How many CDs have you stolen?
sfgate.com
WHEN AN industry regards its customers as thieves, there's a problem. For the recording industry, this mistrust has morphed into near-war with some music listeners.
Technology has made it easy for kids in baggy pants -- and their buttoned- down parents -- to swap tunes free of charge over the Internet. Try as they will, Hollywood lawyers have had little luck curbing CD burning, file swapping of songs or a flock of Web sites devoted to copying tunes free of charge.
On April 25, the music industry lost a court challenge aimed at curbing software used by Web sites such as Kazaa and Morpheus that allow users to trade music for free. The judge, comparing the software fight to the movie industry's bid to halt VCRs, said technology wasn't the culprit.
The day before, music lawyers won another case, to their everlasting shame. Four college kids will pay $12,000 to $17,000 each for running campus music services that allowed fellow students to share music. Lose the big cases, but beat up on the small offenders: That's the recording industry tactic.
Coming next is an extension of this little-guy campaign. The big music firms want the Internet-access providers to cough up the names of subscribers who swap music.
In its clumsy struggle with reality, the so-called Big Five recording companies have plenty of legal firepower, but no reasonable answer to music listening in the Internet age. Yes, swiping tunes without paying for them amounts to shoplifting, deprives artists of royalties and snubs copyright laws.
But news-conference rants and scorched-earth court fights aren't going to change a pop culture trend.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...13/ED73882.DTL
Drop and give me twenty
New U.S. bill bows, looks suspiciously fancy.
Is it Real, or is it Pretty?
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Action the major ingredient for perfect film
THE formula for creating the "perfect" film has been discovered by an academic.
To create a hit movie directors need to combine seven essential elements in the right proportions to ensure they have success, according to university lecturer Sue Clayton.
Her research has revealed that the blueprint for a perfect feature must have: action 30pc, comedy 17pc, good v evil 13pc, love/sex/ romance 12pc, special effects 10pc, plot 10pc and music 8pc.
The study was based on detailed analysis of a cross-section of the highest grossing films in the UK in the past 10 years, ranging from Brit- flicks such as The Full Monty and Notting Hill to big budget blockbusters like Die Another Day and Titanic.
Ms Clayton, who is a movie director and screenwriting lecturer for the University of London and the British Film Council, was commissioned by diet Coke to carry out the research in order to better understand what the British public love about popular movies.
The research will be used to assess the potential success of prospective film sponsorship deals.
Toy Story 2, a Disney Pixar production, was the film that had the closest match to the blueprint. The animated tale grossed more than Ł44m at the UK box office.
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0...perfect%20film
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Soulseek Version 148 Released http://www.slsk.org/
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Security research exemption to DMCA considered
Kevin Poulsen
Computer security researchers would be allowed to hack through copy protection schemes in order to look for security holes in the software being protected, under a proposed exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) being debated in official hearings this week.
Enacted as an anti-piracy measure in 1998, after fierce lobbying from the motion picture and recording industries, the DMCA's anti- circumvention provision generally makes it unlawful for anyone to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" to DVD movies, digital music, electronic books, computer programs, or any other copyrighted work. To do so for commercial advantage or personal profit is a felony carrying up to five years in prison.
But Congress built a safety-valve of sorts into the law, giving the U.S. Copyright Office - part of the Library of Congress - the power to create exceptions to the DMCA to protect legitimate, non-infringing uses of copyrighted material. In October, 2000, when the law took full force, the office carved out two narrow exemptions: one allowing researchers to crack so-called "censorware" applications to learn what websites they block, and a second exemption for old computer programs and databases rendered unusable by a defective or obsolete access control mechanism.
To that list, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) would like to add an exemption permitting white hat hackers to crack copy protection schemes "that fail to permit access to recognize shortcomings in security systems, to defend patents and copyrights, to discover and fix dangerous bugs in code, or to conduct forms of desired educational activities."
"I'm going to argue that the [current] exemptions aren't sufficient, because we're having security people threatened," says ACM's Barbara Simons.
In 2000, a recording industry standards group used the threat of a DMCA lawsuit to block Princeton University professor Ed Felten from publishing a paper on weaknesses in a digital audio watermarking scheme. The group quickly retracted that threat, and similar cases are rare, but Simons says the DMCA still casts a shadow over the academic security community in a more subtle form, discernable in outline. "It's much harder to document what doesn't get written, what doesn't get published," says Simons. "But it's had a very chilling effect,".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30692.html
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The mood among campus file-swappers
Sumir Meghani
The Recording Industry Association of America recently stepped up its effort to combat music sharing by suing four university students who used their college networks to run file-sharing services.
But at Stanford University--as well as at other colleges and universities around the country--students are growing increasingly perturbed by what they see as an attempt by the record labels to infringe on their legitimate right to make copies of digital media.
This is not a group to alienate.
The RIAA's own statistics show that almost one-third of music purchases are by individuals younger than 24. This group is also likely to influence the purchasing habits of family members. From my experiences, I'd say roughly 80 percent of undergraduates on campus have downloaded a piece of audio or video from a peer- to-peer service during their college career.
You can divide the collegiate downloading universe into three broad categories.
Some students first find out about new artists or genres through friends. They download MP3s onto their computers to decide whether or not invest in a particular band. If they like the music, they purchase it at a local store or through an online retailer.
Other students download music that they would otherwise never purchase. They may like a particular song that they heard on the radio, but are not willing to pay $20 to acquire a CD that includes a dozen others that they have no interest in hearing.
The third group is comprised of students who download music that they would have bought if it hadn't been available for free on the Internet.
Given the magnitude of P2P downloads relative to historic music sales trends and my own personal experience on campus, I would think that the music industry would want to make a special effort to appeal to the second group. That's because, if these individuals bought each song they downloaded, profits in the music industry would be substantially larger.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-1001272.html
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IBM Boosts Shark's Copy Features
Press Release
IBM today announced that its TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server Model 800 ("Shark") has been enhanced for IBM's new flagship eServer z990 to provide unparalleled data protection and access for business continuity and efficiency.
On Demand capabilities now includes standby capacity on demand, which allows customers to acquire up to 6.9 terabytes of "standby" capacity based on business needs; this additional capacity is available whenever needed. IBM's flagship storage solution also now includes Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) V2 and FlashCopy V2 to significantly enhance data mirroring and business continuity for the z990 as well as other server environments.
"As the backbone of IBM's storage product family, we have continued to enhance Shark to deliver increased value to our customers," said Roland Hagan, Storage Systems Vice President, IBM Systems Group. "When coupled with our new flagship zSeries mainframe, the new Shark offers more data protection, performance and accessibility than any other zSeries/storage option to support customers' on demand requirements, which require extremely high availability and protection."
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=33739
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New Technology for the Packet Police
Mark Joseph Edwards
Cisco Systems has introduced new technology that will let law enforcement agencies
and ISPs police both networks and people. According to Cisco, one new creation already present in routers but not yet deployed, is the ability to tap both IP telephony calls and data streams.
Cisco submitted a draft proposal for a new standard, "Lawful Intercept in IP Networks," to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The procedures used to tap and intercept voice and data traffic would be undetectable by a user and prevent unauthorized personnel from knowing about such data taps. Additionally, if the tapped data is encrypted and an ISP has access to the encryption keys, then the ISP must either decrypt the information in the packets or provide the keys to law enforcement agencies.
http://www.secadministrator.com/Arti...rticleID=39020
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You don’t say.
P-To-P Leads List Of Most Disruptive Free Apps
TechWeb News
Ah, the ways workers waste time.
Internet content filtering software provider N2H2 released a new list Tuesday of the five most disruptive free applications that hound workplace managers trying to keep employees on task and the company's networks secure.
