Justin Frankel creator of Gnutella, WinAmp and Waste ends long affiliation.
Nullsoft Founder Resigns From AOL
Jim Hu
Justin Frankel, the controversial software engineer who created the Winamp media player, has resigned from America Online.
In an interview over instant messenger with CNET News.com on Monday, Frankel said the time was right to step down after shepherding the latest version of the player, Winamp 5, to a public launch in late December.
The announcement brings to a close a chapter in the annals of dot-com history, which began in 1999 when the then-20-year-old Nullsoft founder sold his company to AOL in a deal reportedly worth US$100 million. In the years that followed, Frankel clashed frequently with his corporate handlers, stirring up controversy with a string of products that fell outside AOL's approved regime.
"It was a pretty big love/hate relationship for me," Frankel, 25, wrote. "The love ultimately comes down to working with your friends on interesting things that you've poured a lot of time into. The hate is dealing with the process and the pitfalls of corporate America."
AOL spokeswoman Ann Burkart confirmed Frankel's resignation but declined further comment.
The resignation, quietly made public in online postings late Thursday, comes just weeks after AOL laid off hundreds of programmers in its West Coast offices, including at least two from the San Francisco- based Nullsoft division where Frankel worked.
Nullsoft operated in relative autonomy as a cutting-edge development arm for AOL. The team created the media player in AOL's flagship service as well as a streaming media technology called Ultravox that is now being used in AOL's broadband radio product. But the corporate culture of AOL never completely gelled with Frankel's more subversive side.
Frankel's most notable run-in with AOL occurred in 2000, when he posted a peer-to-peer file-sharing service called Gnutella. The software sparked an immediate response from AOL executives who were in the midst of acquiring Time Warner, which ran a major record company. Gnutella was eventually pulled, but not before thousands of copies were downloaded by other software engineers, spawning a new breed of file-swapping services that rose up after courts shut down Napster.
Time Warner has since agreed to sell Warner Music Group, citing sagging revenue and lacklustre growth.
In May 2003, Frankel was forced to pull a software program called Waste, which let users set up private networks equipped with peer-to-peer file sharing and instant messaging. Soon after Waste was pulled, Frankel threatened to quit AOL but later reconsidered to help complete the new version of Winamp.
"I really had been putting it off long enough; it was just that time," Frankel wrote Monday. "Launching Winamp 5 was a big goal of mine for the last nine months, and having it out in the wild made it that much easier to move on."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9115830,00.htm
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Music 'Dot Com' Boom Imminent
Johnny Evans
Legal download sites developing
The renaissance of legal digital music distribution services is opening up new opportunities for entrepreneurs in a phase of activity
which bares a striking similarity to the early years of the dot com boom.
In one move, former Napster CEO Shawn Fanning has made the classic transition from poacher to gamekeeper, announcing Snocap. Formed with several of the early developers and investors of Napster 1.0, Snocap is building code that will be able to identify tracks traded on peer-to-peer networks and to attach a price tag to those tracks. Users will then have to pay to download those tracks
CNet reports that "several record industry executives believe the idea sounds promising", warning that Fanning will also need to secure support form the peer-to-peer (P2P) networks themselves. In another move that shows the extent of creative energy being thrown at the new emerging business, Wired News yesterday discussed RipDigital, a company that will convert US music fans' CD collections into high-quality MP3s for a fee.
To use the service — which the company reportedly plans extending into other markets — consumers choose their preferred digital music format and choose whether to have their encoded tunes ripped to DVD or an external hard drive supplied by the company. They then ship their CD collections to the company for ripping.
US copyright law means the company cannot archive the tunes, but must rip them each time from the original legally-acquired discs. The company charges $129 (about £60) for 100 CDs. With the online music market anticipated to reach values in excess of $3bn (about £1.6bn) by 2008, entrepreneurs have recognized the value that may exists in creating services for the emerging breed of music fan.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm...view&news=3786
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BPI Ramps Up Copyright Battle
Dinah Greek
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is making a two-pronged attack on what it says are violations of copyright and trade laws.
