[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week


"This is about whether the F.C.C. is going to become the Federal Computer Commission and the Federal Copyright Commission. The F.C.C. does not have the power to tell technology manufacturers how to build their machines." - Gigi B. Sohn


"In this age of professional spammers and telemarketers making fortunes, we're misusing our energies to pursue these types of small time wrongdoers. I will personally donate $1,000 to the Canadian student's defense." – Steve Wozniak


"AOL has already removed the Winamp plug-in that made this [Napster song ripping] process fairly simple. Programmers are developing a patch that will be automatically pushed to the software's users." – John Borland


"On the CDFreaks board, there was talk of new conversion methods that had nothing to do with Winamp." - David F. Gallagher


"There is no evidence on the record that piracy of digital broadcast content is a problem now or is going to be a problem in the near future. We don't want agencies making rules based on nothing. And there's also no evidence that the broadcast flag will do what it wants it to do." - Gigi B. Sohn


"Thus Spacewar was, in effect, the first open- source video game. And it was the first piece of freeware as well." – 1up.com


"Remember, don't break the law; just creatively skirt around the legal boundaries like any law-abiding politician would do." - Wallace Wang


"I've got six weeks left and will be conducting at least one more raid ....I'll get back to you." - Michael Speck


"Overall, the book covers a lot of ground in a brisk fashion. It's an excellent resource for the bored file-trading stud looking to expand his game and for the up and coming geek." – Ashlee Vance
















Court Questions FCC's Broadcast Flag Rules
Declan McCullagh

A federal appeals court on Tuesday sharply questioned whether the Federal Communications Commission has the authority to ban certain types of digital TV receivers, including peripheral cards, starting in July.

Two of the three judges on the District of Columbia Circuit panel said the FCC never received permission from Congress to undertake such a sweeping regulation, which is intended to encourage the purchase of digital TV receivers that curb Internet distribution of over-the-air broadcasts of programming such as movies and sports.

"You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?" asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: "You can't regulate washing machines. You can't rule the world."

In November 2003, the FCC said that every product sold in the United States after July 2005 that can receive digital TV broadcasts or digital TV streams must be able to recognize a "broadcast flag." Such products--ranging from TV sets to computer tuners made by Elgato Systems and Hauppauge Computer Works--are permitted to deliver high-quality digital output only to devices that also adhere to the broadcast flag specification.

The groups challenging the FCC's broadcast flag regulation include the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They argue that the FCC exceeded its authority, that Congress should be responsible for making copyright law, and that librarians' ability to make "fair use" of digital broadcasts will be unreasonably curtailed.

But one of the judges, Sentelle, suggested that the library and other nonprofit groups challenging the FCC's rule would not suffer the kind of particular harm necessary to allow the case to proceed.

"You have to have a harm that distinguishes you from the public at large," Sentelle said during oral arguments. "If there is not a particularized harm, you do not have standing...There may be someone from the industry who can come forward." Edwards also said he was concerned about the groups' "standing," referring to the judicially recognized right to sue. Special rules exist for organizations suing federal agencies.

From the perspective of the entertainment industry, the broadcast flag is needed to encourage over-the-air distribution of valuable content. Without the FCC's action, the Motion Picture Association of America has argued, the threat of Internet piracy would imperil the future of digital TV.
http://news.com.com/Court+questions+...3-5585533.html


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Wozniak Questions Apple's Legal Zeal in Tiger Leak Lawsuit
Brad Gibson

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has criticized his former company for going after a student who shared a developer release of Mac OS X Tiger, saying Apple is wasting time going after "small time wrongdoers." Mr. Wozniak promised to donate $1,000 to help in the students defense.

In an online posting to the blog site DrunkenBlog, Mr. Wozniak wrote that he believed Vivek Sambhara of Atlanta, Ga. was guilty of an honest mistake.

Mr. Wozniak wrote:

"...This is an unintentional oversight and the interviewed student appears to be one of the most honest people on this planet. I have to question who is most right in this case. I wish that Apple could find some way to drop the matter. In my opinion, more than appropriate punishment has already been dealt out. In this age of professional spammers and telemarketers making fortunes, we're misusing our energies to pursue these types of small time wrongdoers. I will personally donate $1,000 to the Canadian student's defense."

Mr. Sambhara, along with David Schwartzstein of Norwalk, Conn. and Doug Steigerwald, of Raleigh, N.C. are being sued by Apple Computer for allegedly distributing "Tiger," the company's next major Mac OS X release. Apple is seeking an injunction against the defendants, as well as unspecified damages.

The company alleges Mr. Steigerwald violated his membership agreement to the Apple Developer Connection (ADC), Apple's in-house developer network, by downloading and distributing the Tiger builds through BitTorrent, a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing network. Mr. Sambhara and Mr. Schwartzstein, also ADC members, allegedly redistributed the file to others via the Internet, first obtained by Mr. Steigerwald.

Details of the case were first reported by The Mac Observer on December 21, 2004.

Mr. Sambhara, in an online interview with DrunkenBlog in early January and identified as 'Desicanuk', contradicted himself by first denying he had redistributed the developer release of Mac OS X Tiger, but then admitting he had.

"I've not uploaded or torrented or shared in anyway, previous releases of Tiger," he wrote. But later, Mr. Sambhara commented, "did I do exactly what Apple is accusing me of doing? I did share the file. So in that regard yes. But there was no malicious intent. I've never done anything malicious in my life...I do think what I did was wrong and I understand why they are suing me."

An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available for reaction to Mr. Wozniak's comments.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/02/22.3.shtml


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RIAA Appeals Ruling In Legal Flap Over Copyright Subpoenas
Jim Suhr

The recording industry is appealing a federal court's ruling that it can't force Internet providers to identify music downloaders under a disputed copyright law, calling such pressure "a critically important tool" in blunting illegal file-sharing worth billions of dollars.

The Recording Industry Association of America wants the entire 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn last month's split decision by a three-judge panel with that court in a dispute involving Charter Communications Inc. and online music swapping.

In that 2-1 ruling, the 8th Circuit panel affirmed another appellate decision in Washington in December 2003, thwarting the RIAA's push to compel Internet providers to identify customers accused of illegally distributing songs over the Internet.

In its appeal filed last week, the RIAA - the trade organization for the largest labels - argued that the 8th Circuit panel's ruling, if upheld, "will deprive copyright owners of a critically important tool for stopping the massive infringement of copyrights over the Internet."

"Billions of dollars and important federal policy are at stake," the appeal said.

A message was left Thursday with Charter seeking comment.

Last month's ruling did not significantly affect the recording industry's continuing campaign to sue Internet users.

In the Missouri case, judges said St. Louis-based Charter - the nation's third-largest cable TV company and among the country's biggest Internet providers - wasn't responsible for 93 of its customers allegedly trading 100,000 copyrighted music files across the Internet and shouldn't have been compelled to identify them under the 1988 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The appeals court said Charter's role was "confined to acting as a conduit in the transfer of files through its network." In now challenging that ruling, the RIAA said "there is no dispute that these individuals are committing copyright infringement on a massive scale and that Charter is the only entity able to identify the individuals."

Since the earlier ruling, the music industry has filed civil lawsuits nationwide against "John Doe" defendants, based on their Internet addresses, then worked through the courts to learn their names. That process is more complicated - and more expensive - for the record labels.

Despite the Missouri ruling, the RIAA has said it would continue suing thousands of people it accuses of illegally sharing music.

In a dissent, the 8th Circuit's Diana Murphy complained that the rulings prevent copyright holders from easily protecting their works and said repercussions were "too easily ignored or minimized." She wrote that the industry's practice of filing lawsuits against anonymous defendants was "cumbersome and expensive."

The RIAA's appeal said the majority's "misreading of the statute (in last month's split 8th Circuit ruling) produced a result that is irreconcilable with the DMCA's text, structure and purposes."
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...0982882.htm?1c


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MP3s For Pennies? Russian Cops Say No
John Borland

A Russian digital-music site offering high-quality song downloads for just pennies apiece is the target of a criminal copyright investigation by the local police, recording industry groups said Tuesday.

AllofMP3.com has been operating for several years, asking consumers to pay just 2 cents per megabyte of downloads--usually between 4 cents and 10 cents per song. Alongside the catalogue available at traditional stores like Apple Computer's iTunes, the site offered access to songs from the Beatles and other groups that haven't yet authorized digital distribution.

The Russian site claimed it had licenses to do so from a local clearing house, but record labels have maintained that the licenses weren't valid. After long-standing complaints, the Moscow City Police Computer Crimes division completed an investigation earlier this month and recommended that prosecutors charge the site's operators with criminal copyright infringement.

"We have consistently said that AllofMP3.com is not licensed to distribute our members' repertoire in Russia or anywhere else," Igor Pozhitkov, regional director of IFPI Moscow--part of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry--said in a statement. "We are pleased that the police are bringing this important case to the attention of the prosecutor."

The investigation marks a potentially substantial step forward in Russia for copyright holders. Record labels and movie studios have sometimes had difficulty persuading Russian law enforcement to deal with piracy problems.

A similar set of self-declared "legal" download sites arose in Spain, claiming to have licenses to sell music from local copyright authorities. Record labels sued both, and only one, Weblisten.com, remains online. The other, Puretunes.com, settled with the industry for $10 million.

The Russian MP3 site claimed it had full rights derived from a group it called the "Russian Multimedia and Internet Society," as long as customers were planning to download the songs for personal use only. In a message posted in English, the site said it "does not keep up with the laws of different countries and is not responsible the actions of non-Russian users."

The Moscow City Prosecutor's office has until March 7 to decide whether to act on the police department's recommendation. The IFPI has also submitted its own formal complaint to the prosecutor's office.

According to the IFPI, the Russian music market is ranked No. 12 in the world, worth about $326 million in 2003. The group estimates that about 64 percent of music consumed in the country has been pirated, however.
http://news.com.com/MP3s+for+pennies...3-5586034.html


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Chinese Copyright Rules To Take Effect

A regulation on the collective management of copyrighted materials, approved by the State Council, is to become effective on March 1, better protecting the interests of copyright owners throughout the nation.

Under the 48-article regulation, such rights as hiring, performance, projection, broadcasting, duplication and Internet-based information distribution - all listed in the Copyright Law and difficult for the copyright owners to effectively safeguard their rights - can be entrusted to collective management organizations for protection.

The regulation, which has been developed on the basis of drawing experience from developed countries, is also applied to foreign copyright owners that hope to enjoy protection in China, according to Liu Jie, an official of the National Copyright Administration.

Collective management on copyright means that management organizations, that are authorized by the owner, can sign agreements with the copyright users to be allowed to use products, pay for using products and other relevant activities, said the administration's Deputy-Director Yan Xiaohong, at a news conference yesterday in Beijing.

Copyright is a kind of civil right that is usually governed by owners themselves. But in many cases, methods of using literature, art and scientific works are scattered here and there. Particularly, such rights as performance and broadcast, are difficult for the copyright owners to control, said Yan.

On the other hand, it is complicated for a great number of users of the music product to get authorization from the owners for greatly using the products, said Yan.

Hence, an international practice has come into being - the copyright owner authorizes collective management organizations, on his behalf, to grant use rights to others and collect use fees for the owners.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_2607165.htm


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Competition

ILN News Letter

Warner Bros. To Release Discounted DVDS In China

Warner Bros. plans to release dozens of its films on DVD to retailers in China at deeply discounted prices. The studio hopes that cheap and legitimate DVDs will compete effectively enough with their bootlegged counterparts that are readily available on the market.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...761836,00.html


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Studios Target Oscar Film Swappers
John Borland

Hollywood studios launched a new round of legal action Thursday, aimed in part at people swapping versions of nominated films in Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony.