N2H2 -- which composed the list based on downloads, feedback from its customers, and office security and productivity measurements -- tagged peer-to-peer file- sharing programs as the leading disruptor.
Wasting work time isn't the only reason why P-to-P topped the list, said N2H2 in a statement, but also noted liability issues that can pop up when such software's deployed on company machines and networks. The Recording Industry Association of America, for instance, sent a letter to various Fortune 1000 companies in October of last year and again in January and March, warning them of possible sanctions if their employees traded illegal files with P-to-P software.
PC games, video players, free password assistance programs, and browser toolbars round out the Disruptive 5 on N2H2's list.
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNe...icleID=9901265
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Copyright Cops Slated To Close Lyrics Sites
Paul Rubens
Ever searched for that infuriating song lyric you couldn't quite make out? If the music industry gets its way, you had better sort it out while you still can.
"OK - let's make this the big one, frubmlub."
Trying to figure out that last word, the opening line from John Otway's classic 1975 song Beware of the Flowers (Cos I'm Sure They're Gonna Get You, Yeh) nearly drove me mad for 20 years.
I must have listened to the first few seconds of the record thousands of times but I could never quite make out what "frubmlub" really was.
Then one day in 1996, on a small website set up by Otway himself, I came across his e-mail address.
Sometimes you can be listening to a song and you just can't understand a word being sung, or you can't make out if the guy is singing 'woof woof woof' or 'who? who? who?'
Darryl Ballantyne, Lyricfind
So I sent him a message asking him what the word that sounded like "frubmlub" really was, and, amazingly, a few days later back came an e-mail from the one-hit-wonder himself (his "Cor Baby That's Really Free" reached number 27 in the charts in 1977) with the answer I'd been seeking all these years.
It turns out that I'm not alone in becoming obsessed with hard-to-make-out lyrics - millions of people around the world have wasted thousands of man-hours pondering over the exact wording of songs, probably ever since the invention of the record player.
The bad news for anyone with a troublesome lyric on the brain is that most sites are illegal: Sarah Faulder, chief executive of the Music Publishers Association, says that unless the websites have the permission of the copyright owners to display the lyrics (which most do not), they are breaking the law.
LyricFind's Ballantyne says that getting permission is impractical as there is no central body to approach to license lyrics en masse, but Faulder says this is no excuse for breaching copyright.
"Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission. It is as frowned upon as the downloading of music illegally, and when publishers know about these sites they follow them up", she says.
LyricFind has now been forced to remove all lyrics from its site, and others will probably close over the coming months. But with so many people so obviously interested in lyrics, more legitimate sites are bound to emerge - if only because there is money to be made from them by the copyright owners.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3019681.stm
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Leading File Sharing Company Challenges Publishers To Make All Music Content Available Online
Press Release
iMesh (
www.imesh.com), a leading peer-to-peer company which allows users to download, and share files issued the following challenge to the music industry today:
"The music industry needs to realize that the file sharing industry continues to thrive, and is not going away. While publishing companies and musicians have challenged file sharing companies in court, the time has come after last week's landmark ruling to realize that artists and publishers have clearly created a situation where users have little alternative but to search for free content online," stated Elan Oren, CEO of iMesh.
"For nearly 3 years, we have spoken with the music industry, and publishers to provide full, legal content online, and they aren't responsive. Publishers need to make all material, including the newest and most popular files available online, in the same form and manner as original music. We should work together to create a true partnership with file sharing companies to convert users to paid content. File sharing companies must work together with publishers to determine fair pricing, and a business structure. By not offering all content online, our millions of monthly users continue to tell us that musicians are helping to create the problem, as they don't offer a choice for consumers seeking top notch content online -- thereby exacerbating the problem," added Oren.
"With file sharing companies you can find all musical content online, in contrast to publishers sites which offer limited inventory. Consumers seek the best and newest material, and by publishers not making everything available, consumers will continue to seek out file sharing companies, where they can get great service and everything they want. By releasing spoof files, users aren't fooled and arent satisfied, as they can still find the unaltered versions. The music industry is realizing very small revenues from file sharing -- Why not seek to further monetize an existing market?" added Oren.
"While record sales continue to decline, and plastic piracy continues to grow, publishers and artists must realize the changing times. By achieving zero conversion from current file sharing users, the music industry needs to change and move forth in order to achieve success. Placing all content online is a good first step, within a controlled, focused business manner as an initial distribution point," added Oren.
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=51709
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Walking the plank in defense of pirating computer music files
B. Lammers
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I had used Daniel Lanois' new album, "Shine," in a test of a speaker system. That CD has been on my mind for about a month, and I can't get it out of there.
I made a copy of the "Shine" CD on my computer and gave it to my friend Jon because I thought he would like it. He did. Now it is stuck in his head, too. Am I a bad person?
I have been listening to Lanois' two earlier albums. I have been listening to the albums he produced for Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers. I own those CDs, and I've always loved them.
There was some Lanois music that I didn't have. He did the soundtrack to the movie "Sling Blade." I knew he had done a version of "Shenandoah" with Harris singing. The Borders bookstore that I was in recently did not have the soundtrack CD, so I fired up the file-sharing software on my computer and searched for "Shenandoah." Two different versions popped up. I downloaded them.
Am I a criminal?
Am I depriving Monsieur Lanois of his rightful earnings as a songwriter, musician and producer by copying his songs?
I added those two songs to several from the other albums to make what I called "The Daniel Lanois Sampler." I have been playing that CD in my car. My wife is playing a copy of that sampler in her car. I'm planning to give Jon a copy. I may even give my friend Joe one, too.
Am I a pirate?
"Aye, matey," the Recording Industry Association of America might reply. Recently, the RIAA sued four college students for downloading more than 1 million songs. The association asked for $150,000 for each song. Two weeks ago, the RIAA settled for $12,000 to $17,000 from each student.
The settlement came just four days after a federal court ruled that two companies that make file-sharing software were not violating copyright law by allowing users of their software to retrieve songs from other users' computers. Because the two software companies, Grokster and Streamcast Networks, did not actually participate in the downloading of music, the court said they did not violate the law.
This procedure, called peer-to-peer file-sharing, is different from the old Napster system that was declared illegal. Users uploaded songs to Napster's file server and then downloaded songs from that server to their computers.
With Grokster and Streamcast's software, songs are not contained in a computer system that either company owns. The software allows users to link their computers directly to other users' computers through the Internet.
What are we to think? That the system is legal, but its users are crooks? That doesn't make sense.
The music industry understandably wants to guard its property. And computer users understandably want to take advantage of advances in technology.
The big question is whether file-sharing hurts or helps the recording industry. I think it helps the industry, much like a lending library or browsing in a bookstore allow people to get a feel for the books they will buy.
That's the way it has worked for my friends and me. After listening to my copied version of "Shine," Jon bought his own version of the official disc. Joe is a little tighter with his cash, so he probably won't buy one.
After using those two downloaded versions of "Shenandoah" on my compilation CD, I finally found the "Sling Blade" soundtrack CD and bought it.
After listening to my compilation CD, it wouldn't surprise me if Jon buys the Emmylou Harris album that Lanois produced. If he does, my interest in Lanois will have spurred the sale of three CDs more than just my original purchase.
The interest and excitement that file-sharing creates among music fans more than makes up for the temporary infringement on copyrights.
A few companies have figured that out. The Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam and Phish have all issued a series of CDs that are designed to "beat the boots."
http://www.cleveland.com/living/plai...9152922490.xml
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Song-Swappers Taking Bite of Apple's Service
Sue Zeidler
Apple Computer Inc.'s new online music store has proven to be both a runaway commercial success and a backdoor route to unauthorized song-swapping by some Macintosh users, analysts and music executives said on Wednesday.