The industry group is ramping up its efforts against online retailers selling CDs sourced from the Far East and Asia and users of peer-to- peer (P2P) sites.
Web surfers can save up to 50 per cent when shopping for music with popular online retailers such as CDWow.
But in what is likely to be just the first of a number of legal battles, the BPI has forced CDWow to change how it sources its CDs.
Some online retailers make savings by importing products from the Far East and Asia where prices are lower because overseas record companies take a smaller percentage of sales income.
This is known as parallel importing, which the BPI claims is in breach of European trading laws.
The BPI brought a case against CDWow, but it was settled out of court in late January. CDWow will now only sell CDs that have first been placed on the European market to UK and Irish customers.
The net effect will be an average price rise for CDWow customers of between £2 and £3, the company claimed.
The BPI is also turning its eye on Amazon.com and e-tailer Play.com for similar alleged infringements of European law.
At the same time the BPI has warned that it may launch legal action against people who swap music files on P2P sites.
This reflects growing frustration within the music industry, which has been trying to stop internet users sharing copyrighted music files.
The move follows in the footsteps of the Recording Industry Association of America, which began court action against a number of alleged P2P users in September last year.
The legal framework to allow the BPI to sue users is already in place thanks to the recently revised Copyright Directive, but that the organisation still preferred to educate P2P users.
And BPI director general Andrew Yeates, warned that the BPI could bring injunctions against ISPs as a means of trying to obtain the names and addresses of suspected file sharers. ISPs have said they would fight such a move.
"It would be the next step for the BPI. We are not in the business to sue for the hell of it, but we have an active dialogue with ISPs and work with them," said Yeates.
http://vnunet.com/News/1152317
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Music’s Cold Online Revenge
Mike Butcher
When it comes to the relationship between the Net and that rather older medium, music, there’s life in the old dog yet.
For instance, It would appear Madonna telling us to "F*** Off" in those bogus tracks her label distributed on P2P networks like Kazaa wasn’t such a brilliant idea afterall.
A US federal court has cleared the way for Kazaa owner Sharman Networks to sue the entertainment industry for copyright infringement, saying it misused Kazaa to invade users' privacy and send corrupt files and threatening messages. Ooer.
Ok, so admittedly the users were probably downloading several billions dollars of music at the time, thus depriving J-Lo of the ability to finance her eyebrow plucking habit (or not?), but who’s counting?
Sharman ( their latest hit, for course, being Skype, according to the IHT is to pursue the case, though handily it’s HQ is on the island nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific - tricky to serve a writ on at the best of times. And last Friday a judge rejected the entertainment industry's request to dismiss the lawsuit.
The Recording Industry Association of America said "Yah, boo, you’re just a bunch of Vanuatan jokers." Ok, so what they really said was "the court does not appear to want these claims to proceed at this point. If they ever proceed, Sharman will have a very difficult time providing evidence to support their allegations." Got that?
So the RIAA and others used KaZaA to try to enforce their copyrighted material while violating Sharman's copyright. It’s such a shame Pop Will Eat Itself aren’t still around.
Meanwhile in Cannes - at the Midem conference - Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a new musicians' alliance which will let artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels.
The "Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists" - or MUDDA is the venture’s name, which launches formally in a month.
This is no idle threat. Gabriel co-founded a European company, On Demand Distribution, which runs legal download sites in 11 - count’em - European countries.
But for all we know, Kazaa and the rest are probably being slowly made obsolete by Nokia, which has launched the Nokia 7700 Media Device in Cannes.
It is Nokia's first dedicated media phone, and is the the first mobile phone that can receive digital TV transmissions and FM radio along with images and text on the LCD handset display screen, displaying pictures of the artist, the name of the song or its current chart listing.
In Europe, digital radio networks are happily sending data down the line to sets, trumping in-car CD players and the like.
Phew. Anyone for 78s?
http://www.thestandard.com/movablety...ves/000077.php
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Students Still Plug Into File Sharing
Amy Rolph
Despite reductions in filesharing nationwide and hundreds of lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, UW students have found a way to share music, videos and software over Residence Hall computer networks.
