[JackSpratts]

Camping Out for the Grokster Case
Katie Dean

Forget Star Wars premieres. A seat at the MGM Studios v. Grokster Supreme Court hearing Tuesday morning was the hottest ticket in town.

Gray skies, with intermittent rain and cold, didn't deter a group of staunch file-sharing supporters -- as well as a number of hired line-standers -- from queuing up starting at around 2:30 p.m. Monday to secure a seat in court for the landmark copyright case.

"I feel very strongly (about) the case," said Nick Disabato, a graduate student in information science who drove up from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was first in line. "I share music with my friends constantly and that's how I get a lot of my recommendations. Ever since I started downloading MP3s, I've purchased three times more music. I haven't purchased as many dud albums."

Some observers consider this file-sharing case, which will determine whether Grokster and StreamCast Networks should be liable for the copyright infringement of their users, to be the most important copyright case since 1984's Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios. Then, the court ruled 5-4 that Sony's Betamax videotape recorder was a legal device because it was capable of "substantial non-infringing uses." The ruling paved the way for the development of the thriving home video and DVD market.

Many standing at the foot of the Supreme Court building hoped the justices would preserve that landmark decision. Supporters passed out "Save Betamax" shirts courtesy of the Consumer Electronics Association. Old Betamax tapes from the 1980s were handed out as inspirational souvenirs.

Those hoping to be in the gallery came prepared. A few brought comfy folding chairs with canopy tops to block out the rain. Others had sleeping bags, hats, wool socks, gloves, tarps, a tent, umbrellas and blankets. One brought a video camera to film the experience for a documentary on copyright reform. Some chose to stash their court clothes a few blocks away in a hotel, or planned to have friends deliver a respectable change of attire.

For entertainment, the file-sharing faithful brought laptops and books. Disabato also brought an iPod shuffle loaded with controversial music from Dangermouse, a DJ known for causing a kerfuffle when he illegally mixed the Beatles' White Album with Jay Z's The Black Album. He also included a bootleg mix called "Piracy Funds Terrorism," by MIA and Diplo, on his iPod. He brought some small speakers to broadcast the music to others in line but wasn't sure if the security guards around the court would let him use them.

As the night wore on, Seth Schoen, staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ordered five pizzas to be delivered to the Supreme Court. Others took turns going for coffee.

Peer-to-peer software engineer Francis Crick (the grandson of Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the double-helix structure of DNA) made the trip from Los Angeles. He said if the entertainment companies succeed in shutting down peer-to-peer networks, the case will impair the development of new technologies in the United States.

He said his opinion on the case is "very pro-American" for that reason.

"I feel split down the middle," said Beatrice Murch, who made the trip across the country from San Francisco with her husband. She said some of her relatives work in the movie industry and she understands "where the content providers are coming from."

At the same time, she said, "these guys are trying to squash technological innovation."

"I definitely feel that peer-to-peer systems have legitimate uses. Copyright law is out of whack and needs to be changed," Murch said.

By 9 p.m. Monday, there were about 40 people in line to fill the estimated 50 available seats in court. Other space is reserved for the press and members of the Supreme Court bar.

Hired line-standers were paid between $200 and $500 for the night to hold spaces for various people with an interest in the outcome of the case, according to one line-stander who declined to give his name. People can be sent to the back of the line if they are caught swapping places with a hired line-stander at the last minute. Those who pay the personal placeholders usually show up an hour or two before the court opens.

But many of those lined up Monday were willing to wait themselves, even in the cold and rain.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Murch said. "I'm not going to melt."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67061,00.html


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Brouhaha Over Kazaa Means Nada
Patrick Gray

Millions of music lovers will soon know if the Kazaa file-sharing software will survive the recording industry's legal assault on the technology in Australia's federal court.

The case against Sharman Networks, maker of the Kazaa peer-to-peer software, is winding down. A decision in the case, which first made headlines in February last year when the music industry executed its controversial civil raids on the Sydney offices of the Australian software maker, is expected in May.

Reporters, law students and observers filled a Sydney courtroom this week to hear the lawyers' final oral submissions to Justice Murray Wilcox. Closing arguments wrapped up Wednesday, with the predictable rhetoric emanating from both camps. The music industry said Kazaa is a "system" that encourages piracy on an unprecedented scale; Sharman Networks says it can't be held responsible for the illegal actions of its users, and that its software has legitimate, non-infringing uses.

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, peer-to-peer technology continues to thrive. Web, e-mail and instant-messaging applications are the three pillars of the internet, and it's not far-fetched to imagine peer-to-peer technology becoming the fourth. Peer-to-peer has matured and is poised to jump the divide that separates the early-adopting geek from the mainstream internet user, a feat achieved by instant messaging in just a few years.

The explosion in the popularity of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer software has proved the technology is here to stay. Unless the music industry is completely naive, it knows this much.

It also surely knows that in the grand scheme of things, Kazaa is unimportant software, and Australia is an unimportant jurisdiction. A ruling of interest to cyberlaw boffins and technologists won't force the U.S. attorney general to call an emergency meeting. Regardless of the outcome in the Sharman trial, little will change on U.S. shores, and even less will change on a global scale. It's almost certain the losing side will appeal, and the whole thing will drag out for another year.

Bigger issues are at play. Technology is inextricably linked to progress, and progress is seldom reversed. In the end, the people decide; hot showers will stay hot, computers will continue to sit where typewriters did, cars will be driven by engines and not horses, and peer-to-peer networks will operate as long as people want to use them.

While it's easy to think the music industry has ignored the internet to its peril, it knows a great deal more about the technology landscape, and how to manipulate the public's perception of technology, than many net-savvy observers will admit.

It may surprise some readers in the United States to know that most uses of an iPod in Australia are prohibited. Making a copy of a copyright sound recording in Australia, even between formats, is completely and utterly illegal. Want to put your CD collection on your iPod? Sorry. Too bad.

Considering the iPod was on sale in Australia before legal music-download sites were launched, it's fair to assume that most iPod users in the country were breaking the law. It may also be possible for the music industry to argue, in Australia's courts, that Apple Computer authorized and even encouraged piracy through its marketing and advertising campaigns.

But it's not Apple in the federal court, it's Sharman; the music business knows how to pick its battles. It would look silly attacking the iPod, which has become a cultural object, but its attack against a commercial peer-to-peer operator was a predictable move.

The music industry attacked Sharman, insiders say, because the software maker was earning money as a direct result of the unauthorized distribution of the industry's product, and was doing it in a very public and noisy manner. Whether that's a legal point that can be proved, it's a logical point that stands up to the most cursory analysis. No MP3s on the Kazaa network means a greatly reduced number of users, which means less advertising revenue.

Public perception is important to the recording industry. Could it be seen to be doing nothing while its songs were freely and illegally traded with impunity?

Most who take an interest in the music industry's war on piracy will remember the Recording Industry Association of America's PR disaster when, in 2003, it filed suit against a 12-year-old girl, a Kazaa user, for copyright infringement. The organization was slammed by the press and slated a heartless, lumbering menace. After all, it had sued poor, sweet little Brianna, who was among 261 the RIAA attacked in a sweeping anti-piracy campaign that targeted peer-to-peer users.

Those who were disgusted by the action took comfort in the idea that the RIAA had at least lost some face by wringing thousands of dollars in recompense from a child.

The music industry, both inside and outside the courtroom, seems more than happy to play the bad guy. Scaring the wits out of peer-to-peer users by suing a 12-year-old girl isn't a PR disaster, it's a masterstroke. It's heavy- handed, bordering on brutal, but from the music industry's perspective a sensational story like that is just what the doctor ordered. What were the consequences? The detractors were disgusted. Then they went out and bought CDs.

In modern society, few consumers boycott. If the music industry started selling CDs in baby-seal fur covers, there'd still be buyers. But Brianna's story would have made some people think twice before they downloaded the latest inane pop single, and that's powerful PR: "Could I be the next one sued?"

Technology has delivered a cruel blow to the music industry. Peer-to-peer has given thousands of consumers a taste of what it's like to have an enormous music collection. The effect on a large chunk of the collective consciousness was akin to putting the engine in the horse carriage or adding hot water to the shower. They have thousands of music tracks. They don't want to go back to CDs.

Until the music industry tweaks its business models to suit the peer-to-peer user -- say, 100 tracks a month for a reasonable subscription fee -- it's never going to stamp out internet piracy. The practice will continue and so will the court cases. The irony is that recording cartels continue to contribute to the phenomenon by allowing a market vacuum to stay in place.

The well-paid lawyers, the only guaranteed winners in the Sharman action, are finished arguing before Wilcox. But it's worth remembering that technology has a habit of winning in the end, and an adverse finding against a bit player in a backwater jurisdiction won't kill peer-to-peer. If the music industry wants to survive, it needs to think outside the box and stay out of the courtroom.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67006,00.html


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Court Ruling May Not Hinder Music Theft
AP

Even if entertainment companies win their Supreme Court battle for new authority to protect movies and music on the Internet, lawyers say it won't be easy to shut down the decentralized computer links used to trade songs and films.

However, entertainment executives say expanded grounds for lawsuits are needed to discourage inventors from profiting from cool gadgets of the future that could be used for stealing.

``This sort of thing is out there now and you can't go -- and I may be wrong about this -- but I don't you think you can go into people's homes and pull (software) out, or that anybody's likely to do that,'' said Theodore Olsen, the former U.S. solicitor general now working for entertainment companies. ``But it would be an important statement; an important point here is to stop the worst of the activity, stop the people who are making money.''

Richard Taranto, the lawyer for software-maker Grokster Ltd., told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that modern file-sharing tools like Grokster's are ``autonomous communications products,'' underscoring the evolution of such software since the entertainment industry's landmark victory in July 2001 shutting down the centralized Napster online service.

Taranto said the case presently facing the Supreme Court is ``critically different'' from the Napster legal fight. He argued that since Grokster isn't directly involved in the activities of its customers illegally swapping music and movies online, it can't be sued for violating copyrights.

Justices appeared divided on important issues during courtroom arguments. In a lively hourlong debate, the court openly worried that new lawsuits could stunt the next iPod. Justices also wondered aloud whether lawsuits against manufacturers might have discouraged past inventions like copying machines, videocassette recorders and MP3 music players -- which consumers can use to make illegal copies of documents, movies and songs.

Justice Antonin Scalia said a ruling for entertainment companies could mean that if ``I'm a new inventor, I'm going to get sued right away.'' Scalia, 69, referred to the company as ``Grokster, whatever this outfit is called.''

The chief executive for Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Andrew Lack, said Grokster ``doesn't pass the smell test with a lot of the justices.'' Lack was in the courtroom Tuesday.

``There were some concerns that they don't want to see technology or innovation stifled,'' Lack said. ``Grokster is wrong from a variety of perspectives.''

The entertainment industry's lawyer, Donald Verrilli Jr., maintained that, unlike Grokster's customers, most iPod buyers are honest consumers who pay for their digital music, effectively shielding Apple Computer from such copyright lawsuits.

But Justice David H. Souter said even iPod users will steal music if they believe they can. Souter questioned why the entertainment industry wants to sue Grokster but under the same legal theory wouldn't also sue Apple so aggressively the iPod's developer would ``lose his shirt.''

``I know perfectly well if I can get music on my iPod without paying that's what I'm going to do,'' said Souter.

Yet the court appeared deeply troubled by Grokster's efforts to encourage rampant Internet piracy and profit from it. Verrilli called its software ``a gigantic engine of infringement'' thieves use to steal 2.6 billion songs, movies and other digital files each month.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy pressed Grokster's lawyer on whether profits from trafficking in stolen property can rightfully be used to help finance a young technology business. ``That seems wrong to me,'' Kennedy said.

Regardless of the outcome, it still won't be legal to download copyrighted materials over the Internet without permission, though tens of millions of computer users do it each day. A ruling won't affect thousands of copyright lawsuits filed against Internet users caught sharing music and movies online.

Besides the lawsuits, the entertainment industry has deliberately polluted file-sharing networks with poor-quality copies of songs and falsely named files, among other tactics, to frustrate Internet thieves.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT


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'Write a Mac Virus Competition' Halted For Legal Reasons
Dan Ilett

Plans to hold a $25,000 competition to write a virus designed to infect the Apple OS X have been scrapped after the company behind the scheme backed down over "legal problems" and complaints from Mac customers.

Apple accessories company DVForge announced the competition after security company Symantec claimed OS X was likely to come under increasing attack as Apple's market share in the computer market grew.

DVForge said it had so much faith in the security of OS X it did not believe a virus writer could disable the operating system.

"The contest was only cancelled because I was convinced on Saturday morning that there was some minor risk of federal law violation in continuing," the head of DVForge, Jack Campbell, wrote on the company's website. "I have been stunned by Mac users writing to us who seem to prefer to live in fear and uncertainty, with their heads down, feeling 'lucky' for the moment, rather than to actually know the truth."

Before it was pulled, virus writers were invited to to infect PowerMacs connected to the internet and running the latest version of OS X, apparently without antivirus or firewall security.

The plan has been heavily criticised as a publicity stunt but the company has rejected these claims, saying it was better to settle the matter of the security of Apple's flagship operating system once and for all.