Apple on Wednesday announced that more than 2 million songs have been bought and downloaded from its iTunes Music Store since it launched 16 days ago.
That figure, according to analysts, easily surpasses the traffic of various other label- sanctioned services launched over the past year and a half to combat online piracy.
Apple's strong sales record is welcome news to music labels searching for a commercially viable alternative to free unauthorized peer-to-peer services they say have lured millions of would-be consumers from buying music.
But the industry's enthusiasm may be tempered by the emergence of Web sites and software applications that enable Mac users to search other Web-connected Mac computers' hard drives to listen to songs online, without the necessary licenses and permission.
Carey Ramos, an attorney for the National Music Publishers Association, said he was impressed with Apple's service and hoped the company will take steps to eliminate the file-sharing.
Although Apple, which sells songs for 99 cents, has said its service only allows users to copy songs to two other Macintosh computers, programmers found a way to use the iTunes software to play and copy music through the Internet, developers said.
The Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group for the major labels, AOL Time Warner Inc., EMI Group Plc , Bertelsmann AG , Vivendi Universal's Universal Music and Sony Corp., as well as the labels themselves declined comment. Apple had no immediate comment.
But several music industry executives said privately that the service's success outweighed the problem, which they saw at this point as fairly isolated.
''Apple is trying to launch a legitimate service but no solution is bulletproof. We also have a problem with several million unprotected masters sitting in the market right now and they are called CDs,'' said one music executive.
Prior to launching the service with licenses from all five major labels, Mac users could not use industry-backed services like Pressplay or MusicNet.
Los Gatos, California-based software engineer Rob Lockstone said he shut down his iTunes-based Web site (
http://www.itunesdb.com) after just one week after stumbling across an application which allows users to download music from iTunes servers onto their local machines.
Lockstone said he was not contacted by Apple or any record companies, but felt compelled to act because his site was being used in a way he had not anticipated.
''I cannot, in good conscience, continue to provide a service which will facilitate the theft of copyrighted material,'' he said in a message on his Web site.
Lockstone told Reuters his site does not allow a user to directly download music and that he implemented a mechanism to prevent individual IP addresses or host names from being gathered from his site, but that users hacked his site to get access to the addresses.
''They would come to my site or another site and basically harvest the addresses and then tap into this other program to talk to the other iTunes server and hook up and copy MP3 files,'' he said.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml...toryID=2744407
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Hackers: iTunes can be shared over Net
John Borland
Apple Computer's iTunes software has apparently opened up a new way for Macintosh owners to share music collections across the Internet.
The new music jukebox software, released two weeks ago as part of a set of high-profile Apple music announcements, contains features that allow Mac users to stream music to each other over a network. The songs are not downloaded permanently but do allow computer users to listen to any song on another network- connected Macintosh's hard drive.
Several groups of online programmers say they have figured out ways to extend this feature from a local area network to the Net. A few Web sites and software applications are claiming to allow people to search other Net-connected Macintosh computers' hard drives in order to listen to songs online.
"The feature is built into iTunes...but we had to dissect it ourselves," said Kevin April, Webmaster for Spymac.com, which launched its own music-sharing hub last week. "Integrating it into a Web service was a big task."
The rise of the new services threatens to put Apple's software squarely in the center of a controversy that the company had hoped to avoid with the release of its new iTunes online music store. That site, which offers easy access to a huge music catalog of 99-cent songs, won strong kudos from record labels as a big step forward in the authorized distribution of music online.
It's not wholly clear whether sharing music with a few, even anonymous people online veers completely away from that vision. The sharing feature is only as strong as a given Mac user's bandwidth, which for most home consumers can support just a few individuals, April said.
Nevertheless, the new services say that they offer a way to search and stream songs on demand, which typically requires a specific kind of license from the copyright holders. Long and bitter battles over the cost of those licenses, even for hobbyist Webcasters, have been fought in front of Congress and federal copyright regulators.
Apple itself did not release documentation on the over-the-Net sharing features and does not officially support the efforts.
iTunes "is not meant to be used in any other way than for personal use," said an Apple representative. The company said it will be monitoring the trend, but had no further comment.
Along with the Spymac Web site, applications such as ServerStore and iTunes Tracker say they are providing search tools for people sharing their music online.
An earlier project called iCommune advertises the ability to download other Mac users' songs, much like more traditional peer-to-peer services. That project was shut down once after protests from Apple, but has been relaunched without using proprietary Apple technology.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-1001121.html
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Apple's Apocalypse
With the release of its iTunes Music Store, Apple is hoping to revolutionize the music industry. The only problem is that it's not a revolution every music fan wants. Artistry and the whole concept of the album could go down the digital drain.
Bob Bobala
If you're a music fan, chances are you've heard about Steve Jobs' grand plan to save the music industry. Apple's new architecture for digitally downloading songs at $0.99 apiece has been written about in everything from Fortune to Rolling Stone to The Motley Fool.
On its first day of business, Apple's iTunes Music Store sold 275,000 music singles from industry heavyweights such as Vivendi's Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony Music, Bertelsmann's BMG, and AOL Time Warner's music division. In its first full week, Apple sold a million downloads, amounting to roughly $350,000 in revenue for the company.
Industry execs and artists alike are hailing this as a great solution to online piracy as well as a brilliant, consumer-friendly way to sell music. It's as easy as point and click, and while you can copy the music for personal use, it is encrypted so you can't upload it to file-sharing/stealing platforms across the Web.
But you have to worry when company executives, rock n' rollers, and a techno- geek like Jobs are speaking in unison. This has got to be too good to be true. In fact, I think the whole thing could destroy what I like most about music.
Now, before you go any further, you have to understand where I'm coming from: I held out as long as I could before I bought a compact disc player and I believe I still do have a few 8-Tracks lying around that I just can't part with. I also have enough vinyl and CDs to fill a small house.
And that is the rub for me. I love holding that album or disc in my hand. It's all about the albums and how they're arranged. You have the heavy metal section, the blues section, the jazz section, the rock section, the I-have-no-idea-where-to-put-this-one section -- all meticulously arranged and organized to my satisfaction and my satisfaction only. Sure, no one else could logically find anything, but they enjoy the search. And I enjoy having guests over and just saying, "Go to it. Pick any disc you like and we'll crank it."
It is just not the same saying, "Scroll through the files on my laptop. I'm sure you'll find something you like." Yes, I know you environmentalists will slam me for encouraging excess use of paper and plastic, but darn it, give me a whole CD! Give me the liner notes, the pictures -- it's not the same even if you can download that stuff. It was hard enough adjusting from those beautiful double-fold vinyl albums to CDs. Don't take that away from me, too!
Actually, what worries me most is that the whole concept of the album could go by the wayside if Jobs has his way. "Nobody thinks of albums anymore, anyway," he told Fortune in its May 12 issue.
You smug punk. I think of albums. In fact, I wholeheartedly buy albums expecting to find songs I like more than the ones that attracted me to the record in the first place. The magic is in digging into those deeper cuts that would never get radio play. Why do I need more Britney Spears singles? A good album is a piece of art. It's like a fine book of short stories -- each one belongs there and supports the other.
Apple does sell whole albums at its music store. But why record a whole album if you can just put out a snappy hit for the masses? A musician no less prominent than Sheryl Crow told Fortune that it's a "relief" not to have to produce an entire album every time she wants to reach her fans. Well, that's just lazy, Sheryl. Plus, if you're only going to release those vapid hits like "Soak Up the Sun," your fans won't have a chance to discover the more intelligent songs you hide deeper in your albums (and I am single and available for dates anytime).
