"We could literally take a 1 gig piece of video and sell it for 10 cents and make money. You can't do that with conventional electronic distribution." – Greg Kerber
"Merely providing a link is unlikely to create secondary liability for the search engine." – Jennifer M. Urban, Laura Quilter
"The findings are troubling, and seem to indicate a need to further study, and perhaps revisit entirely, the DMCA takedown process." – Jennifer M. Urban, Laura Quilter
"The radio station has been the best choice of my high school career. I can't believe someone would swoop in here and take it from us." – Nicole Fisher
"The law is unlawfully open to interpretation." – Fatih Tas
"G.M.'s not coming out with a product anybody wants." – Daniel Crane
Merry Thanksgiving
It snowed today. 3" of heavy chuff early this morning makes it a White Thanksgiving at home. Thanks to broadcast TV I watched the computer-colored version of Babes in Toyland & the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Thanks also to content ownership I’m looking forward to unspooling my colorized copy of Miracle on 34th St and streaming selections from a big fat Christmas music folder on my hard drive and wow, I’m having a minor bit of holiday mixup.
At the moment the sun’s out full bore making the snow blindingly white and I just got a list of items we need for the upcoming feast like OJ, ice and a battery for the camcorder. So I think I better put this up now, I may not have time later on, or I may simply be too stuffed to sit in front of the screen. Such a life eh? While many are homeless and hungry some have a lot. Is distribution the key? We’re good at it in the West – not so good elsewhere. I think about it often and give thanks for my good fortune and try to extend a hand to those in need. I hope we’re getting better.
Amongst news here of plant closings and diminished consumer expectations we can at least recognize what we do have, even if others have more, for certainly many more have much less. And while it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Connecticut and I’m streaming A Jazzy Wonderland throughout the house, it is Thanksgiving after all, and I’m glad of that and the family that I have to share it with. I hope next year more of us can say the same.
Happy holidays everyone!
Enjoy,
Jack
November 26th, ’05
Sony's Escalating "Spyware" Fiasco
Along with lawyers, prosecutors, and furious fans, artists are joining the backlash against the label for slipping a hidden, anti-theft program into users' computers
Lorraine Woellert
Van Zant's Get Right with the Man CD was released in May, but six months later it still was doing better-than-respectable business on Amazon.com (AMZN ). The album ranked No. 887 on
the online retailer's list of music sales on Nov. 2. Then news of the CD's aggressive content safeguards -- a sub-rosa software program incorporated courtesy of Sony BMG -- exploded on the Internet.
To prevent audiophiles from making multiple copies of the CDs, Sony (SNE ) had programmed the Van Zant disk, and dozens of others, with a hidden code called a "rootkit" that secretly installs itself on hard drives when the CDs are loaded onto listeners' PCs. Soon enough, hackers began designing viruses to take malicious advantage of the hidden program, and a Sony boycott had begun (see BW Online, 11/17/05, "Sony's Copyright Overreach").
Growing Outrage.
Overnight, Get Right with the Man dropped to No. 1,392 on Amazon's music rankings. By Nov. 22 -- after the news made headlines and Sony was deep into damage control, pulling some 4.7 million copy-protected disks from the market -- Get Right with the Man was even further from Amazon's Top 40, plummeting to No. 25,802.
The wrath of fans killed Sony's CD copy controls, with the company pulling 52 titles off retail shelves, beginning the week of Nov. 14. But the wrath of bands could be far worse for the company -- and for efforts to protect content in general.
Singers and songwriters are increasingly expressing frustration at devices used by record companies to protect digital content from widespread theft that results when CDs are copied repeatedly or popular tracks are given away on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, such as LimeWire and BitTorrent. Sony's misstep has been bad for the company -- and its effects could spread much further, should the consumer outcry gain traction with the recording artists who need to keep their fans happy if they want to sell records.
Drop In Sales.
In the beginning, it was cyber libertarians and outspoken consumer groups leading the charge against digital rights management (DRM). But the Sony rootkit debacle has brought the issue home even to digilliterates -- including many of the artists themselves.
"We're really upset about this," says Patrick Jordan, director of marketing for Red Light Management, which represents Trey Anastasio, former front man to jam band Phish. Anastasio's latest solo album, Shine, was released Nov. 1, just as news of Sony's rootkit was worming its way onto Internet blogs and listservs. "I'm expecting a decrease in sales," Jordan adds.
Indeed, Shine debuted with 15,000 sales its first week. But by week two, when the rootkit fiasco was in full swing, sales had plummeted to 7,000. Weekly numbers will be released Nov. 23, and Jordan is bracing for the worst. "It's been damaging, and certainly we're going to discuss that with the label," he says.
Maddening Method.
Recording artists as a group have been among the most vocal backers of so-called DRM schemes as a way to control online theft of music. And many such protection devices are widely accepted, because they're loose enough that they don't impede the average audiophile's listening.
A Sony BMG spokesman declined to comment for this story, but the goal of the Sony rootkit has been lost in the digital fog. The software was meant to set up speed bumps for would-be thieves, yet give consumers some of that much-demanded flexibility. In Sony's case, that meant the freedom to make up to three copies of a purchased disk and play it on multiple platforms, such as a PC or a car stereo, yet prevent posting to P2P sites or massive copying.
What tripped up the company was less its goal than the method used to achieve it. Sony BMG's content-protection scheme, designed by an outside software-security firm, was basically a form of spyware. Rootkit installed itself surreptitiously, relayed back to the company what users were doing with their Sony music, and exposed users' PCs to viruses.
The Cultural Challenge.
Sony now is facing at least three consumer class-action lawsuits, as well as at least one law-enforcement action. On Nov. 21, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott accused the company of violating the Lone Star state's laws against computer spyware.
"Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak-and-dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers," Abbott said in a written statement. "Consumers who purchased a Sony CD thought they were buying music. Instead, they received spyware that can damage a computer, subject it to viruses, and expose the consumer to possible identity crime."
But the most serious fallout from the rootkit brouhaha could be the cultural challenge to DRM. Some artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, subscribe to a "trust your fan" mentality, and have begun negotiating with their record labels to omit content-protection provisions from their CDs.
Brokenhearted Artists.
Many others are frustrated with content protections, such as Sony's, which prevent their music from being dragged onto Apple Computer's (AAPL ) iPod. Apple refuses to license the proprietary iPod software to the record labels for use with any music that isn't purchased from its iTunes music-download site.
As Sony BMG and other labels release more CDs with tracks that can't be dragged to iPods, artists are hearing from outraged fans. In response, some artists -- including Tim Foreman, guitarist for Switchfoot, whose Nothing Is Sound release was part of the Sony recall -- used a fan site to post instructions for disabling Sony content protections that prevent consumers from dragging tunes to their iPods.
"We were horrified when we first heard about the new copy-protection policy," Foreman wrote in a Sept. 14 post first reported by Billboard magazine. "It is heartbreaking to see our blood, sweat, and tears over the past two years blurred by the confusion and frustration surrounding new technology."
Abandoned Labels?
"This is serious business," says Red Light Management's Jordan. "As managers, we've always supported trusting our fans. Copy protection has nothing to do with trust."
If reaction to the Sony rootkit is any measure, Jordan is right. As news of the secret code grew, music fans began using Amazon's review function to post messages to their favorite tunesters. "Sorry Trey," wrote Freddie, an Anastasio fan from Maryland, "but you should find a new label."