The Oscar season has traditionally been a difficult one for Hollywood's antipiracy efforts, since movie studios typically distribute hundreds of copies of films to awards judges. Some of those copies inevitably end up on peer-to-peer networks or get copied and counterfeited.

As with previous rounds of lawsuits filed by the Motion Picture Association of America, the group's executives declined to say how many people were targeted in the lawsuits or where the suits were filed. They cited several award-nominated films--including "Sideways," "The Incredibles" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"--as being involved in the lawsuits

"The films stolen in these cases show that every corner of the industry, even smaller productions, are at risk," said Dan Glickman, the MPAA's chief executive officer. "When rampant online theft occurs, it makes it harder for these films to get financed."

The MPAA is several months into an aggressive new legal campaign against unauthorized film trading, which has resulted in several key file- swapping hubs being taken offline.

Earlier this month, the studio trade association announced that file-swapping site LokiTorrent, one of the hubs supporting BitTorrent technology, had agreed to pay a $1 million settlement and give its server logs to the MPAA. The news sparked worry among file swappers, who feared the information could be used for lawsuits against individuals.

As with the thousands of lawsuits launched by the Recording Industry Association of America, the new MPAA legal action is being taken against anonymous "John Doe" individuals. The names of defendants will come out through the course of court actions.

MPAA executives declined to comment on whether they believe any of the movies allegedly swapped by people involved in Thursday's lawsuits came from the versions of films sent to Academy Awards judges.
http://news.com.com/Studios+target+O...3-5589105.html


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Hollywood Catches Case of Oscar Blahs
Sharon Waxman

In the days leading up to the movie industry's most glamorous night, the Oscars, the word heard frequently around Hollywood this year is not glitz, or hype, or excitement. It is fatigue.

Strange, perhaps, and unexpected. The same millions of dollars as in years past have been spent on pitched Oscar campaigns, with their color, full-page newspaper advertisements and their earnest television spots. The same publicity muscle has been put into cocktail parties and question-and-answer sessions led by Oscar nominees at the guilds and the movie industry's home for the aged.

But the fatigue is palpable nonetheless. A combination of lackluster box office and a certain awards overload, along with an underlying fear of prosecution for potentially pirated Oscar movie DVD's, seems to be contributing to a malaise. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters have taken less joy than usual in participating in the national movie ritual, which is being broadcast Sunday on ABC.

It hasn't helped that viewership for the Golden Globes plunged by nearly 40 percent this year, and that the Grammys, just two weeks ago, suffered poor ratings, too. What if Hollywood holds an awards show and America doesn't show up?

Awards fatigue "is always a concern, even when the ratings haven't dropped," said an academy spokesman, John Pavlik, who acknowledged an active discussion of the issue in his organization. "How often can you see the same person win the same award and not be fatigued by it?"

He added: "And it's not just the awards shows - it's 'E. T.,' it's 'Access Hollywood' and all the shows that have clips from the awards shows, and show people winning again and again. You see the same thing for a week at a time." The shifting ground under the Oscars, with declining ratings and a rising thicket of competing awards events, was one reason for this year's choice of host, the irreverent and sometimes outrageous Chris Rock. Mr. Rock, whose fan base tends more toward an MTV demographic than the famously conservative one of the motion picture academy, seems to be making some Oscar voters nervous, judging from interviews about the awards with insiders, Oscar handicappers and academy members themselves.

The telecast producer, Gilbert Cates, seems to relish the debate over Mr. Rock and has said he intends to shake up the established order by having some nominees go on stage before the Oscar announcement and by taking cameras into the audience, where some awards may be presented.

Mr. Cates addressed skepticism about the format at a meeting this week with the academy public relations committee, one member who was there said, speaking on condition of anonymity because it was an internal academy matter. The member said Mr. Cates told the group: "Could it backfire? We're going to try it. If it works, the academy will do it again. If it doesn't, it won't."

But another challenge this year seems to be the best picture nominees themselves: none have crossed the $100 million mark at the domestic box office. In previous years when films like "Titanic," "Forrest Gump" or "Gladiator" ruled the box office and the nominations, audience interest seemed built in.

This year the leading contenders for best picture, handicappers and academy members say, are Clint Eastwood's quiet boxing drama, "Million Dollar Baby," and Martin Scorsese's epic about Howard Hughes, "The Aviator." Neither qualifies as a box office blockbuster.

"The Aviator," whose aggressive Oscar campaign has been led by Miramax, a co-financier of the movie with Warner Brothers and the Initial Entertainment Group, has taken in a relatively modest $89 million so far (it cost $112 million). Warner Brothers' "Million Dollar Baby" has taken in $56 million (it cost $30 million). In the best actor and actress categories, only a few major movie stars made the list, Leonardo DiCaprio and Annette Bening among them. But Americans are probably more familiar with Jennifer Aniston than with the rising favorite for best supporting actress, Sophie Okonedo ("Hotel Rwanda").

Indeed, at the box office last weekend, the No. 1 movie was "Hitch," a romantic comedy starring Will Smith, which took in $37 million. The best picture nominees - the director Alexander Payne's wry comedy "Sideways," the gentle "Finding Neverland" and the biopic "Ray" in addition to "The Aviator" and "Million Dollar Baby" - took in just $20 million, combined, according to boxofficemojo.com.

"This year, 'Ray' has done very well with its sector, 'Aviator' did well with its sector, but none of them have crossed over," said the publicist Tony Angellotti, who worked on the "Ray" Oscar campaign for Universal. "Most of these five pictures have not been wildly successful attracting more than their core target audience."

The veteran producer Peter Guber, an academy member, agreed. "Generally I think you'll find the ratings go down this year," he said. "It doesn't have those kind of big, visible icon films. It's just the nature of the thing. Why are people watching? Because of the noise of the film, the stars of the film, the media attention, what they're wearing. We in the academy like to think it's a cultural experience, but it's really a collection of stars and what they're wearing that gets the viewing audience."

As every year, the studios have done their best to compete for the Oscars. Universal has taken care to release the DVD for "Ray," about the singer Ray Charles, in recent weeks, as academy members vote.

For "The Aviator," Miramax, led by its co-chairman, Harvey Weinstein, has bought extensive television advertisements featuring comments from Alan Alda, nominated for best supporting actor, and the co-producer Michael Mann explaining the film's importance and Hughes's significance. Bloggers have noted that in some television spots, the studio paired "Aviator" images with music from the opening credit sequence of Mr. Scorsese's boxing masterpiece, "Raging Bull." The music, from the opera "Cavalleria Rusticana," is a detail that older academy members would be likely to notice, though the average television viewer might not. Mr. Scorsese, a nominee for best director, has never won an Oscar.

Meanwhile, "Million Dollar Baby" has been running promotional segments several minutes long on New York cable channels about the making of the film and its importance to the director and star, Mr. Eastwood. A dispute over the movie's treatment of assisted suicide, with conservative commentators and disability rights advocates attacking the film, seems only to have increased academy members' affection for Mr. Eastwood, who has portrayed himself as a Hollywood outsider in making this project. He is a nominee for best director and for best actor.

And while Fox Searchlight's "Sideways" seems a longshot for best picture, the movie has been a ringing success for the mini-studio, taking in $58 million so far and winning a Golden Globe for best movie, comedy, as well as the Screen Actors Guild's best ensemble award.

But it all remains confusing, truth be told. Historically, the movie with the most Oscar nominations wins best picture, and in this case that would be "The Aviator," which snagged 11. But the sentimental favorite seems to be "Million Dollar Baby," whose director won the top award from the Directors Guild of America, a good predictor of the best director Oscar.

Take your pick. As Mr. Guber put it, "Tradition's great, as long as it works."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/mo...rs/25osca.html


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For Users, Napster of Old Is Just a Few Tweaks Away
David F. Gallagher

The old Napster, circa 1999, was a vast jukebox with no controls over the illegal copying of music files. The new Napster, which sells legal downloads, is also a vast jukebox, but it was clear last week that the company still has less-than-perfect controls over illegal copying.

Word spread across the Web recently that a few tweaks of WinAmp, a popular music-playing program, and a small plug-in available on the WinAmp Web site would allow users to take a music file protected with Microsoft technology and produce an unprotected copy.

This method can convert files from other music services but it is a particular threat to Napster because of its "all you can eat" subscription model: customers pay as little as $9.95 a month for borrowing privileges at Napster's library of a million songs. The ability to create unprotected files would enable users to download as much music as possible, then cancel the subscription and walk away.

Glenn Shannon, a programmer in Tucson, first publicized the technique several weeks ago on the Web site CDFreaks.com. From there, the method moved to blogs and news sites. Napster responded on Wednesday by posting a message from its chief technical officer, Bill Pence, that played down the problem, saying the method "can be likened to the way people used to record songs from the radio onto cassette tapes."

If so, these were some fancy tape recorders. In online comments, people said they were downloading around the clock and converting dozens of songs at a time by running multiple copies of WinAmp on one computer.

"We offer a service for people who believe artists should be paid for their work," said Dana M. Harris, a spokeswoman for Napster. "If people disagree with that, they're going to find ways to get around it."

Meanwhile, AOL, which owns the company that makes WinAmp, removed the problematic plug-in from the WinAmp site (copies soon appeared elsewhere) and said it was rushing to fix the glitch in WinAmp.

Mr. Shannon said his intention was not to cause trouble for Napster. Indeed, he said he was a satisfied Napster customer who was just frustrated that the protection on the files prevented him from playing them on his older portable music players.

"After people see the convenience that the Napster premium services offer, they're not really going to sit there and pirate all this stuff," he said.

But on the CDFreaks board, there was talk of new conversion methods that had nothing to do with WinAmp.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/te...21napster.html


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AOL Blocks Music-Copying Feature
John Borland

America Online is disabling a feature of its popular music software that had been used to evade copy-prevention features of digital music services, the company said Friday.

The company's Winamp software was identified by bloggers this week as part of a process that transformed copy-protected music downloads into songs that could be burned by the thousand to CD. The tool had potentially affected any subscription service that used Microsoft's media format, including Napster, Virgin Music and even America Online's own music subscription plan.

AOL programmers are taking a series of steps to prevent its software from being used in this way, a representative said.

"Immediately upon discovering this flaw, we worked quickly to address it and to ensure that Winamp can continue to provide secure playback of Windows Media content," spokeswoman Ann Burkart said. "A fix is being implemented today in existing players, and a new player will be posted for users to download."

The technique used in the Winamp process is not a new one and is a part of many other pieces of software available online. Nevertheless, the news rippled though the record industry and online music services this week, causing renewed scrutiny of the subscription music business model by top industry executives.

The process was essentially a high-tech version of recording a song off the radio. Antipiracy software, including Microsoft's, typically prevents a direct digital copy from being made. But some software packages, dubbed "stream rippers," allow a computer to rerecord audio as it is being played.

The resulting files are typically lower quality than the originals, and the artist, album and file information are lost.

AOL has already removed the Winamp plug-in that made this process fairly simple. Programmers are developing a patch that will be automatically pushed to the software's users. The patch will probably disable altogether the ability to play copy-protected songs in Microsoft's format.

A new version of Winamp software will then be released that can once again play the Microsoft-formatted songs, but will block the stream-ripping capability, Burkart said.
http://news.com.com/AOL+blocks+music...3-5582618.html


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Federal Effort to Head Off TV Piracy Is Challenged
Tom Zeller Jr.

Mike Godwin, the legal director for Public Knowledge, a digital-rights advocacy group in Washington, is a fan of Showtime's new drama series "Huff." So three weeks ago, when he missed the season finale, he decided to download it to his personal computer.

It took about seven hours to download all 500 megabytes of the hour-long episode over his high-speed Internet connection, using the latest file-sharing software designed to handle large digital files.