"Interestingly, this was actually a serious PR risk for us," wrote Campbell. "It is always safest to avoid controversy and to simply sit quietly on the sidelines and let the issues of the day drift by. The issue of the world at large constantly misstating the Mac OS X virus susceptibility was something we decided as a company to try and do something about."

Despite multiple attempts to contact Apple, the company did not respond for comment.
http://software.silicon.com/malware/...9129049,00.htm


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Symantec Details Flaws In Its Antivirus Software
Matt Hines

Symantec has reported glitches in its antivirus software that could allow hackers to launch denial-of-service attacks on computers running the applications.

In a notice posted on its Web site this week, Symantec detailed two similar vulnerabilities found in its Norton AntiVirus, which is sold on its own or bundled in Norton Internet Security and Norton System Works. The flaws, which could lead to computers crashing or slowing severely if attacked, are limited to versions of the software released for 2004 and 2005.

The Information-Technology Promotion Agency of Japan, a government-affiliated tech watchdog group, identified the first instance of the problem in the AutoProtect feature of the Norton AntiVirus consumer product, Symantec said. AutoProtect is used to scan files for viruses, Trojan attacks and worms.

The flaw essentially causes Symantec's software to crash when it is asked to inspect a file specifically designed to exploit the problem, which Symantec said could be submitted either remotely from outside a system or internally by someone with physical access to a computer.

The second flaw, discovered by the Japan Computer Emergency Response team, can be used to launch denial-of-service attacks by scanning specific file modifications using the SmartScan feature in Norton AntiVirus. Symantec said that any malicious use of that vulnerability would specifically require someone with authorized access to a computer to exploit the issue. SmartScan is designed to scour for viruses hidden in file extensions, as well as in executable and document files.

No attacks related to either problem have been reported so far, according to Symantec. The company also said in its warning that both vulnerabilities are "low impact" threats to its customers.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec said it has informed its customers of the problems and has issued patches to correct the flaws, including sending out an automated fix to subscribers to its Automatic LiveUpdate service. The company recommended that people who have not already applied the patches should do so immediately in order to protect against potential attacks.
http://news.com.com/Symantec+details...3-5646871.html


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India Surveys Aftermath Of New Patent Law
Padma Tata

India is facing the aftermath of a new patent law that bans making cheaper copies of new patented drugs. What exactly can be patented remains to be determined, and there are unallayed fears of a drug price hike that could seriously damage healthcare and battle against HIV in the developing world.

India's 1970 patent law recognised only patents on processes, not products. This enabled Indian firms to use alternative methods to produce cheap "generic" copies of drugs that were patented in other countries. Multinational companies that spend billions of dollars in research and development complain these "copycat" drugs cause annual losses of over $500 million.

But after joining the World Trade Organization in 1995, India had to change its patent laws by 1 January 2005 to meet its commitments under the WTO's agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The new bill, finally passed by the Indian Parliament on 23 March, now recognises both product and process patents.

The government argues this will boost Indian pharmaceutical research, attract foreign collaboration and help the nation emerge as a force in global pharmaceuticals.

Research rising

There are already "winds of change in India", notes Raghunath Mashelkar, director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India. There has been a 400% increase in private research and development spending on drugs and pharmaceuticals in the four years to 2005, he told New Scientist.

The number of pharmaceutical patents filed by Indians under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) - a global system for simplified multiple filing of patent applications - has also increased, from 43 in 1999 to 291 in 2003.

But some private and public sector scientists warn of a scarcity of trained pharmacologists, few successes in identifying new candidate drugs and a lack of high-quality animal testing facilities.

The Indian pharmaceutical industry's reaction has been mixed. Big Indian firms welcomed the changes, but small and medium companies have criticised the grey areas.

These include ambiguous definitions of what can be patented and a weak framework for opposing grants before they are granted. Mashelkar says an expert committee will now look into the exact criteria for inventiveness and patenting.

Stringency and flexibility

The new law attempted to find a balance between stringency - desired by multinational drug firms - and flexibility - demanded by public health campaigners. The latter argue the bill is stricter than required and ignores the flexibilities under TRIPS intended to safeguard public health in emergencies. Indian firms will now have to wait for three years before they can apply for compulsory licensing of newly patented drugs to meet an emergency need.

There are also over 8000 product patent applications pending in India, which could now be granted. If so, Indian firms currently making generic versions of these drugs would have to pay royalties.

International humanitarian agencies fear this will lead to a price monopoly, increasing charges. Of particular concern are anti-HIV drugs. Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) says half of the 700,000 HIV-positive people who currently receive anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world depend on Indian generics. It cautions the new bill may "drastically restrict, perhaps even prevent" the supply to developing countries.

Indian public health experts fear the changes will worsen access to medicines in India itself. Government data shows the number of Indians unable to afford medical treatment rose sharply from 10% to 25% in the decade up to 1999. "More poor people will stop going for treatment," says Ritu Priya, at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7205


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Blockbuster to Settle 'No Late Fees' Claims

Blockbuster Inc., the top U.S. movie renter, has agreed to pay $630,000 to settle claims from 47 states that said its "No Late Fees" rental policy deceived customers, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office said on Tuesday.

Under the agreement, Blockbuster will also be required to make full refunds to customers who claim that they were misled and were charged restocking fees or the full price of movies rented if they were returned seven days after the due date, a statement from Attorney General Tom Corbett's office said.

It said the agreement, which also includes the District of Columbia, would dramatically alter the way Blockbuster advertises its "No Late Fees" policy in the future.

New Jersey last month had filed a lawsuit that accused Blockbuster of failing to disclose key terms of its new rental policy.

Under the "No Late Fees" policy, Blockbuster said customers would have a one-week grace period after the rental due date. If a movie or game were returned after the grace period, the customer would be charged for the purchase of the item.

If the item were returned within 30 days, the customer would receive an account credit but would be charged a restocking fee of $1.25.

Full details of the settlement were scheduled to be released later on Tuesday, Corbett's office added in a brief news release. The Pennsylvania attorney general's office was one of six leading state agencies to negotiate the agreement with Blockbuster.

A Blockbuster spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Blockbuster -- which recently abandoned a bitter takeover battle for No. 2 U.S. movie renter Hollywood Entertainment Corp. -- unveiled the "No Late Fees" policy in December in an attempt to reinvigorate its business amid growing competition from online renters to discount retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=8026034


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Intel, Bertelsmann Team Up for Online Media Venture

The world's largest chipmaker, Intel, and German media conglomerate Bertelsmann plan to cooperate in developing technology for downloading and sharing films, music clips and games from the Internet.

Intel will make chips for PCs, notebooks and mobile phones that are compatible with a new online media file-sharing platform from Bertelsmann's services and technology arm arvato, capitalising on the huge and growing public appetite for accessing music and other media online.

"One of the major environmental changes in the electronics industry is this convergence -- a combination of computing, communications and content," Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"This thing we call the digital home really is the combination of all three of those things."

The deal represents a surprising alliance between two of the largest players in the media and technology industries, which have clashed in recent years because consumers have used cutting-edge products to copy billions of movies and songs without paying for them.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether "peer-to-peer" software makers should be held liable for the millions of copyrighted files their users download each day.

Through a trade group, Bertelsmann's music company has pressed to shut down software makers like Grokster and Morpheus, while Intel has sided with other technology companies that fear anti-piracy efforts could deter the next generation of innovative products like Apple's iPod music player.

But Bertlesmann also has shown more flexibility and daring than its peers.

The company struck an alliance with the Napster file-trading network in 2000 at a time when its own record company, BMG, was seeking to shut it down, and said last November that it was in talks with Grokster to develop a legitimate peer-to-peer service.

Digital Home

Intel has for decades been closely and almost exclusively associated with the personal computer, but it is now beginning to expand beyond the slow-growing PC market into the $200 billion consumer electronics industry.

It is a founding member of the Digital Living Network Alliance, an industry association that promotes open standards to make personal computers, consumer electronics and mobile devices in the home compatible with each other.

But so far, the chipmaker's efforts to get inside television sets and cellphones have been stymied by tough competition.

Bertelsmann's arvato unit announced the launch last week of a new Internet platform, which it plans to sell to mobile phone operators, Internet providers and TV stations.

The software platform, called GNAB, will allow makers and distributors of music, games, movies and ringtones to offer legal downloads of large files to clients under their own brands.

"Our emphasis with the digital home is obviously to do the architecture, the user interface, the platform," Barrett said.

Bertelsmann also owns half of the second-largest record company in the world, Sony BMG, with Japan's Sony Corp.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Mar30.html


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Supreme Court Weighs Piracy, Technology Innovation In 'Grokster' Case

The powerful interests of the entertainment and high-tech industries clashed at the US Supreme Court in a case pitting the freedom to innovate against the battle against digital piracy.

The powerful interests of the entertainment and high-tech industries clashed at the US Supreme Court in a case pitting the freedom to innovate against the battle against digital piracy.

The nine justices heard oral arguments in a case which seeks to determine if companies that distribute peer-to- peer (P2P) software can be held liable for copyright infringement if the networks are used for illegal copying of songs, movies and software.

Legal analysts said the case, likely to be decided in June, has broader implications for the battle against rampant online piracy and for whether new technologies can be introduced without fear of litigation.

Activists on both sides of the issue demonstrated outside the court. Some carried signs reading "Hands off my iPod." Others, highlighting the losses for artists, carried banners reading "Feed a Musician."

Donald Verrilli, arguing for plaintiffs including the movie and music industries, said the companies being sued for the file-sharing systems built their businesses on the theft of copyrighted material.

Verrilli said that allowing the defendants, Grokster and Streamcast Networks, to continue unchecked, "gives them a perpetual free pass" to facilitate illegal swapping of music and films.

"The recording industry has lost 25 percent of its revenue since the onslaught of this," Verrilli told the court, saying that the distributors of peer-to-peer software "are draining all the money out of the system."

But Richard Taranto, arguing for the defendants and a broad coalition of technology firms and others, said the court should reaffirm a standard set in a 1984 case involving the Sony Betamax video recorder, when it upheld the use of technology that could be used both legally and illegally.

"Any alternative would be worse," Taranto said, adding that if the Betamax legal standard were overturned, "virtually every business (involved in new technology) would be subject to litigation."

Taranto added that while peer-to-peer networks may be used for illegal copies, this applies to other technology, "including the personal computer, the modem, the Internet service provider. Every piece in this chain is essential."

Verrilli cited studies showing that 90 percent of the use of Grokster and Streamcast were for illegal copies, but said it is "not a numerical question," but a question of what the companies set out to do.

But Justice Stephen Breyer said such a standard could mean a death blow for many types of technology, saying that under the terms proposed by the plaintiffs, "Would we ever have a VCR? Would we have the Xerox machine? Would we have an iPod? Or for that matter the Gutenberg press? ... In each of those cases there would be vast amounts of infringing uses."

Justice David Souter made a similar point, saying, "If a guy is sitting in his garage figuring out whether to invent the next iPod, how do we know in advance anything that would give the inventor the confidence he would not be sued?"

Justice Anthony Kennedy, appearing to give some weight to the plaintiffs' arguments, said something is amiss about a company building a business around distribution of unauthorized copies.

He said it appeared that "expropriated property can be used as part of the start-up capital" of these firms, adding, "that sounds wrong."

The court was weighing the Sony Betamax precedent, but another case involving the Napster internet site, which under its former owners had some 60 million users downloading mostly illegal copies of songs from its central servers.

Taranto argued that this case is different from Napster, which was eventually shut down by the courts, because that firm encouraged people to copy songs from its own computers. Moreover, he said P2P networks have many legal uses and should be no different than iPods or photocopy machines.

In order to shut down Grokster and Streamcast, Taranto argued, the plaintiffs would have to show they encouraged piracy or were guilty of "willful ignorance."

Up to now, courts have ruled in favor of the technology industry.

Some technology groups have filed briefs that support neither side, but urge the court to uphold the Betamax precedent while leaving open options to curb piracy.

The case stems from legal action filed by 28 Hollywood studios and music firms in 2001, arguing that the free swapping of digital content threatens creators of virtually any creative work that can be illegally copied over digital networks.

Kazaa, a popular Australian-owned file-swapping network, is a defendant as well but its case is being heard separately.

The case has attracted widespread interest, with over 50 supporting briefs filed on behalf of prominent firms including Intel, Yahoo and Apple; the US government; groups as diverse as Consumers Union, the National Basketball Association and Business Software Alliance; and musicians such as Elvis Costello and Avril Lavigne.
http://www.bakutoday.net/afps/englis...t_1_visu2.html


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Supreme Court Hears P2P Case
John Borland

Supreme Court justices quizzed attorneys for file-swapping software companies and Hollywood studios Tuesday, in a case that will help determine the future of both the technology and entertainment industries.

In their questions, the justices were critical of the entertainment industry's proposal, which would hold companies "predominantly" supported by piracy liable for copyright infringement. However, they showed little sympathy for the file-swapping companies' business model.

"What you are suggesting is unlawful expropriation of property as a kind of start-up capital," said Justice Anthony Kennedy. "From an economic standpoint and legal standpoint, that sounds wrong."