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/...ry030514bb.htm
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On display: your data
'Stealth software' or 'spyware' is quietly, invisibly worming its way into computers
Rachel Ross
Gordon Neill had no idea he was being watched. The 26-year-old Toronto man thought he was safe from prying eyes, especially when using his home computer. He was careful about the software he installed and even used a firewall to monitor everything transmitted to and from his computer. As a professional software developer, Neill was confident he could protect himself from spying software.
But all his efforts weren't enough. A quick scan of Neill's hard drive revealed more than 70 pieces of stealth software lurking on his machine, monitoring his online travels.
Commonly called spyware, this software transmits information about a computer user without their knowledge and consent. It could be personal details or demographic information, such as your age, e-mail address or banking information. It could be the contents of every Word document and e-mail you write this week. Or, as in Neill's case, it could capture information about visited Web sites.
"I try my best to avoid it at all costs, but I guess it's pretty sneaky stuff," Neill said. Neill is not alone. In fact, you probably have spyware on your computer right now. While it's hard to get a precise measurement on something that prides itself on being sneaky, spyware especially the kind that tracks Web surfing ? is difficult to avoid. Quite often, spyware piggybacks on other software. Free, file-sharing software the kind music lovers use to share songs over the Internet is notorious for including extra software that monitors a user's activities. It's like eating an apple and getting a worm too. Don't think you're a target? Your online activities are more meaningful than you think. Right now your computer could be monitored by a hacker in Finland, an advertising agency in North Dakota or your employer. Advertisers see every Internet-enabled computer as a shopping cart, and every computer user as a potential customer. Knowing your interests and Web habits can help them sell you on a product. Hackers see every computer user as a potential source of information and income. Banking passwords or credit card numbers are as good as cash. Employers might not bother watching your every keystroke, but they can record it and then scan through it later to check on troublesome employees.
Spyware is so ubiquitous a small industry has developed to get rid of it. A handful of companies around the world now make it their top priority to produce programs that can detect and remove spyware.
Most of the companies that make the invasive, monitoring software wouldn't use the word spyware to describe their products. Many claim their software isn't spying at all. It's all completely above board, they say, outlined in privacy policies and licensing agreements. But few people ever bother to read those long, boring text documents.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=969048863851
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Stereophonics Are A Thretenin’ Leegul Action Agin’ Fans What Are File Swappin’ Varmints
Stereophonics' record label bosses are threatening legal action after fans got their hands on the band's next album - weeks before its official release. The Cwmaman trio's fourth album, You Gotta Go There To Come Back, is not released until June 2. But a copy of the 13-track recording is already available for free on some websites.
The band is just the latest to fall prey to illegal internet downloaders, joining Radiohead, Super Furry Animals, Madonna and many others. They recently experienced the same embarrassment, their forthcoming albums being leaked online up to three months in advance.
The 'Phonics had been expected to preview tracks from the new disc on a May promotional mini-tour, ending in Cardiff on the eve of the release. They will front a press launch with a special signing session at the Welsh capital's Virgin Megastore on June 1.
But the album was this week published on a downloads website, and has since spread to other destinations on the internet.
The band's independent label, V2 Records, was not aware of the disc's availability. Giles Drew, head of new media at the label, said it would be threatening legal action against any sites hosting the album, through a "cease and desist" letter issued via the British Phonographic Industry.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...es/3027699.stm
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Canada
Don't bother shopping at Apple's new online Music Store
Access to downloads of new, legal variety still months away
Sandra Sperounes
This was supposed to be a story about the virtues of Apple's new download service, iTunes Music Store.
I was all ready to write about how easy it is to download songs from all five major labels. How mesmerizing is the selection of tunes. How reasonably cheap are the prices. (Ninety-nine cents per track, $10 per album.) How I will never again be tempted to burn songs from illegal programs such as Kazaa and LimeWire.
I logged on to
www.apple.com with anticipation. I watched the snazzy documentary, complete with testimonials from today's top stars. I laughed when Bono said, "I do not want to have a doctorate in button-pushing to get to The Clash." And then, I cried.
In all the articles about Apple's iTunes, they've failed to mention a vital piece of information: IT'S NOT AVAILABLE IN CANADA.
Neither are its U.S. rivals, Pressplay and MusicNet, which were both launched in December 2001. So, it seems, Canada is doomed to be a nation of pirates, ripping off millions of tracks without ever paying a single cent for them.
What gives? Well, licensing issues. In layman's terms, Canada's record industry is still trying to work out how much artists, songwriters and music publishers should receive from each digital service. Brian Robertson, the president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, has been brokering a deal over the last 12 to 15 months.
"You're really creating this from scratch, it's a whole new business model," he said in an interview Tuesday.
"If there's a subscription service fee of $10 a month, where does that revenue get split? How much do you pay a songwriter? What do you pay the artist? So, we're working our way through that and I think we're pretty close now."
Robertson hopes Pressplay, MusicNet and a Canadian-owned service, run by Moontaxi Media, will be available within the next four months. He says iTunes has yet to contact CRIA about launching in Canada, but he assumes he'll hear from Apple soon.
Until then, we're not totally out of luck when it comes to finding legal music on the Net. Almost every artist Web site offers free tunes for fans -- either by download or stream. (Downloads can be stored on your computer, streams only enable fans to listen to songs.) Epitaph Records usually streams entire albums while MusicMatch, available to Canucks since March, gives users access to more than 8,000 artists for as little as $2.95 US a month.
There's one catch, though. You can't download any of MusicMatch's tunes -- it's basically a radio station without the ads. Still, it's popular, with more than 135,000 users in North America, an estimated 10 per cent of them Canadian. And there are plans to offer downloads in the near future, said Jennifer Roberts, MusicMatch's director of corporate communications.
http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmon...7-27F09F0BA14D
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Marx's Nightmare
Arnold Kling
James Miller's essay is a perfect example of the alienation of moderates by those who advocate the position of the entertainment industry. There are many of us who take great pains to distance ourselves from digital communists, but we nonetheless reject the rigid, dogmatic stance of the lawyers for Hollywood and the RIAA.
In particular, I believe that it is not constructive to take the metaphor of "intellectual property" completely literally. As Dan Bricklin points out, "Each copy of a videotape, book, or computer program in a department store is separately bought and paid for by that store from a wholesaler before being put on the shelf. Each shoplifted copy is not just a missed sale, but it is also out-of-pocket money paid without a return... Software is different. Buying software legally online is almost just as easy as pirating it today. Software has been susceptible to piracy for decades, yet, according to the BSA (an anti-piracy group) 'the commercial software industry... [is] the fastest growing industry in the world.'"
http://www.techcentralstation.com/10...D=1051-050903B
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Hacker gains access to Microsoft members' service
Microsoft has launched an investigation after a hacker found a way to access a popular Internet service and obtain personal details of users.
The discovery potentially put at risk sensitive information about the estimated 200 million people around the world who have a Microsoft Passport account.
The service, which is described as an electronic wallet, contains information such as the members' email and home address, mobile number and credit card details.
Microsoft heard about the flaw in the Passport software on Thursday morning. The company insists less than 200 accounts throughout the world have been accessed.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology
Ultra-thin screen is step towards electronic newspaper
An ultra-thin screen that can display electronic text while being bent, twisted or even rolled up has been developed by scientists. The material stops short of being a true electronic newspaper since it cannot be folded in half. But it is the most significant step yet towards practical e- papers and wearable computer screens.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm...ews.technology
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Music industry fears Uni stalling will derail case
The music industry has expressed concern that alleged "delaying tactics" by the University of Melbourne over access to information revealing possible copyright breaches may make Federal Court action over the issue immaterial.
Despite agreeing last month to preserve copies of files on the university network which may contain evidence of breach of copyright, the University of Melbourne has failed to do so, according to Michael Speck, the managing director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), the company retained by the Australian music industry to conduct surveillance of possible illegal activity.
