at the time was that they agreed that if an infringement was residing on an ISP's network, the service provider would agree to remove it from the system after receiving a valid notice from the copyright owner.

Neither side ever anticipated the development and explosive growth of peer-to-peer networks.

"The technology didn't even exist then," Deutsch said, noting there's nothing for an ISP to take down from its systems when file swappers engage in copyright infringement. "The infringement moved from the service providers to the customer's hard drive."

Deutsch contends P2P infringement violations shouldn't be covered by the DMCA subpoena provision since the law only anticipated copyright infringement on service providers' systems. She is quick to point out that Verizon is in no way endorsing infringement.

"Verizon is not attempting to shield customers who break copyright laws. We are, however, seeking to protect the fundamental privacy and due process rights that should be afforded to our customers and all Internet users," Deutsch said, adding that Verizon and and other ISPs have always complied with subpoenas obtained through the traditional process of presenting the court with evidence of suspicion of a crime and reviewed and signed by a judge.

D.C. District Judge John Bates, though, didn't see it Verizon's way.

"Under Verizon's reading of the Act, a significant amount of potentital copyright infringement would be shielded from the subpoena authority of the DMCA," Bates ruled. "That would, in effect, give Internet copyright infringers shelter from the long arm of the DMCA subpoena power, and allow infringement to flourish."

The first indication that the RIAA had a different interpretation from Verizon's came in August of last year when it went to court to force Verizon to comply with a DMCA subpoena seeking information related to "a computer connected to the Verizon network that is a hub for significant music piracy." The motion said Verizon was the only entity that could identify the infringer behind the computer.

Since prevailing in June, the RIAA has issued hundreds of DMCA subpoenas to ISPs in what Deutsch characterized as "taking advantage of a procedural delay." Deutsch said since Verizon turned over the original two names sought by the RIAA, the music industry trade group has hit the company with almost 200 more subpoenas.

Deutsch says the RIAA is engaging in a fishing expedition in order to obtain as many names as possible before the appeals court ruling and that the music industry is "trampling on the privacy rights" of thousands of ISP customers.

"The court's decision has troubling ramifications for consumers, service providers and the growth of the Internet. It opens the door for anyone who makes a mere allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without the due process protections afforded by the courts," Deutsch said after the January ruling. "This case will have a chilling effect on private communications, such as e-mail, surfing the Internet or the sending of files between private parties."

Other ISPs are now joining Verizon in the legal fray. Earlier this month, Pacific Bell Internet Services, a subsidiary of SBC Communications, filed a lawsuit against the RIAA after it received 200 subpoenas demanding the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the ISP's subscribers who the RIAA claims are engaging in copyright infringement.
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/2248641