The case, which pits big record labels and movie studios against file-trading software companies Grokster and StreamCast Networks, is the culmination of five years of legal battles against the peer-to-peer networks that entertainment companies believe are undermining the viability of copyrights.

Two federal courts have already ruled in favor of the file-swapping companies, saying that the software should be compared to a photocopying machine or a VCR--that it has enough legal uses to protect the file-swapping companies.

Record labels and movie studios dispute that idea, saying that Grokster and StreamCast, the parent of the Morpheus service, have deliberately built their business on the existence of widespread copyright infringement. They're asking the Supreme Court to rule that any company whose business is predominantly supported by piracy should be liable for that infringement.

Dueling protesters lined the sidewalks outside the court building before the hearing got underway. Black-T-shirt-wearing supporters of file sharing carried signs proclaiming "Save Betamax" and "RIAA keep your hands off my iPod."

Meanwhile, another group of 18 singer-songwriters from Nashville carried guitars and signs reading "Feed a musician. Download legally."

"We're hear to give a face to people being hurt by illegal download," said Erin Enderlin, one of the songwriters. "When we don't get paid, we can't pay our rent."

That argument has sent ripples of anxiety through Silicon Valley. Technology companies are leery of being held responsible for unforeseen or unauthorized uses of their software, and many are deeply concerned that the entertainment industry's proposal would force a potentially crippling legal review of virtually every product before its release.

Intel, the Consumer Electronics Association, and other technology and venture capital groups have appealed to the court to avoid placing new liability on technology manufacturers, rather than on individuals who are infringing copyrights.

As influential as the case is likely to be, few believe the issue will end with the Supreme Court, whose decision is expected in June. Many observers expect the losing side to take its case to Congress after the court rules.

Indeed, many legal observers say the high court is likely to leave the law largely as is and if it wants a different outcome, to ask Congress to change the copyright law.

"I think the court is going to affirm (the lower-court rulings)," said Ronald Katz, a copyright attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Philips. "This doesn't fit in with the way copyright law is written. But it's not surprising that the law doesn't fit with something that didn't exist at the time the law was made."
http://news.com.com/Supreme+Court+he...3-5644861.html


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FAQ: Betamax--Tech's Favorite Ruling
John Borland

On Tuesday morning, lawyers from Hollywood and the technology industry will meet at the U.S. Supreme Court to argue over the fate of peer-to-peer software. But they'll be spending much of their time talking about the VCR.

At the core of the file-swapping dispute is an interpretation of the 20-year-old decision that made Sony's Betamax legal to sell in the United States. Much of the subsequent consumer electronics industry has been built with that decision in mind, and now companies are worried that it's open for review.

The following list of frequently asked questions is a layman's guide to why the Betamax ruling matters today.

Isn't Tuesday's Supreme Court case about Grokster and file-swapping? What's all this about Betamax?
Two lower federal courts have ruled that file-swapping software companies--in this case, Grokster and Morpheus parent StreamCast Networks-- aren't legally liable for the copyright infringement that happens on their peer-to-peer networks. For support, both courts pointed to the 1984 Supreme Court ruling that said Sony Betamax VCRs could be legally sold.

Many people inside the technology industry believe that the Betamax decision laid the foundation for much of the subsequent computer and consumer electronics industry. Some worry that a new ruling on the issue could change the legal ground rules for technology businesses.

How would my life be different without the Betamax decision?
The Betamax ruling established that it was possible to record media at home, as long as it was for personal use. It made sure that companies producing recording devices couldn't be sued, even if some people used them in illegal ways. If Betamax had gone the other way, the explosion in VCRs, rental movies, home DVDs and digital video recorders couldn't have happened, or would likely have been slower and more expensive.

The case also let personal computers, which can digitize and record audio and video, develop without restrictions.

What started the fight?
Sony released the Betamax video recorder for the United States market in 1976. Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Productions promptly sued Sony, contending that recording video at home was copyright infringement.

Why did they sue Sony, instead of the people making the recordings?
The studios made an argument called "contributory copyright infringement," saying that Sony was responsible for making large-scale copying possible.

What were video recorders actually being used for?
The case largely took place before the tape rental market had taken off. Surveys by Sony and the studios showed that the primary use for VCRs, at least in 1978, was recording TV content so it could be watched later.

Was recording a show at home actually illegal?
At the time, it wasn't clear. The studios said home recording was illegal if permission hadn't been granted beforehand. Some shows explicitly gave viewers the right to record, or gave guidelines on how long tapes could be kept before being erased.

How did the case get to the Supreme Court?
The District Court initially ruled in favor of Sony, saying that "time-shifting"--recording a show so it could be watched later--was legal. But even if it had been deemed copyright infringement, the court said Sony couldn't be held legally responsible for those actions.

A court of appeals decision upended that judgment, saying that copying TV programming at home was not fair use. Because videocassette recorders were sold primarily for making copies of copyrighted works, the court said Sony should be liable for damages, and potentially should be barred from selling VCRs.

Who supported the studios?
Amici, or "friends of the court," briefs were filed in support of the studios by the Association of American Publishers, CBS, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Music Publishers Association, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Writers Guild of America, among others.

Who supported Sony?
Amici briefs were filed in support of Sony by the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, GE, Hitachi, Sears, Toshiba and 12 states, among others.

What did the Supreme Court rule?
In 1984, after seven years of litigation, the Supreme Court largely upheld the lower court's initial ruling. In the most far-reaching portion of that decision, that court said flatly that a product is not liable for contributory infringement if it is also used for legitimate purposes. "Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses," the court wrote.

The court also held that home recording, at least for the noncommercial use of "time shifting," was not infringement.

If copying at home is OK, why are people being sued for file-swapping?
People who are uploading music though peer-to-peer networks aren't viewed as doing it for personal use. Their actions potentially have an effect on the market for music or videos in a way that recording a TV show and watching it later does not. Record labels have said that "ripping" a CD to MP3 files, or burning a few copies, as long as they're for personal use, is OK.

OK, but why isn't DVD-copying software legal?
Home copying is legal, but entertainment companies aren't required to let you do it. There's another law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which makes it illegal to break through any antipiracy protections put on digital media. Movie studios protect their DVDs against copying, and so all the software that breaks through this protection is illegal to distribute in the United States.

Most memorable quote on the issue:
In 1982, testifying in front of Congress before the Supreme Court had ruled, MPAA President Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
http://news.com.com/FAQ+Betamax--tec...3-5637912.html


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MGM v. Grokster: Innovation On Trial
Grant Gross

During opening arguments yesterday, Supreme Court justices yesterday voiced their concerns that should the entertainment industry get its way, technology companies may stop innovating.

The entertainment industry wants to sue the distributors of the Grokster and Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) software packages for their users' actions.

During oral arguments in the MGM vs. Grokster case, justices peppered a lawyer for the entertainment industry with questions, saying a move away from a 21-year-old standard on technology and copyright could have major effects on the technology industry.

Ents industry wants control

Donald Verrilli Jr., representing the music and movie industries in the case, told justices that Grokster and Morpheus distributor StreamCast Networks built their business plans around copyright violations, and the vast majority of files traded with the Grokster and Morpheus software violate copyright law. The Supreme Court's 1984 Sony Betamax ruling exempts makers of technology from secondary copyright liability lawsuits when their technology has "substantial noninfringing uses," but Grokster supporters can point to just a few hundred thousand legal files among the 2.6 billion traded with P2P software each month, he said.

"That's the whole business," Verrilli said. "What they're talking about as lawful is a tiny, teeny little fraction."

Verrilli called Grokster and Morpheus a "gigantic infringement machine that was built on inducement" of copyright violations.

Control versus innovation

But Justice Stephen Breyer questioned how the court could draw the line between Verrilli's assertion that P2P software enabled "substantial" infringements and the Betamax ruling. If the court recognized a new standard penalizing technologies enabling substantial copyright violations, the copying machine, the VCR and the Gutenberg printing press might not be legal, Breyer said.

Using the same logic, the entertainment industry could argue that Apple’s iPod also encourages copyright violations, added Justice David Souter. "If I can get music to the iPod without buying the CD, I'm not going to buy the CD," he said. "How do we know in advance on your test anything that gives the inventor or the developer the confidence to go ahead?"

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals erred in rejecting the entertainment industry's case because it "basically adopted a test of theoretical noninfringing uses," answered Paul Clement, acting solicitor general of the Bush administration's Department of Justice, which is siding with plaintiffs Motion Picture Association of America, the National Music Publisher's Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America in the case.

Technology under threat

But a tougher definition of secondary liability would open up technology companies to many more lawsuits, said Justice Antonin Scalia: "I'm going to get sued right away before I get a chance to do business," he said.

Justices didn't spare P2P lawyer Richard Taranto from tough questioning. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the Sony Betamax decision continued on for 13 pages after establishing that the Betamax VCR technology was capable of substantial noninfringing uses. The Supreme Court in 1984 recognized that the VCR's primary commercial use was for "time shifting" television programs by recording them and watching them later, a legal use, she said.

Justice Anthony Kennedy questioned why the Supreme Court should stick to the Betamax standard when most commercial uses of P2P are related to copyright violations. Taranto told justices that the Grokster case focused only on the current actions of the P2P vendors, not past actions that may have encouraged users to violate copyright law, but Kennedy questioned how Taranto could separate past actions from the current business plans.

"What you want to say is unlawfully appropriated property can be used for (a business') startup capital," Kennedy told Taranto.

Ginsburg also questioned how the distributors of Grokster and Morpheus could shield themselves from charges of willful ignorance of their users' copyright violations. Justices noted the 9th Circuit Court, in 2001, ruled against file- trading service Napster.

Not Napster

Unlike the old Napster service, which operated centralized servers, Grokster and StreamCast Networks don't know what's being traded by users of their software, Taranto said. Their decision to offer decentralized file-trading software went beyond avoiding Napster's fate, he said; P-to-P technology also frees the vendors from the cost of operating central servers.

Outside the courtroom, advocates for the Grokster side wore T-shirts saying, "Save Betamax." Some slept over night outside the court.

Grokster supporters said they were encouraged by the justice's questions during the hearing. "I thought the justices asked exactly the right questions," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and lawyer for StreamCast Networks in this case. "Is it right that the entertainment industry should be in charge of the nation's technology sector?"

A Supreme Court decision is expected in about three months.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index...ge=1&pagePos=4


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Justices ask about innovation

Court Reviews Peer-To-Peer File-Sharing Case
Don Jordan

Regulating music and movie-sharing programs on the Internet could hinder innovation, some Supreme Court justices said Tuesday in a case that could shape the commercial future of entertainment.

The court is reviewing a ruling that software companies that provide free "peer to peer" file-sharing technology cannot be held liable for copyright infringement by the software's users. In the case, called MGM Studios v. Grokster, the court is considering whether to shut down Grokster and other Internet programs that allow computer users to obtain music, film and other products for free.

Justice Antonin Scalia said during oral arguments that if he were an inventor, "I know I am going to get sued right away if I start this business."

Justice Stephen Breyer compared the software's copyright infringing capabilities to that of the iPod, the portable device that can be used to store thousands of illegally downloaded songs.

Attorney Donald Verrilli, who represents the motion picture studios and recording companies that are appealing the lower court ruling, argued there is a difference between the two that makes Apple's iPod legal.

"There are significant commercial uses" for the iPod, Verrilli said. The file-sharing companies "intentionally built a network of infringing users."

Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that file-sharing technology is used legally millions of times a year.

Verrilli responded that illegal downloading accounts for more than 90 percent of the file-sharing software's uses, adding that the companies "operate in the shadows."

Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which produces the Morpheus file-sharing program, are both named as defendants in the case. A decision could be months away.

Verrilli said the recording industry has lost 25 percent of its revenue since the "onslaught" of the file- sharing companies.

But Richard Taranto, who represents the file-sharing companies, said the entertainment industry has no credible evidence that file sharing is harming business. He cited the 1984 case Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios, in which the high court ruled that Sony was not liable for copyright information committed by people using Betamax home video recorders.

"The Sony ruling safeguards legitimate uses," Taranto said. "Changing the rule would have an overriding bad effect on other industries."

Some of the nine justices also raised concerns about the software companies encouraging illegal file- sharing to gain new users and increase profits.

But the targets of the entertainment industry's lawsuit argued that there is much more at stake than copyright infringement.

"There is nothing illegal about innovation," said Michael Weiss, the chief executive officer for StreamCast.

Outside the Supreme Court, record company supporters played guitars and sang as others carried signs that read, "Feed a Musician, Download Legally," and "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

Nashville songwriter Erin Enderlin, 23, said illegal downloading has forced some smaller Nashville record companies to shut down and has reduced the number of artists signed to contracts.

"We're not anti-technology, but just pay us for the songs you're downloading," Enderlin said.

Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier, famous for helping write many hits, including Stop! In the Name of Love and You Can't Hurry Love, attended the arguments and said he was optimistic his songs would be protected.

"We're in a very traumatic situation," he said.

Members of the Consumer Electronics Association march- ed along the court stairs in support of file-sharing companies.

Spokeswoman Megan Pollock said a decision against the file-sharing companies could stifle the availability of technology for consumers.