A message taking a strong stance against illegal filesharing over the University computing networks was sent via e-mail to all UW students, faculty and staff last October. Regardless of this message, in which Vice Provost Steven Olswang asked students to comply with copyright laws, it appears that music, movies, games and pornography have continued to be exchanged on campus servers.
"I've downloaded $150-worth of games for free," said a sophomore in McCarty Hall who did not wish to be named.
The most prevalent means of peer-to-peer file sharing on campus is done through a program called Direct Connect, a shared system linking dormitory computers together.
The direct connect server hosts a shared folder called DawgFarm, that can be accessed from any computer on the server. Students can search DawgFarm and download music, videos or games from the collections stored in the direct connect folders of other users, provided that the owner is logged on. Movies and music are often available on DawgFarm weeks before their official release.
According to DawgFarm users, there is a student responsible for maintaining the shared folder. However, none of the students interviewed knew the identity of this person.
Olswang told The Daily that as a distributor of Internet services, the University is obligated to look into any claims of illegal use on any campus computer.
According to Olswang, students in dorms are not the only computer users who are guilty of peer-to-peer filesharing; staff and public computers have also been subject to investigation. In many cases, guilty parties have been discovered.
"Our policy is to adhere to the law," said Olswang. "We have had to disconnect access on numerous occasions."
Catherine Innes, director of policy and strategic initiatives, said 500 alleged cases of illegal filesharing have been reported in the past two years.
According to Olswang, the typical reprimand consists of computer access being shut off while the matter is investigated. If suspicions are substantiated, illegally obtained files are removed and the guilty party is subjected to "re-education" about legal file sharing before computer access is restored.
Olswang said he knows of two cases in which an individual has continued to download illegally after the "re-education" process. In such cases, he said, computer access may be terminated completely. If there were a third offense, expulsion would be considered.
"We hope that this never happens," said Olswang. "The issue of filesharing is a national problem, not a campus problem."
According to a study published this month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the number of people downloading music files illegally has been cut in half since last September when the Recording Industry Association of America began prosecuting those suspected of violating copyright laws.
However, there are those who disregard any threat of prosecution.
"I don't do it enough to get caught. I download once a month, maybe," said a McCarty Hall resident who also asked to remain anonymous.
http://thedaily.washington.edu/news....e=8149&-search
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The Sound of The Industry
How Bad a Year?
Music biz recovery means suing and firing more people
Douglas Wolk
Exactly how bad a year did the music industry have in 2003? It depends who's asking. According to Nielsen Soundscan, American labels sold 687 million units (including 19.2 million paid downloads) last year—a drop of less than 1 percent from 2002. A widely cited survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that file sharing has plummeted since the Recording Industry Association of America started threatening traders with lawsuits. The percentage of Internet users who download music, it claims, fell from 29 percent to 14 percent between May and December.
Of course, it may be more correct to say that half as many Internet users are willing to tell a pollster that they download music—these days, the first rule of File Club is you do not talk about File Club. And a study by the NPD Group (which monitors actual computer usage), released a couple of weeks after Pew's, indicates that peer-to-peer file sharing went up 14 percent between September and November, after dropping for six months.
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled December 19 that the RIAA can't use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to subpoena Internet service providers for their customers' identities without a lawsuit. Even Senator John Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, declared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that that's "not what the DMCA was intended to do. . . . We can't be writing legislation that gives holders of certain types of intellectual property special rights." In response, the RIAA has gone back to getting information the old-fashioned way: by filing suits, on January 21 against 532 allegedly file-sharing "John Does," now identified only by IP address. Presumably, some of them won't turn out to be 12-year-old girls, 83-year-old nuns, or senators trading bootleg remixes of Howard Dean's post-Iowa yelp.
More PR disasters, after all, could impede the RIAA's attempts to look like an actual arm of the law. The organization was recently granted permission to put the FBI's logo on CD packages, to remind consumers once again that it considers them all potential criminals. LA Weekly reported a few weeks ago that the RIAA's anti-piracy unit (now headed by former ATF director Bradley Buckles) has been hiring ex-cops to wear "raid" vests stenciled "RIAA," confront street vendors selling bootleg CDs, and fill out incident reports saying that they "voluntarily" forfeited their wares. (The unit's Western regional coordinator, John Langley, told the Weekly why they photograph the people they bust: "A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature. Today he's Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he's Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he's something else. These people change their identity all the time.")