Still, he did get it. And he did watch it.

"It's a great show," he said.

To Mr. Godwin, the time-consuming download (and the file's poor quality) indicated that the rampant piracy of digitized broadcast programs - a threat Hollywood has long warned against - was hardly imminent. But to the Federal Communications Commission and the Motion Picture Association of America, cases like this one suggest a future of widespread illegal file-sharing that must be stopped before it begins.

The debate will be presented in oral arguments tomorrow before the District of Columbia Circuit for the United States Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by Public Knowledge and others against the F.C.C., challenging a new regulation that is intended to prevent such bleeding of television content onto the Internet.

"This is about whether the F.C.C. is going to become the Federal Computer Commission and the Federal Copyright Commission," said Gigi B. Sohn, the co-founder and president of Public Knowledge. "The F.C.C. does not have the power to tell technology manufacturers how to build their machines."

All sides agree that the new rule would do just that in attempting to limit unauthorized sharing of digital broadcast content over the Internet. The rule would require that as of July 1, all new consumer electronics equipment capable of receiving over-the-air digital signals - from digital televisions to computers equipped with TV tuner cards - must include technology that will recognize a "broadcast flag."

That flag is simply a marker of sorts, a packet of bits embedded in a digital television broadcast stream that essentially carries the message "this stream is to be protected." In addition to recognizing that message, new equipment must include technology that will prevent the content from being distributed to other devices unless they, too, are flag-compliant.

To the entertainment industry, the rule is a necessary precondition to its participation in the nationwide move toward digital broadcasting that Congress and the F.C.C. have been promoting for nearly 10 years - a transition that would, among other benefits, free up valuable tracts of the electromagnetic spectrum now being used to deliver bulkier analog signals.

The M.P.A.A. has argued that without the broadcast flag rule, content creators would have no incentive to provide digital content over the airwaves, because people could simply pluck video streams out of the air and redistribute them to millions of viewers over the Internet.

"It's very simple," said Fritz Attaway, a vice president and Washington general counsel for the M.P.A.A. "Without the broadcast flag, high-value content would migrate to where it could be protected."

In practical terms, such "protected" places would be cable and satellite systems where digital content can be more easily scrambled, encrypted or otherwise controlled, leaving broadcast networks at a distinct disadvantage in the new digital marketplace. (About 20 million American households still receive their programming exclusively over the open airwaves, according to Nielsen Media Research.)

But the M.P.A.A.'s position has also been understood by some to be simpler and starker: if you don't make it safe for us to provide high-value digital content over the public airwaves, we won't.

The transition to all-digital broadcasting is supposed to be completed by the end of 2006, after which the unused parts of the spectrum are to be reclaimed by the federal government. Those frequencies could then be used for, say, public safety communications, or, perhaps more important, auctioned off for use by emerging wireless and other technologies.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that such auctions could generate $15 billion in revenue for the government over the next 10 years. Other estimates put the value much higher.

But if content creators refuse to provide digital programming because of piracy concerns, consumer demand for digital television will be low, which means a slower transition to all-digital broadcasts. And that, in turn, would mean no revenue for the government from spectrum auctions.

Less than 5 percent of all households now have televisions that allow them to view digital broadcasts, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

"The F.C.C. has a unique role in seeing this transition through," said Rick Chessen, chairman of the commission's digital transition task force, "and one of the key elements of the transition is making sure that high-quality digital content is available. If that content isn't there or if it migrates somewhere else, then the transition, and ultimately the broadcasting system itself, is hurt."

The only other viable option to the broadcast flag - encrypting digital broadcasts entirely - would have been a much more heavy-handed approach, Mr. Chessen said, because consumers have already purchased millions of digital televisions that would be unable to receive the encrypted signals. Under the broadcast flag system, noncompliant devices could simply ignore the flag and function normally.

Mr. Chessen also noted that the agency had encouraged competition by not mandating any particular technology to make new consumer devices flag-compliant. So far, 13 methods for doing so have been developed by 9 companies - including big players like Sony, Philips and RealNetworks - and submitted to the F.C.C., which has approved them all.

And using the Internet to redistribute legitimately copied content is not wholly ruled out, Mr. Chessen said, as long as there is some mechanism in the devices to prevent "mass and indiscriminate" sharing.

Consumer electronics manufacturers have, for the most part, kept a fairly low profile in the debate, wanting neither to be burdened with cumbersome design specifications nor to upset the powerful content industry, which is the chief proponent of the flag.

"We have a strong history of defending fair use and innovation," said Jeffrey Joseph, the vice president for communications at the Consumer Electronics Association. "But you also have to have content to make these boxes worth a dime."

But staunch opponents of the broadcast flag rule - which include groups like the American Library Association, the Consumers Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation - see it as an unprecedented regulatory sledgehammer.

In only a few limited circumstances has the F.C.C. issued design regulations for the manufacture of consumer electronics - and in those cases, only after a statutory mandate from Congress. The V-chip is one example; closed-captioning capabilities in TV sets is another.

But the broadcast-flag rule was not created by a Congressional directive, and opponents argue that is at least partly because the kind of piracy it is meant to prevent is not a big problem.

"There is no evidence on the record that piracy of digital broadcast content is a problem now or is going to be a problem in the near future," said Ms. Sohn of Public Knowledge. "We don't want agencies making rules based on nothing. And there's also no evidence that the broadcast flag will do what it wants it to do."

Indeed, it is a fairly simple matter - and will probably remain so even if the rule survives - for even mildly dedicated pirates to capture and convert signals back and forth from digital to analog, effectively defeating the flag. (Mr. Godwin noted that his version of "Huff," like nearly all video content now circulating on the Internet, was probably an analog signal at some point.)

Another problem, said Ms. Sohn, is that the broadcast flag would prohibit redistribution of public domain works and stop certain kinds of distribution of content that is allowed under the fair-use provisions of copyright law. "Let's say you want to do a video blog, or want to comment on a TV show with a 10-second clip and share it," she said. "You won't be able to do that."

Other opponents of the rule say there will be no way of knowing what sorts of new technologies might have emerged without the regulation, because every device involved - televisions, video recorders, portable devices on which video programming can be displayed - will be forever shaped by the design specifications laid out by the broadcast-flag rule.

"Everything would have to be built to this single standard," said Susan Crawford, a professor of Internet law at the Cardozo School of Law in New York. "It's like being bitten in the neck by a vampire. As soon as you buy one compliant device, you'll have to continue buying new devices to keep them working together."

Whether or not the court will be sympathetic to any of these arguments is an open question, but Ms. Sohn and Mr. Godwin of Public Knowledge say they are confident that their arguments will be persuasive - particularly because the F.C.C. issued the rule without prior action from Congress.

"This is basically the Roach Motel approach to intellectual property protection," Mr. Godwin said. "Content can check in, but it can't check out."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/te...gy/21flag.html


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Broadcast TV and Broadband Video: Collision and Disruption

Breakthroo examines the collision between broadcast television and broadband video, what new innovations are at play for scheduling or distributing video, and analyses if any are disruptive to incumbents, and what that would mean for the existing broadcast television value net.

As a mature global industry, broadcast TV has experienced many cycles of sustaining innovations, where various technical and functional performance dimensions have improved over the decades, for example, the shift from: black and white to colour, a single public broadcaster to multiple commercial entities, analogue to digital, etc. All of which, have sustained traditional incumbents while incrementally improving customer satisfaction. However, broadcast TV is unlikely to have faced such a prominent and potentially disruptive innovation to market incumbents as peer-to-peer (P2P), which represents a diametrically opposing distribution method. If broadcast denotes one-to-many distribution, P2P denotes any-to-any, where anyone with a broadband connection can up/ download files (including video assets), irrespective of whether you’re a global firm or individual consumer.

P2P may not be the first method to pull/make available video assets as data, as that is also achievable by HTTP downloads, streaming and video on demand (VoD); but it does mark a shift in the architecture and availability of broadcast video assets, and reduces distribution entry barriers. With P2P networks, video ‘creators/producers’ (that create and fund content) and ‘packagers’ (that commission and aggregate it) can reach end users directly (with the former disintermediating the entire value web, the later disintermediating ‘distributors’). But, instead of P2P being framed as an alternative to broadcast TV, it’s really an augmentation, an additional route to market, albeit one with the potential to disrupt an already fragmenting TV viewing constituency, and enable both firms and amateurs to become asset creators/producers/distributors. And as the Internet is a – conceptual – world of ends, any broadband user can leverage a P2P client/network to distribute video assets.

Read the free report in-full: PDF Download (right-click to save)

What This Report Identifies

1. The current state of broadcast TV
2. The current state of broadband video
3. Traditional broadcast TV value net structure and pressures
4. Innovations that are sustaining or disruptive, and to whom
5. Shifting of Time, Place and Media

Findings

P2P marks a radical shift in the architecture and availability of broadcast video assets, and severely reduces competitive entry barriers for video distribution. Using P2P networks, both video creators/producers (that create and fund content) and content packagers (that commission and aggregate it) can reach and sell to end users directly; the former disintermediating the entire value web, while the later disintermediates traditional distributors. However, instead of P2P being framed as an alternative to broadcast TV, it’s more likely an augmentation, an additional route to market; albeit, one with the potential to disrupt a fragmenting TV viewing constituency, and enabling firms and amateurs alike to become asset creators/producers/distributors.

Conclusions

The current state of broadcast TV

TV channels are undergoing a simultaneous confluence and fragmentation, a Pareto principle perhaps, resultant of consolidating large channel packagers coalescing around more populist – commodity – fare, while new digital entrants package ever more niche – differentiated – channels and programming. An increasing array of TV platforms and end devices affords users real diversity in how they choose to consume and/or create video.

The current state of broadband video

High-level convergence of media, telecoms and datacoms, where any TV/ video service can be sent across any network (fixed/cellular/wireless), is fragmenting the distribution market, increasing competition and speeding commoditisation. Channel packagers have additional distribution options, creators can bypass packagers and distributors, and users have more video access and control (push, pull, P2P). Intelligent edge devices enable user generated video, and – faster than real-time – file distribution via efficient, swarming P2P networks; further augmenting millions of concurrent P2P users. Residential gateways that control data access and services, and multi-purpose flat-panel displays, are the eye of the – home environment – storm between multiple markets.
Traditional broadcast TV value net structure and pressures

The broadcast value net will continue to grow, featuring far more segments and increased complexity, from iTV to IPTV, from channel packagers to distributors. New entrants and substitutes will threaten incumbent business models and put aggressive pressure on margins, and innovative new products they diffuse into markets will change technology performance dimensions and customer buying criteria. Firms will need to embrace new offerings in order to find new growth and remain competitive, and explore ever more niche content demands, i.e. look to the margins, to aggregate higher volume, more personal, smaller transactions.

Innovations that are sustaining or disruptive, and to whom

P2P, being the most likely disruptive innovation for video distribution, will enable new firms to threaten distributors which fail to compete on content granularity, volume of sources, and cost. The ability to media shift may be one characteristic customers use in adopting P2P-based video services. New P2P video distributors will force the broadcast value net structure to expand, and increasing competition margin pressure.

Shifting of Time, Place and Media

As sustaining innovations, DVR systems will reside within incumbent services or as augmented features of STBs, online VoD providers, etc. Commoditisation of basic features will be accelerated by multiple, competing value players rushing to diffuse them – consequently forcing some players towards evolved features, premium markets, and modularisation of previously interdependent interfaces within the value net. Freeing users from the TV/home constraint will be achieved with place shifting solutions via streams, downloads and device transfers. Adoption characteristics will differ to iTunes/iPod, as video place shifting requires a user’s total attention, most appropriate for nomadic scenarios; of which a manifestation may be a preference for short – bite size – video clips. End-to-end systems with rich content libraries may prove difficult to negotiate and offer. Media shifting and P2P blur the professional/amateur divide, making possible point-to-point distribution of video content and user-generated videos. In combination with the explosive popularity of blogging, syndication, and ‘long tail’ economic models, will create a virtuous circle. Video professionals and niche markets now have a viable distribution alternative to broadcast, providing them with a direct sales route and zero costs.
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/646/broadcast_tv_and


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New Twist In Internet Piracy As Britons Rush To Download TV
Ciar Byrne

Impatient fans of popular American television shows from 24 to Desperate Housewives are increasingly turning to illegal internet downloads to watch programmes hours after they have been broadcast in the US.