"In the long run, you don't know what is next," Pollock said of new technologies. "If you stop it now, it's sad."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...h/news/3108813


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Lively Debate as Justices Address File Sharing
Linda Greenhouse

The much-heralded Supreme Court showdown in the Grokster case between old-fashioned entertainment and newfangled technology found the justices surprisingly responsive on Tuesday to warnings from Grokster, the software maker that allows Internet users to share computer files on peer-to-peer networks, that a broad definition of copyright infringement could curtail innovation.

Justice David H. Souter asked Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the lawyer arguing for the Hollywood studios and the recording industry, to envision "a guy sitting in his garage inventing the iPod."

"I know perfectly well that I can buy a CD and put it on my iPod," Justice Souter said. "But I also know if I can get music without buying it, I'm going to do so."

Because that possibility was so obvious, he continued: "How do we give the developer the confidence to go ahead? On your theory, why isn't it a foregone conclusion from the outset that the iPod inventor is going to lose his shirt?"

That Justice Souter, the least technically minded of the justices - he still drafts his opinions by hand on a legal pad - could even invite a dialogue about Apple iPods, much less suggest that he could be tempted to engage in illegal file sharing, was an indication of how this confrontation of powerful interests had engaged the court.

But by the end of the lively argument pitting Grokster and its allies on the electronic frontier against the entertainment community's stalwart defense of intellectual property rights, any prediction about what the court will actually decide appeared perilous. The justices themselves seemed taken aback by the procedural complexities of the case, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios v. Grokster Ltd., No. 04-480, which moved through the lower federal courts on summary judgment, without a trial.

Some justices appeared tempted by the prospect of allowing the studios and record companies to get to trial on a legal theory that the lower courts did not address: that Grokster and the other defendant, StreamCast Networks, which offers the Morpheus file-sharing service, are liable for copyright infringement for having actively induced consumers to use their software to download copyrighted material on an immense scale.

The Federal District Court in Los Angeles, in a decision affirmed last year by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, took a different approach, ruling that the file-sharing networks were not liable because their services were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses."

The lower courts took that test from the Supreme Court's 1984 decision that absolved the Sony Corporation, manufacturer of the Betamax video recorder, of copyright liability for infringing uses that consumers might make of the product.

The Sony decision provided the right answer, and that should be the end of the case, Richard G. Taranto, arguing for Grokster and StreamCast, told the court. He said it was "critical" for the Supreme Court to adhere to the "clear Sony rule" for the sake of "innovation protection."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg objected, noting that the 1984 decision "goes on for 13 more pages" after articulating the test that provided Sony's defense.

"If the standard was that clear, the court would have stopped there," Justice Ginsburg continued. "I don't think you can take one sentence from a rather long opinion and say, 'Ah-hah, we have a clear rule.' "

In briefs filed as friends of the court, allies of the file-sharing networks in various technology industries and civil liberties organizations have depicted file sharing as a useful, if not vital, means of expanding knowledge through the inexpensive transmission and Internet archiving of lawful material in the public domain. As long as the noninfringing uses were not "far-fetched," Mr. Taranto said, the defense that applied to videocassette recorders should be available for his clients' "autonomous communication tool," as he described file sharing.

Whether this argument makes headway may depend on the technological universe that the court considers in applying it. Grokster and StreamCast are asking the court to look at all possible uses of file sharing, not just the use that is made of their own software. The plaintiffs, backed by the Bush administration, are asking the court to focus on the business of the defendants.

Paul D. Clement, the acting solicitor general, told the justices that while the Ninth Circuit had used as its test "the mere theoretical capability of noninfringing uses," the Supreme Court should look at the actual "business model" used by the defendants. It was an "extreme case," Mr. Clement said, a model built on "copyright infringement without liability, with the full knowledge that the draw is unlawful copying."

"Sony could have set up a 'theoretical capability' test, but it didn't," Mr. Clement continued. Instead, he pointed out, the Sony decision required evidence of a "substantial" noninfringing use. The court in that decision found that consumers used their VCR's primarily for recording television programs that they could watch later, a noninfringing use referred to as time-shifting.

Justice Antonin Scalia said he was concerned that legitimate uses of a new technology might need some time to become established; in the meantime, the developer would be defenseless against a copyright infringement suit. "What I worry about is a suit right out of the box," he said. "Do you give a company a couple of years to show 'substantial' noninfringement?"

Mr. Clement replied that in the government's view, there should be "a lot of leeway at the beginning." But that was "not this case," he said, asserting that Grokster and StreamCast had "a business plan from Day 1 to capitalize on Napster."

Napster, the original file-sharing network, was put out of business by a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2001 that it was secondarily liable for the copyright infringement committed by its users. The Ninth Circuit found that Grokster differed significantly from Napster because its software permits users to share files with one another directly, rather than going through a central computer server.

Mr. Verrilli, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, urged the justices not to rely on that distinction. "There is a shell game going on here," he said. "Our position is that we're entitled to injunctive relief against the continued operation of this gigantic machine that was built on infringement."

In a second argument on Tuesday, the court heard an appeal by the Federal Communications Commission and the cable industry of another Ninth Circuit ruling, this one with implications for the development of the business of providing high-speed access to the Internet. The Ninth Circuit rejected the commission's view that companies offering cable modem service should be considered in the "information service" rather than telecommunications business, and as such should be exempt from the extensive regulation to which federal law subjects traditional telephone companies.

At issue is the ability of Internet service providers to force cable companies to open their broadband lines. The outcome of the case, National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, No. 04-277, is likely to depend on how much deference the justices decide to give to the F.C.C. Based on the argument, the outlook is uncertain.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/te...0bizcourt.html


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Will High Court Dodge P2P Decision?
Roy Mark

One thing that distinguished the Supreme Court debate Tuesday morning over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and copyright infringement liability was that the justices meted out tough questions for both sides.

By the end of the one-hour hearing, the tough questions were enough to give both the entertainment and technology industries serious pause as to which way the court will rule.

The justices repeatedly peppered MGM attorney Donald Verrilli with questions about how far Hollywood wanted to move the line on secondary copyright infringement. Far enough to stifle innovation? Far enough to cause inventors to quit innovating over fear of lawsuits?

That line of questioning pleased technology advocates who want the court to uphold the principles laid out in the 1984 Sony Betamax Supreme Court decision. In that decision, on a close 5-4 vote, the court said if a technology had substantial non-infringing uses, it was immunized from lawsuits even if some people use the technology for illegal purposes.

But P2P pleasure quickly dissipated when the justices accused them of using stolen copyright materials as "seed capital" to build their businesses.

"There were, in short, questions from the court that would provide both comfort and discomfort to both sides. And any prediction about the outcome would be hazardous, indeed," Jeffrey Knowles, a San Francisco intellectual property attorney who attended the hearing, said in an e-mail comment.

That said, Knowles then ventured a prediction: "I think this court is prepared to resolve at least some part of the ongoing debate about the copyright accountability of peer-to-peer file-sharing services -- and in the process add new insight into the Sony Betamax decision's application in the digital era."

Blair Levin, a senior analyst with Legg Mason, was also e-mailing opinions after the hearing.

"The Supreme Court justices were dissatisfied with the implications of the extreme positions each side presented, and we believe they likely will try to develop a way to send the case back to trial on a narrower theory of infringement," Levin wrote.

If they do, it will likely be on the issue of "active inducement." Under current copyright law, companies can be held liable for secondary copyright infringement if they actively encourage users to infringe.

Up to this point, that has not been an issue in MGM vs. Grokster. Both a district court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grokster based on the Sony Betamax standard established by the Supreme Court.

But when Verrilli told the court the standard that Hollywood uses when deciding to pursue lawsuits against different types of technology, he said it wasn't the percentage of non-infringing uses, but the business model being developed by a company.

"That's an inducement argument," Justice Antonin Scalia shot back.

"On several occasions, the justices' questions implied that they might be able to resolve the case without reaching the issues of Sony's scope, perhaps on the grounds of active inducement," Knowles, who has represented music interests against P2Ps, wrote. "They noted, however, that this would not go very far in resolving the next case in which, perhaps, the evidence of such inducement might be absent."

Levin said a lower court decision on active inducement "would be a better result for the content industry than a 9th Circuit ruling, but offers less protection than they are seeking at the Supreme Court."

He also noted an active inducement case would represent a "more livable outcome for both the tech and network companies than the test advocated by the content industry and the government."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/print.php/3493961


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The Web On Speed: P2P And Epidemic-Based Protocols
Chris Jablonski

Emerging technologies like Web services, trading exchanges, XML market data, and pervasive computing will not tolerate the current state of information latency on the Web. For example, a domain name currently takes days to propagate through all the DNS servers and caches distributed around the globe.

According to Meta Group's Nick Gall, a new generation of P2P (peer-to-peer) protocols is almost ready for prime time that will drastically reduce the time it takes for information to spread over the Internet. He points to Cornell's Project Quicksilver that pulls together a set of technologies based on peer-to-peer and epidemic-based protocols, "which can quickly and reliably spread large amounts of information throughout a globally federated network in seconds and minutes, versus hours and days," according to Gall. As an indicator of increasing commercial interest, he points to Amazon's hiring last year of Cornell's Werner Vogels to design such protocols into its next-generation architecture.

"Leading-edge users should be pursuing this technology for their next-generation business service networks; otherwise, they will face an expensive rip and replace of conventional registry/repository technology in three to five years," Gall asserts.

To get a head start, you should get familiar with Cornell's Ken Birman, who is leading the Quicksilver project, the fourth generation of a similar set of technologies. His new book, Reliable Distributed Systems: Technologies, Web Services, and Applications, is due out any day now.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Research/index.php?p=128


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Grok This

Artists deserve to be paid — but the entertainment industry’s bid to outlaw innovation is wrong-headed and doomed to fail

THE QUESTIONS that Supreme Court justices ask during oral arguments are notoriously unreliable as guides to how they will eventually rule. Nevertheless, the justices appear to have focused on the right issues this past Tuesday in the matter of MGM Studios v. Grokster, which has been described as potentially the most significant copyright case in a generation.

The justices made it clear that they have no sympathy for those who use Grokster and other peer-to-peer file-sharing programs to download music and movies illegally, thus depriving artists, actors, and other creative types of the rewards that are justly theirs. But the court also seemed unwilling to solve the problem by stifling technological innovation. As Justice Stephen Breyer observed, the entertainment industry’s arguments in favor of banning P2P software could just as easily be used to outlaw photocopiers, VCRs, and portable MP3 players such as the iPod, given that all those products can be used to violate copyright law. Said Breyer: "You see the problem here. It could be that in each of these instances there are vast numbers of infringing uses."

There is a major difference: Grokster and Morpheus, similar file-sharing software owned by co-defendant StreamCast Networks, do not appear to have any legitimate business applications, which makes them quite different from the examples Breyer cited. And the justices were right to be troubled by the notion that they should offer legal protection to businesses that profit from theft. But the court needs to craft a solution that somehow manages to punish illegal activity without stifling innovation.

Illegal file-sharing is a real problem, and the entertainment industry’s attempts to shut down companies that facilitate it are understandable. But though suing may make sense in the short term, in the long term the industry must overcome its reluctance to come to terms with new technology — a reluctance that is not only hurting its own bottom line, but that of the creative community as well. Remember, it wasn’t that many years ago that the industry did try to ban the VCR, because it feared people would tape movies and shows off their television sets and sell them surreptitiously. Fortunately, in 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that that the Sony Betamax could be sold legally because it could be used for legitimate purposes, such as time-shifting. The main difference between the Grokster case and the earlier one is that, by most accounts, at least 90 percent of P2P activities are illegal. Yet in the early days of the VCR, industry leaders did not foresee the rise of prerecorded videotapes and video rentals, developments that helped revitalize and enrich Hollywood. The same could happen with P2P. We are in the midst of a very fluid situation, and it’s impossible to know how technology will develop over the next few years.

Rather than standing in the way of innovation, the music and film businesses need to embrace it, and to understand that today’s threat can become tomorrow’s profit center. Consider the case of Apple. In 2001 the company began selling Macintosh computers with built-in CD read-write drives and software that made it easy to download music and transfer it onto compact discs. Apple’s advertising slogan — "Rip, Mix, Burn" — was a virtual invitation to steal. Two years later, though, Apple entered into a partnership with the major recording labels, which had finally become desperate and scared enough to try something new. And Apple has since sold well over 100 million songs — legally — through its iTunes Music Store. The partnership provided a huge boost to Apple’s iPod music players, and helped to revive the record industry as well, even if it did have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The entertainment business can also combat the illegal file-sharers by offering innovation that promises greater value for consumers. One of the dirty little secrets of online music is that it often doesn’t sound all that great. The reason: compressing it for rapid transfer over the Internet removes so much data that a true audiophile can discern a significant difference. Yet CDs aren’t perfect, either. In the past several years, the record labels have gingerly embraced new formats such as Super Audio CD, which offers much richer sound when the disc is played on the proper equipment. The industry benefits because the file sizes produced by formats such as SACD are so huge that transferring them over the Internet simply isn’t practical. Likewise, an increasing number of albums are now being released with the music CD on one side of the disc, and videos, concert footage, and other extras in DVD format on the other. The idea is that fans won’t want to miss out on the DVD goodies by downloading the music for free.