Artists have yet to take such measures -- but if the fallout worsens, Freddie's advice may not sound so drastic.
http://www.businessweek.com/print/te...122_343542.htm
Texas Sues Sony BMG Over CD Rootkit
Nate Mook
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced Monday that he has filed suit against Sony BMG over the use of illegal spyware in its copy-protection mechanism that gained national attention earlier this month.
Abbott also disputed Sony's claims that it had recalled all affected CDs, saying investigators were able to purchase "numerous titles at Austin retail stores as recently as Sunday evening."
The lawsuit notes that Sony's software uses a rootkit "cloaking" technique to hide itself from users and prevent its removal. Abbott says the DRM remains active at all times, even when Sony's media player is not active, which has led to concerns about its true purpose.
"Sony has engaged in a technological version of cloak and dagger deceit against consumers by hiding secret files on their computers," Attorney General Abbott said in a statement. He also highlighted the security concerns brought about by the rootkit.
"Consumers who purchased a Sony CD thought they were buying music. Instead, they received spyware that can damage a computer, subject it to viruses and expose the consumer to possible identity crime."
Since its discovery in late October, news of the rootkit has spiraled out of control, with consumers and artists alike angry at the revelation. In an apology issued last week, Sony said it "deeply regrets any inconvenience to our customers."
But that hasn't stopped lawsuits stemming from consumers' outrage, nor accusations of collusion between security companies and Sony. Texas becomes the first state to sue over Sony's tactics. Consumer lawsuits have been filed in California and New York as well.
Under Texas' Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act of 2005, Abbott is seeking civil penalties of $100,000 for each violation of the law, attorneys' fees and investigative costs.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Texa...kit/1132596035
New Sony CD Risk Identified
John Borland
Computer researchers uncovered a new security risk Friday related to Sony BMG Music Entertainment copy-protected CDs, which could expose several hundred computers to attack.
This security flaw dealt with different technology than that which has sparked controversy for nearly three weeks, however.
Recent criticism has focused on Sony's release of discs containing copy-protection software created by British company First 4 Internet, which opened listener's computers to hackers' attack. The latest risk is from an uninstaller program distributed by SunnComm Technologies, a company that provides copy protection on other Sony BMG releases.
"This nightmare makes it rather clear that Sony doesn't really care about customers, not only in the way they want to spy on you (and open the door to your pc for any hacker) but rather in the way the handled the whole situation." --Ki Ji
Sony said in a statement Friday that SunnComm had removed the uninstall program from the Web, and was in the process of contacting 223 consumers who had downloaded it while it was available.
The security hole in the uninstall program was similar to one discovered with First 4 Internet's uninstall program several days ago.
In each case, Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten and researcher Alex Halderman found that the uninstall programs responded to commands from their creators' Web sites, but would also respond to malicious instructions from other Web sites.
In its statement, Sony said that SunnComm was developing a new uninstall program for its copy- protection software, and that Felten had agreed to review it before it was posted online.
The SunnComm security risk discovered by Felten and Halderman is limited to the uninstall program, which was distributed separately from the CDs themselves.
http://news.com.com/New+Sony+CD+risk...3-5961560.html
Gartner: Piece Of Tape Defeats Any CD DRM
Anti-piracy technologies 'easily defeated', reports analyst
Tom Sanders
The highly controversial XCP digital rights management (DRM) technology bundled by Sony BMG on 52 of its audio CD albums can be defeated by applying a small piece of tape to the discs, according to analyst firm Gartner.
Applying a piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disk renders the data track of the CD unreadable. A computer trying to play the CD will then skip to the music without accessing the bundled DRM technology.
"After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs," Gartner concluded in a newly published research note.
The use of a piece of tape will defeat any future DRM system on audio CDs designed to be played on a stand-alone CD player, the analyst said.
Gartner predicted that the music industry will start to lobby for legislation that requires computer makers to include DRM technology on their systems.
But the analyst advised that, instead of limiting what users can do with music they have already purchased, record labels should focus on tracking this use.
This would enable a "play-based" model where users are charged a fee based on how they consume music.
Sony abandoned the use of the XCP anti-piracy technology earlier this month after weeks of heavy criticism from security experts and consumer advocates.
The technology sought to prevent users from making illegal copies of the music on Windows computers, but posed a major security risk and was capable of damaging the computer when users attempted to remove the software.
Gartner called the DRM scheme a "public relations and technology failure".
http://www.vnunet.com/actions/trackback/2146367
Kazaa Faces Dec. 5 Court Deadline To Alter System
Jeffrey Goldfarb
An Australian court has given file-sharing network Kazaa until Dec. 5 to either filter copyrighted music from its system or shut down, music industry officials said on Thursday.
The imposition of the deadline follows a ruling in September by the judge in Sydney that Kazaa users were breaching copyright and that the network's owners had to modify the software.
Other global peer-to-peer (P2P) services, which distribute data between users instead of relying on a central server, also have come under fire from courts in recent months.
Kazaa's operators, Sharman Networks, had appealed the judgment. But according to music industry trade group IFPI, the Australian court said that to avoid complete shutdown Kazaa must, as a first step, put in place a keyword filter system within 10 days.
Sharman Networks had said it could not control the actions of an estimated 100 million users.
"It's time for services like Kazaa to move on -- to filter, go legal or make way for others who are trying to build a digital music business the correct and legal way," IFPI Chairman John Kennedy said in a statement.
A growing number of legal online music services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s <AAPL.O> iTunes, Napster <NAPS.O> and RealNetworks Inc.'s <RNWK.O> Rhapsody have grown in popularity over the past year as a new generation of P2P services like Mashboxx hope to offer the advantages of file-sharing without infringing on copyright.
http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...yID=nL24440105
Warner Music to Pay $5 Mln in NY 'Payola' Probe
Warner Music Group Corp., one of the largest U.S. record companies, will pay $5 million to settle a New York state probe into how it influenced which songs are played on the radio, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Tuesday.
The probe involved "pay-for-play" practices, commonly known as "payola," in which companies are accused of paying radio stations or promoters to secure air time for songs.
In July, Sony BMG agreed to pay $10 million to settle a related pay-to-play probe.
Warner Music agreed to stop making payoffs in return for airplay, and fully disclose all "items of value" provided to radio stations, Spitzer said. It also issued a statement acknowledging its "improper conduct," the attorney general said.
In a statement, Warner Music said "the reforms we have agreed to with the Attorney General are consistent with the internal reforms that our new management team implemented earlier this year."
Spitzer said the financial benefits involved direct bribes to radio programrs, including airfare, electronics, and tickets to sports events and concerts; payments for operational expenses; radio contest giveaways; hiring independent promoters to funnel illegal payments to radio stations, and buying "spin programs" to artificially increase airplay.
The $5 million will be used to fund music education and appreciation programs, Spitzer said.
Warner Music conducted its initial public offering in May. It was earlier acquired by media mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr., now its chief executive, and a group of private equity investors for $2.6 billion from Time Warner Inc.
Warner Music shares rose 5 cents to $17.45 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...h=Warner+Music
Madonna Loses Plagiarism Case In Belgium
A Belgian songwriter has won a plagiarism case against Madonna with a ruling that will force the country's radio stations to stop playing the star's 1998 hit single Frozen, his lawyer says.
Salvatore Acquaviva won the case in a court in the Belgian town of Mons, where the judge ordered EMI, Sony, and Warner Music to get radio and television stations to stop playing the song, Victor-Vincent Dehin said.
The judge also ordered the three companies to get music stores across Belgium to stop selling not only the single but also Ray of Light, the album on which it appears, he said.