Britain is the worst offender in this explosion of online television piracy that has seen illegal downloads of some programmes increase by more than 150 per cent in the past year, research shows.

24, the hit thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, is the most popular pirate television programme worldwide. In the past 12 months, illegal downloads of the show have risen from 35,000 per episode for the third series to 95,000 for the fourth.

Downloads of Desperate Housewives, showing on Channel 4, rose from 40,000 for the first episode to more than 60,000 for the most recent, although this is a tiny fraction of the four million viewers who regularly tune in. About 18 per cent of online television piracy is in Britain, closely followed by Australia - countries with a growing demand for early access to American television shows.

The rise in broadband internet access is the main driver of the piracy, allowing a programme to be downloaded in two hours. The UK had more than six million broadband connections at the end of 2004, Ofcom said.

Another factor is the new file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent, specifically designed to download films and television programmes.

Television piracy is gaining the notoriety enjoyed by Napster in its previous incarnation as the home of illegal music downloads.

The cost to the television industry is difficult to quantify because most people pay a general subscription fee rather than for individual programmes. But advertising revenues are at particular risk because illegal downloads do not include adverts.

David Price of Envisional, the internet monitoring company that performed the study, said: "It's a double whammy for advertisers. First, they are losing eyeballs. Second, the people whose eyeballs they are losing are the demographic they want, young and technologically savvy with high disposable incomes. TV companies must take a leaf out of the record industry's book, set up legal download sites and bring lawsuits against the worst offenders. The companies are pursuing a television equivalent of iTunes, which would offer high-quality downloads and maybe added content."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/li...p?story=613672


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Interactive Viral Campaigns Ask Consumers to Spread the Word
Nat Ives

DURING the early days of Internet advertising, skeptics often argued that Web ads would never sell prosaic packaged goods effectively.

As more Americans become comfortable with the Web, though, major marketers are increasingly asking agencies to produce elaborate, interactive online campaigns - even for grocery store goods that hardly anyone researches or buys online.

One of the shiniest lures online is the developing field of viral advertising, in which companies try to create messages so compelling, funny or suggestive that consumers spontaneously share them with friends, often through e-mail or cellphone text messages. The goal is the exponential spread of ads that are endorsed by consumers' own friends.

The best-known viral success may be the offbeat "Subservient Chicken" site, created to promote a Burger King chicken sandwich. The site, which shows a person in a chicken suit who seems to follow typed commands from Web surfers, has drawn 13.9 million unique visitors since it went live in April 2004, according to the agency that created it, Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami.

Thus far the energetic rise of viral marketing has been fueled largely by such bizarre creations, along with young, hip and technology-savvy Web surfers. But its promise is finally tempting marketers like Georgia-Pacific to test the tactic on much broader audiences.

Georgia-Pacific has begun a campaign, created by Fallon New York, part of the Fallon Worldwide division of the Publicis Groupe, that uses a viral component to sell Brawny paper towels to women, age 25 to 54.

"This is definitely a new approach for us," said Alfredo Ortiz, senior brand manager for Brawny at Georgia-Pacific in Atlanta. But the growing number of Americans with high- speed Internet access includes millions of women, he said. "There's definitely room to market to this target."

To seed the campaign, as viral marketers say, Georgia-Pacific sent a single blast of e-mail messages last week to consumers who had signed up for newsletters from www.allyourrooms.com, a Georgia-Pacific site that provides information on topics like decorating, entertaining and cleaning.

Visitors to the Brawny site will find a section for the tongue-in-cheek "Innocent Escapes" videos in which a strong but sensitive Brawny Man offers compliments like, "By the way, you look beautiful today - something about your eyes."

Ari Merkin, executive creative director at Fallon New York, noted that "Innocent Escapes" visitors would find both a "play movie" button and an all-important second button, "send to a friend."

"If someone passes one of these things along, it's an endorsement," Mr. Merkin said. "It does wonders for us."

Brand managers for Brawny and its larger competitor, Bounty, still spend minuscule portions of their annual ad budgets on Internet advertising. From January through November 2004, for example, Brawny spent less than 1 percent of its $24.2 million estimated budget on the Web, with 31.4 percent devoted to broadcast network television commercials, according to estimates by TNS Media Intelligence.

In the same period, Bounty devoted less than 1 percent of its estimated $60.4 million ad spending to the Internet, with 34.2 percent of the ad budget going to broadcast network television buys, TNS Media Intelligence said.

But for Brawny, the No. 2 paper towel brand, new tactics may offer the best hope to erode a daunting Bounty lead. Last year, shoppers spent $240.6 million on Brawny paper towels, according to data from Information Resources Inc., which tallies sales in supermarkets, drugstores and mass merchandisers excluding Wal-Mart. By comparison, Bounty sales totaled $853.5 million, by Information Resources' estimate.

Another company, Frito-Lay North America, has begun promoting a packaged product, Doritos, with a yearlong integrated campaign incorporating big text-message and online components. But its core target comprises teenagers and adults up to 25 years old, who seem the most familiar with and receptive to viral approaches.

Kickoff teasers for the Doritos campaign included enigmatic billboards asking passers-by to text message "inNw" to a certain number, 46691, or visit www.inNw.com. Those who send text messages receive quick responses on their phones from Doritos challenging them to guess what "inNw" means, thereby engaging them in dialogue and potentially making the question a conversation point among friends.

The flagship New York office of BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, created the "inNw" Doritos campaign. The text-message component was developed by HipCricket in Essex, Conn., a five-month-old wireless marketing and event agency.

Text messaging and Web fluency is spreading among consumers, said Lora DeVuono, vice president for advertising and communications at Frito-Lay in Plano, Tex., part of PepsiCo. "In terms of lifestyle integration," she said, however, "it's the under-30 crowd that's focused on its complete integration in their lives."

As viral marketing gains adherents, it is also gaining awards shows like this week's Viral Awards in New York. The event, a North American version of the Viral Awards in Britain, primarily honored bizarre or risqué work like "Subservient Chicken" and an online campaign for Trojan condoms that portrayed seminude athletes vaulting into sexual positions.

"The sophomoric, shock-driven work is going to predominate for a while," said Owen Plotkin, president at the Now Corporation in New York, an editing boutique for television commercials and viral productions that was host for the awards. "That's the easiest way to ensure people pass something along."

"It's really hard to make something so compelling that it makes people want to share," Mr. Plotkin said. "But that can happen, too, and it does happen."

The success of Brawny's "Innocent Escapes" depends largely on the entertainment value it brings visitors, said Stephen Strong, director for interactive at the Chicago office of Foote Cone & Belding, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. "It's human nature to share that stuff," he said. "People will be sending each other stuff online until the Internet shuts down."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/bu...ia/18adco.html


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The Times Company Acquires About.com for $410 Million
Katharine Q. Seelye

The New York Times Company announced yesterday that it would acquire About Inc. and its Web site, About.com, from Primedia Inc. for $410 million.

Times Company officials said the acquisition would add a fast-growing, highly profitable Web site to the company's portfolio and would increase the company's revenue from the expanding online advertising business.

"This deal provides a very attractive return on our investment going forward, and I feel very comfortable standing up in front of shareholders and telling them that," said Leonard P. Forman, chief financial officer of the Times Company.

By adding About's 22 million monthly users to the Times Company's 13 million monthly users - from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and more than 40 other Web sites - the company said it would have the 12th-largest presence on the Internet.

"This scale is important as content companies compete for market share in readership and advertising," said Martin A. Nisenholtz, named by the Times Company yesterday as senior vice president for digital operations.

About.com uses a network of about 500 experts to write online about hundreds of specialty topics, from personal finance to quilting to fly-fishing. Primedia wanted About.com as a way to provide a link with its many print publications, Web sites, newsletters and video programs.

Kelly P. Conlin, Primedia's president and chief executive, said that selling About.com would help Primedia reduce its debt and strengthen its own balance sheet.

The Times Company's acquisition of About.com comes after it was among the losers in a bidding war in the fall for CBS MarketWatch, the financial news Web site. The site was acquired by Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $519 million.

Times Company officials said About.com would help diversify its online advertising base by adding "cost per click" advertising, in which advertisers pay only when a reader clicks on an ad.

Cost-per-click ads are the fastest-growing segment of online advertising. The Times Company said it also expected to market its products to About.com users. "The appeal of About is that it gets the NYT Company into the fastest-growing component of the advertising market place, and therefore it makes strategic sense," said Peter Appert, a media analyst for Goldman Sachs.

"The challenge is that About is very small versus the total scale of the NYT business," he said, adding that About's revenues last year were $40 million, a fraction of the Times Company's revenues. "It represents barely over 1 percent of NYT revenue, so while it's strategically appealing and it's a step in the right direction, it's financially too small to really change the growth story at the NYT," Mr. Appert added.

Times Company officials said the demographics of About's users were somewhat different from those of users of The Times's Web site. The median age of About's users is 37, which is five or six years younger than that of nytimes.com users. About 65 percent of About users are women, while The Times's site attracts more men than women. The average income of About users is $61,000 a year, while that of The Times's online readers is $80,000 a year. And there is little overlap between current About users and The Times's users.

"It adds a huge new base to our mix," Mr. Nisenholtz said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/bu...a/18times.html


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Publisher Aims at Cellphones
Edward Wyatt

Stepping into the rapidly expanding business of providing information for wireless hand-held devices, Random House announced yesterday that it had acquired a minority stake in Vocel, a San Diego start-up company that offers educational content to subscribers over cellphones for a monthly fee.

Random House said it had also agreed to license two product lines - Living Language, a series of foreign-language self-study programs, and Prima Games, which publishes video-game strategy guides - to Vocel for use with its cellphone technology.

The two companies did not disclose terms. Random House, a division of Bertelsmann, will not be involved in the day-to-day operations of Vocel, but two Random House representatives will serve on Vocel's five-member board.

Under the agreements, Vocel will adapt language-study guides and video-game tips from Random House for delivery to cellphones beginning sometime this summer. While most information will be in the form of text, the Living Language service will also permit users to hear the correct pronunciations of foreign words.

Since last year, Vocel has offered SAT preparation materials from Princeton Review to subscribers, who pay $5.75 a month to have interactive SAT tests, flash cards and other study materials delivered to the display screens on their phones.

The test preparation service is available to about six models of cellphones through Verizon Wireless. Carl Washburn, who founded Vocel two years ago and is its chief executive, said the company planned to expand to other wireless carriers this year. It is also negotiating with other publishers and information providers to license additional content.

Richard Sarnoff, president of Random House Ventures, an investment subsidiary of the publishing company, said the company intended to expand its offerings of text and audio information to wireless providers beyond yesterday's agreements.

"Mobile phones have already integrated themselves into people's lives as an everyday appliance," Mr. Sarnoff said. "You're also going to see them become an everyday information appliance. As the world's largest consumer publisher, we want to get out in front of this."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/bu.../18random.html


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Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here
Kate Zernike

From a chenille-slipcovered sofa in the basement of their friend Dave's mom's house at the edge of a snow-covered field, Brad and Other Brad, sock-footed pioneers in the latest technology revolution, are recording "Why Fish," their weekly show.