Dire predictions to the contrary, illegal file-sharing has not killed the music business, nor is it likely to destroy the film industry, either. Recorded-music sales were up two percent last year, the first increase in some time. That doesn’t mean the business is healthy — CD sales are still far lower than they were just four years ago, largely because of illegal downloading. But it does mean that there is still time for the industry to get its act together. Moreover, artists themselves do not agree on the hazards of file-sharing. Sheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks have sided with the record industry in the Grokster case. Others, such as Chuck D and Brian Eno, have taken the opposite position, arguing that P2P makes it easier for them to distribute their music and limits the power of the international media conglomerates that control their work. It’s hard to see how Chuck D and Eno’s utopianism is ever going to put money in any artist’s pocket. But they are among the most thoughtful observers of the music scene, and their views need to be taken seriously.

None of this is to countenance theft. Stealing music, films, and other content is wrong, whether said theft takes place via Grokster or by slipping a copy of a CD under one’s jacket and walking out of a store. The old online saw that "information wants to be free" has never made any sense. After all, musicians, actors, writers, and other artists — as well as the companies that make their work possible — deserve to be properly compensated for what they produce.

Ultimately, though, dealing with the challenge of technological innovation by trying to outlaw it is as futile as commanding the tide to stop coming in. The Grokster case is fundamentally different from the Napster ruling of several years ago: Napster actually provided a central directory to facilitate theft, and it made some sense to shut that directory down. This time, the industry is trying to ban an idea. Even if Grokster and Morpheus are shut down, P2P software will continue to proliferate — if not here, then overseas, which the Internet makes just as accessible as the record store next door.

So, whether we like it or not, illegal file-sharing is here to stay. The industry’s goal should not be to eliminate it, which is impossible, but rather to reduce it to a manageable level through a combination of legal action against particularly egregious violators and better value for consumers who play by the rules. That’s what will best serve everyone’s interests, including those of the artists themselves. Those are the principles the Supreme Court justices should keep in mind as they prepare to decide this case three months from now. That doesn’t mean Grokster and Morpheus shouldn’t be put out of business; perhaps they should, given their officials’ utter contempt for the rights of artists. Developers and marketers of such software should have some economic responsibility to those who are being financially damaged. The onus should not be placed only on the copyright holders who are being ripped off. Nevertheless, the entertainment business needs to invest at least as much effort in embracing new technology that would benefit everyone.
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/...s/04576696.asp


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Creative work makes for slippery private property online

As The Supreme Court Weighs The Legality Of File-Sharing On The Web, Some Are Calling For A New Kind Of Copyright
Gregory M. Lamb

You might have to go back to Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to find a publishing technology as disruptive. The Internet can reproduce content and distribute it almost anywhere at nearly light speed. Call it the perfect copying machine - with an out tray to everyone.

And that's the trouble. For any creator of "intellectual property" - text, software, music, videos, and so on - the Internet is challenging the fundamental notion of who owns the content and how it can be used. This week, the issue reached the United States Supreme Court in a case that may go a long way toward deciding what rights creators have. The issue isn't clear cut.

Protect the creators too much and it may inhibit technological progress and chill artistic expression, some argue. Others say the technology and culture of sharing electronic files has made the philosophy of "all rights reserved" obsolete.

What's needed, some observers urge, is a new copyright that recognizes a middle ground between all rights and no rights to a work of art.

In court, the big music and film companies "can win every single case from now until the cows come home, but they cannot put the genie back in the bottle because people have discovered that they have the tools of participation," says Andrew Zolli, founder of Z+Partners, a think tank in New York. What the Internet has done is wrest away from a few producers the ability to sell scarce goods to a large group of consumers through expensive and highly controlled channels, he adds, such as when three commercial networks controlled what TV viewers saw in the 1960s. Now everyone with access to a computer has "the tools to produce as much media - if not more - than they consume."

Indeed, the Internet hasn't only made copying easy, it also has helped foster a culture in which some artists create new work by literally reusing or remixing the work of others. Hip-hop music, built on the idea of "sampling" the beats or sounds of earlier music, is the most obvious of several examples. "The very works that we seek to copyright are built from found objects of other cultural products," Mr. Zolli says.

Some say this remix world demands a new attitude toward copyright, one that still respects the artist's need to make a living, but acknowledges that a carrot works better than a stick to pay the bills.

That was John Buckman's idea in 2003 when he founded Magnatune.com, an independent record label that sells music through online downloads and CDs and also licenses music for both commercial and noncommercial use. His business plan was simple: Let people listen to the music all they want for free over the Internet. If they like an album so much they want to own it, they can pay a range of prices from $5 to $18 per album, which they can choose. (On average, he says, buyers are paying $8.20.)

Whatever they pay, half goes directly to the musician, a much larger share than in conventional record deals. The company has 180 artists signed up, most of whom produce music in niche categories, such as classical or new age. So far, no one's getting rich. The highest earners, Mr. Buckman says, make a little more than $20,000 a year, barely enough for a couple of Britney Spears's wardrobe changes.

The company's slogan is "We Are Not Evil." That's a direct swipe at major record labels, whose pricing policies and crackdown on illegal file- swapping have angered many. That activity, known as peer-to-peer (or p2p) file-sharing, is shrinking a bit, and legal downloading from sites such as Apple's iTunes music store is increasing, according to a recent poll from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. But it's unclear whether illegal swapping really is decreasing, or whether respondents are reluctant to admit to it for fear of being sued by music companies.

While iTunes has sold 300 million songs online in its first three years, some 750 million songs are traded for free online each month, according to estimates by BigChampagne, a firm that tracks file-sharing on the Internet. Those p2p trades are illegal, according to current law.

P2p lies at the heart of a case argued before the US Supreme Court Tuesday. In MGM v. Grokster, lawyers for the entertainment industry and others argue that p2p software such as Grokster is used almost exclusively for illegal sharing of copyrighted material, such as songs. They want it shut down or hemmed in by strict safeguards.

Those supporting Grokster, mostly from the high-tech community, argue that such restrictions would inhibit future technological innovation and creative energy. They say that the software has legitimate uses.

The Grokster case will turn on one issue: whether the technology has substantial uses that are legal uses, says Manny Pokotilow, the managing partner of Caesar, Rivise, Bernstein, Cohen & Pokotilow, an intellectual property law firm in Philadelphia.

In a narrow 5-to-4 decision in 1984 involving the Sony Betamax videocassette recorder, the Supreme Court said Sony wasn't liable if some people used the machine to make illegal copies because the technology had substantial legal uses as well.

With Betamax as precedent, Mr. Pokotilow isn't so sure the argument from the entertainment companies will hold up. "To me, someone could have enjoined the use of the Xerox machine when it first came out," he says, because it could be used to make copies of copyrighted materials.

If the court does crack down, and if entertainment companies continue to sue individuals who use p2p, Buckman says, he expects a boon for his business. "The harsher the atmosphere is for pirates, the more angry they will be, and the more they'll seek out fairer alternatives," he says.

Buckman operates under a unique kind of copyright called Creative Commons, developed by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, in which "some rights reserved" is the operating principle. Under Creative Commons, artists can choose to relinquish all rights (release to the public domain) or keep some, such as requiring attribution (giving the author credit). They may ask for permission and payment for commercial use, but not for noncommercial use. And they can mandate that the user agree to "share alike," meaning that if the work of art is used to help create a new work (such as a new song), that new work of art has to allow others to use it in the same way.

More and more companies springing up will recognize the new economics of copyright, Zolli says. "Some of them will flame out badly. Some of them will go down and take some of their customers with them.... But a new crop of companies will eventually emerge to take advantage of the participation and create economic value out of it."

One successful model already exists in Amazon.com, he says. "Amazon actually puts huge amounts of their intellectual property [online for free]. You can read many of the books that you can buy from Amazon right on the website."

Letting customers sample content creates new demand and not just for a few blockbusters. Some 90 percent of the books listed on Amazon.com sell fewer than 1,000 copies each, he says. People are "buying books they've never heard of" until Amazon.com introduced them.

The technique isn't new, Buckman says. "Music has always been given away for free to create demand." It's been sold through being played on the radio and more recently through music videos on MTV or free CDs stuck into magazines. "All we're doing is giving it away through a different medium," he adds.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0331/p01s01-stin.html


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In the Competition for DVD Rentals by Mail, Two Empires Strike Back
David Pogue

YOU might not imagine that there's a single movie-distribution channel left to invent. These days, a movie can reach you by pay-per-view, on a plane, at the video store, on a TV movie channel, on the Internet, at the front of a Greyhound bus, in the second row of a minivan or even - get this - in a movie theater. (Hey, it could happen.)

Not to seem ungrateful, but none of these mechanisms deliver the holy grail: any movie, any time. There is, however, a low-tech distribution channel that comes pretty darned close: DVD rentals by mail.

Seven years ago, Netflix invented the category, the business model and the prepaid two-way shipping envelope. Now, as three million subscribers are helping Netflix hit its profitable stride, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart have entered the market, taking a page from the Netflix playbook.

Actually, they've taken pretty much the entire playbook. All three services look and work almost exactly alike. Netflix must be furious.

The fun begins at each company's Web site, where you can look over its DVD collection. Netflix and Blockbuster list 40,000 and 35,000 titles, many times what you'll find at the video store. Wal-Mart brings up the rear with 16,000 movies.

Using a Search box, New Releases lists, movies by category and so on, you build a list of the movies you want to see, in the order you want to see them. This movie queue is a big deal; building it and customizing it give you the same sense of achievement as setting up your iPod playlists.

A day or two later, the first three discs arrive by mail, packed in a three-layer shipping envelope. After watching a movie, you rip off the top layer of the envelope, revealing the return address. When the company gets that DVD back, it mails you the next one in your queue.

Where you live determines the mailing times. Netflix has 30 distribution centers all over the country; Blockbuster has 23, and plans to add 7 by June. (Wal-Mart brings up the rear again with 14.) In metropolitan areas, if you ship a movie back on Monday, you'll generally get the next one on Wednesday or Thursday.

The appeal of these companies lies primarily in their convenience, vast selection and accommodation of your quirky tastes. But there may also be an economic attraction. Each company charges a flat monthly fee. For example, Netflix's three-DVD plan costs $18 a month; Blockbuster's, $15; Wal-Mart's, $17.36. (What's the matter? Focus groups didn't go for $17.37?)

For that money, you can watch as many DVD's as the Postal Service can bring you, as long as you never have more than three at a time. (Other plans are available for lighter or heavier appetites.) If you watch and return three movies a day, you could theoretically watch 40 DVD movies a month, all for the same $15. True, you wouldn't have a life, but you'd be paying only 38 cents a movie.

The best part is no late fees and no deadlines. A DVD can sit on your shelf for weeks, waiting for the mood to strike you. (That tends to happen with movies you've heard are great but depressing, like "House of Sand and Fog.") The rental company doesn't care; it is paid the same amount whether you return the thing or not. In other words, these plans banish one of life's nagging worries: the fear of racking up huge late charges.

As you can imagine, starting a DVD-by-mail operation is an enormous logistical challenge. In the early days, Netflix horror stories (scratched or lost discs, long delays) were commonplace. These days, though, Netflix's act is decidedly together; its customer service stories sometimes verge on the heroic. ("I once somehow managed to mail back one of my own DVD's in a Netflix return envelope," one reader wrote to me. "I was certain that I would never see that disc again, but I sent an e-mail to customer service anyway. I got a prompt reply saying that they would locate my DVD and send it back to me - and they did. No charge.")

Netflix (netflix.com) has the most subscribers, too: three million customers, versus 750,000 for Blockbuster. (Wal-Mart doesn't disclose its membership numbers.) And as it turns out, 800-pound gorilladom has its privileges. You'll find far more customer movie reviews on Netflix, which can shield you from renting duds. And Netflix's power in the industry occasionally translates into exclusives and early availability; Netflix had "The Incredibles" in my mailbox on the very day it was released by Pixar. (Blockbuster - no small industry player - says that it will soon announce exclusives.)

By their admission, Blockbuster (www.blockbuster.com) and Wal-Mart (www.walmart.com/dvdrentals) are still playing catch-up. Wal-Mart, for example, has only a small fraction of its rivals' movies and distribution centers. It is often the last of the three companies to get a new movie in stock. Its Web site doesn't offer any customer reviews. Surprisingly, its three-DVD plan is not even the price leader (Blockbuster has that distinction). So unless you believe in rooting for the underdog - has that word ever appeared in the same sentence with Wal-Mart before? - there's no good reason to choose it.

Blockbuster's DVD-rental Web site is a joy to navigate, but its status as a fledgling seven-month-old service is sometimes evident. For example, it tends to be overly cautious when estimating when you'll get the movies in your queue. The day before its release, "The Incredibles" was listed as "very long wait (six weeks or longer)," but it arrived in three days. And the Blockbuster site occasionally greets you with: "Sorry, but we needed to do a little housecleaning. Please check back later."

But Blockbuster offers an irresistible feature that its rivals will find impossible to duplicate: two downloadable rental coupons a month for anything from a Blockbuster store: DVD movies, VHS tapes or even video games. Movies-by-mail is great, but it doesn't approach that "Sorry about your day, honey; let's go pick up a movie" spontaneity.