Speck was commenting to ZDNet Australia following a brief court hearing in Sydney this morning.
The case was bought before the Federal Court by music giants Sony, EMI, and Universal against the University of Melbourne, Sydney University and the University of Tasmania to obtain information MIPI believes may contain evidence of copyright infringement. The music industry is keen for the universities to preserve a copy of the files sought so that they are available if and when the court rules in their favour.
However, Federal Court Justice Tamberlin today deferred ruling on the matter until 9.30am Thursday, and urged the two parties to have "intense and detailed" discussions on the matter before returning to the court.
"We've no confidence they're genuinely moving to preserve the evidence," said Speck. "The longer they prevaricate the less likely there'll be any evidence." He added that at least one other university, which had previously agreed to preserve the files pending the outcome of the case, appeared to be changing its position on this matter.
The University of Melbourne claims the Web sites mentioned in the MIPI allegation are not related to the university. Two students' Web sites contained links to external sites which offer copyrighted music for download, but the links have been removed and the students cautioned.
University of Melbourne vice-principal (information) Helen Hayes has said the university has taken all reasonable steps in the circumstances. The University is very reluctant to allow external investigators to access and search University computer facilities.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebu...0273139,00.htm
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Super-DMCA Update (Texas)
The Texas version of the Super-DMCA has been passed by the relevant committees in both the state House and Senate. It will probably come to a vote in the Senate later this week. If you're a Texas resident, this would be good time to contact your state senator!
Topic(s): Super-DMCA
Posted by Edward W. Felten at 08:22 PM
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000387.html
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San Francisco Court Considers Legality of Backup DVD Copies/Electronic Frontier Foundation Backs Up 321 Studios Software/Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Advisory
EFF Press release
San Francisco - On Thursday, May 15, a federal court will consider the legality of software that enables backup copying of digital video disks (DVDs).
Judge Illston of the Northern District of California Federal Court in San Francisco will hear arguments on a case involving 321 Studios' DVD backup software. 321 Studios opposes a summary judgment motion from movie studios claiming that the DVD backup software software is unlawful under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Championing the public's rights to use and innovate with media, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting 321 Studios' constitutional challenge to the DMCA. EFF, along with co-signers Public Knowledge and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, argues that tools such as 321's DVD X-Copy, which enables a user to make a personal backup copy or excerpt of a DVD, must be lawful because they are necessary to the public's fair use of digital media.
The movie studios on the other side of the 321 Studios lawsuit claim that DVD X-Copy -- and any hardware or software tools that would allow viewers to back up or extract snippets from DVDs -- is an unlawful circumvention device.
However, many people use DVD X-Copy for other purposes than copyright circumvention. Videographers are duplicating their work, professors are preparing classroom examples, and parents are creating backups for their children using DVD X- Copy and similar tools.
"The public should benefit from new media technologies, not find its rights further restricted when new formats are used," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Software that enables the exercise of fair use rights, from any media, is an important part of the copyright balance."
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030513_321_studios_pr.php
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Western Europe
David Minto
German cable-TV infrastructure breaks into internet mass market
Teles and Bosch Breitbandnetze have signed an agreement to introduce into the market a ‘cable-DSL service’.
The move will enable the 1.4m households with cable-TV from Bosch to gain, for a short term and extremely aggressively priced, powerful broadband internet access – at a service speed of up to 16Mbit/s, among other features.
The cableDSL-cooperation between Bosch, one of the largest German cable-TV network companies, and Teles, is the first time German cable-TV infrastructure has broken into the internet mass market. By means of this cableDSL technology over current infrastructure, up to 37m households could gain advanced broadband internet access, deployable almost instantly and at low cost.
Further cableDSL-cooperations of Teles with other cable-TV service companies are under negotiation.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16342
Spanish acquire taste for 'smart homes', report
54 per cent of Barcelona and Madrid citizens are interested in buying technologically advanced ‘smart homes’, according to a new from report from Netydea.
Netydea investigated three of the most important Spanish smart home projects in 2002, dubbed Proyecto Hogar, Media House and La Casa Internet. The smart homes opened up entertainment, communication, automation and security possibilities within the home through network and internet technology.
The report claims growing demand is due to three reasons, namely that the internet has reduced the cost of the implementation, that people demand more home security applications, and finally that new building regulations regard new technologies as an important issue.
Netydea experts state that the smart home is 1-3 per cent more expensive than a common building. On the other hand, 54 per cent of Madrid and Barcelona citizens are interested in this kind of house, 78 per cent of them say that this technology adds value to the building, and 70 per cent consider it as an improvement in the quality of life.
More iTunes news: 2 million tracks now sold
Okay, so it’s getting a little boring now – but news about Apple’s iTunes project just keeps rolling in with the
computer innovator now revealing that over 2m songs have now been purchased from their online music store since it was launched 16 days ago.
Continuing the trend set during the first week, over half of the songs purchased to date were purchased as albums, further countering concerns that selling music on a per-track basis will destroy album sales.
Over 4,300 new songs were added to the iTunes Music Store yesterday, including five albums from The Doors, new featured artist Fischerspooner's album "#1" and pre-release tracks from various upcoming albums,
However, reports are also coming in that hackers are finding a way to exploit Apple’s ‘Rendezvous’ technology to share their songs not just over a local area Network (LAN), but also over the internet. Though the feature doesn't allow iTunes' users to download songs permanently on their hard drive, only to stream songs stored on another network-connected hard drive, the development is sure to raise piracy concerns amongst the record labels.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16343
Apple hopes to bring iTunes to Europe by autumn
Computer innovator Apple is reported to be in advanced talks with European record labels in a push to launch a version of its iTunes mecord store in Europe before the end of the year.
The download service from Apple, unequivocally legal due to its licensing agreements reached with content owners, debuted in the US two weeks ago and has met with remarkable success. Despite the proliferation of P2P file-trading sites, such as Kazaa, where many music tracks can be downloaded for free, Mac users are reported to have flocked to Apple’s new service with over 1m tracks purchased in the first week of operation alone.
The kudos attached to Apple and the loyal following its brand attracts may have a lot to with the success of this online music store compared to those struggling to make ends meet in the PC internet universe. However, the iTunes phenomenon has also resulted from the simplicity of service offered, with tracks costing a flat 99 cents to download and licensing agreements allowing users to ‘burn’ downloaded music to CD and transfer music to the Apple iPod MP3 players and other Macs within the home.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=16294
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Your voices are being heard.
Intuit Drops U.S. Anti-Piracy Feature
Associated Press and Globe and Mail Update
Intuit Inc. says its top-selling U.S. TurboTax software will dump an unpopular anti-piracy feature that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.
The company disclosed its change of heart with the release of its earnings for the three months ended April 30 - Intuit's busiest quarter of the year. Although the company's sales and earnings for the period surged from last year, the improvement wasn't as dramatic as Intuit promised investors three months ago.
Management said its projections were undercut by a sluggish economy, the Iraq war and a frosty response to TurboTax's new anti-piracy feature, called "product activation."
The product activation feature is based on Macrovision's SafeCast product, also known as C-Dilla. Safecast installed some permanent parts of itself on customers' PCs without telling people it was doing so, and proved very difficult to remove, resulting in a consumer backlash.
The SafeCast technology was introduced in the U.S. version of the company’s tax software this year, but not in the Canadian product which is called QuickTax. In Canada, the company used a different copy-protection system it developed itself. Intuit Canada's product manager, Chris Wilkinson, said in a recent interview that the QuickTax copy protection system installs nothing on the PC’s hard drive or in memory, and it validates a computer by generating a unique key based on some of the components installed on the machine.