Clutching a microphone and leaning over a laptop on the coffee table, they praise the beauty of the Red River, now frozen on the edge of town, and plug an upcoming interview with a top-ranked professional walleye fisherman. Then they sign off.

"I'm Brad" says Brad, in real life, Brad Durick, a 29-year-old television advertising salesman.

"And I'm Brad," says Other Brad, a 44-year-old newspaper writer, Brad Dokken. "Until next week, keep your hook in the water, keep your line tight and keep it fun."

Their show, mostly ad-libbed, is a podcast, a kind of recording that, thanks to a technology barely six months old, anyone can make on a computer and then post to a Web site, where it can be downloaded to an iPod or any MP3 player to be played at the listener's leisure.

On an average day, about 100 people download "Why Fish" from its Web site. That is not a huge audience, but two fishermen can dream. Some popular podcasters say they get thousands of downloads a day.

Since August, when Adam Curry, a former MTV video jockey, and David Winer, an early Web log writer, developed the podcasting technology, 3,075 podcasts have sprung up around the world, according to a Web site, Ipodder.org, that offers downloads of podcasting software.

From "Say Yum," a California couple's musings about food and music, to "Lifespring," a Christian show whose creator said he had a vision to podcast, to "Dutch Cheese and American Pie," by a Dutch citizen planning to move to the United States, these shows cover a broad variety of topics.

Podcasts are a little like reality television, a little like "Wayne's World," and are often likened to TiVo, which allows television watchers to download only the programs they want to watch and to skip advertising, for radio or blogs but spoken.

And as bloggers have influenced journalism, podcasters have the potential to transform radio. Already many radio stations, including National Public Radio and Air America, the liberal-oriented radio network, have put shows into a podcast format. And companies are seeing the possibilities for advertising; Heineken, for example, has produced a music podcast.

Inevitably, politicians are taking note, too. Donnie Fowler Jr. put out "FireWire Chats" by podcast in his bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saying Democrats had to embrace new technology if they wanted to reach a grass-roots audience.

Still, most podcasts are made by people like the two Brads, who record from basements, bedrooms or bathrooms, and devote their shows to personal passions.

In Southern California, three men have hit the Top 50 on Podcastalley.com, a podcast tracker, with "Grape Radio," a "Sideways"-like program about wine. Their expertise? They drink wine and like to talk about it.

There are music podcasts - cover songs, punk and "The Worst Music You've Ever Heard." There are many religious podcasts, nicknamed Godcasts. Then there is "Five Hundy by Midnight," a Midwest gambler's musings on Las Vegas.

There are podcasts on sports and on bicycling, on agriculture and on politics. There are poetry podcasts and technology podcasts.

In Northern California, Devan and Kris Johnson, young newlyweds, offer "Say Yum," recording themselves making dinner and playing music after work. (A snippet: "I hope everybody gets to eat avocados.") But they are not even the first of their genre; one of the first and most popular podcasts is recorded by a young married couple, talking about their lives, and sex lives, from their farmhouse in Wayne, Wis.

There are even podcasts about podcasting and several Web sites, like Podcastalley.com and Podcastbunker.com, that review and rank podcasts and provide links to them.

People who study consumer behavior say the rapid growth of podcasts reflects people's desire for a personalized experience, whether creating a stuffed animal at a Build-a- Bear store or creating playlists for their iPods.

"It's about control," said Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist at Context-Based Research, a consulting firm in Baltimore that has done several studies on how technology changes human behavior.

"Making something of their own, feeling like they've put it together, there's lots of self-confidence in that," Mr. Blinkoff said.

The potential audience for podcasting is huge; Apple alone has sold 10 million iPods in the last three years, about half of those in the last few months of last year.

And already, several podcasts have found sponsors. Dave Whitesock, who under the show name Dave Miller records the "Miller Report," a daily podcast from Grand Forks, got a limousine company to help pay for his report in exchange for a daily mention: "For when you need a stretch limo in Grand Forks."

While some podcasters take hours to edit their shows, many simply embrace dead air and the "ums" that come with what Mr. Whitesock called "Live to Hard Drive."

Brian Race, a radio station manager in Georgia who runs Christianpodcasting.com on the side, picked up his cellphone in the middle of a recent podcast to discover his mother on the line. He kept on recording.

The rawness is part of the appeal.

"Everyone says, 'They're amateurs, they're amateurs, they're amateurs,' but sometimes, frankly, it's more interesting to listen to someone who's not a professional but who has something genuine or interesting to say," said Michael W. Geoghegan, an insurance marketer in California and the host of "Reel Reviews," a movie review podcast intended for people heading to the video store.

Mr. Geoghegan said he had "multiple thousands" of downloads a day. He does no editing. "People stumble when they speak," he said. "I think the listener appreciates when it's not superpolished as it is on a commercial station."

Podcasting has tended to be contagious; after Mr. Geoghegan stumbled on a Web site about podcasting in September and started his show, he persuaded three friends who like wine to start "Grape Radio."

Mr. Whitesock, too, stumbled on a Web site about podcasting, and persuaded the two Brads to do a fishing show, and then another friend to do a movie review show. This month, they added a music show in which a radio disc jockey for a local Clear Channel station plays local music he would not get to play on the air, and persuaded the part- time mayor of Grand Forks, Dr. Michael Brown, an obstetrician, to do a monthly show, and put his State of the City address on podcast, too.

"We can reach people in the rest of the world who might say, 'Hey, Grand Forks is a great place to move to,' " said Dr. Brown, who said his shows had been downloaded by about 100 people, including some who wrote in with complaints. "And technologically advanced young people say, 'I can stay in Grand Forks.' There is a place for them here."

In California, the Johnsons of "Say Yum" added clip-on microphones to their usual after-work routine to create their show.

"I'm usually cooking, and Devan's usually playing music, so we just chat over the music," Ms. Johnson said.

Brian Ibbott had always loved making mixed tapes and CD's. His podcast, "Coverville," has become one of Podcastalley's most popular, and in many ways it is like a real radio show, without the advertising. Sunday is all-request day, and listeners can call in their requests. Mr. Ibbott, 35, plays back their recorded requests before the songs.

"I don't know that I'm doing it so much as a protest against radio as I am to develop the radio show I always wanted to hear," said Mr. Ibbott, who lives in Colorado. The last great radio station nearby, he said, was bought out by Clear Channel. "And they got the same playlist everyone else did."

He pays a few hundred dollars to Ascap and BMI to allow him to play copyrighted music, he said, and is negotiating with the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed lawsuits to prevent unauthorized music downloading.

Mr. Ibbott, like the Johnsons and most podcasters, work in technology jobs. But then there are some like Steve Webb, who fits his Christian show "Lifespring" in between his regular job as a windshield repairman. He was on a Cub Scout trip with his son, he said, when he woke with a vision that he was to do a podcast.

"I felt it was leading in the Lord," said Mr. Webb, 50. "I felt he wanted to have a voice in this new media. After all, the Gutenberg Bible was the first thing printed on the printing press."

Technology watchers say that like blogs, some podcasts will be widely heard and influential, while others may end up with no more reach than local access cable programs. But many podcasters, like the two Brads, say they are simply happy to have an outlet for their passion. As Mr. Durick said, "You love to talk fish if you're a fisherman."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/te...eUZKHpQedPIEYg


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Napster Founder, Shawn Fanning Among Other Music Industry Leaders to Present at Leading Music & Technology Conference

Music & Technology Industry Luminaries to Debate Grokster Case, Peer-to-Peer Networks and Mobile Opportunities at 5th Annual Digital Music Forum in New York City
Press Release

Digital Media Wire, the industry's leading digital and mobile entertainment news, events, and information provider, today announced its final round of panelists and key-note speakers for the 5th Annual Digital Music Forum (http://www.digitalmusicforum.com/), to be held March 2nd at the French Institute in New York City.

The one-day conference, which is the premier event for music industry decision-makers, will focus on business models and legal issues impacting the music industry, featuring a candid, one-on-one discussion between Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson and Napster founder Shawn Fanning about Fanning's new venture and his future in music. Additional keynotes will also include one of the most powerful people in music, master manager and promoter Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Productions in addition to David Goldberg, VP & General Manager, Music at Yahoo! Mike Conte, General Manager, MSN Marketplaces for Microsoft.

The event includes thought-provoking panels on the outlook for online and mobile music markets and the clash between technology and copyright laws. Speakers representing both parties in the peer-to-peer file-sharing case MGM v. Grokster make up a panel of legal and policy experts who will discuss views on how best to balance the competing interests of copyright protection and the promotion of technological innovation. The case, which has far-reaching ramifications for the future of peer-to-peer and online piracy, is set to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 29th, 2005. If the plaintiffs win, distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing software could face immense damage awards and/ or court injunctions that would force them to cease distributing their software.

"Peer-to-peer and mobile developments will be at the heart of discussions at this year's forum," says Ned Sherman, CEO of Digital Media Wire. "I am excited to line up industry-leading authority topics such as developments in legal peer- to-peer issues, the Supreme Court's review of MGM v. Grokster and technological development in regards to positioning the mobile phone to become the key device for music to be digitally accessed and distributed. This is going to be one of the most important years for the future of music and these events are likely to shape the industry for years to come."
http://press.arrivenet.com/tec/article.php/594632.html


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The basics

WinMX MP3 Music Sharing Software Review
Joanna Gurnitsky

1) Overview of the WinMX software: This product is designed to trade songs and videos across the Internet using "peer to peer" (P2P) networking.

It works like this: thousands of users install WinMX on their PCs, and willingly open their hard drives to each other. As these thousands of people log on to the Net using WinMX, the pool of available WinMX hard drives changes moment-to-moment. Every WinMX user is empowered to search for songs and movies, and then begin downloading and uploading music files to each other. Equitable sharing of music and movies is promoted, and people will often share gigabytes of files with their fellow WinMX users.

This WinMX P2P network system employs its own custom file sharing client software, created by FrontCode Technologies. The current version of WinMX is 3.31, and is free to download here: http:// www.winmx.com/

2) Warning: WinMX is a highly controversial software because of copyright laws, and WinMX users do risk possible fines and lawsuits.

3) What You Need to Run WinMX (System Requirements)" : Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP. Pentium166 with 64MB of RAM or better recommended. MacIntosh "grey- market" versions are available for around $50USD.

3) Why WinMX is a Good P2P Software: WinMX is simple to install, easy to use, available for free, and is the only no-cost P2P software that is free of malignant spyware. In short, if you choose to participate in P2P file sharing, WinMX is the friendliest and cheapest choice available.

4) The Downsides of WinMX: Other than in Canada, it is a copyright infringement in most countries to share music and movie files. WinMX users risk being fined or even sued everytime they trade music files.

6) The Legalities of Using WinMX Music-Sharing Software:

True WinMX software is FREE, but you must decide if you will risk being sued for copyright infringement. The only country that legally sanctions Internet music- and video-sharing is Canada. If you are in the USA, the UK, Mexico, Australia, or elsewhere, you do run a risk of being caught and fined for sharing music.

Example of an American User Being Fined: On May 6th, 2004, a woman from Connecticut was fined six thousand dollars for downloading copyright-protected music from the Internet, and was barred from downloading, uploading or distributing copyrighted songs over the Internet.

7) Warning About a Consumer Scam: some P2P networks will unethically sell you paid versions of various file sharing software, including WinMX, and claim that this paid software absolves you of copyright responsibility. This is a lie. While the software itself may be legal (you paid for it), the copyright aspect is not addressed by these surchages.