Nor is that the only twist Blockbuster has, ahem, in store. Later this year it will increase the number of distribution centers by as much as 15,000 percent when it invites its 4,500 local stores to become DVD mailing centers. This audacious master plan ought to shave DVD shipping times drastically. (If the local store doesn't have the movie you want, one of the regular centers will send it out instead.)

There are, in other words, two winners here. Blockbuster is the value king, undercutting Netflix by $3 a month and offering in-store rentals; it's as though it is reimbursing you for tolerating its start-up glitches.

Netflix is the service king, the smoothest and the most reliable program. It's the only outfit with highly evolved features like separate queues for each family member (including individually addressed envelopes), each limited by movie rating, if you like. Netflix also offers far more plans than Blockbuster or Wal-Mart; you can sign up to have any number from two to eight discs out at a time, at prices from $12 to $48 a month. For busy people, a two-DVD plan is especially attractive; Blockbuster offers no such plan.

Before you cancel HBO and tear up your Blockbuster card, though, some words of caution. All three companies ship each DVD in a bare-bones envelope, so you don't get to see the artwork or the liner notes. Bonus discs count as separate titles. Scratched or unplayable discs are an occasional nuisance. (At each company's Web site, you can report the damage with one click. The company takes the DVD out of circulation and sends you a replacement.) Discs sometimes disappear in the mail, too; fortunately, you're not charged (at least if it doesn't happen with suspicious frequency).

Otherwise, though, the DVD-by-mail distribution channel is a brilliantly conceived solution to a classic new-millennium problem. You get exactly the movies you want, almost when you want them. Don't look now, but "movie channel" has just acquired a whole new meaning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/te...ts/31stat.html


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Hollywood Seeks iTunes For Film
Stefanie Olsen

Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment is trying to develop and own the next iTunes--but for films.

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like (Apple Computer CEO Steve) Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, said at the Digital Hollywood conference here.

"I'm trying to create the new 'anti-Napster,'" he added.

To that end, Arrieta said, his group plans to digitize Sony Pictures' top 500 films and make them available for the first time in various digital environments within the next year. He said the distribution for films like "Spiderman II" will go beyond just Movielink, the video-on-demand joint venture of Sony Pictures and several other major studios, which to date has hosted a limited library of Sony's.

For example, Sony plans to sell and make films available in flash memory for mobile phones in the next year, Arrieta said. It also will further develop its digital stores for downloading and owning films on the PC, he said in an interview.

Sony's plans--and similar moves by other studios--are likely to avoid empowering any one technology company--such as Apple in the music equation--and allow studios to pocket more of the profits. The philosophy in Hollywood is "Define your own agenda or someone else will for you."

Equally important is trying to avoid the rampant digital theft in peer-to-peer communities that the music industry has suffered, media executives say.

At the Digital Hollywood conference--a three-day event beginning Wednesday--media executives including Arrieta ruminated on ongoing hurdles to giving consumers access to unlimited films, TV shows or multimedia on a range of devices, anywhere at anytime.

They agreed that issues surrounding digital rights management, consumer adoption, and simple and compatible consumer electronics remained bottlenecks in the industry.

Still, Hollywood is working with technologists to help deliver the promise of the "digital home" more than ever before, according to entertainment executives. It's just that the two sides may still be speaking different languages.

"The plumbing of IT is converging," said Adam Bain, vice president of technology and production at Fox Sports Interactive. "But there are so many different devices the trends are of a divergent nature."

Advertising's future
Media executives during the "Digital Home" panel also discussed the future of 30-second TV commercials in a digital environment that lets consumers skip over the ads.

Charles Swartz, executive director and CEO of the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center, said that because ads are the most effective sales tool ever invented, they will not disappear. But, he said, there's an opportunity to customize and target the ads to people's homes with advanced technology.

"Commercials aren't dead; they'll just get more interactive and effective," said Shahid Khan, managing director of Bearingpoint, an entertainment consulting firm. "But someone has to figure out how to better measure this animal."

Whatever the case, entertainment, advertising and technology will increasingly meld into a seamless product, executives say, and it remains to be seen who will be the powerbroker. Sony Pictures, whose parent company develops a wide range of consumer electronics, reiterated that it's trying to set its own agenda for new entertainment distribution.

"The future is about creating an entertainment ecosystem," in which players, platforms, content rights, and the user interface are fluid, Arrieta said. The industry's "in a transition period, but there's a high-level dialog (with technology partners) going on now."
http://news.com.com/Hollywood+seeks+...3-5647682.html


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Microsoft Launches Video Download Service
Dinesh C. Sharma

Microsoft on Wednesday formally launched its video download service for handheld devices deploying Windows Mobile.

Owners of Portable Media Centers, smart phones and pocket computers will be able to download daily programs and other video content from MSNBC.com, Food Network, Fox Sports, IFilm, and other providers, the company said. The service was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Microsoft said about 20 content partners, including CinemaNow, MTV, Napster and TiVo, have agreed to make video formatted for devices using Windows Mobile since the launch of Portable Media Center last year.

"The launch of Portable Media Centers in 2004 began a new era of portable entertainment, and today's announcement solidifies the continued momentum we've seen for portable video," John Pollard, director of Windows mobile applications at Microsoft, said in a statement.

Microsoft said subscribers will be able to select content like sports clips, news headlines and music videos from the video Web site. Some content can also be downloaded to PCs running Windows XP. The service is available in the United States for an annual subscription of $19.95. Some free content also be available without a paid membership.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+launch...3-5647078.html


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Microsoft Expands Antipiracy Program
Ina Fried

As part of its growing antipiracy program, Microsoft plans to require customers that want to download a local language add-on to Windows first verify that their copy of the operating system is legitimate.

Over the coming months, Microsoft will require all customers that want to download one of 22 "Language Interface Packs" to first authenticate their copy of Windows.

"They are significantly valuable add-ons to Windows," said David Lazar, director of the Genuine Windows program at Microsoft. The language packs add localization options beyond the dialects for which Microsoft offers full-fledged Windows versions.

The move is the latest expansion of a broad program in which Windows users are asked to verify their copy of Windows before downloading various add-ons.

When the pilot program began last year it was purely optional, with no benefit for verifying one's operating system and no penalty if the OS was found not to be genuine. Over time, Microsoft has added perks for those whose Windows copy passes muster, and the company has announced plans to withhold software downloads from those whose copy is determined to be unauthorized.

Microsoft has said that piracy costs the company millions but has not been specific about its losses. The Business Software Alliance, of which Microsoft is a member, has pegged annual industrywide losses at $29 billion, though that figure has been disputed.

Lazar noted that the language packs are still relatively new, allowing Microsoft to blend two strategies together--increasing the number of languages in which Windows is available while at the same time clamping down on piracy.

The company is starting this week with its Vietnamese language pack and plans to add the validation requirement to four or five of the language packs each month.

Microsoft has been gradually shifting its Windows Genuine Advantage from an opt-in program to one that will be required for most downloads. The program has been optional in all but three countries: Norway, the Czech Republic and China. However, Microsoft plans to make it mandatory for all users by the middle of this year. Lazar said Wednesday that the company was on track to meet that goal.

In countries where Microsoft is requiring customers to verify their version of Windows, the software maker has been offering a discount on a legitimate copy of the OS to those whose copy is found to be pirated. Lazar did not say what percentage of customers have opted for the offer but said there has been "good uptake."

The company is also being clearer about which security updates will be made available to those whose Windows copy fails to pass the test. In the past, Microsoft had said customers would not be able to use Windows Update to get security patches at will but noted that users would still be able to keep their machines current via Automatic Update. Lazar noted Wednesday that customers can also download individual patches from the Microsoft Download Center, although that requires a customer to know what patch they're looking for.
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+expand...3-5647224.html


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RadioYourWay Great for Radio Junkies
Ron Harris

Today's technology consumer devours lots of different media, and that has taken the luster away from some old- fashioned information stalwarts - namely AM/FM radio.

These days, I'll squeeze in time for my favorite radio programs right after I'm done reading a boatload of e-mails, listening to voicemails (home and work), uploading digital photos to my blog, reading my RSS feeds and updating my Netflix queue.

Oh, and did I mention that my cell phone ringtones are getting stale?

Thankfully, Pogo Products' latest gadget, RadioYourWay LX, has worked plain old radio programming back into my busy day.

RadioYourWay is about the same size, shape and color as a full-sized iPod, though lighter. It's an AM/ FM radio that can be programmed to record the radio programs you want and save them on its internal memory for later playback - on the go.

Think of it as a pocket-sized VCR for radio.

The model I tried sells for $200 and comes with 128 megabytes of onboard memory. That might not sound like much storage given today's 40 gigabyte digital audio players, but 128 megabytes will hold hours of decent quality audio encoded at lower bitrates, which is fine for talk radio.

For instance, at the lowest quality 32 kbps audio encoding setting (plenty good for AM), I was able to record more than eight hours of talk shows to the unit's internal memory. RadioYourWay also includes a slot for adding an SD memory card for more storage.

I used the menu screen to set up some daily recording schedules. It was quick and painless to set the unit to record KGO-AM 810's Ronn Owens from 9:00 a.m. to noon each weekday; some KNBR sports talk radio at 2:00 p.m.; and the creepy world of George Noory and Art Bell on "Coast to Coast AM" in the wee hours of the night.

The files can be saved as MP3s or Windows Media Audio files. Once I filled the unit with hours of radio, I connected it to my PC via the provided USB cable and transferred the files over to free up more room on the radio.

RadioYourWay appeared as a removable disk in the "My Computer" folder. There's a CD with some drivers included with the unit, but I never needed it on two of the three computers to which I connected the unit, which is compatible with both PC and Mac.

Audio can be recorded at 32, 64, 96, 128, and 256 kilobits per second, but anything higher than 64 kbps demanded too much storage space for something I wasn't planning on keeping very long anyway.

Speaking of digital audio files, the Supreme Court has just heard an Internet file- sharing case. The court is attempting to determine if companies that make file- sharing software are liable for what users do with it.

Pogo executives say they don't expect their device, which can turn FM songs into MP3 files on the fly, will draw heat from the broadcasting industry.

"Equate this to the VCR in your home," said Pogo's vice president of sales and marketing, Robin McSurley. "If you're time-shifting a broadcast program for your own viewing pleasure on your own VCR, that is your legal right."

I give RadioYourWay high marks for excellent radio reception, digital volume control and the handy line-in jack for recording external audio. The rechargeable battery boasts 10-hour life while in record mode, and I got about that during my tests.

Griffin Technology has conquered time-shifting radio as well with its RadioSHARK product ($100). But that device must remain plugged into the computer since it has no onboard memory or power source.

RadioYourWay does it all from the comfort of your pocket.

At $200 (or $250 for the 512 MB model), RadioYourWay is a little pricey for a fancified radio, but Pogo really built this one well.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...LATE=DEFA ULT


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Review

Creative MuVo Micro N200 MP3 Player
Tony Smith

The N200 is Creative's most diminutive MuVo yet - hence the 'Micro' in the title. The feat has been achieved by ditching the MuVo family's integrated USB connector in favour of a slimline, D-shaped port of the kind you find on digital cameras and the like. Yes, you now need a cable, something not required by other MuVos, but you get a much more compact player.

It's shorter than Apple's iPod Shuffle, but wider and thicker. Ditto older MuVos and even the V200. It's heavier than the Apple player too - 34g to 22g - but when you're down to this level, a few grams here or there make little difference. Like the Apple device, and other MuVos before it, the N200 is eminently pocketable, but unlike its rival, Creative bundles an armband and a belt holster, though a neck lanyard would be more useful - particularly since the N200 has a loop on the back to connect one to.

The Shuffle may lack the N200's tiny display, but it does have a better controller. The MuVo family is still in the jog-dial era, and I found the N200's to be rather spongy - it was too easy to push the wheel in, the equivalent of a mouse click, when I was actually trying to flick it up or down.

Equally fiddly is the power/play/pause, which is recessed into the body of the player, making it hard to push if you don't possess small fingers. Does Creative believe only little kids want to play these toys?

Unlike other MuVos, the N200 is a single-part device, so the AAA battery from which it takes its power fits snugly into a bay on the back of the machine. Creative claims an alkaline cell will give you 15 hours' playback, more than the Shuffle's 12 hours and easy replaced when it had run down.

On the base of the player, behind a rubber cover, is the aforementioned USB socket. Next to it is the 2.5mm line-in port. Creative bundles a 2.5-to-3.5mm cable, allowing you to connect the N200 to other audio/video kit and record their output direct to MP3. Encoding is limited to 96, 128 or 160Kbps.



It's a slightly tricky system to use. You set the record level with the volume keys, though you can't adjust them once you've started encoding. And I found that while the music coming through the earphones sounded fine, it was too high for the encoder, causing the recorded sound to be clipped. You can get it right with some experimentation, but there are better ways of getting audio onto the device. That said, once you've got the record level right, the N200 is good at spotting the gap between tracks and creating a new file at each break.

Speaking of noise, there's an audible whine when the screen's backlight is on. Fortunately, you can keep the backlight off, and in any case this wasn't a problem I noticed with the N200's sibling the V200.