The RIAA is also trumpeting its $200,000 settlement of infringement claims against Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the few vinyl plants still operating in America. (If you bought an indie-label seven-inch single in the '90s, it was very likely pressed there.) It seems that they were hired to press some records that turned out to include unlicensed content ("more than 170 unauthorized sound recordings"). Everything that customers send to United is now "audio tested," and no samples of any kind are permitted. Fair use? The public domain? Out of the question.
Individual record labels are facing turbulence too. Warner Music Group, soon to be taken over by Edgar Bronfman (whose investment group is buying it from Time Warner), is bracing for massive layoffs, rumored to be up to half of its staff. Antonio "L.A." Reid got the boot as president of Arista the same week that the label had the top three songs in the country with "Hey Ya!," "The Way You Move," and "Milkshake." And the Beastie Boys' defunct Grand Royal label failed to sell its assets in a bankruptcy auction last week—nobody offered more than $65,000.
Even so, Pepsi's giving away 100 million song downloads (five times the total number sold last year) on Apple's iTunes in February and March. Coca- Cola has riposted by launching its own music site, in the U.K. rather than the U.S., and selling songs in Windows Media rather than iTunes' AAC format —the website doesn't even work on Macs yet. It's also saddled with the worst name ever: mycokemusic.com. (Mirror and razor not included.) Evidently, the only pop business that's got money to throw around right now is the carbonated kind.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0404/soti.php
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Analysis
Not Yet Time For Record Labels To Be Smug About The End Of Piracy
Faultline
There is an increasingly smug feeling among the big record companies and their various agents, that has been brought about by the supposed demise of music piracy.
There are three related important points to establish about music piracy. Firstly it is illegal and also morally wrong to obtain copies of music or film or other entertainment without some form of payment. Secondly the process has been stimulated by the perception that record companies neither have the interests of the artists at heart, and they have in the past made huge profits by overpricing music.
Thirdly music companies have been slow to realize that digital music requires a rights regime that allows various personal copies of music to be moved between different personal types of players.
Quite simply, young people would rather break a law than pay the current prices, and certainly break the law to copy tracks they have already bought for one player, which won’t play on another.
It is only one third of this equation that may have been addressed so far, that of stopping piracy, and Faultline would argue that this has not been finally or successfully addressed, despite claims to the contrary, made throughout this week.
An annual online music report out this week from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said this week that the arrival of the legitimate online music services will take a large market share against the illegal use of peer-to-peer file sharing networks like Kazaa, during the coming year.
There are two pieces of evidence that it cites. It says that the imminent arrival of iTunes, Rapsody and Napster, the more successful of the online music services offered in the US, will see a healthy rise in paid for, online sales. IFPI also says that US buyers have bought 30 million songs through these services, and while Europe has only, so far, purchased 3 million, this is set to rise. Online music supplier OD2 said this week that its sales are rising at the rate of 25 per cent per month.
IFPI points out that there are already 30 existing online services and credits part of their growing success to the awareness growing that not only is file sharing of a copyrighted work illegal, but it is now becoming obvious that people that do it can get caught. The number of music files available on the Internet has fallen by 20 per cent to 800 million over the last year, after peaking at one billion at the start of 2003.
IFPI finished with: “For everyone working to create a successful legitimate online music business, this report reflects a new sense of optimism and evidence of real change,” this from IFPI chairman and CEO Jay Berman. He added: "We believe the music industry's Internet strategy is now turning the corner, and that in 2004 there will be, for the first time, a substantial migration of consumers from unauthorized free services to legitimate alternatives."
However three million downloads in a year are not enough to turn the tide, even if those downloads are growing at 25 per cent a month (as OD2 claims in a statement this week), because there have been four years of declining CD sales, and during 2002 EMI lost 11 per cent of its revenue, down by some $460 million, and for 2003, although it has yet to publish its final figures, it is likely to be flat for the year, at best.