These unethical scammers will obscure the issue with hazy statements like: “Due to the nature of peer-to-peer software, we are unable to monitor or control the types of files shared within the peer-to-peer communities”. In the end, despite what these unethical vendors will tell you, you are still liable for music sharing copyright regardless if you pay for the software or not

8) Technical Concerns for Using WinMX P2P Software:

a. Always check your files with a good anti-virus program.

b. If you are behind a router-firewall and are curious how to set up your file sharing, go here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.bucha...l?routers.html

This website contains detailed information you can use to “open up” certain ports on your router to allow the “in” and “out” file sharing traffic.

c. Personal comment: I would highly recommend that you get acquainted with some tips and tricks that will make your WinMX-life easier. These tips include: how to avoid downloading fake files, and what to do if the movie you just downloaded refuses play on your computer. You can also find a lot of information about the fine-tuning of your transfer speeds and other WinMX expert features here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/candyst...llingWinMX.htm


Related Link: US copyright law: http://www.copyright.gov/

9. Final Comments:

If you are willing to assume the risk of copyright infringement, then I highly recommend WinMX over its competitors. The software is free, it is quite stable, it is free of malignant spyware, and the interface is quite friendly.
http://netforbeginners.about.com/cs/...nmx_review.htm


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Music To Your Ears

Never mind copyright laws, file-sharing software creators will constantly reinvent the wheel to ensure peer-to-peer technology lives on, says Aaron Tan

INCURRING the wrath of music bosses was probably on Mr Shawn Fanning's mind when he created Napster, the first peer-to-peer (P2P) file- swapping program that enables users to download music files from computers across the Internet - without paying for copyrights.

A Northeastern University college dropout, Mr Fanning was looking for a better way to trade music files. When he completed the program in 1999, he called it after his nickname. By early 2001, Napster had some 50 million users.

With massive numbers of music files being shared freely, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), together with bands like Metallica, sued Napster for abetting copyright infringement, and forced it to shut down.

Napster had to block all copyright infringing content, including 250,000 songs using 1.6 million file names.

Next in the legal pipeline was Kazaa. But this time, the United States District Court in California ruled in favour of Streamcast Networks and Grokster, distributors of Kazaa-like P2P software. Their verdict: The distribution of such programs is legal.

The good side

The claims that P2P programs are tools to steal copyrighted music and video from people who don't care about copyright laws, ignore the friendly face of the technology.

There is no doubt that freeloaders use it to download copyrighted material, but all the stuff on P2P networks are not just Linkin Park albums or Sex And The City episodes.

The technology can readily and efficiently make available all kinds of information to students, teachers, businessmen, researchers - everyone, in fact, says P2P United, a non-profit organisation fighting to save the know- how.

For example, Pennsylvania State University in the United States created Lionshare, a P2P program that shares academic information around the world.

Kontiki, another file-sharing program, was evaluated by the British Broadcasting Corporation as a way to distribute programmes online, according to an Economist report last year.

The makers of Kazaa have also created Skype, a P2P-based Internet telephony software that allows you to make free phone calls over the Internet to anywhere in the world, giving telcos stiff competition.

So the argument that P2P programs are used to download copyrighted material and, hence, should be outlawed, will rob the technology of its merits. It's like saying kitchen knives should be banned because they can kill.

In fact, about 10 per cent of the material on P2P networks do not infringe copyright laws, according to US research firm BigChampagne.

Apply to P2P, too, the US Supreme Court's 1984 decision that sales of Sony's Betamax video tape recorder does not violate the rights of copyright owners.

'Even if it were deemed that home-use recording of copyrighted material constituted infringement, the Betamax could still legally be used to record non-copyrighted material or material whose owners consented to the copying. An injunction would deprive the public of the ability to use the Betamax for this non-infringing off-the-air recording,' the court ruled.

In fact, many substantial non-infringing uses of P2P software already have been found by some courts to mean that the technology itself is not unlawful and that those who distribute it are not guilty of violating copyright law, P2P United said on its website.

Cat-and-mouse game

So, in a cat-and-mouse game with copyright owners, P2P software makers are constantly reinventing the wheel - the latest effort being BitTorrent.

Now this is a P2P-based technology that rewards people who share. Those who want a file must share what they have with everyone else.

The more they share, the faster they receive their downloads.

It's also incredibly efficient at distributing large files like the Linux operating system, games and video, which would otherwise cost companies a lot of bandwidth to make them available for download.

But late last year, websites like SuprNova.org - crucial BitTorrent hubs or trackers that hold information on who is receiving or sending a shared file at any time - went up in smoke as the Motion Pictures Association of America took criminal action against them.

While other trackers still exist, the demise of major BitTorrent trackers has made files harder to find, as traders turn to private P2P networks.

Qnext is one such network, which makes use of its software clients to share all kinds of files like photos, videos and documents with specific Qnext users - usually friends and family members.

Others, like Pixpo, are focused on photo-sharing within a selected group of friends, or among the entire community of Pixpo users.

Even so, P2P programmers are a resilient bunch. Since Napster, they have been working on better iterations of the technology with Kazaa and Gnutella.

It won't be long before they come up with a way to dynamically move BitTorrent trackers from one place to another, so that the network does not get crippled from a single point of failure.

That is something the entertainment industry has to learn to grapple with, again.
http://it.asia1.com.sg/newsdaily/news005_20050219.html


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Interview: The Future in Grid Computing
David Worthington

INTERVIEW Computing grids are software engines that pool together and manage resources from isolated systems to form a new type of low-cost supercomputer. In spite of their usefulness, grids remained the plaything of researchers for many years. But now, in 2005, grids have finally come of age and are becoming increasingly commercialized.

Sun Microsystems recently unveiled a new grid computing offering that promises to make purchasing computer time over a network as easy as buying electricity and water. Even Microsoft is said to be investing in grids and Sony has grid-enabled its PlayStation 3 for movie-like graphics.

As interest in these distributed technologies grow, so does the probability for disinformation. With that in mind, BetaNews sat down with some of the world's leading grid guru's, Dr. Ian Foster and Steve Tuecke, to set the record straight and divorce grid hype from grid reality.

BetaNews: Since we last spoke in 2001, what significant developments have there been in the commercialization of grid technologies?

Dr. Ian Foster: Back then we were just seeing earlier interest in grid technologies from companies like IBM etc. Since then we have seen tremendous growth and enthusiasm. And a lot of things are being labeled as grid that perhaps one could argue they are not. Perhaps they are more, in some cases, computing cluster management solutions, but also some substantial early deployments in the industry from companies like IBM and Sun, and others like HP and so forth.

Then more recently we have seen Univa being created, which I am involved as founder and advisor. I primarily focus on the open source software side. And that is significant because it represents a step forward on the transfer to the commercial side of this open source grid technology, which is going to be important as a means of building the standards-based systems that are required for broad deployment.

The other thing that you may have come across just recently is the Globus Consortium and this is a set of four major participants: HP, Intel, IBM and Sun; focused on advanced commercial use of Globus software.

BetaNews: Speaking of IBM, it claims to have grid-enabled much of its product line.

Foster: I think things are not quite as simple as that. IBM has a product called the IBM Grid Toolbox, which is basically Globus with some IBM enhancements or add-ons. They have done a fair bit of business based on that, using that technology to federate storage and computing resources within various industries. At the same time, when they say they grid-enabled WebSphere, for example, what they mean more is that they modified WebSphere to run on a cluster, I believe. So I do not think that the grid-enabled WebSphere at present is using Globus technologies.

BetaNews: Is that what you meant about mislabeling clustering as grid?

Foster: The key thing we are trying to achieve with grid is federating resources, breaking down the silo boundaries that are making computing more expensive or less reliable when it shouldn't be. And there are of course a number of ways of skinning the cat. So at the moment, in the absence of some of the necessary standards, first of all you see low ambition solutions that are already focused on clusters; other solutions that may extend across clusters that are more proprietary in nature; and lastly where we are moving -- with recent work on standards with the open source software basis -- towards larger scale federation and standards base federation. And those are the two things that the Globus software is about.

BetaNews: Do you consider Sun's grid engine to be an example of a proprietary solution?

Foster: Yes, the Sun grid engine is a system that can be used to manage a single cluster. I think it can be used to federate clusters that are running Sun grid engine software. It's a proprietary solution in the sense that it won't interoperate with other resource managers.

But you know it is a grid technology, and I think Sun would like to take it, and where we'd like to see it go, is toward something that would use open protocols probably based on Globus implementations as a basis for federating clusters of different sorts or computing resources of different sorts. So again, it's a technology that is useful today in sort of a closed environment that can become something more powerful as it integrates with the right open protocols.

BetaNews: Let's move on to Globus. Tell us where you are at.

Foster: So, when we would have talked last, Globus toolkit version 2 had come out probably about that time and that was the first version to really get large-scale deployment in the science space. Since then we have made a lot of progress in quite a few dimensions and one primary one is integration with Web services technologies.

Globus Toolkit version 4, which will come out in April, makes heavy use of web services technologies and implements a set of specifications that are relevant to distributed resource management and federation coming out of places like OASIS and W3C and the Global Grid Forum. And so in that sense it represents an alignment -- a convergence -- of what is going on in the Web service space and I think that's pretty significant.

BetaNews: What Web service technologies is Globus supporting?

Foster: What we provide is primarily an implementation of Web services standards to allow people to build services, and the primary goal is also for us to provide a set of pre-defined services that allow you to use Web services protocols to interact to request the allocation of compute resources, the creation of computational services and moving the data from one place to another and so forth.

The actual hosting environment on which we implement our services today is primarily Apache access, we don't currently have a .NET implementation but that is something that could be provided.

BetaNews: Will the upcoming Globus toolkit include pre-coded modules to build grid-based solutions?

Foster: The Globus toolkit version 4 itself provides a set of modules that address various issues that arise when you are building systems that federate computing resources. So, these include components that implement WS-Security standards, others that provide resource management services, data management services and so forth.

The Globus consortium is going to pull resources to add additional modules to the open source code base, perhaps in some cases they may devote resources to porting Globus components to new platforms, perhaps to integrate with new classes of enterprise software. There is a range of things that we would expect them to do that they haven't yet announced such as their plans for exactly where they'll spend their resources.

BetaNews: Will any of the modules be industry-specific modules such as finance or perhaps engineering? What types of applications would these systems actually be used for?

Foster: That's a really good question. Will some of this work that I am talking about the consortium doing focus on particular verticals, financial services for example? I would answer as follows:

What is going to get people using grid technology on a large scale is going to be vertically integrated solutions. The consortium, at least in its initial phases is probably going to be more likely to focus on infrastructure elements because that's where the different pediments will have common requirements. But as the consortium grows in membership, I could certainly imagine interest groups forming that would want to support more vertically focused components.

One thing of somewhat relevance that I would mention at this point, is a neat demo that was done by SAP at its SAP TechEd conference late last year that sort of suggests some of the ways in which Globus and grid technology might evolve. At this conference they showed three of their analysis packages that had been modified to use Globus to do dynamic provisioning so that as incoming load increased they would dynamically acquire and deploy their applications on more computers, and as load was reduced they would dynamically release those resources for other purposes.

BetaNews: What industries are Univa partnering with at the moment?

Steve Tuecke: At this point we are not talking about any particular customers. One partner that we are working with for example is building up to apply the technology to government markets. We have various discussions going on in financial services in big engineering type settings. Examples of those are automotive and aerospace. There's discussions going with other industries, the traditional markets of the big technical computing for grid. Where we see a lot of opportunities moving forward is out in those non-traditional technical computing markets such as the ones indicated by SAP type applications.

Foster: I think we see ISVs as a potentially big market for grid computing.

BetaNews: There has been a lot of buzz about Sony using grid in its PlayStation 3 gaming console. What are some non- enterprise applications of grid and how do you feel grid can perhaps revolutionize or change gaming? Will grid technologies affect consumer electronics such as devices that store photos or music?