Playback of WMA and MP3 files, by contrast, is flawless, and unlike many other comparable players, the N200 fully supports DRM-protected WMAs from music download services. If the sound's not quite right for you, there's the usual EQ pre-sets and a custom equaliser to help you adjust the sound to your taste. Rolling the cursor over each pre-set is enough to trigger it, so you can rapidly sample each one with any given song.

FM playback is similarly fine - well, within the limits of any analog radio of this size that uses the earphones as an antenna. In short, the sound is a little hissy and it's easy to move just off-station as you're travelling around. You can record radio programming, though the files are saved in WAV format rather than MP3. Ditto whatever you record off the player's built-in microphone.

Like past MuVos, the N200 works with Creative's own Windows-only jukebox software, but since it also operates as a generic USB storage device, you can drag and drop compatible music files too - good news if you're a Linux or Mac OS X user (use Chris Shull's free WinFSCleanser to zap all those invisible Mac meta files that just confuse the MuVo).


Verdict

Creative's Flash players just keep getting better. The N200 looks good, sounds great and if its controls are a little too fiddly, it's nonetheless sufficiently compact for the smallest of pockets. It doesn't have the iconic look of Apple's iPod Shuffle - and with it quite the same level of 'must have'-ability. It's a little more expensive, too. But it's the clear winner on features.


Creative MuVo Micro N200

Rating
80%

Pros
Compact size; display; looks good; great sound quality.

Cons
Fiddly controls; weak line-in recorder; no integrated USB jack.

Price
£90/$120 (512MB), £130/$170 (1GB)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03...ive_muvo_n200/


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Supports MP3, WMA and OGG

Pez To Dispense MP3s Instead Of Candy
Matt Hines

Rap impresario 50 Cent may be riding atop the Billboard charts on the strength of his hit single "Candy Shop," but music lovers of all kinds will soon be able to mix their passions for beats and sweets if one gadget maker's plans come to fruition.

That's right, the candy market's best-known handheld device, the iconic Pez dispenser, is about to go digital. Under a recently granted licensing agreement with Pez Candy, a gadget design company known as Lincoln West Studios will soon begin selling MP3 players modeled after the big-headed plastic treat sleeves.

Based on Lincoln West's plans, which were first detailed Thursday in a blog posted to the company's Web site, the Pez MP3 will arrive sometime this summer, built around a Samsung chip, and featuring 512 megabytes of capacity, as well as an LCD screen. The device will look exactly like a traditional Pez dispenser from at least two sides, and will come in a variety of colors, said Patrick Misterovich, president of the Springfield, Mo., design company.

And while the Pez MP3 will not hold any hidden capacity for carrying the time-honored candy onboard, the device will mate with any of the plastic heads produced to snap onto actual Pez Candy dispensers. This feature alone could play out in a gadget geek's dream, as Pez recently added characters from the Star Wars trilogy to its legions of swappable hinged craniums.

The first production run of the devices, built for Lincoln West by a third-party manufacturer, will deliver roughly 1,000 of the MP3 players to the United States. The music players, which will come with ear-bud style headphones and a USB cable to connect with PCs, will sell for $129 apiece and be sold directly through Lincoln West's site. The lightweight devices will have six control buttons and an LCD readout that mimics the design of other smaller players, Misterovich said.

The designer said he was inspired to create the Pez MP3 after following a competition launched by breath mint maker Altoids, which challenged participants to create something original out of one of the company's pocket-sized tin containers. The winner of the competition was an individual who stuffed a speaker for use with Apple Computer's iPod digital music player into one of the tins.

"I saw that and I thought, that's pretty neat, taking something that you wouldn't think of as electronics and turning it into a device," Misterovich said. "When I started thinking about how I could do that, the Pez idea came to me, and I figured it was something that was pretty cool that could appeal to a lot of people."

The gadget stylist has previously marketed MP3 players aimed at younger audiences, including so-called "tweeners," or boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 13, who fall between traditional children and teenage marketing segments. While those players, dubbed as Secondhand Monkeys, produced only mixed results, and relatively small sales, Misterovich said, the designer is convinced that the cult-like following already dedicated to the ubiquitous Pez candy dispensers will help spur greater interest in his newest creation.

"The (Secondhand Monkey) was just an experiment, it was probably a bit too early to market at that demographic, but it will be there someday," Misterovich observed. "Pez dispensers are something people have already shown that they're very willing to grab onto."
http://news.com.com/Inventor+turns+P...tml?tag=st.pop


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Potential of Lesser Known Audio Formats
ToM

Back in on dialup in 2001, I'd queue gigs upon gigs of MP3 audio via Audiogalaxy, rarely giving the quality of the files I was about to download a second glimpse. 128kbps, even 96kbps CBR MP3, as long as it sounded like the original song, it'd do. Hard drive space was an issue back then too. With less than 30GB to spare, I didn't want to waste precious space on small music files. Besides, what were LAME and Xing encoders? Back then, it didn't seem to matter.

Nowadays, my music downloading habits have changed a lot. Whether it's a single or an entire album, I now find myself spending time going after the best encodes I can find. With my PC now carrying close to a Terabyte of storage, I can download near endless amounts of music without skipping out on quality.

One open format of compression, Ogg Vorbis (.ogg), has appealed to me the most, and for the past couple of years has been my choice when ripping CDs to my shares.
Another lossy format that caught my eye was Musepack (.mpc). Although not my preference for encoding, I often download high quality MPC encoded albums from the likes of MPC Donkey.

"Lossy" is a term given to compressed music such as MP3, OGG, MPC, WMA and iTunes. These types of file have been compressed to an extremely small file size after being ripped from a CD. Quality varies depending on the format, bit rate and encoding technique used.
"Lossless" is the term used for formats which maintain their original CD-quality sound after being ripped from a CD. These are much larger than lossy audio.

One big advantage of downloading lossless audio is that you're free to compress it to your favorite lossy format afterwards for playback on, say, your portable MP3 player. Keep the original CD quality file or delete it after compressing, it's your choice.

Trans-coding from one lossy format to another simply doesn't work as you can't realistically make already-compressed audio a higher bit rate than the source.

Compared to lossy audio, lossless rips are much harder to get hold of online, particularly of older and rarer music. The newsgroups are probably the place you'll find the most lossless audio publicly, carrying an array of lossless binary groups. Much like with other media, eDonkey is also often a great resource for archived lossless rips.

Now, onto pay services. With lossless audio being a rarity, wouldn't you think pay services would want to fill the void? In the eyes of the experienced file sharer (this one at least) pay services such as Napster offer absolutely nothing new in comparison to what's already available - for free. In fact, with the inclusion of DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions, limited content and other annoyances, pay services offer substantially less than conventional P2P.

The one service I know of that's been offering lossless and alternative lossy encodes for sometime now is the Russian-based AllOfMP3.com. "Online encoding", as it's dubbed on their website, gives the customer the ability to choose from a range of different audio codec’s, ranging from MP3 to OGG to FLAC and so on. This variety appeals to me, and together with reasonable prices and the lack of DRM makes AllOfMP3 the only service currently on the market worth paying for, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, AllOfMP3 has been under legal attack from the American Recording Industry, and only remains legal due to its location. Back at the beginning of the month, AllOfMP3 was deemed legal under current Russian law.

The use of lossless and high-bitrate audio formats is a relatively recent trend; the MP3 format preceded consumer broadband by several years. As more people continue to migrate from dialup to broadband internet service, and with broadband speeds as well as hard drive capacities increasing, the popularity of lossless audio should continue to rise, perhaps even becoming the dominant format within the next few years amoungst file-sharers.

So, "Why waste time offering alternative codec support? .XXX is the most popular - all the hardware out there supports it!" Unfortunately, I believe this will be the excuse pay services will be using for some time to come. Also, supporting other formats would, in the eyes of a greedy distributor, give the consumer too much control over their purchase which would be free of the DRM Windows Media Audio can support.

Though it's true WMA, AAC (iTunes) and MP3 are the most widely used format by consumers, I still believe accounting for other formats could potentially attract a market that would otherwise not give pay services a second thought.
http://respectp2p.org/article/4/


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The Grokster Case's Silent Majority
Chris Anderson

This week the Supreme Court received an avalanche of friend-of-the-court filings for its hearing of the Grokster case, which pits a peer-to-peer file-trading technology against MGM. Yet the outpouring of concern in the case only hints at the true number of interested parties.

Two decades ago, when the famous Betamax case set a precedent that protected the VCR, it was consumers versus the studios and record labels. But now there's an equally important third party: the creative amateur — people like you and me who not only consume but also produce content. And they're on the side of Grokster and the extraordinary power of the new distribution networks.

As anyone who's played with the software now shipped with any new PC or Mac knows, the same tools that allow you to easily copy and share music and video also allow you to make your own. As a result, we're seeing the rise of a peer-production generation, such as teenagers using Apple's Garageband to create or remix their own music and snowboarders distributing highlight videos of their tricks to, yes, bloggers like me.

Once upon a time, the ability to manufacture and distribute media and entertainment was the domain of professionals alone. Only pros could harness presses, airwaves, trucks, warehouses; only pros could command shelf space in the media and entertainment markets. Videotape and audiotape were the first cracks in this wall, giving consumers the power to do a weak form of manufacturing and distribution. But digital technology collapsed the wall. Using no more than my laptop and any one of a hundred cheap or free online services, I can be recording studio, record label, music store and marketing machine.

The Amazons, EBays and iTunes of the world have broken through the distribution bottlenecks. Increasingly, their endless aisles of shelf space hold not just the manufactured hits of the traditional media and entertainment powers but also the remarkably diverse output of countless niche producers. Each may not sell a lot, but together they represent a cultural force that can rival the mass market.

And they are not just in it for the immediate sales. Britney Spears may consider file-trading a threat to her royalty stream, but there are other musicians who would be delighted to find they had become a peer-to-peer hit. Getting heard is the challenge for most bands; once they have fans, there are lots of ways to make a living off them, from touring to T-shirts to CD sales. Even legends like David Byrne are on their side. As he put it in a National Public Radio interview, "Most artists see nothing from record sales — it's not an evil conspiracy, it's just the way the accounting works. So as far as the artist goes — who cares?"

What's at stake is the realm of ideas, sliced and diced a million ways. The peer-to-peer music sites are the closest current approximation to the celestial jukebox we all want. Kazaa, for instance, has 25 million unique tracks, dwarfing iTunes' measly 1 million. BitTorrent has more videos than Blockbuster. Much of it is pirated, to be sure, but a significant portion of it — videogame highlights, say — was never intended to be moneymaking in the first place. The problem is that we don't know how to stop the piracy without chilling the creativity.

The main flaw in the case against Grokster is that the action attempts to criminalize a technology rather than a specific use. It also fails to distinguish between commercial content and noncommercial content. Restricting these powerful new distribution tools to fight piracy would hobble the new emerging creative class too. The potential collateral damage to legitimate users is much higher than in the Betamax case.

The Supreme Court should recognize that there is a silent majority in this case, made up not of pirates or the pop stars but the millions of individual talents who risk getting caught in the crossfire.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions


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New Dr. Who Leaked on Purpose?
Daniel Terdiman

The pilot episode of the BBC's highly anticipated new Doctor Who series may have been intentionally leaked onto file-sharing networks to generate buzz, a source who instructed the network on viral advertising told Wired News.

Earlier this month, the 45-minute premiere episode, entitled "Rose," showed up on BitTorrent. The appearance of the episode generated a flood of discussion in online forums, blogs and the mainstream media. As a result, interest in the show, which debuts March 26 on BBC One, has skyrocketed.

The new series stars Christopher Eccleston as the time-traveling doctor. The long-running sci-fi series began in 1963 but has been absent from TV screens since 1989, except for a one-off TV movie, which was widely panned.

To one advertising consultant, the leak is clear evidence the BBC is taking advantage of some recently learned lessons on the power of viral advertising it got from a collection of hired guns known as the Broadcast Assassins.

The Broadcast Assassins were a group of entertainment and technology veterans brought in last year by the BBC's entertainment group to "discuss the impact of new technologies on viewing/ listening behavior," said Asa Bailey, a veteran advertising expert and member of the group. "We told them all about the how-tos, and how to do viral advertising," said Bailey, who is also founder of the Viral Advertising Association.

Bailey said the BBC asked the group how to use viral advertising to inform the public of its programming.

"I told them they should release things before their time, like what they've done with Doctor Who," he said. "Give out the first episode online, because it's going to be valuable. You've got that cool factor, and it's the whole, 'I've seen it before you have' kind of thing."

Bailey said the leak "is great, and it's the first time we've ever seen them do it, and so we're really impressed with them."

Bailey said although he didn't have definite knowledge the leak was official, the quality of the episode is highly suspicious. If it were an unofficial leak, it would likely be of poor quality, he said.

The BBC denied any part in the distribution of the episode.

"The leak of the first episode on the internet was not a publicity stunt," BBC spokeswoman Annie Frederick told Wired News in an e-mail. "It was a significant breach of copyright which is currently under investigation. The source of it appears to be connected to our co-production partner. We would urge viewers not to spoil their enjoyment and to wait for the finished version."

Frederick didn't say whether the leaked pilot is the final version. Although the episode is high quality, it may be a rough or incomplete cut.