EMI, Sony, and Warner Music each face a fine of more than euro100,000 ($A160,462) if they fail to obey the order within 15 days, he said.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=73024
Vietnamese Parliament Passes Intellectual Property Law
The Vietnamese National Assembly passed important laws, including on intellectual property, in addition to some resolutions during a sitting Saturday.
They included the E-Transaction and Environmental Protection laws
besides resolutions on drafting laws and ordinances and a program to keep surveillance on land use, public projects and law enforcement.
“Much attention was paid to legislators’ opinions on protecting intellectual ownership and geographic origins,” Ho Duc Viet, head of the Science, Technology and Environment committee, said.
Under the Intellectual Property Law, for arts performances for non- commercial purposes – including cultural exchanges or propaganda – permission need not be obtained from creators/owners, or loyalties paid.
However, in case of commercial performances, royalties have to be paid though permission from the creator/owner need not be obtained even for published works.
The resolution on drafting laws and ordinances envisages passing 25 draft laws and discussions on 25 other bills at the ninth and tenth sessions of the National Assembly, scheduled for May and October next year.
http://www.thanhniennews.com/politic...1&newsid=10679
Hong Kong
Accused Music File Sharers Risk Being Revealed By Law
Justin Mitchell
If the High Court orders four local Internet service providers to disclose the identities of 22 alleged illegal music file sharers, the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance would allow it, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
While Belinda Pui of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said she could not comment specifically on the case, she said that an exception provision called Section 58 in the Privacy Ordinance allows for the release of personal data under "quite a number of exceptions."
One of the exceptions is that while personal data cannot be used without the subject's permission for a purpose for which it wasn't originally intended, information related to the "detection of a crime or prevention of unlawful conduct" can be released without the customer's permission.
"The data user may use Section 58 to disclose the data. I think that compliance with a court order is consistent with the original collection purpose. It is the general principle," Pui said.
Her comments came after the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers' Association said Tuesday it will respect the privacy of users but was bound by local laws.
"Third parties requesting ISPs to conduct data matching and disclosure of personal data should base such a request on solid and verifiable evidence," association chairman York Mok was quoted as saying in an AFP report.
Mok said they must also be fully responsible for all costs and damages attributable to such requests.
The association represents 60 ISPs in Hong Kong including Yahoo, IBM and PCCW, one of the local providers being pursued.
The others being challenged are Hutchison Global Communications, Hong Kong Cable and i-Cable Communications, all of which so far have declined to comment on the territory's first legal battle against online piracy by the music industry.
The move was part of a concerted global action taken by 17 countries on November 15, launched by London- based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
IFPI Hong Kong said it had locked onto the Internet protocol addresses of the 22 individuals engaging in illegal file sharing on the Internet. It hoped to seek compensation by bringing civil lawsuits.
However, it could not identify them without the help of the ISPs.
The hearing of the case has been scheduled for Tuesday.
IFPI Hong Kong blames online and CD piracy for losses of more than HK$1 billion annually and a 20 percent drop in the number of people working in the music business.
"We really don't know in which circumstances the court would allow ISPs to provide personal data to the IFPI," Pui said. "But if it occurs the ISPs must comply with the court order."
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_d...343&con_type=1
30 Percent of DMCA Takedown Notices Questionable: Report
This is a summary report of findings from a study of takedown notices under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.1 Section 512 grants safe harbor from secondary copyright liability (i.e., the copyright infringement of their end users) to online service providers (OSPs), such as Internet access providers or online search engines. In order to receive the safe harbor, online service providers respond to cease-and-desist letters from copyright complainants by pulling their users’ information—web pages, forum postings, blog entries, and the like—off the Internet. (In the case of search engine providers, the link to the complained-of web site is pulled out of the index; in turn, the web site disappears from the search results pages. These notices are somewhat troubling in and of themselves, as merely providing a link is unlikely to create secondary liability for the search engine, in the first place.) Because the OSP is removing material in response to a private cease-and-desist letter that earns it a safe harbor, no court sees the dispute in advance of takedown.
In this study, we traced the use of the Section 512 takedown process and considered how the usage patterns we found were likely to affect expression or other activities on the Internet. The second level of analysis grew out of the fact that we observed a surprisingly high incidence of flawed takedowns:
. Thirty percent of notices demanded takedown for claims that presented an obvious question for a court (a clear fair use argument, complaints about uncopyrightable material, and the like);
. Notices to traditional ISP’s included a substantial number of demands to remove files from peer-to-peer networks (which are not actually covered under the takedown statute, and which an OSP can only honor by terminating the target’s Internet access entirely); and
. One out of 11 included significant statutory flaws that render the notice unusable (for example, failing to adequately identify infringing material).
In addition, we found some interesting patterns that do not, by themselves, indicate concern, but which are of concern when combined with the fact that one third of the notices depended on questionable claims:
. Over half—57%—of notices sent to Google to demand removal of links in the index were sent by businesses targeting apparent competitors;
. Over a third—37%—of the notices sent to Google targeted sites apparently outside the United States.
The specifics of our data set may limit the ability to neatly generalize our findings. Yet the findings are troubling, and seem to indicate a need to further study, and perhaps revisit entirely, the DMCA takedown process.
http://mylaw.usc.edu/documents/512Rep-ExecSum_out.pdf
Big Media Loves BitTorrent
Peter Kafka
It sounds great: The guy behind the software that moves a good portion of illegally swapped movies and TV shows through the Internet hooks up with the studios that make the movies and TV programs.
That, more or less, is what Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent software, and the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's lobbying arm, said Tuesday afternoon. Just listen to the press release: "The announcement today is historic in that two major forces in the technology and film industries have agreed to work together."
If Hollywood is looking for a gesture to demonstrate that unlike the music business, which was dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet age, it is ready to try to innovative approaches to the Web, the deal is a nice olive branch. But if Hollywood is looking for a way to solve its online piracy problem, this isn't it.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that Cohen can't do a thing to stop folks who want to use his software to swap copyrighted files, no matter how well intentioned he is. All the 30-year-old can do is to promise to try to stop people who visit his BitTorrent site from trading unauthorized files.
But unlike the original Napster, which used a centralized server to connect file-sharing song swappers, BitTorrent is simply software, and it is open source software at that, meaning that anyone who chooses can produce their own version of the program. And they have--there are at least a dozen popular versions of the software, with new ones popping up constantly.
Even folks who use Cohen's official software--his company claims some 50 million downloads since 2003--aren't necessarily affected by the agreement. Only users who use a search engine Cohen installed earlier this year will notice a difference, because Cohen has agreed to take down links to pirated files. And while BitTorrent software may be popular, Cohen's site itself doesn't get much traffic: File-sharing measurement firm BigChampagne says the BitTorrent.com doesn't crack the list of the top 20 sites that specialize in BitTorrent files.
So what does the deal really mean? For Cohen, who just recently transformed himself from a programmer with no interest in business into an entrepreneur who has received $8.75 million from venture capitalists Doll Capital Management, it means he can operate his company without being sued by a Hollywood studio. Given the aftermath of the Grokster case, that's no small thing.
And even for the MPAA, which represents studios such as The Walt Disney Co., Sony, General Electric's NBC Universal, Viacom's Paramount and Time Warner's Time Warner Warner Brothers, the deal isn't entirely symbolic. As Hollywood moves more rapidly into electronic distribution--witness Disney's deal to distribute some television shows via Apple Computer's iTunes, for instance, or Warner Brothers plan to distribute some of its TV catalog through America Online--peer-to-peer software like Cohen's could be a useful way to move big files to paying consumers.