At the current price for European downloads (generally 99p a track, almost double the US prices for the same music) three million downloads yields £3 million, or $5.4 million. Even if 50 per cent of that money was due to EMI’s catalog, this would only be $2.7 million, and after delivery database OD2’s take and the take from etailers HMV etc… this would be reduced to about $1.3 million. It is hardly going to replace $460 million in lost revenues.
If these three million paid-for downloads were increasing at 25 per cent per month through 2003, then they began on about 55,000 downloads in January 2003 and ended on 640,000 in December 2003. Taking the number on from there, growing at 25% per month, this 3 million will go up to 43 million downloads in 2004, and if that same growth continued through 2005, this would take paid music downloads in Europe to 631 million, grossing some $1.1 billion. Once again if half of that belonged to EMI (and it won’t) and half of that was taken by the distribution process (which it will) then that might add up to $250 million, about half of what EMI has lost. Hardly time for dancing in the streets at the EMI shareholders meeting.
And we have more problems with this. No growth, including the original take up of browser technology on the internet, sustains a growth rate of 25% per month (the world wide web once had 15 per cent a month growth for about two years, but nothing else has come close). So this growth rate will not be sustained. Also it was not gradual and linear in the first place. Digging between the lines among OD2’s statements this growth was mostly in one huge leap when Microsoft added the service to MSN, and then more modest movement month to month.
So expect perhaps 25 per cent growth per month for a few more months and then seasonal variation and tailing off to perhaps 10 per cent growth for the rest of the year. Also expect a price war. This is a land grab market and already there is the announcement of Coca Cola entering the online music wars, again off the back of the OD2 delivery network, to launch its own music site next month. While they all use the same delivery mechanism it is likely that prices must be the same. But yet to come to Europe are music services from Apple, RealNetwork’s Rhapsody, Walmart, Musicmatch, the company that powers both Dell and Hewlett- Packard’s forthcoming online music web sites and of course Sony, that will tightly integrate its site with its own electronic players.
It will be strange if all of these charge almost double the price in parts of Europe, that they do in the US, given that many of the artists are European, and in EMI and Universal and Bertelsmann, the music companies are owned in Europe. Online services generally tend to flatten global pricing, and the resentment of the European youth will continue until they can see that they are being charged the same as their US counterparts, and while they are resenting overcharging, they will continue to indulge in piracy. So either price cuts, or more piracy.
Already Playstation and Xbox games, often written by European companies, are sold online in the US by Amazon for instance, for a fraction of European prices but cannot be shipped over to Europe. And DVDs are also the same, with a grey importer of Far East DVD movies being forced last week, in a settlement with US studios, to charge more in Europe than either the US or the Far East.
It is these inequalities that bedevil the operations of the troubled music companies, as much as piracy. There is a feeling still in the minds of aging executives, that one day the industry will all go back to being the same as it was before, once they’ve “fixed” the piracy question. But the internet has changed forever the global cross communication over pricing, and this has still to be addressed.
And yet EMI’s share price has gained over 40 per cent since 2004 started. Surely for EMI to recover we must see a return to the retail environment to buy CDs, not just an acceptance that online music is here to stay.
More likely to put the recording studio mess to rights is an announcement from Macrovision this week that it has a new release of its CD copy-protection system. This version will use the full Microsoft DRM system; Macrovision says the CDS-300 will offer multi-level protection and rights management for music CDs. CDs made with this system can seamlessly create playlists, export to portable devices and makes authorized burns to another CD, and offers one-click access to bonus content on the disc, or premium content via web links.
The company claims that the average consumer should not even notice that their CD is copy protected and says that content owners can set usage rights, for example, allowing consumers the ability to export to compliant portable devices (with a specified number of exports), as well as burn CDs (with specified number of burns). Copied files will not play if emailed or distributed via the Internet.
But will the content companies actually set these kinds of rights? We don’t think so. They have shown themselves to be solely interested in returning the industry to where it was before piracy took off, and will only use innovative and intricate rights regimes to combat other music companies that offer the same, not to tempt people away from piracy. At least not so far. Almost all the OD2 tracks for sale in Europe are not for sale to burn to CDs or to play on a PC, and yet this system uses the very same DRM protection that Macrovision is just introducing and the facility to do so is supported by OD2.