The U.S. copy protection feature in TurboTax also depended upon an activation code that essentially tied the software to a single computer to prevent buyers from passing around TurboTax to people who hadn't paid to use it. The code allowed customers to use TurboTax on other computers, but all printing and electronic filing of tax returns had to be done from the computer where the software was first launched.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Intuit believed the feature would be a sales catalyst by forcing consumers who had illegally used TurboTax in the past to buy copies this year.
The feature instead triggered a customer backlash.
"Product activation didn't give us the uplift we expected," Mr. Bennett said in an interview Wednesday. "It turned out to be the wrong thing to do and that's why we are correcting it."
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...ry/Technology/
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Product review
Azio MP3 player, recorder and storage drive
Ian Johnson
The Good: Good price; extremely light and portable; works as an MP3 player, voice recorder and file storage/transfer device; good sound; clear display; great battery life.
The Bad: No belt clip or carry case - instead, the headphones are permanently built into a very un-cool sort of necklace arrangement; hold button doesn’t lock the sensitive power/playback control.
The Verdict: A pretty good bargain even if this was just a 128MB storage device, and yet it also plays MP3s and works as a voice recorder. If you can handle the funky headphones, it's a nice deal.
I like to have music with me wherever I go, and I used to lug a personal CD player around with me. Then MP3 players came along and let me pack a lot more music into a more convenient package, and as a result I haven’t dusted off my CDs in ages. Now, thanks to Azio’s MP-306, my dictation recorder may be joining the CD player in a desk drawer.
The MP-306 is about the size of a standard USB storage device – around twice the size of an adult’s thumb, as a rough guide. It comes in a 128MB version for $99 (U.S.), and a 64MB version is also available (although for my money, it’s worth paying the $20 premium to double the memory and music/recording capacity).
The 128MB unit I looked at holds roughly 25 to 30 songs, depending on the format and the bit rate they’re recorded at - the player supports both the WMA and MP3 recording formats. There’s no removable media slot to expand the memory.
The MP-306 has a small rectangular display on the front that shows the scrolling name of the playing track, the playback mode (shuffle, repeat, normal), the volume level, time remaining in the track, and the amount of battery life left. The text on the 96-by-26-dot LCD display is tiny, but the resolution is sharp and the adjustable blue backlight is excellent, so it’s easy to read.
The controls are pretty basic, and they're very, very small to match the size of the player. There’s an on/off switch that also activates the play and pause functions, two tiny buttons to raise and lower the volume, a rocker switch that controls fast-forward/rewind and song selection, and an A/B mode selector. A hold switch locks the controls so they don’t get changed accidentally.
The two main problems I found with the controls involved the on/off. First of all, the hold switch locks everything except the on/off button, which (and this is problem two) is extremely sensitive. A feather-light touch can activate it. As a result, the player often got turned on accidentally in my pocket or briefcase, wasting battery power. At other times, the pause button would get activated accidentally, stopping the music in mid-song. All of this could have been avoided if the hold switch had been designed to lock all the buttons on the MP-306, including the power/play switch, as this feature is designed to do on most MP3 players. It’s frankly a rather baffling oversight.
The rocker switch also feels a bit flimsy and the spring is weak, but to be fair, I had absolutely no problems with it during the review period.
The player runs on a single AAA battery, which was another of my few complaints about the unit. The AAA cell helps keep the player size down a bit, but I’d put up with a slightly bulkier unit in return for the ability to use cheaper and longer-lasting AA batteries (and AAA rechargeable batteries are much harder to come buy than AA-size cells, too).
Even so, the battery life is good. The company rates it at 12 hours under ideal conditions, and in my “real world” tests I got between nine and 11 hours depending on how much I used the fast-forward/rewind and the screen’s backlight.
The volume output of the unit is excellent, generating far more sound than most of the MP3 players I’ve reviewed in the past couple of years. But while it’s got lots of power, it’s also got finesse. The sound quality is crisp and clear. There’s also a limited selection of audio presets, such as rock and jazz, that can tailor the sound playback.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...y/TechReviews/
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Verizon, Microsoft launch DSL service
Evan Hansen
Verizon Communications and Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled their long-awaited joint DSL service for $34.95 a month, with a $5 discount for customers of certain Verizon voice service plans.
The two companies first announced a broadband partnership last June.
"Verizon Online DSL with MSN 8 will help speed the adoption of broadband by providing consumers with communication and information services that enrich the online experience while addressing important issues such as junk e-mail and online safety," Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said in a statement.
The offer comes as premium Internet service providers such as Microsoft's MSN, AOL Time Warner's America Online and EarthLink seek to reinvent themselves for the high-speed Net to battle subscriber erosion due to discount dial-up providers and broadband providers. In making the leap, older ISPs are taking on the role of front-end marketers and premium content providers, riding on lines owned by the cable and phone companies.
MSN, with 8.7 million subscribers, is the second largest ISP in the United States after AOL.
According to the companies, Verizon with MSN 8 offers content customized for broadband connections, called DSL Live, featuring videos as well as Listen.com's Rhapsody music-streaming service. Other features include virus protection, antispam filters and parental controls.
Verizon for MSN 8 comes months after Yahoo and SBC Communications launched a co-branded DSL service.
SBC, which is offering a promotional rate of $34.95 a month, has added more than 1 million net new subscribers since the second quarter of 2002, according to the company. Net subscribers are up 63 percent, to 2.5 million, compared with 1.8 million for Verizon's DSL service and 1.1 million for BellSouth's.
Still, DSL providers have struggled to match the pace of cable providers, leading to price cuts in a bid to fuel demand. Verizon's $29.95 a month bundled service is $10 to $20 a month cheaper than cable plans from Charter, Comcast and Road Runner.
Roughly 16 million U.S. households get some form of high-speed Web access. Most, about 10 million, get it from cable companies, which have until recently been considered to offer better service for about the same price as DSL providers such as Verizon.
Both cable and phone companies are increasingly turning to service bundling as way to stave off inroads from competitors, a tactic that has drawn scrutiny from consumer groups. Under such deals, cable companies may offer discounts for customers who sign up for cable TV, broadband and voice services, for example.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-1001147.html
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Bid to Deny Porn Access on Professors' PCs Fails
A Cal Poly SLO faculty panel rejects an effort to bar instructors from using state computers to view Internet sex sites.
AP
An effort to stop Cal Poly professors from viewing Internet sex sites on state-owned computers has failed.
Professors can continue to view adult pornography on state-owned computers in their offices, so long as it does not create a hostile work environment, the executive committee of the Academic Senate at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo decided Tuesday.
The committee, which helps set campus computing rules, considered a resolution that would have barred professors from looking at such images. But the committee struck down the proposal on a 6-4 vote, keeping it from going to the full senate.
The move killed the resolution to ban pornography on campus, but it left open the possibility that it could come back later. The executive committee will not meet again until this fall.
"People in the workplace are enjoying the privilege of sexual entertainment with state resources," said Linda Vanasupa, materials engineering department chair. "There are people who feel this is not appropriate. My colleagues don't seem to be willing to give up that privilege."
Vanasupa said she drafted the resolution after her former boss viewed pornography on his office computer and created a hostile work environment. The resolution would have allowed professors to view sexually explicit images for academic purposes.
But some faculty members said it didn't adequately allow for academic research or classroom presentations.
"In physiology, we talk about sexual excitement," biology professor Susan Elrod said. "How is the biology faculty not going to get called on the carpet if we show nude pictures to our class?"