NBC Universal, for instance, has already struck a deal with privately held Wurld Media to begin using peer-to-peer software to distribute some of its films beginning next year. This presumably won't be an enticement to file-sharers who don’t want to pay anything for a copy of Meet the Fockers. But because the method uses less bandwith than a centralized distribution system, peer-to-peer delivery could ultimately mean that consumers could pay less for an Internet download than they would through other outlets.
"We could literally take a 1 gig piece of video and sell it for 10 cents and make money," says Wurld Media Chief Executive Greg Kerber. "You can't do that with conventional electronic distribution."
So give Cohen and the MPAA some credit. When they say, as they did in their press release, that their agreement is "an early experiment in using technology to assist in solving the problems of piracy," they are half right. Turning the BitTorrent site into an authorized distributor won't stop people who don't want to pay for content. But it may help Hollywood figure out how to sell their wares on the Web. Some money is better than none.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/22/bit...ent_print.html
Hollywood Makes Deal With BitTorrent Creator In Bid To Stop Piracy – Report
The US movie industry has announced a deal with the creator of a technology that is widely used for copying movies and TV shows illegally over the Internet, the Financial Times reported.
In its online edition, the newspaper said the deal between the Motion Picture Association of America and Bram Cohen, the software developer behind BitTorrent, will remove links to pirated material on Cohen's website, BitTorrent.com.
But the report cited observers as saying the deal will do little to stop online movie piracy.
'There is nothing you can do to shut off the illegal usage of all the online networks that have been set up based on BitTorrent's technology,' Allen Weiner, research analyst at Gartner said.
Instead, he said, deals like this one could encourage legitimate online networks with the backing of the movie industry similar to the way Apple's iTunes music service has become a legal alternative to peer-to-peer music sites.
BitTorrent is used for online networks, known as 'trackers', that help users find movies. It creates a quick way to download movie files.
Cohen said around a third of all the data that passes over the Internet is connected with BitTorrent sites.
http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds...fx2351068.html
Bogus e-Mails Contain New 'Sober' Worm
AP
Austria's equivalent of the FBI said Tuesday that it is investigating a flurry of bogus e-mails sent in its name to people in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
The Federal Criminal Investigations Office said the e-mails warn recipients that they are illegally in possession of pirated software, and that the messages contain the computer-crippling "Sober" worm.
The agency warned people who receive the e-mails not to open the attachments, and said it has nothing to do with their circulation.
An investigation is under way, the agency said.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...LATE=DEFAU LT
iTunes Outsells Traditional Music Stores
John Borland
Apple Computer's iTunes music store now sells more music than Tower Records or Borders, according to analyst firm the NPD Group.
The research company tracks downloads from digital music stores, as well as people's purchasing habits at offline retail stores. During the past three months, iTunes made it to the U.S. Top 10 sales list for the first time, NPD said.
"Taking their growth and others' pain, it's not inconceivable to see them cracking into higher ground in the foreseeable future," said NPD music and movies industry analyst Russ Crupnick.
The benchmark is a meaningful sign in digital music's steady progress--and Apple's domination of that trend--toward becoming a significant part of the overall music business.
According to figures from the Recording Industry Association of America, digital sales accounted for slightly more than 4 percent of the market during the first half of 2005, up from about 1.5 percent during the first half of 2004.
Apple's iTunes has maintained more than 70 percent of the PC-based digital music download market throughout 2005, Crupnick said. That market share is likely to climb slightly when Macintosh customers are added in, but NPD does not track those purchases, he said.
For its comparison, the company compared 12 separate song downloads at iTunes to a single album purchase at an ordinary retail store. Using that measure, iTunes scored higher than Tower, Borders and Sam Goody.
Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Amazon.com, FYE and Circuit City all scored higher than iTunes, NPD said.
http://news.com.com/iTunes+outsells+...3-5965314.html
Publisher Sued Over Book Critical of Turkish State
Sebnem Arsu
A Turkish book publisher said today that the government was suing it for distributing a translated book critical of the Turkish identity, army, state and the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The head of Aram Publishing, Fatih Tas, could face three years in jail for issuing the book, "Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade," by John Tirman, which focuses on Turkey. It was published in the United States in 1997.
Prosecutors contended that the book humiliated Turkish institutions by including the testimony of people who were subjected to human rights violations by the security forces during heavy fighting with the Kurdish Worker's Party, or P.K.K., in the country's southeastern region in the 1990's.
Prosecutors also took offense at the book for saying that the founder of modern Turkey adopted a nationalism that was "a version of fascism."
The case against Mr. Tas came as a surprise, although he has been sued many times in the past, because the Turkish government has reformed its penal code to favor further freedom of expression in order to qualify for membership in the European Union.
Lawsuits still crop up, however, involving issues like Kurdish rights or state unity, topics that remain sensitive in the eyes of the judiciary.
"The law is unlawfully open to interpretation," Mr. Tas said. "I'm accused of insulting the Turkish identity but the limits of what should be defined as an insult or criticism or scientific analysis are not mentioned in the law."
Several other intellectuals and writers, including the acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk, face similar charges, which raise concerns among the members of the European Union about how well Turkey can adapt to the standards of democracy in Europe.
"It's an outrage," said Dr. Sahin Alpay, a political scientist from Bahceshir University. "Nonviolent expression of opinion cannot be considered a crime in the new penal code, but it seems that it would take a quite long time for the authorities to adopt to these changes."
Government officials acknowledge shortcomings in adopting the legal reforms but take an optimist stand in the face of severe criticism from mainly European countries.
"I'll continue to do what I think serves democracy in Turkey and believe that Turkey will attain much better days in future," Mr. Tas said.
Trials of Mr. Tas and Mr. Pamuk are both scheduled for December. The novelist is charged with insulting the state in his comments - appearing in a Swiss newspaper in 2005 - about the Turkish massacre of ethnic Armenians in the last century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/in...nd-turkey.html
Senate Bill Lets Artists Claim Price for Gifts
Robin Pogrebin
Living writers, musicians, artists and scholars who donate their work to a museum or other charitable cause would earn a tax deduction based on full fair market value under a bill just passed by the Senate.
Currently such work receives only a deduction based on the cost of materials unless it is donated posthumously by the estates.
The measure was approved as an amendment to a broader $59.6 billion tax relief bill passed by the Senate early Friday. It now goes to a House-Senate conference committee. The House version of the tax relief bill does not include the arts provision, but the senators who introduced the amendment - Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican - said they were hopeful that the committee would support it.
Under the bill, artists could donate their work during their lifetimes at full market value provided that it is properly appraised and handed over at least 18 months after it is created.
The provision seems likely to open the way for more acquisitions by cash-strapped museums. "It's very important for cultural institutions and libraries to be able to be the recipient of these works of art that otherwise might go into private hands," said Mimi Gaudieri, the executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors.
"Especially for small to midsize institutions with modest acquisition funds, as a gift from the artists, it's a great opportunity to enhance their collections," Ms. Gaudieri said.
The donated work must be related to the purpose or function of the museum or charitable organization receiving the donation.
Mr. Schumer, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the measure would even the playing field for arts donors. "Right now, artists are better off waiting until after they die to donate their works to a charity or a museum," he said, adding that the amendment "fixes that problem and treats artists the same as anyone else who works hard and wants to donate something to charity at the fair market or appraised value."
Arts professionals described the measure as long overdue. "Artists donate to cultural nonprofits or other nonprofits, and all they get is the cost of their materials," said Tom Healy, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which represents arts groups downtown. "If you have a painting that's worth $5,000, you may be able to deduct $20 for the canvas."