It will be a long battle before music companies start experimenting with attractive rights, long after piracy is under control. But this is a chicken and egg argument. No rights experiments and people will continue to pirate.
In the meantime the main game in reducing piracy, the messy public legal actions that are designed to scare customers out of file sharing, continue. In Europe we are told that the first suits are about to be filed, but as yet there are no named individuals coming to trial, while in the US the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed another 532 suits this week.
These new filings serve two purposes. One to keep the pressure up on reducing file sharing, but secondly also to clarify that the RIAA has not given up on its legal actions just because Verizon, just prior to Christmas, convinced a US judge that the fast subpoena process that the RIAA was pursuing was not legal. Now every suit has to be filed as a “John Doe,” action against someone with no known name, and will have to go to a judge in order to force the ISP to name their customer.
Would that put the RIAA off? Will the judge always agree to grant a motion to discover the name? These two questions need answering quickly and in the RIAA’s favour and need to be made public very loudly, or file sharing would immediately go back on the increase. November figures released last week shows that file sharing has already risen by 1 million individuals from October. Another rise and it could mean that all of the RIAA’s prior legal work would all be wasted. Finally the RIAA will find itself on the receiving end of a copyright legal action any day, now that a US federal judge has given leave to Kazaa to sue them. The Kazaa case rests on the fact that the RIAA is alleged to have used unlicensed versions of Kazaa to monitor the internet for copyright infringers. This amounts to a violation of the Kazaa license and Kazaa wants it stopped.
And if the RIAA is blocked from using this software to find pirates, then it is back to the drawing room for the RIAA, EMI, the IFPI and a move back to rampant piracy once again. Like we said, it is far too early for the music companies to be smug about the demise of piracy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35131.html
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Voice Mail In Your Inbox, Caller ID On Your TV. What Can't Broadband Do?
Nicole Davis
PS Illustration by Garry Marshall
Could the landline be going the way of the telegraph? To find Web-tech enthusiasts who think so, just ask any one of the two million plus people who have downloaded Skype, peer-to-peer software that allows users to make calls anywhere in the world, for free, over the Internet. "I'm speaking to you through a headset connected to my regular telephone, connected to my laptop, which is wireless," says Skype CEO Niklas Zennström, calling an ordinary phone in New York from Sweden. "Like a very big cordless telephone."
That "very big cordless" is threatening to further rock the already battered telecom industry. Thanks to today's critical mass of broadband connections, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the nine-year-old technology behind Skype, is finally going mainstream. So much so that some experts predict that 40 percent of the world will be using VoIP within the next five years, a prospect that has telecom giants scrambling to keep pace, and profits. Already MCI, AT&T and SBC offer some type of VoIP calling plans to their customers. And while the big guys play catch-up, smaller players like Packet8 and Vonage are winning over callers at breakneck speed with long distance Internet calling plans as low as $20 a month.
Skype plans to cash in as well. This winter the company will introduce a new fee-based service that will allow users to make and receive calls over the Internet from regular phones.
But there are still a few technical hurdles on the road to ubiquity. The extra equipment VoIP requires -- at minimum, an analog-to-digital converter to patch your phone into the Internet -- feels cumbersome, and service can be spotty. From his oversize "cordless," Zennström is barely audible as he speaks about becoming the leading player in VoIP. "VoIP is notorious for poor quality," says Andrew Odlyzko, director of University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center. "But in the long run, it has the potential to transcend the limitations of telephony."
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/interne...582766,00.html
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FREEZE FRAME
Striking A Discordant Note
Instead of constantly crying wolf, the music industry needs to adapt as fast as possible to technological change.
Amit Khanna
The recorded music industry worldwide has been caught in turbulence for the past few years. In fact, it is the only segment of the entertainment industry whose growth rate has fallen.
In India too the sound of music has been a bit jarring. This distortion amidst a booming economy and a flourishing sector is a classic twenty-first century dilemma.