Dissenters also argued that the proposal would have infringed on academic freedom and their 1st Amendment rights.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...2Dtechno logy
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The future of digital technology is in the hands of the U.S. Congress
Pamela Samuelson
Rip. Mix. Burn. Empowering freedom...or simple piracy? For now, technologies for ripping, mixing, and burning are lawful to manufacture and distribute in the United States. But for how much longer? The motion picture industry, among other groups of copyright holders, wants Congress to mandate that standard technical protection be installed in all digital media devices. In March 2002, Senator Ernest ("Fritz") Hollings (D-S.C.), with the endorsement of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and others, introduced legislation to do just that.
His Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) would give representatives of technology companies, copyright holders, and consumer groups 12 months to agree on such "standard technical measures." The act would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a rulemaking that would lead to the requirement that a standard protection measure be embedded in every digital media device. This latter term is broadly enough defined to include general-purpose computers. Making or distributing digital media devices without the standard measure, or removing or altering the measure, would be illegal and, if done for profit, would be a felony.
CBDTPA is unlikely to be enacted any time soon, now that the recording industry has allied itself with the Business Software Alliance and the Computer Systems Policy Project (both in Washington, D.C.) against government mandates of such measures. However, the motion picture industry may well persuade the FCC to adopt the so-called broadcast flag technology as a mandatory standard for digital TV tuners and related technologies; the FCC is considering it now. This would require tuners to recognize a digital flag embedded in broadcast signals indicating that the signals cannot be redistributed to any device lacking specified standard security measures. Makers of all sorts of products for home entertainment systems would be affected.
Philips Electronics North America Corp. (New York City) is not pleased with the proposed broadcast flag. In its reply to the FCC, it asserts that if the proposal were adopted, it "would require the FCC to impose an invasive regulatory regime affecting virtually all consumer electronics devices and computer equipment within the home network."
But such rules are not entirely new. Two government mandates of technical measures to protect copyrighted works already exist in U.S. law. One is the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act, which requires consumer digital audio recording devices to contain serial copy management system (SCMS) chips, which allow unlimited first-generation digital copies, but degrade second- and third- generation digital copies. The second is in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires makers of videotape recorders to install Macrovision's copy control technology to prevent unauthorized copying.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY...ay03/legi.html
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WFA Debuts Zone Finder
Press Release
The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced the availability of ZONE Finder - a search tool and database designed to help travelers find Wi-Fi ZONE wireless public Internet access services in over 25 countries. This new component of the Wi-Fi ZONE program is free to both users and service providers. ZONE Finder is available at
www.wi-fizone.org.
“Finding Wi-Fi® wireless public access service around the world has been difficult without an official list of locations,” said Dennis Eaton, Chairman of the Wi-Fi Alliance. “As the originators of Wi-Fi, many people have asked us to develop an official list of public access locations to make it easier to stay connected in their home town or when traveling. In fact, travelers are increasingly selecting locations like hotels and cafes based on the availability of Wi-Fi services. Having this information available makes travel planning much easier. Even after travelers arrive at their destination, they often like to know where these services are available. ZONE Finder also allows users to download a list of Wi-Fi ZONEs for times when they arrive at their destination without access to the Internet.
“Wi-Fi has grown around the world in popularity and it is only natural that the Alliance takes the lead to offer a vendor-neutral indicator of public service availability – Wi-Fi ZONE. We believe this symbol will become an internationally recognized indicator of public Internet service availability like many other service symbols for dining, telephones or medical services. In addition, the Wi-Fi ZONE logo is intended to complement a service provider’s existing brand. In many cases, people may not know the local service provider’s brand for public access service, but they will be aware of the Wi-Fi brand. After all, a very similar logo is on the PC card in their laptops which they use to connect to the Internet. This is particularly helpful when traveling between countries where the public service brand names are very different,” continued Eaton.
Only locations that participate in the Wi-Fi ZONE program are allowed to display the Wi-Fi ZONE logo at the venue, Web site or in promotional materials. In addition, only locations that participate in this program are allowed to use the Wi- Fi term to describe their public access services. The program is free to wireless Internet service providers who meet the program’s requirements. To sign up, visit
http://www.wi-fizone.org/zoneProvide...iew.asp?TID=7.
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Sony Speeds Multiformat DVD Drives
Upgraded drives can record data twice as fast as previous models.
Martyn Williams
Sony has upgraded its multi-format DVD recording drive adding faster recording to the unit, although users will have to wait a while to use one format at the higher speed because of a lack of available media.
The DRU-510A internal drive and DRX-510UL external drive are upgraded versions of Sony's 500 series multi-format drives that were unveiled last year. They were the first drives to support both the competing 'plus' and 'minus' recordable DVD formats.
The DVD+R/RW formats were developed by a group of companies led by Sony and Koninklijke Philips Electronics, while the DVD-R/RW formats were developed under the DVD Forum. The two standards are battling for dominance in the expanding recordable DVD market.
The new drives support 4X recording for DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-R and 2X recording for DVD-RW. Compared to Sony's first multi-format drive, it is an increase on the plus formats from 2.4X while the minus format speeds are the same.
Twice as Fast
For consumers this increase means data can be recorded twice as fast onto the three formats that support 4X--leading to an obvious cut in the amount of time required to burn a disc. For example, at 4X speed it will take approximately 15 minutes to fill a 4.7GB DVD disc to capacity, against almost 30 minutes using 2X speed and an hour at 1X speed.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110749,00.asp
Top 10 D/Ls - Singles
BigChampagne
'Matrix' sequel spotted on the Net
John Borland
Underground Internet file-swapping circles were buzzing Wednesday with rumors that a copy of "The Matrix Reloaded" had been released online, a day before its theatrical opening date.
Information posted on several widely read hacker sites described a two-CD release of the Warner Bros. film by a group that had earlier claimed to have posted the "X-Men" sequel, "X2." The news sparked a frenzy of activity in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels and other forums dedicated to movie swapping.
Some individuals claimed in chat sessions that they had seen copies of the movie, a sequel to the blockbuster "The Matrix," as early as Wednesday morning. CNET News.com could not confirm the complete accuracy of the information. However, still shots that appeared to be taken from the movie had been posted online.
A one-minute sample file obtained by CNET News.com also appeared to be genuine. The video file was of medium quality, providing a watchable but somewhat blurry resolution at full-screen size, but had a dark picture that occasionally made it difficult to make out details.
Tom Temple, director of worldwide Internet enforcement for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), said he had no information indicating that the movie had been released early online.
"We have seen a lot of files named 'Matrix,'" Temple said. He articulated that the MPAA has not yet seen a file on the Internet that actually is the sequel.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-1001562.html
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AMD loses marketshare to Intel
But the quarter-to-quarter trend shows it's gaining on Intel again.
submitted by J. Eric Smith
AMD has given up more hard-earned marketshare to Intel as the current tit-for-tat battle between the two semiconductor companies starts to rage once again. Market analyst firm Mercury Research claims that AMD's share has slipped to 16.6% of the total CPU market for Q1 2003, down from 18.2% for the same quarter in 2002. At the same time, Intel's marketshare increased from 80.8% in Q1 2002 to 81.7% for Q1 2003, showing that Intel is picking up customers from AMD.
However, it's not all gloom and doom for AMD. While AMD is down from where it was this time last year, it's up compared to where it was this time last quarter. AMD actually gained a 2.8% marketshare over the last quarter, a fairly hefty gain for the Sunnyvale-based company.
http://64.55.181.130/news/geeknews/2...0514019986.htm
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“It is executives, not technology, who keep these services from greater success.”
Film Rentals, Downloaded to Your PC
David pogue
DECADES ago, a Mad magazine cartoonist, Dave Berg, offered a vision of how the Soviet Union might win the cold war. Here in America, a never- ending succession of labor-saving devices - escalators, cars, remote controls and so on - had already created the most sedentary society on earth. All the Soviets had to do was wait until we evolved into living Weebles, complete with tippy, round bases and vestigial leg sprouts. Then they would just knock us over with the butts of their rifles.