As long as the work is physically tangible, it can be contributed as a deduction, said Robert L. Lynch, president and chief executive of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group. "A score has value just like a painting," he said.
Applying the provision may present challenges for the Internal Revenue Service, given that appraising a work of creativity is often a highly subjective process. "It's a pretty new day in tax policy," said Dean A. Zerbe, a senior tax lawyer and investigator for the Senate Finance Committee. "It has the potential for people to want to go back and expand it."
He suggested that some professionals might seek a deduction for a product like a legal brief or a medical operation. "It's something the house will have to look at closely," Mr. Zerbe said.
The bill also comes with stricter rules for the qualifications of appraisers. "The public is now going to be made aware of what a qualified appraiser is," said Fran Zeman, the former chairwoman of the personal property committee of the American Society of Appraisers. "It's important for everyone to understand the importance of using someone who is qualified."
Ms. Zeman said that noncash contributions to charitable groups are often overvalued. The Internal Revenue Service has grappled with the valuation of donations ranging from automobiles to frequent-flier miles.
Mark W. Everson, the I.R.S. commissioner, raised that issue in testimony last spring before the Senate Finance Committee. "Valuation issues are often difficult," he said. "Overvaluations may arise from taxpayer error or abuse as well as from aggressive taxpayer positions."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/ar...ign/22tax.html
Books for Lending, Data for Taking
Alison Leigh Cowan
AT the library at North Carolina State University, students and faculty will soon be able to sign up for an Internet-based service that will alert them when favorite journals are published, with links to the articles. They will also be able to create home pages with links to databases, books, journals, Web sites and other resources.
The library is one of several around the country that are borrowing techniques from Amazon, Netflix and other Internet companies that keep information about their customers' purchases and preferences so they can better cater to their needs or tastes.
The hope is that these on-line programs, whose feasibility is still being tested at this point, will help libraries appeal to a generation that often prizes convenience over privacy.
Yet for the libraries, privacy remains an important issue. The data such personalized programs store - information about what journals someone is reading, for example - could be sought by government agencies under laws like the USA Patriot Act. The act, which gives the government broad antiterrorism powers, must be renewed in Congress by the end of the year; last week Senate Democrats, who dislike some parts of the law, threatened a filibuster.
"Privacy and confidentiality have always been among our core values," said Carolyn Argentati, the deputy librarian at North Carolina State. "So the question is, how to remain true to them in a changing technological and legal environment?"
Libraries have a long tradition of protecting the privacy of their patrons. During the cold war, for example, when the F.B.I. quietly asked libraries to monitor their foreign patrons, many librarians instead worked for passage of laws making library records confidential. In 48 states and Washington, library data is considered private, with some exceptions.
Librarians generally are wary of the Patriot Act, approved after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which makes it easier for law enforcement agencies to gather information in terrorism investigations.
"You cannot protect patrons' privacy right now under this law," said Christine Bradley, the executive director of the Connecticut Library Consortium, which represents 800 local organizations.
A smaller consortium of libraries in the Hartford area has gone to court to fight federal investigators who are seeking patron information in one case. The request is one of an estimated 30,000 made to businesses and institutions each year by federal agents under the Patriot Act. The case has mobilized the American Library Association to join officials of some 400 communities nationwide to urge Congress to consider the impact on civil liberties when it votes on extending the act.
To those who say libraries are special because of their devotion to intellectual freedom, law enforcement officials say terrorism has raised the stakes. They say librarians are naïve to think that libraries should be treated differently from other public places where people congregate without an expectation of privacy.
They also argue that shielding libraries from government surveillance will just convince everyone from terrorists to pedophiles to patronize the local library, much as some of the Sept. 11 hijackers used library computers for some of their dealings.
"It's indisputable that people use libraries to commit crimes because they think they can conceal their identity," Kevin J. O'Connor, the United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, said in a recent talk at the University of New Haven.
But there is an increasing demand for libraries to provide the kind of anticipatory services pioneered over the Internet. Such programs might suggest books to patrons based on what they've borrowed in the past, or help patrons identify a book when they know little about it other than the plot.
"This is getting to be a little bit of a conflict now because some of our patrons would like that," said Michael Simonds, the chief executive officer of Bibliomation, a nonprofit consortium in Middlebury, Conn., that keeps track of circulation records for 64 libraries. "They've gotten used to Amazon and Netflix and those kinds of services."
Eric Lease Morgan, a librarian at the University of Notre Dame and a programmer, said, "It will be a good thing to have the various computer systems be a little more intelligent about you." Mr. Morgan said his latest project, software that can suggest resources to library users based on past selections, should make research easier.
But Michael Golrick, the city librarian in Bridgeport, Conn., said there were large numbers of immigrants in his area who might be wary of the data-gathering nature of such programs. "There are folks in the community who have reason to worry about surveillance, and people who came to this country to avoid the kinds of surveillance and persecution we're seeing tinges of today," Mr. Golrick said.
One solution, he said, is for libraries to purge their records often, so that if law enforcement officials come around there is not much on file. "I can't give what I don't have," he said.
Those rolling out new services say that patrons should be made aware that information will be stored. But some librarians say conspicuous and detailed disclaimers about privacy may make it hard to promote the programs. "Some people argue that those types of warnings are disproportionate to the risk and might scare users away from using the library," said Ms. Argentati of North Carolina State.
Michael Cropper, a graduate student who serves on an advisory committee to the university's libraries, said he knew that any information that is stored can also be shared. But he said there was strong demand on the campus for new programs.
"People tend to clamor for more convenience," Mr. Cropper said, noting that these personalized services make it "easier for people to get what they're looking for."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/we...w/20cowan.html
Google Supports Library of Congress Online Effort
Juan Carlos Perez
Google Inc. is giving a financial boost to a U.S. Library of Congress project to digitize “rare and unique” items and build an online library.
With its US$3 million donation, Google has become the first private-sector contributor to the Library of Congress’ World Digital Library (WDL) project, the two organizations announced Tuesday. The Library of Congress will continue to seek contributions from other private-sector companies for the project.
At this stage, the Library of Congress is looking to develop a plan to lay the technological foundations of the WDL, whose content will mostly be digitized unique items, such as manuscripts.
Google’s library-scanning activities have landed it in hot water recently. Google is digitizing books from five major libraries, including books under copyright protection, to make them searchable online using the company’s search engine. As a result, The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have filed separate lawsuits charging Google with copyright infringement.
The program, announced in December and called Google Book Search for Libraries, is a project to scan all or portions of the library collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, The New York Public Library and Oxford University. Google says its users will be able to access the full text of books in the public domain, but only a few sentences of copyright books.
The Library of Congress will get special permission to include works in the World Digital Library that aren’t in the public domain.
This isn’t the first time Google and the Library of Congress have collaborated. The two organizations recently completed a project to digitize about 5,000 public-domain books, and Google will scan works considered of historical value from the Library of Congress’ Law Library.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/11...ogle/index.php
At Harvard, a Man, a Plan and a Scanner
Katie Hafner
Twenty years ago, when Sidney Verba became director of the Harvard University Library, he thought there was a good chance he would enjoy a placid transition into retirement.
Placid is not the word Mr. Verba would use to describe his life now. "Challenging" or "exciting" would better fit the bill, he said, choosing his words carefully.
Mr. Verba is overseeing the university's partnership with Google, which plans to create searchable digital copies of entire collections - tens of millions of books - at five leading research libraries.