Foster: I am not familiar in details of what Sony is doing. But I'll just lead to a couple of things. One is, I am not sure where they are at the moment, but at least a year ago I spoke to an interesting company called Butterfly.net that was proposing to provide grid-based infrastructure for hosting multi-player online games. The assumption being that as people development new games they needed the central infrastructure to host the actual gaming activities and that this was a competency that was better outsourced to a specialist and that is what they proposed to do. But I understand that is not exactly what you are asking about here.

So, there is a whole class of interesting things that people sometimes called peer-to-peer (P2P) that relate to the loose and informal federation of computing and storage resources among individual participants. This is not something that I think we have put a lot of thought into but clearly I think it can become very interesting and I can see that some of the same technologies that are being developed for grid being applied.

Especially if you want to do something more than the current P2P systems that are based on loose notions of federation and trust and perhaps think about systems that, for example, federate storage among members of a family or different participants in some distributed organization that have some degree of trust and are therefore more likely to be people that you rely on to do things for you.

BetaNews: How important are identity management standards to the future of grid computing? There is no firm common ID management standard as of yet. Could that fact impede grid technologies from reaching the market?

Tuecke: I do not think that lack of any particular one set of standards that everyone agrees to will substantially delay grid tech to the market, but it does speak to a larger question about standards in general. This is why at the end of the day grid will not be adopted in its full glory; grid will not see it full potential, until there really are a common set of standards. Not just for ID management, but for all sorts of bits for technology like the Web.

A lot of potential comes out when you get those ubiquitous standards. That being said, there are already getting to be very large grid deployments in enterprises and even across enterprises and those are based on some combination and or Web open standards that exist to underlie them combined with technologies like Globus.

BetaNews: In so far as grids and Web services are now converging, do you feel that grid computing can be used to create alternative to common desktop environments such as Windows?

Foster: So this is one take on things: One perhaps narrow view on grid is that it is part of this trend of moving away from the mainframe where computing and storage and data processing are now done on this loosely coupled fabric of computing systems which may be geographically distributed.

There are various reasons to move into that direction and one is to take advantage of commodity systems. Now as you make that move, you start to need to replicate functions that used to be provided by these nice mainframe operating systems so you need resource management, security, monitoring, and accounting - all of these. This machinery needs to be reconstructed in this loosely coupled web services environment.

As we start to do that -- and we are making good process on those things -- I think we start to create something that has some flavor of a distributed operating system. And perhaps if it is successful starts to commoditize the OS on an individual system.

I think that is part of the excitement and also challenge of Web services for people like Microsoft.

BetaNews: Thank you both for your time.
http://www.betanews.com/article/prin...ing/1109004118


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File-Sharing Dragnet Scoops Up Bay City Grandma
Crystal Harmon

You've got to pay the piper, the saying goes, if you want to call the tune.

And if you want to share the tunes online, you might get hit with a mighty big bill.

The recording industry has targeted hundreds of people around the country with lawsuits, alleging they infringed on record companies' copyrights when giving and taking music online.

A Bay City family got served with notice of such a lawsuit last month at their home on King Street.

"I almost got a heart attack when I was going over those papers," said Margaret Szeliga, an automotive design engineer and single mother. "What happened? How did this happen? I was in shock when I saw those court papers."

The person named as defendant in the lawsuit is Szeliga's mother - a 70-year-old Polish immigrant who speaks little English and has never even owned a computer, let alone downloaded the songs "Armed to the Teeth" by Epidemic or "The Backend of Forever" by Coheed and Cambria.

Those are just two of the 671 songs listed in the lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court, accusing Szeliga's mother of violating copyright laws.

Szeliga says her 17-year-old daughter, like millions of other teens, took part in online music swapping while the two lived with her mom before moving into another apartment in the same home. Since her mother paid the Internet bill, she's listed as the one doing the swapping.

Szeliga phoned the industry lawyers and quickly hashed out a tentative settlement, she said, avoiding the expense of hiring a lawyer and the hassle of court proceedings and a threat of even greater cost.

But it's not cheap. She has 90 days to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $3,750.

She'll raid her 17-year-old daughter's college fund and senior class trip fund and take out a personal loan to pay the unexpected bill. She said her daughter is devastated, feeling guilty, depressed and angry for being penalized for an activity that's common practice.

"I wish we would have had some kind of warning," Szeliga said. "I just cannot believe our luck. What are the odds? Some of her friends have over 4,000 songs. On a raffle, we never win anything. On a situation like this, we are the unlucky ones."

The recording industry says 2.6 billion songs are illegally shared via the Internet each month. Through software that allows computer users to trade music at the touch of the button, an estimated 60 million Americans are building massive music libraries for free.

In the Szeliga family's case, though, the "free" collection of 671 songs will end up costing them about five bucks per tune - tunes which, as part of the settlement, must be destroyed.

Swapping or stealing?

The Recording Industry Association of America sued 717 people around the country last month for copyright infringement. It's the third major round, with the first coming in 2003. Most of the lawsuits end in settlements like that reached by Szeliga.

The RIAA claims that the drastic action is necessary to keep the music industry healthy.

Illegal file-sharing robs musicians of their livelihoods and threatens the very future of the music industry, industry advocates say.

They point to a 26 percent decline in sales of recorded music over the past five years - paired with a surge in the sales of blank compact discs folks use to copy music.

The latest technology that makes it so easy to swap, rather than buy, recorded music; however, also makes it easier to track down offenders.

To prepare for the lawsuits, record industry representatives joined online music-sharing networks and scanned other members' directories - which are an open book to fellow members.

The directories list files members are offering to distribute. The record industry investigators downloaded some of the music, copied the directory, and noted the date and time.

The RIAA - which represents most major record labels - then served subpoenas on Internet Service Providers demanding records to identify the Internet user believed to be violating copyright laws.

While downloading even a single copyrighted song is illegal, the industry focused on folks who were making substantial collections of tunes available through the network, according to RIAA press releases and their informational Web site, whatsthedownload.com.

Unable to sue the millions of apparent violators at once, the RIAA targeted people around the country, making sure that each of the federal court districts were represented.

Their hope is to generate enough publicity that folks, fearing a lawsuit or even criminal charges, will turn to legal online music providers, such as iTunes, which charges 99 cents per song.

Legitimate music services grow in popularity with more and more music being purchased every day," said Steven Marks, general counsel for RIAA, in a press release trumpeting the latest batch of lawsuits.

"But the great music created by hard-working writers, artists and technicians continues to be stolen at an alarming rate through illegitimate peer-to-peer services on the Internet.

We must continue to let individuals know that they bear responsibility for illegally stealing the work of those who make the music. And we need to educate them about the widespread availability of legal music sites on the Web.

With the number of legal online music sites growing - more than 200 are now in operation, industry leaders hope consumers will take the safe and legal route to building their music libraries rather and accept that the free ride is over.

The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear - this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences, said RIAA president Cary Sherman.

But the message is slow to get through.

A Survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project recently revealed that 58 percent of people who actively download music say they don't care about copyrights.

Online file-sharing leaves tracks

How the conflicts over copyrights will be resolved in the digital age remains unknown.

"It's anybody's guess right now," said Jerry Henderson, professor of broadcast and cinematic arts at Central Michigan University. "The RIAA is trying to stop the illegal fire sharing. They're trying to capture money they, and the performers, should be getting.

"The interesting question is going to be whether ignorance of the law will be a defense."

Copying and distributing copyrighted music has always been illegal, even in the olden days of vinyl records. But it was a cumbersome task, with sometimes less-than-stellar results.

"What really made the difference was the digitizing," Henderson said. "An illegal copy is almost as good as the master CD in terms of quality. That's why it's a whole new ballgame."

Also making a difference is the fact that file-swapping online leaves digital fingerprints of the crime. No one knew if you recorded your "Frampton Comes Alive" album on a cassette to give to your buddy.

As technology evolves, the ability to control dissemination of entertainment becomes more challenging. Radio stations - such as the student-run one at CMU - now broadcast in streaming digital formats. Listeners with the right software could easily capture those songs and make copies, Henderson said.

Some music fans are striking back at the record companies. Electronic Frontier Foundation is a group of lawyers, scholars and music lovers that has come to the legal defense of some defendants in the RIAA lawsuits.

EFF says record companies violate consumers' privacy in their quest to ferret out copyright violators. Rather than sue individual music collectors, the organization suggests that record companies embrace file-sharing and find a way to collect payments from users, other than filing lawsuits.

The EFF (www.eff.org) wants people to interested in "fighting the copyright regime" to join their organization and help change laws so that peer-to-peer sharing of music files is no longer illegal.

Henderson expects that, within a decade, music - and other forms of entertainment - will become almost like a utility. Consumers will have access to a global collection of nearly every song, movie and TV show ever made on tap for viewing or listening on demand. A monthly bill will show up, and a portion of that bill will cover royalties.

In the meantime, though, the record companies are fighting to get folks to buy the cow and stop getting the milk for free.

High court to weigh in

College students were among those targeted in the latest round of suits - 68 students at 23 universities, including Michigan State, Wayne State and the University of Michigan, were sued for illegal file sharing.

Henderson said some universities, including CMU, are attempting to educate students about the illegality of free music-swapping and "convince them that file-sharing is not cool."

"The university has cut off access to students computers for excessive file sharing," he said.

While music is the most commonly swapped type of entertainment, copyrighted movies are also available online - illegally - with a click of the mouse.

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up a case next month that, while it focuses on movie-swapping, may set precedent for those who collect music for free in cyberspace.

The court will weigh in on the case of MGM Studios vs. Grokster. The movie-maker is suing the company that produces software that makes sharing movies online so simple.

At issue is weather to software-maker is responsible for the copyright infringement their software facilitates. An estimated 600,000 movies are downloaded daily, according to MGM.

It's up to consumers, most of whom wouldn't even consider shop-lifting from a record or movie store,- to decide whether it's worth the risk to take songs and movies online in violation of copyright laws.

To be completely safe, Henderson suggests folks avoid it.

"If it's free, it's probably illegal," he said.

Szeliga wishes she'd have understood more about the potential consequences of copyright infringement a year ago.

She'd heard rumblings about Kazaa, the services her daughter used to build up a library of music ranging from Willie Nelson to Incubus.

The conventional wisdom was that if you kept your music library under 1,000 songs, you'd be safe from any kind of legal action, Szeliga said, "but I told her it could be trouble."
http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/in...8151193890.xml


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Why Wilco Is the Future of Music

Great things happen when a band and its audience find harmony.
Lawrence Lessig

On February 13, thousands of musicians from around the world will gather in Los Angeles at the Grammy Awards to celebrate music circa 2005. But the celebration won't hide the war that's going on. Record labels are threatened by technologies that give fans access to music in ways no one ever planned. They plead with Congress for more laws to control the fans. Activist organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge (on whose boards this columnist sits) are fighting back. They (we) demand an end to the war, and the attack on innovation that it represents.

Yet there's something hollow about the earnest rage on both sides of this debate. Hollow, as in inauthentic. It is artists who make music, not the industry that markets it or the technologies that take it. But artists independent of the industry have been as rare in this debate as kids who don't file-share music. Of course, there are the "rebels" - those who have made it in the old system and who call for something new. But they know, as we all know, that they will be fabulously successful, regardless of what they do now. They risk nothing, and thus their message means less.

The band Wilco and its quiet, haunted leader, Jeff Tweedy, is something different. After its Warner label, Reprise, decided that the group's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was no good, Wilco dumped them and released the tracks on the Internet. The label was wrong. The album was extraordinary, and a sold-out 30-city tour followed. This success convinced Nonesuch Records, another Warner label, to buy the rights back - reportedly at three times the original price. The Net thus helped make Wilco the success it has become. But once back in Warner's favor, many wondered: Would Wilco forget the Net?