The cold war is over, but the trend toward the elimination of all muscular effort continues apace. If you're a movie lover, for example, you can now rent a Hollywood film by downloading it directly to your Windows PC, saving yourself two exhausting trips to Blockbuster. You don't even have to return the movie when you're done; the movie file automatically deletes itself from your hard drive 24 hours after you first click Play. Of course, you're also spared the caloric expenditure involved in rewinding a tape.
Since the demise of movies.com and intertainment.com, only two contenders are left standing in the downloadable-movie racket:
movielink.com and cinemanow.com. (A third, starzondemand.com, is in the works.) Each charges about $4 or $5 to watch a recent movie, roughly the same amount the video store does.
Now, if you wonder why anyone would ever want to download and watch a movie on a PC, you are not alone. The downsides are daunting.
First, each movie file is huge; you need to clear a landing strip of 500 to 800 megabytes on your hard drive. Second, dial-up users need not apply, and even with a cable modem or a digital subscriber line, all of that data takes a long time to arrive: 20 to 90 minutes for a typical two-hour movie depending on the speed of your broadband connection. (You could probably bike or walk to Blockbuster in that time, but of course that would entail exercise.)
Worst of all, you have to watch the movie on the PC, which usually means listening to the soundtrack through cheap speakers, watching on a smallish screen and sitting on a chair that was never intended for leaning back, motionless, for 120 minutes. CinemaNow's site offers instructions on connecting your PC to your television, but the layout of your home, and your tolerance of ugly wires, may rule out that configuration.
Still, plenty of people are willing to overlook these drawbacks. About 30 percent of American households are equipped with high-speed Internet connections, and thousands of people regularly download movies from software-piracy sites like KaZaA.
You can probably guess where all this is going: Movielink and CinemaNow were created as legitimate, Hollywood-sanctioned alternatives to free, unauthorized services. (Movielink was started by Sony Pictures, and joined by Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM and Universal; CinemaNow is financed by Microsoft, Blockbuster and Lions Gate Entertainment.) Their emergence roughly parallels the creation of the much-hyped pop-music download services that the record companies created, following precisely the same "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy.
There's a key difference between the movie-download sites and the music-download sites, however: the music sites show a glimmer of promise.
How CinemaNow stays in business is a marvel. The site is so marred by typos and poor programming, it could have been a high school sophomore's first Web design project. After you provide your credit-card information during the registration process, you're asked for it again on the next screen, and yet again each time you buy a movie. It's like a hovering Blockbuster employee who follows you around the store, asking every 30 seconds: "And you're sure you can pay for this, right?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/te...ts/15stat.html
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Required Reading 
Copy Protection Is a Crime
…against humanity. Society is based on bending the rules.
David Weinberger
Digital rights management sounds unobjectionable on paper: Consumers purchase certain rights to use creative works and are prevented from violating those rights. Who could balk at that except the pirates? Fair is fair, right?
Well, no.
In reality, our legal system usually leaves us wiggle room. What's fair in one case won't be in another - and only human judgment can discern the difference. As we write the rules of use into software and hardware, we are also rewriting the rules we live by as a society, without anyone first bothering to ask if that's OK.
The problem starts with the fact that digital content can be copied - perfectly - from one machine to another. This has led the recording and movie industries to push for digital rights management schemes. Buy a one-time right to play the latest hit song or movie, and DRM could prevent you from playing it twice.
Of course, to exercise such exquisite control over content, DRM requires deep changes to all parts of the equation - the hardware, the operating system, and the content itself. Sure enough, some in Congress recently pushed the FCC to add a "broadcast flag" to content which digital hardware would be required to honor. DRM is barreling down the pike.
The usual criticism is that the scheme gives too much power to copyright holders. But there's a deeper problem: Perfect enforcement of
rules is by its nature unfair. For contrast, consider how imperfectly rules are applied in the real world.
If your lease stipulates that you can't paint without explicit permission from your landlord, you will nevertheless patch up the scratches made by your yappy little dog on the bottom of the front door. If the high-priced industry analyst's report warns you on every page against duplicating, you'll still hand out at your weekly sales meeting copies of a page with a relevant chart. You'd snicker at the very suggestion of doing otherwise.
But why? The analyst report is stamped 'DO NOT PHOTOCOPY', and the bit in your lease about not painting really couldn't be any clearer. We chuckle because we all understand that before the law there's leeway - the true bedrock of human relationships. Sure, we rely on rules to decide the hard cases, but the rest of the time we cut one another a whole lot of slack. We have to. That's the only way we humans can manage to share a world. Otherwise, we'd be at one another's throats all the time - or, more exactly, our lawyers would be at each other's throats.
Yet we're on the verge of instituting digital rights management. What do computers do best? Obey rules. What do they do worst? Allow latitude. Why? Because computers don't know when to look the other way.
We're screwed. Not because we MP3 cowboys and cowgirls will not have to pay for content we've been "stealing." No, we're screwed because we're undercutting the basis of our shared intellectual and creative lives. For us to talk, argue, try out ideas, tear down and build up thoughts, assimilate and appropriate concepts - heck, just to be together in public - we have to grant all sorts of leeway. That's how ideas breed, how cultures get built. If any public space needs plenty of light, air, and room to play, it's the marketplace of ideas.
There are times when rules need to be imposed within that marketplace, whether they're international laws against bootleg CDs or the right of someone to sue for libel. But the fact that sometimes we resort to rules shouldn't lead us to think that they are the norm. In fact, leeway is the default and rules are the exception.
Fairness means knowing when to make exceptions. After all, applying rules equally is easy. Any bureaucrat can do it. It's far harder to know when to bend or even ignore the rules. That requires being sensitive to individual needs, understanding the larger context, balancing competing values, and forgiving transgressions when appropriate.
But in the digital world - the global marketplace of ideas made real - we're on the verge of handing amorphous, context-dependent decisions to hard-coded software incapable of applying the snicker test. This is a problem, and not one that more and better programming can fix. That would just add more rules. What we really need is to recognize that the world - online and off - is necessarily imperfect, and that it's important it stay that way.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/view.html
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Copy Protected Disc Won’t Play In Computer – Unless It’s Copied First
Sam Varghese
EMI's copy-protection technology has resulted in a Melbourne resident doing exactly what the company is trying to prevent - copy a music disc in order to listen to it.
Stephen Marovitch, creative director of the Simon Richards Group which is based in Port Melbourne, picked up the latest Norah Jones album on April 25, and took it to work.
Once there, he tried to listen to his new acquisition, using his Titanium laptop which runs version 10.2 of Apple's operating system. There was no response, with the disc not being recognised.
One can't blame Marovitch for not trying - he tried to listen to the disc on a workstation which runs Windows 2000 and then on one which runs Windows XP.
In both cases, he got no joy. The disc was not picked up by the system.
His response was to send an email dripping with sarcasm to EMI.
"Just a courtesy email to inform you, that as a result of problems experienced playing the Norah Jones CD containing your Copy Control measures on Apple OS10.2 Titanium
Laptop, Windows 2000 workstation and Windows XP workstation, I have now been forced to copy your CD just to listen to it," he wrote.
"In all circumstances the CD drives could not recognise, load or play the disc. Maybe you should consider displaying a warning on the covers of all of your CDs i.e. Warning: This CD may not work!"
"Please congratulate the genius that concocted this anti-pirating strategy."
Marovitch said he was unlikely to buy anything from the same label again.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...591771111.html
Until next week,
-
js.
Current Week In Review.
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Recent WIRs -
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16211 May 10th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16135 May 3rd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=16080 April 26th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15980 April 19th
The Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.