The partnership is part of the controversial Google Book Search Library Project, which has provoked lawsuits by publishers and writers' groups that accuse Google of violating copyrights by scanning the books into Google's search database without the permission of the copyright holders.
The University of Michigan, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University have also signed on with the Google project, which expects to scan 15 million books from the libraries.
For Mr. Verba, the decision to support Google's plan was not easy or obvious. He has a unique perspective on the legal and intellectual debate because his various professional roles connect him to every aspect of the creation and use of books.
"It's been dominating my life for the last year and a half," said Mr. Verba, a prominent political scientist who has been a professor at Harvard for more than 30 years. Even now, he is cautious about the implications of the ambitious project.
Until two years ago, the congenial and energetic Mr. Verba was chairman of the board of Harvard University Press. And in that position, he witnessed mounting anxiety about the future of publishing, especially with the advent of digital texts.
"Scanning the whole text makes publishers very nervous," he said. "I have sympathy with that. They have to be assured there will be security, that no one will hack in and steal contents, or sell it to someone."
And as the author or co-author of 18 books, he understands the worry that Google's digitization project might cause writers over loss of income or control of their work. Many of his own books are still in print.
But as a librarian and a teacher, he argues that the digital project will meet the needs of students who gravitate to the Internet - and Google in particular - to conduct their research. And he says he believes the project will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world.
He was taken aback when Google was sued, first in September by a group of authors, then last month by five major publishers.
"It's become much more controversial than I would have expected," Mr. Verba said. "I was surprised by the vehemence."
For the time being, Harvard has confined the scanning of its collections largely to books in the public domain and limited the initial scanning to about 40,000 volumes. But it hopes eventually to scan copyrighted books as well, depending on the outcome of the legal dispute. "The thing that consoles me," Mr. Verba said, "is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book."
Google's search of copyrighted works in the library collections allows users to see a limited amount of text surrounding the relevant search term. But to make those snippets freely available on the Web, the books must be scanned in their entirety into Google's database to create a searchable index, which the lawsuits claim violates the fair use provision of copyright law.
Mr. Verba says he believes that showing small excerpts helps direct readers to books they would not know about otherwise, and could help spur sales.
Patricia Schroeder, the former Colorado congresswoman who is president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, which is suing Google on behalf of the five publishers, has a far less sanguine view.
"Look, people should be able to search all this stuff, but it should be the author's choice and not Google's," Ms. Schroeder said. "You can't have a corporation just come in and say, 'We're going to do this and it's good for you.' "
But as an educator, Mr. Verba has watched his students shun libraries in favor of search engines and other electronic resources. In his courses, Mr. Verba has cast a skeptical eye on student papers thick with URL's in the bibliography.
"Everyone with a teenage kid is worried that the younger generation may believe that all knowledge is on Google," said Mr. Verba, who said he nagged his own students to use library books.
"But what this does," he said, referring to the Google project, "is take you to Google, which takes you to the library."
Yet when Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive, first visited Harvard two years ago and put forth the idea of digitizing millions of books spread out over Harvard's more than 90 libraries, Mr. Verba was skeptical. The sheer magnitude of the task seemed staggering.
James Hilton, the interim university librarian at the University of Michigan, for example, said that he asked his staff a year ago to estimate how long it would take to digitize the library's seven million volumes. The answer was more than a 1,000 years.
Then Google came along and offered hope that the project could be done within a decade.
"We are among the most aggressive of libraries doing their own digitizing," Mr. Hilton said. "Google thinks they'll be able to do it in six."
As for Harvard's own back-of-the-envelope calculations, "it would be incredibly expensive beyond anything we could imagine funding," Mr. Verba said. "I didn't think it could be done by anyone, including Google."
One of his main concerns was the physical vulnerability of some of the older volumes. As custodian of his institution's materials, he worried that the physical handling of the books could damage them.
But he said he was impressed by Google's technical competence and the ambitious scope of the project. Still, he wanted to see more details, especially about the protection of the books themselves. He told Google to come back after it had worked out those fine points.
Google did return, some nine months later, details in hand.
"It was clear they had done their homework," said Mr. Verba, who was careful not to talk about parts of the project that fall under a nondisclosure agreement. "They had designed a very efficient means of doing the digitization, in a nondamaging, cost-efficient way. And they were willing to invest a large amount of money."
Although Google will not disclose its investment, outsiders have speculated that the company is spending more than $200 million on the entire project.
Google has also cultivated an aura of mystery around its proprietary book-scanning technology.
Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president for product management, who is overseeing the Google Book Search project, said the company had built its own scanners, which capture the image of the page using optical character recognition technology. The scanning for Harvard's collection, she said, is taking place at Harvard's book depositories.
Some Google watchers think the company has developed an advanced page-turning scanning technology while others think Google's scanners are more conventional, having workers turn the pages at hundreds of scanners.
Crain's Detroit Business reported last month that Google had leased a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Ann Arbor to digitize the University of Michigan books. Nathan Tyler, a Google spokesman, said Google was looking to expand its scanning facilities for Michigan, but did not have anything to announce.
"It's a fascinating time, and very confusing," Mr. Verba said of the copyright controversy. "And if you ask me if I have a clear view of fair use, the answer is no. It's all up in the air."
Another concern for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits is the second digital copy that Google gives to the libraries as part of each agreement. But Mr. Verba maintains that those second copies will be used only for archiving and preservation, in keeping with a research library's charter.
"We think and hope it is legally the appropriate approach," Mr. Verba said of the Google project. "But we're taking it day by day."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/bu...21harvard.html
CBS Says in Talks with Google for Video Search
Kenneth Li and Michele Gershberg
U.S. television network CBS is in discussions with Internet media company Google Inc. for video search and on-demand video, CBS chairman Leslie Moonves said on Tuesday.
Viacom-owned CBS, which is in the process of splitting itself apart from the faster growing MTV cable networks and Paramount film studios, is seeking other distribution outlets for its top ranked shows including the CSI franchise.
"We're talking to them about a whole slew of things including video-on-demand, including video search," Moonves told Reuters in an interview regarding Google, ahead of Reuters's Media and Advertising Summit next week.
Such talks are occurring across the media industry at a time when entertainment companies are wary of new technologies like the Internet and video games that appear to siphon off consumers of traditional media.
Moonves, however, said he saw more opportunities on the Internet to boost CBS's reach and bottom line.
CBS's discussions have not been restricted to Google and have also included talks with Yahoo Inc., although no deals have yet been struck.
"They need our content, we need their technology," he said, referring to broader discussions with Internet companies. "We argue about which is more important. I think ultimately my content, no matter how you get it, content is still the most important thing."
In September, Viacom's UPN television network struck a deal with Google to offer exclusive video streams of its "Everybody Hates Chris" comedy show. The premier show was offered for four days at Google Video service.
Google is just one of a handful of big Internet companies that seek to offer video programing on the Web. Yahoo is seeking to license more video for its service.
But finding a way for media and Internet companies to work together has not been without snafus. Shortly after Google debuted its video search in June, copyrighted videos from random users crept onto the service, drawing the ire of the very media companies Google aimed to attract.
Google removed the videos after a few days.
Then there's digital video recording technology company TiVo Inc., whose early plans to let some of its customers send recorded videos directly to Apple Computer Inc.'s new iPod digital media player could set the stage for the next copyright fight.
"There's some intellectual property questions about the situation," Moonves said about TiVo's plans.