The co-production partner, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also denied involvement, and said it is conducting its own investigation.

"We believe it was one of our suppliers," said CBC spokeswoman Ruth-Ellen Soles, who wouldn't elaborate on the nature of the supplier. "And at the moment, the investigation isn't complete."

But to Broadcast Assassin Bailey, denials of leaking the "Rose" episode are disingenuous. "It's a classic," Bailey said. "The best viral advert they could have done for that program would be to release the first (episode). You couldn't have come up with a better viral advert than that."

According to a study by Envisional, which monitors internet traffic, the United Kingdom is the No. 1 country in the world when it comes to downloading TV content from the internet. The study suggested that U.K. residents account for 20 percent of all TV shows downloaded from the net.

Meanwhile, although the BBC denies any role in the leak, the broadcaster has for months said it plans to implement digital downloading through the internet as a significant part of its broadcast offerings. The network said it will soon release a media player that would allow viewers to watch TV content online.

In any case, buzz about the Doctor Who episode has certainly paid off, whether the BBC takes credit for it or not. Word about it has reached countless sites, and, more importantly, the episode seems largely well-received.

"It's nice to have it back, and I'm looking forward to watching it with my daughter when it airs on the BBC in a few weeks," said writer Warren Ellis on his blog.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66913,00.html


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MGM vs Grokster - The Lover's P2P Quarrel
Thomas Mennecke

On March 29th, 2005, legal representatives from Grokster and MGM will present their arguments before the United States Supreme Court. At issue is whether Grokster can be held responsible for copyright infringement. Copyright holders contend that Grokster should be held directly responsible for the infringing activities of its users.

While Napster quickly fell to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in 2001, this has not been the case for Grokster. Unlike Napster, Grokster functions on a decentralized network, specifically FastTrack. While Napster maintained centralized indexing servers at their headquarters, the FastTrack network distributes this functionality throughout the community via "SuperNodes."

SuperNode functionality is built into the Grokster software. Anyone with a fast enough computer and internet connection can become a SuperNode.

Since Grokster cannot control these SuperNodes, two Federal courts have negated the copyright industry's claim that P2P developers are liable for copyright infringement. The only course of action left for the copyright industry is their upcoming appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Below we present to you, in perhaps a more jovial fashion, the conflict and arguments that surround each party.

Grokster: How was your day?

MGM: I'm not talking to you, Grokster...

Grokster: I'm sorry, what's wrong dear?

MGM: Don't play stupid with me, you know exactly what's wrong...

Grokster: Honey, I swear, all I asked was how your day is going.

MGM: Well, where should I begin? I woke up this morning, and noticed that you were stealing almost all of my most popular music and movie files.

Grokster: That's ridiculous honey. I have been sitting here programming all day. In fact, I don't think I've left the house all morning.

MGM: I'm sure you would like me to believe that, and I'm sure you would like to convince everyone else of that also. But whether you would like to admit it or not, you're helping millions of individuals each day to violate my copyrights.

Grokster: And what exactly does that have to do with me? Like I said, all I have done is sit here and program all morning. How do the actions of my users have anything to do with me? I don’t keep track of them, they aren't my children you know...

MGM: It has everything to do with you. You have full knowledge of the infringing properties of your service. This makes you libel as a contributory infringer. Your software is designed to assist in the massive infringement of copyrighted material, and is constantly being upgraded to aide in this end.

Also, you are guilty of vicarious liability. With all the advertising and third party software that coexists with the software, you have been making millions of dollars in revenue. You have been gaining financial advantage by exploiting my copyrights. And I haven't seen a dime.

Grokster: Money? Is that what it boils down to with you? Let me tell you something. First, stop using such misleading words as "service." We do not provide a service, we write software that creates a network. Those are two very big and distinct differences.

Second, what is this about contributory and vicarious liability? Because my software can be used to violate your copyright, I am guilty of this?

What you describe also paints a picture for just about every other piece of technology out there...iPods, CD writers, DVD writers, etc. To protect people like me from people like you, the 9th Circuit Court agreed with the Supreme Court’s Universal vs Sony Betamax decision in 1983. The Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that Sony's Betamax recorder was legal, which absolved Sony of contributory copyright infringement, as it does me. The Supreme Court ruled this way because the Betamax recorder was "capable of substantial or commercially significant noninfringing uses.”

In addition, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that I was not guilty of vicarious infringement because I do not control the indexing of files. Napster did control the indexing of files because their servers were centrally located. Since no communications exist between me and my users, save for the transmission of advertising, we are not guilty under this provision either.

MGM: I really can’t believe you're trying to pull that Sony Betamax crap with me right now. That's so typical of you.

Let me first say that you're right, the Supreme Court did find in 1983 that Sony's Betamax was capable of "substantial or commercially significant noninfringing uses.”

However, there are some big differences. All the gadgets you mention, iPod, CD Writers, etc, DO have substantial noninfringing uses. Video recorders DO have noninfringing uses. But do you expect me to use that logic with your software?

Let’s put things in perspective. According to some estimates, over 2 billion files are transferred over P2P networks every month. In addition, over 90% of those files are copyrighted works. I find it very hard to believe that any of those other electronic devices are used 90% of the time to distribute millions of copyrighted files each day.

You have obvious knowledge of copyright infringement. Why else have you stuck Napster metatags into your website to redirect web traffic? Hmmm? Why else did you choose a name so similar to Napster?

Grokster: Well, er-

MGM: I'm not finished! Do you think I forgot about the time when you created that nifty little AudioGalaxy migration tool? When I had those guys shut down, you went right ahead and created a program that easily transferred AudioGalaxy shared files to your service.

Lastly, let me reiterate that the 9th circuit court misapplied the Sony Betamax case. The Supreme Court ruled the majority of the Betamax’s use was for “time shifting” purposes of already free material. In addition, the application of “time-shifting”, or the recording of material for future viewing, has no effect on the artist’s incentive to create. The videocassette recorder, the court found, is not capable of massive copyright infringement and is protected under “fair use” laws since most people use the technology for home use.

I’m afraid that P2P technology and Betamax technology are on opposite ends of the spectrum here. P2P is fully capable of replicating copyrighted works beyond the Supreme Court's vision in 1983. Today, just about anyone can distribute thousands of copies of my material, multiplied by millions. How exactly does that constitute fair use?

Grokster: You really like to play around with that 90% figure, don’t you? Well let’s see, there are over 2 million people on the FastTrack network. Even if you number is correct, that leaves 10% sharing legal content. That equates to around 200,000 people. If you ask me, that is a substantial amount of people engaging in noninfringing activities. If you don’t believe me, let me break it down a bit.

Numerous recording artists, such as Janis Ian, Bela Fleck, John Mayer, Phish, Pearl Jam, and the Dave Matthews Band have authorized their work to be distributed via P2P. Numerous businesses, such as Prelinger Archives, GigAmerica, Reel Mind, and J!ve Media have built commercial businesses by using peer-to-peer file-sharing to promote and distribute hundreds of thousands of authorized copies of music, video, and video-game content. The Linux Operating System is frequently distributed by BitTorrent.

Many independent record labels are now opting to distribute their content via P2P also. Altnet, SnoCap, MashBoxx and BitMunk all have agreements with various independent labels to distribute their work. Should they suffer because you feel your business model is not in agreement with the P2P philosophy?

Lastly, the Supreme Court has shown in the past that it is not necessarily interested in what proportion technology infringes on one’s copyright. In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sony because their technology is “merely capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” While Grokster may be used for infringing uses right now, the future of P2P may not necessarily be this way. The technology must be allowed to develop without stifling innovation.

P2P technology has proven time and again to be a very practical and money saving way to distribute legal content.

MGM: Well that’s really great for those artists and companies, Grokster. It really is. But how does that help my situation? You know what really irks me?

Yes, that 90% figure really is important to me. While I can appreciate that many artists are now using P2P to distribute their work, you are doing nothing to prevent the infringement of my copyrights.

The technology readily exists for you to implement into your software. Several vendors exist that can and will recognize the unique fingerprints of copyrighted work. It will then prevent those files from being shared or distributed across the network. But of course, you won’t do this because it will threaten your business model.

If you did filter copyrighted material, people would simply go to another network. Your former CTO buddy over at StreamCast said “the question is not whether file- sharing companies can filter, but whether they will.” So I suppose the question is why you refuse to filter out copyrighted material?

Grokster: Note that he was the former CTO of StreamCast, not current. I have to strongly disagree with him. First, he said that back in 2003. Back then, perhaps it was easier to filter copyrighted works.

But remember, Napster tried doing this on a centralized network. If searches are routed through a central point, then perhaps it is possible. However, can you imagine trying to do this on a decentralized network? Such a feat would be near impossible. You don’t seem to realize that we do not see what happens on an individual’s computer. Even if we did by some miracle of science develop the technology, it would require individuals to download a new version of the software.

I’m sure that will be real successful. I can see it now “Hey everyone, we have a new version that filters out copyrighted material, download it now!”

MGM: You know, Grokster I wouldn’t be so mad if you at least showed some effort to help me out here.

Grokster: I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but both Federal courts have agreed that we are not liable for copyright infringement. I have a strong suspicion the Supreme Court will think so too. I have tried to make amends with you MGM, I really have. But you just don’t want to listen to what I have to say.

MGM: I have listened, but you are so set in your ways that it doesn’t appear we will be able to settle these issues ourselves. I’ll see you in court.



Arguments for this story were derived from the MGM, Grokster and Napster briefs.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=723


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Listen To The Supremes With Care

The current file-sharing legal battle in the US could well shape consumer technologies used around the world for the next decade, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson.

It would be nice to think that the argument currently taking place in front of the US Supreme Court over whether the Grokster and Morpheus peer- to-peer (P2P) network services are unlawful was just another piece of legal theatre that did not really concern us over here in Europe.

Sadly, history tells us we need to pay more attention to the outcome of the case than we might like to.

The outcome could well shape the consumer technologies used around the world for the next decade.

The court is being asked to decide whether Grokster and similar services are breaking the law because their networks can be used to distribute unlicensed content, like songs or movies.

What you do with it

Until now, P2P networks have relied on a decision from 1984 that protected Sony from being sued for producing video recorders.

The argument back then was that just because a technology could be used for copyright-infringing purposes that did not make it unlawful as long as there were also legitimate uses.

But the movie and music industries want to abandon this principle, and are arguing that courts should decide on a case-by-case basis.

This would let them sue Grokster, whose P2P network can be used for both licensed and unlicensed copying, but allow them to leave Apple alone even though iPods can do just the same.

The decision matters over here even though the case only concerns US law.

It matters in part because the US has a lot of influence over international organisations that write the wide-ranging treaties covering things like global trade and intellectual property law.

So if the Supremes go against Grokster it will not be long before WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, proposes extending the principle into international law.

But mostly it matters because the US is still the powerhouse of technological innovation.

If banks, venture capitalists and company directors are worried about being sued for marketing a cool toy that can be used in unanticipated but illegal ways then they will play safe.

The inventiveness that created the TiVo hard drive recorder, the MP3 player, and the dual-layer DVD writer will go into developing expensive games for locked-down consoles, new forms of keyword advertising for search engines and better ways around spam filters, or other equally useless activities.

In 10 years' time this may not matter much because China, India and Brazil will be leading the next wave of technological innovation, based around open source development and their own manufacturing capacity.

But they are not there yet.

While a decision to allow the entertainment industry to choke innovation in order to sustain its old business model in an online world could speed up this process, none of the aspirant players is yet ready to drive things forward.

Blogs bothered

It has certainly been entertaining to see the blog postings, Flickr feeds and other online activity coming from the copyfighters who queued all night to get one of the few places in the same room as the Justices while they consider the arguments.

And so far it seems to be going Grokster's way, with questions focusing on the impact on innovation and the degree of uncertainty that a change in the law would bring.

So I am optimistic about the final outcome, at least this time around.

This weekend I am speaking at the Edinburgh Science Festival, along with Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford law professor who has done so much to challenge the extremist view of copyright law put forward by large entertainment companies.

We will be arguing over the limits of the law, about how initiatives like the Creative Commons can make a difference and about how we can ensure that new technologies enhance freedom rather than simply give established players more control.

Lessig is one of the most prominent defenders of a more flexible approach to copyright.

It is one which would not make criminals of anyone who writes software that allows easy file sharing or simpler copying, and an outspoken opponent of a more restrictive law.

But he is a lawyer and an academic, not the CEO of a large software house whose business will be destroyed if the decision goes against Grokster.

It has been really disappointing to see how little support the P2P networks have got from the computing industry, even though they share a common cause.

Intel has filed a supporting statement with the court: the rest have been silent.

A few weeks ago, the Danish press reported that Microsoft's Bill Gates might re-consider the presence its research labs in Denmark if Europe did not allow software patenting, because he believes patents are vital to protect Microsoft's commercial interests.

The story has been dismissed outright by Microsoft. But it seems a reasonable position given how important patents are to Microsoft's strategy.

I may disagree with him but at least he is being consistent.

It is just a shame that he is not sitting in Congress with other representatives of the technology industry telling the politicians that giving the entertainment cartel the power to limit technological innovation will fatally undermine the US computing industry.

Then they might start to listen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4400373.stm
















Until next week,

- js.















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