We've begun to see the answer to this question. Wilco's Net-based experiments continue: the first live MPEG-4 webcast; a documentary about the band in part screened and funded via the Net; bonus songs and live recordings tied to CDs. Its latest album, A Ghost Is Born, was streamed in full across the Net three months before its commercial release. And when songs from it started appearing on file-sharing networks, the band didn't launch a war against its fans. Instead, Wilco fans raised more than $11,000 and donated it to the band's favorite charity. The album has been an extraordinary success - and was nominated for two Grammys.

I got a chance to ask Tweedy about all this before a concert in Oakland, California (that's the weird thing about law professors hanging around Wired - you get to go to the back of the bus). What struck me most was his clarity. He was a man called to a war that he couldn't believe had to be fought. Yet it isn't ideology that drives him. It's common sense.

"Music," he explained, "is different" from other intellectual property. Not Karl Marx different - this isn't latent communism. But neither is it just "a piece of plastic or a loaf of bread." The artist controls just part of the music-making process; the audience adds the rest. Fans' imagination makes it real. Their participation makes it live. "We are just troubadours," Tweedy told me. "The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves."

He uttered this with the passion of a teacher explaining the most fundamental truths. Words echo in this poet's mind many times before they are spoken. These words had echoed many times before. But when I asked him to explain the extremism in this war, passion faded and disbelief took its place. Commenting on a court decision to ban all music sampling without a license, he said one word: racism. And he seemed genuinely confounded by those who use the courts to punish their fans. "If Metallica still needs money," he almost whispered, "then there's something really, really wrong." He would protest this extremism, he explained, by living a different life. By inviting, by creating, by inspiring music, and by ignoring wars about plastic.

If this war is to end, it needs authentic voices. We have had enough preaching. The outrage is beginning to wear thin. It will take bands like Wilco, who live a different example and whisper an explanation to those who want to hear. Peace takes a practice. One that only artists can make real.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/view.html?pg=5


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File Sharing Is Good

I never thought of it that way before. But today I had a chance to read this article at Wired about the band Wilco (see above). Stanford Law Professor Laurence Lessig, one of the first law professors to break the digital sound barrier with his use of it, quotes band member Jeff Tweedy as saying: “The audience is our collaborator. We should be encouraging their collaboration, not treating them like thieves.” Wilco has apparently made it’s very name by encouraging usage under some circumstances on the net. Perhaps other bands should follow the model and learn from what was and is being done.

Most recording companies are investing heavily in Digital Rights Management (DRM) or similar write-prohibiting technologies. Mike Davidson explains in three simple lines how silly that effort is, as a few simple clicks with Apple I- Tunes Software get you a usable MP3, totally free of the DRM. That does not excuse or justify using that product without paying for it, or sharing it illegally. Maybe I am naive, but I think most people pay for what they use. The people causing the great losses are skilled pro’s and unaffected by these steps. Most people do not intentionally break law.
http://htmlfixit.com/?p=439


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Ikanos Pumps 100-Mbit/s VDSL
Press Release

Ikanos Communications, a leading developer of fiber-fast broadband-over-copper solutions, today announced it has added the Fxä 100100 to its successful family of fiber-extension products. The Fx 100100 is the first programmable silicon solution to provide speeds of up to 100 Mbps in both upstream and downstream directions over a single copper line. Ikanos believes that its new solution enables carriers to increase their revenue stream by offering the same high- speed symmetric bandwidth over existing telephone lines that businesses are used to receiving from their Ethernet LAN today.

The Fx 100100 is designed for Optical Network Units (ONUs) and Optical Line Terminals (OLTs), while the Fx 100100S-4 is designed for Subscriber Located Equipment (SLE) and Optical Network Terminals (ONTs). Both products are part of Ikanos' Fx family of chipsets that extend Fiber to the Building (FTTB), Fiber to the Node (FTTN), Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) and Fiber to the Home (FTTH) services over copper.

The Fx solutions
enable carriers to offer a comprehensive suite of high-value services such as the triple play of voice, video, and data; real-time high- resolution video conferencing; enhanced gaming experiences; and peer-to-peer file sharing. Ikanos' Fx solutions spare carriers the cost of trenching fiber because they use the currently installed base of last-mile copper and deployed fiber.

"Ikanos is once again demonstrating its leadership by being the first to market with chipset solutions that provide symmetric 100 Mbps bandwidth over copper," said Rajesh Vashist, president and CEO at Ikanos. "We believe the fiber-fast Fx 100100 solution responds to increasing equipment vendor and carrier interest in offering Ethernet services to their customers. These new chipsets join our existing Fx product family, which has the industry's widest range of Ethernet and ATM solutions for the FTTB, FTTN, FTTP and FTTH markets."
http://www.lightreading.com/document...g&doc_id=68558


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Companies Will Load CDs Onto a DVD or Your iPod
Eric Gwinn

One of the great things about the home computer is its adaptability, far beyond any other device in your home. A TV is a TV; pretty much everything it does is based on visual entertainment. Your computer is a word processor, an adding machine, a gaming system, a connection to the Internet -- and then there are the add-ons.

You get to choose how you want to use your computer, and you get to choose just how far you'll go to make it do even more. Some of us are happy to use what comes preloaded for e-mail, browsing the Web, word processing; others want to open up the hood and tinker to make the machine do what we want, exactly the way we want it to.

It's the tinkerers who have advanced the way we enjoy music and movies, creating and changing options faster than we could comprehend. Back when music file- sharing was heating up, Napster made it easy for its followers to acquire only the songs they wanted, not buy a whole CD at prices they considered too high.

Record companies fought the legality of Napster-style file-sharing and countered with CD singles, then with subscription music services that offered songs in restricted formats. But downloaders continued to choose free music that could be played on any computer or CD player.

It took the hubbub surrounding the easy-to-use iTunes Music Store and the iPod music player -- not to mention the filing of thousands of lawsuits by record companies against file-traders -- to show general music fans that their options had grown beyond physical media such as CDs.

Having abundant choices means nothing if those choices aren't easy to use, and not everyone agrees on what's easy. Some people think it's a snap to put a TV tuner in their computer, others would rather run barefoot across hot coals.

Similarly, some people caught up in the portable music craze will spend hours "ripping" their CDs, that is, loading the music tracks into a computer and adjusting files and formats to get just the sound they want. Others don't want to be bothered.

If you are one of the many people who want to be connected with the maximum convenience, you can make that choice. Companies such as RipDigital and iPod will rip your CDs for you. All you have to do is mail in your CDs and your music player, and in a few days, you get your CDs and a computer-compatible DVD full of your music. That DVD serves as your permanent music library, allowing you to transfer your music from it into your digital music player. Using RipDigital costs $129 for 100 CDs, and there's a discount for ripping even more CDs.

An 8-month-old Florida company goes one better. LoadPod sends a person to your home to pick up your CDs and your iPod, and that person returns five days later with your CDs and your iPod full of all your music. LoadPod handles only iPods, the dominant digital music player.

LoadPod serves 42 states, and charges $1.49 per CD, if you're burning 50 to 99 CDs. The price drops with larger orders.

"After Christmas Day, our business exploded," says Bill Palmer, LoadPod's president. "People who received iPods as gifts were saying, `Great. Now what? I wasn't planning on blocking off several weekends to load my CDs.'"

The constantly changing digital landscape that brought us RipDigital and LoadPod also means their days could be numbered. The rechristened Napster music service is offering an alternative to buying CDs that need to be ripped or paying for tracks that must be copied to the MP3 player.

With Napster's latest offering, music lovers can pay $14.95 a month to stuff Napster-compatible MP3 players with music that will vanish if their subscriptions lapse.

So, you see, living the digital life means having choices that create new gadgets and business opportunities that create new choices.

We like living that way.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/busin...logy-headlines


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Canadian Music
Michael Geist

In these politically charged times, there is a tendency to view many policy issues, whether they be same sex marriage or tax reform, through a narrow lens — left or right, blue or red, liberal or conservative. The same is true for copyright issues.

The University of Toronto recently hosted a major conference on music and copyright law where some participants were quick to label positions as either liberal or conservative. Professor Terry Fisher of the Harvard Law School, author of Promises to Keep, a groundbreaking book on technology, law and the entertainment world, staked out the so-called liberal perspective, presenting his long-term plan for reconciling the divide between the industry and its customers. Fisher argued for an alternative compensation system — one that would grant the public unlimited access to online music while providing substantial compensation to the music industry to be generated through tax revenues.

Graham Henderson, the president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, spoke after Fisher and countered with a conservative, George W. Bush-like view based on "values" and free markets.

Calling him "Comrade Fisher," Henderson argued that the industry was fundamentally opposed to proposals that would replace a market-oriented approach where sales determine revenues with new alternative compensation systems.

In his view, the music copyright issue would be best addressed by "digital rights morality" and by faith in the free market.

While the incongruity of an industry that has mistakenly sued teenagers and dead grandmothers preaching the need for greater morality is notable, it is this industry's professed love of the free market that is worthy of more detailed discussion. In fact, contrary to claims of faith in the free market, the music industry has been a leading proponent of government involvement, consistently seeking both financial support and legislative intervention from Ottawa.

Consistent with most countries, Canada has never adopted an exclusively market-oriented approach to copyright and culture. This is reflected in our division of copyright policy responsibilities — the Copyright Act is officially administered by Industry Minister David Emerson, while the Department of Canadian Heritage Act grants responsibility for the formulation of cultural policy as it relates to copyright to Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla.

This duality suggests that copyright policy must consider both economic and cultural goals. Were Industry Canada to adopt an exclusively economic-based approach, it might eliminate government programs supporting the arts on the grounds that it is the market that should determine Canadian cultural activity. Similarly, a single- minded focus by Canadian Heritage on cultural goals would risk the development of extreme copyright policies that place the interests of the culture sector ahead of the broader economy and the public interest.

Since a market-based approach to music would presumably lead to no government funding, the industry has unsurprisingly ignored its own advice and sought millions of dollars in taxpayer assistance. For example, at last November's music lobby day on Parliament Hill, the industry urged the government to expand its scope and funding of the Canada Music Fund, calling for at least $35 million in annual support.

Not only does the industry rely heavily on government financial support, it also looks to government to intervene in the marketplace by establishing new rules that provide protection against upstarts that threaten longstanding business models.

Many in the industry have admitted that the major music labels were slow to respond to the Internet and its customers' demand for digital distribution of music. While the industry demonizes file sharing services such as Kazaa and BitTorrent, it fails to acknowledge that most of its problems have resulted from changes at the retail level, pricing pressures, and competition from entertainment alternatives.

Viewed in that light, the emergence of the file sharing services was in reality a product of the industry failing to meet marketplace demand, rather than a function of users searching for free music (which is actually not free but compensated through a private copying levy system). The remarkable growth of fee-based music services such as Apple iTunes bears this out. With a viable competitor to the peer-to-peer systems now on the market, Apple estimates that it will sell more than half a billion songs worldwide in 2005 or more than 4,000 songs during the five minutes it takes to read this column.

Rather than changing its business practices to meet this market demand, however, the industry instinctively looks to government for legislative intervention. Just last month CRIA issued a release noting that sales had risen in Canada for the first time in six years. Instead of focusing on new performers, a better economy, reduced pricing, and improved marketing, it continued to focus on government intervention, commenting that "we should not be fooled that the worst is necessarily over."

As Canada heads toward yet another round of copyright reform — there has been more copyright reform in the past 18 years in Canada than in the previous 120 years — policymakers and politicians should be mindful that they have already used legislative intervention to establish many rights and protections that have tilted the copyright balance heavily toward creators at the expense of users.

With the music market showing signs of recovery, government ought to take the industry at its word and stay on the sidelines.
http://p2pnet.net/story/3966