What's certain is big media needs to offer legitimate alternatives. "Video on the Internet is taking off like mad," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research, which has reported that about 46 percent of online households were already watching videos.
Eyeing how the music industry's slow reaction to new technology ravaged sales, U.S. television networks have been busier experimenting online, Moonves said.
"They'd be better off moving as quickly as possible to embrace these technologies," Bernoff added about television networks.
More Vod With Les
More shows are expected to be offered to cable, satellite television and wireless services as well, Moonves said.
CBS announced a one-year deal to let Comcast Corp. cable customers view episodes of some of its shows at the click of their remote for 99 cents earlier this month.
Moonves, who is also co-chief operating officer of Viacom, said the company was in talks with satellite television operator DirecTV Group Inc. for similar deals, although he did not specify when, or if, any deal would be struck.
"We've spoken with DirecTV, sure," he said. "I think you'll see more and more of those deals happening along the way, as well as you'll see more and more deals like ABC did with the iPod."
Although Moonves did not address discussions with Apple's iTunes service, which began selling episodes of ABC's "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" in October, sources have said the two are in discussions.
Viacom's widely held class b shares rose 3 cents to $33.67 on the New York Stock Exchange in afternoon trading. Google shares rose $6.03, or 1.47 percent to $415.39 on Nasdaq.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...RS&srch=google
NBC Universal Deal Highlights P2P Pivot
Jay Lyman
Although the major Hollywood movie studios have historically resembled the recording industry -- which sued thousands of individual users -- when it came to P2P, it appears the big screen and TV content giants have learned from the song swapping struggle and may be faster to take advantage of legitimate digital distribution.
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It used to be that peer-to-peer (P2P) operators and major music and movie entertainment companies mentioned in the same statement indicated some sort of legal action by either side, but the latest announcement -- a deal for NBC Universal content to be available on Wurld Media's Peer Impact P2P service -- has the two holding hands.
In what was called a deal for the first legitimate P2P operator to offer video on demand, the companies said NBC Universal's movies, including "Ray," "Meet the Fockers" and others, would be legally available on the Peer Impact service online.
Industry analysts praised the deal, highlighting other experiments -- such as Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) deal with ABC for shows on the video iPod -- and said although the studios may be better positioned to leverage P2P, there are significant hurdles ahead.
"I think clearly they are all looking at this, and looking at different ways of doing it," Gartner research director Mike McGuire told TechNewsWorld. "It used to be something they hated," he added of P2P. "The real crucial thing is they're at least trying it."
Embracing Technology
Although the major Hollywood movie studios have historically resembled the recording industry -- which sued thousands of individual users -- when it came to P2P, it appears the big screen and TV content giants have learned from the song swapping struggle and may be faster to take advantage of legitimate digital distribution.
NBC Universal and Peer said their agreement would make programming available to P2P users for one day rental.
"This agreement with Wurld Media furthers [our] commitment by allowing consumers to view the highest-quality movies securely on their computers," said a statement from NBC Universal Cable president David Zaslav.
Experimental Use
McGuire said other trials, including the BBC's and the Apple-ABC iPod deal, represent the content holders' first try at legitimate online distribution of video.
"The challenge now is the experiment to see how this channel works," he said. "It is definitely their first shot, their first experiment, so this is going to be fine-tuned."
The analyst added that while there is an expectation of ownership with music, consumers may be more willing to pay for limited viewing of video, which they are accustomed to with rentals.
Nevertheless, McGuire said while the technology and architecture may change, the business model may be the biggest issue for online and on demand video.
Content and File Size
Jupiter Research Vice President Michael Gartenberg told TechNewsWorld the NBC Universal-Peer and Apple-ABC deals signal entry into a new area.
"A lot of this is going to come down to what content is available and how is it available," he said.
Gartenberg added there are major differences with video, which is not something consumers typically watch over and over as they do with music, and which is a dramatically larger file size.
"That has a significant impact as well," he said, adding although there are digital rights management and technology issues to deal with, it is good to see content holders attempting to get ahead of the curve.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/...P-Pivot.xhtml#
Join a Revolution. Make Movies. Go Broke.
Charles Lyons
ARIN CRUMLEY, 24, and his girlfriend, Susan Buice, 27, sat in their cramped apartment in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, in front of the computers on which they edited their independent film. Post-Its on a nearby wall read, "Eat Less," "No More Banana Chips" and "Work Succeed." An oversized skateboard leaned precariously against a makeshift desk. Several women's wigs were scattered on the floor.
Mr. Crumley and Ms. Buice spoke about their 14-month ordeal making "Four Eyed Monsters," which dramatizes how they met online, and in which they co-star. The movie was well received at its Slamdance Film Festival premiere in January and screened at 16 other festivals. But like so many independent labors of love, it has yet to attract a theatrical distributor.
"If the result was going to be this," Mr. Crumley mused, "a film with no distributor, no way for anyone to ever get a chance to see it beyond those who saw it at a few festivals, would I have done it? That's a tough question to answer." Ms. Buice added: "The answer is, 'no,' it's not O.K. for our film to have been mildly successful on the festival circuit. But otherwise, it was just a jaunt into the abyss and now we have financial hell to pay."
The first-time filmmakers used their $10,000 in savings to begin production and borrowed $55,000 on seven credit cards to complete the film. Ms. Buice's parents have contributed $20,000 more for film festival travel and living expenses.
In that, Ms. Buice and Mr. Crumley appear typical of a generation of filmmakers determined to bring their visions to the screen, never mind that a staggering number of completed films don't get farther than the filmmakers' closets. In one measure of the glut, the 2005 Sundance Film Festival received more than 2,600 feature-film submissions - up nearly 30 percent from a year earlier - and selected only 120.
But as technology continues to reduce the cost and difficulty of making a movie, and eager news media scour the landscape for the next Steven Soderbergh, an endless rush of newcomers has jumped headlong into filmmaking.
Cindy Konits, 51, who teaches video arts at Villa Julie College in Baltimore, for instance, has just completed a 20-minute film called "The Way I See It." Four years in the making, it was inspired by a fact that haunted Ms. Konits when she was a child: her mother's first cousin, Dr. Henry Abrams - who had been Albert Einstein's ophthalmologist and friend - kept Einstein's eyes in a jar inside a dresser drawer. Even now, at 94, he still does. In 2001, Dr. Abrams granted Ms. Konits permission to videotape the eyes and make a film about them. "My film explores perceptions of mortality, body parts and perception itself," she said, adding that she planned to submit her short to film festivals.
Sydney Pollack, the director - who has served as a creative adviser at the Filmmakers Lab of the Sundance Institute -said a price must be paid for democratizing any art. "The minute everyone is allowed in, something changes in terms of standards of excellence," he said. "I don't know whether that is good or bad."
And Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the Sundance Film Festival, warned that tales of overnight success can have a negative effect. "One of the problems with the Cinderella stories is that they create enormous expectation that people come out of the box fully grown," he said. "Filmmakers are not allowed enough time to enjoy a sense of growth."
But Lloyd Kaufman, the founder of Troma Entertainment, an independent film company that over 30 years has built a library of some 800 low-budget films, sees only a positive side to democratizing film. "We need to destroy the conspiracy of elites that's killing art and commerce," Mr. Kaufman said, seated in his office in Clinton in front of a poster of his latest film, the comedy "Poultrygeist."
What makes the independent film landscape particularly treacherous, though, is that most independent pictures are either self-financed or backed by individuals who've staked their own cash - and are left holding the bag when, as in the vast majority of cases, the movie turns out to have no commercial future.
Even without a distributor, "Four Eyed Monsters" is hardly an epic failure, if a failure at all, but the situation is dire for its creators. "My parents are really supportive of the creative lifestyle," Ms. Buice said. "But they're not rich people. They are middle class. It's causing problems at home. They like the movie but they are really freaked out by the financial situation. They're constantly on my case. 'Are you eating?' 'Did you pay the rent?' 'Did you pay your taxes?' My mom is very concerned about the credit-card debt."
SINCE their first interview for this article, Ms. Buice and Mr. Crumley have sublet their $1,200-a-month Brooklyn apartment and moved in with Ms. Buice's parents in Massachusetts. Still, they may have a leg up on the thousands of other filmmakers looking for a distributor. They have just posted the first of a series of planned video podcasts featuring additional content related to the film on a Web site, myspace.com, and on iTunes. In a follow-up interview, Mr. Crumley said that after just one week the material had been viewed by 14,000 Internet users.
"Media is not completely democratized yet because distribution is not a democratic thing," Mr. Crumley said. "We're looking at other ways to make our movie available in these different formats so that word of mouth can take over where we left off."
Doug Killgore, 58, has no credit-card debt but he feels indebted to the investors who put up the $1 million budget for "The Trust," a dramatization of the mysterious murder of William March Rice, for whom Rice University was named. Mr. Killgore said he still hoped to find a domestic distributor, even though the film made the festival rounds back in 1992. "I don't regret making the film at all," he said from Houston, where he now teaches at Rice. "I just regret that people who put their money into the film didn't get it back."
Many independent filmmakers have migrated to related careers. Emily Morse, 35, was co-director of the documentary "See How They Run," about the 1999 San Francisco mayoral race. It made its premiere at the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival; Ms. Morse discussed a sale with distributors yet never closed a deal. She acted in several friends' films, worked as a print model, and recently started her own podcast, an online radio show called "Sex With Emily" that uses the motto, "Saving the world one orgasm at a time."
Ms. Morse, who lives in San Francisco, feels some creative people today are too fixated on using film to tell their stories, particularly in a climate where finding a distributor is so tough. "You need a reality check that a lot of people aren't getting," she said. "There are lots of other ways to get your story out there. Right now the convergence of media is moving so quickly."
But not so quickly that it's abetting the drive to make one's own film. Ilja Maran, 13, of Long Beach, Calif., just completed his first film, "Sauce," a 25-minute short capturing him and his friends performing skateboarding tricks. "This came out so well I definitely want to do another one," he said. "I'd enjoy being a filmmaker, especially if you were filming something of interest to me like skateboarding or other sports. But not if it's going to be a soap opera or something."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/movies/20lyon.html
A Party Girl Leads China's Online Revolution
Howard W. French
On her fourth day of keeping a Web log, she introduced herself to the world with these striking words: "I am a dance girl, and I am a party member."
"I don't know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl," that early post continued. "But I'm sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I'm most likely the only party member among them."
Thus was born, early in July, what many regard as China's most popular blog.
Sometimes timing is everything, and such was the case with the anonymous blogger, a self-described Communist Party member from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu.
A 25-year-old, Mu Mu appears online most evenings around midnight, shielding her face while striking poses that are provocative, but never sexually explicit.
She parries questions from some of her tens of thousands of avid followers with witticisms and cool charm.
Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China's ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control.
Web experts say the surge in blogging is a result of strong growth in broadband Internet use, coupled with a huge commercial push by the country's Internet providers aimed at wooing users. Common estimates of the numbers of blogs in China range from one million to two million and growing fast.
Under China's current leader, Hu Jintao, the government has waged an energetic campaign against freedom of expression, prohibiting the promotion of public intellectuals by the news media; imposing restrictions on Web sites; pressing search engine companies, like Google, to bar delicate topics, particularly those dealing with democracy and human rights; and heavily censoring bulletin board discussions at universities and elsewhere.
So far, Chinese authorities have mostly relied on Internet service providers to police the Web logs. Commentary that is too provocative or directly critical of the government is often blocked by the provider. Sometimes the sites are swamped by opposing comment - many believe by official censors - that is more favorable to the government.
Blogs are sometimes shut down altogether, temporarily or permanently. But the authorities do not yet seem to have an answer to the proliferation of public opinion in this form.
The new wave of blogging took off earlier this year. In the past, a few pioneers of the form stood out, but now huge communities of bloggers are springing up around the country, with many of them promoting one another's online offerings, books, music or, as in Mu Mu's case, a running, highly ironic commentary about sexuality, intellect and political identity.
"The new bloggers are talking back to authority, but in a humorous way," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "People have often said you can say anything you want in China around the dinner table, but not in public. Now the blogs have become the dinner table, and that is new.
"The content is often political, but not directly political, in the sense that you are not advocating anything, but at the same time you are undermining the ideological basis of power."
A fresh example was served up last week with the announcement by China of five cartoonlike mascot figures for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They were lavishly praised in the press - and widely ridiculed in blogs that seemed to accurately express public sentiment toward them.
"It's not difficult to create a mascot that's silly and ugly," wrote one blogger. "The difficulty is in creating five mascots, each sillier and uglier than the one before it."
A leading practitioner of the sly, satirical style that is emerging here as an influential form of political and social commentary is a 38-year-old Beijing entertainment journalist named Wang Xiaofeng. Mr. Wang, who runs a site called Massage Milk, is better known to bloggers by his nickname, Dai San Ge Biao, which means Wears Three Watches.
His blog mixes an infectious cleverness with increasingly forthright commentary on current events, starting with his very nickname, which is a patent mockery of the political theory of the former Chinese Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, which was labeled San Ge Dai Biao, or the Three Represents.
In a recent commentary, as the government stoked patriotic sentiment during the commemoration of the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, Mr. Wang asked who really fought the enemy, making the provocative observation that only two Communist generals had died fighting Japan, while more than 100 of their Nationalist counterparts had.
"In blogging I don't need to be concerned about taboos," Mr. Wang said. "I don't need to borrow a euphemism to express myself. I can do it more directly, using the exact word I want to, so it feels a lot freer."
Another emerging school of blogging, potentially as subversive as any political allegory, involves bringing Chinese Web surfers more closely in touch with things happening outside their country.
Typically, this involves avid readers of English who scour foreign Web sites and report on their findings, adding their own commentary, in Chinese blogs.
Several bloggers like this have become opinion leaders, usually in areas like technology, culture, current events or fashion, building big followings by being fast and prolific.
One of the leading sites was run by Isaac Mao, a Shanghai investment manager who had built a following writing about education and technology. His site, isaacmao.com, was later blocked by the authorities after he posted a graphic purporting to illustrate the workings of the firewall operated by the country's censors.
Mr. Mao, an organizer of the first national bloggers' conference in Shanghai this month, recently went back online at isaacmao.blogbus.com/s1034872/index.html.
By far the biggest category of blogs remains the domain of the personal diary, and in this crowded realm, getting attention places a premium on uniqueness.
For the past few months, Mu Mu, the Shanghai dancer, has held pride of place, revealing glimpses of her body while maintaining an intimate and clever banter with her many followers, who are carefully kept in the dark about her real identity.
"In China, the concepts of private life and public life have emerged only in the past 10 to 20 years," she said in an online interview. "Before that, if a person had any private life, it only included their physical privacy - the sex life, between man and woman, for couples.
"I'm fortunate to live in a transitional society, from a highly political one to a commercial one," she wrote, "and this allows me to enjoy private pleasures, like blogging."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/in...4bloggers.html