The digital economy opens several new opportunities but it forecloses a few. One very obvious disruption by technology is the whole market flow of the music industry.
While it was almost certain that the rapid spread of the world wide web and its concomitant use of peer-to-peer and other file-sharing technologies would change the contours of the music business, what has surprised many is the speed and severity of the change.
While the global music business remained stagnant at around US$ 30 billion last year, India’s music industry’s turnover has seen a sharp decline from around Rs 800 crore to Rs 600 crore.
Of course, both these figures exclude almost an equivalent amount in the unaccounted market – the result of piracy, counterfeit products and P2P.
Yet in spite of sales falling, the actual consumption of musical products has increased. More people in India and around the world are listening to music today, be it on hard media (MP3, CDs, cassettes, records) or on soft media (the radio, internet, TV).
The problem is that reach and penetration are not translating into revenue. The digital world is a much more democratic world the digital divide notwithstanding.
Sheer convenience overcomes all guilt in accessing intellectual property unfairly as long as the act does not entail any public display of the process.
The success of Napster, Kaaza and many such file sharing websites is based on this premise. Most people indulge in copyright theft even as they condemn it.
Once you are used to accessing content free it becomes very difficult to start paying for it, unless the price of the legitimate product appears reasonable and it is easily accessible to the consumer.
The music companies failed to realise this. There has been some consolidation in the industry but by and large the old ‘analogue’ distribution still dominates.
Till Apple figured out a business model in I-tunes, most efforts at creating workable P2P sites were disasters.
Now several subscription-based models for digital downloads are emerging. Varying technologies allow you limited or unlimited use of either a fixed number or any number of titles from a catalogue.
This appears to be a near-term solution in the more developed markets which have high PC penetration and better connectivity.
· India is one of the few markets in the world where 70 per cent of the revenue comes from the sale of audiocassettes
· Not only are piracy levels high but gross margins are low
· The music industry’s problems are further compounded by FM radio
However, India has more problems. It is one of the few markets in the world where 70 per cent of the revenue comes from the sale of audiocassettes. Not only are piracy levels high but gross margins are low too.
The problem is further compounded by the nascent FM radio. Suddenly, Indian music lovers are getting to hear a wide variety of music round the clock on affordable stereo systems or even low-priced FM radios.
With the number of FM stations expected to rise to a few hundred in the next few years, even a small broadcasting fee can be a substantial source of revenue for the music companies.
Similarly, a plethora of TV channels which broadcast songs 24x7 can be looked upon more as a revenue source than a threat. From telephone ring tones to piped music and live concerts – many new business streams are emerging.
People can choose from a fair amount of free music. As a result, the number of paying customers is actually dropping in an otherwise expanding market.
Having said that, there still is enough opportunity provided the music industry is swift in its response to the changing paradigm and customer needs.
Traditional sales models will have to be dumped fast in favour of newer methods of digital distribution and airplay. Music companies with large catalogues can specially benefit from these.
In the past, whenever a major technology shift (shellac to vinyl discs, discs to cassettes, cassettes to CDs and now the P2P and digital downloads) happened, the music industry, particularly in India, has been slow in adopting the new technology.
Since a market does not support a vacuum, pirates and interlopers have taken large chunks of revenue away. Now with increasing digital connectivity and affordable devices, a huge opportunity stares music makers in the face. The key to all this is affordability.
We have seen in various product categories – from mobile phones to shampoos (sachets) – that the right pricing has led to an explosion in dormant demand in a huge market like India. Most of the time the music industry has priced itself out of a new opportunity.
Unlike any other market, the Indian music scene is dominated by film music. Except for the cyclical race to acquire the rights to top films, very little innovation has been done either by film producers or the music industry to push sales.
Creatively too, the industry has been on a downslide in the last few years, with not a single blockbuster of a song emerging. Except for remixes with bawdy videos, nothing has caught audience imagination.
Instead of constantly crying wolf, the music industry needs to adapt as fast as possible to technological change, spruce up its marketing and get the creative juices flowing. There’s no reason the sound of music should not translate into money even in the digital age.
The author is chairman of Reliance Entertainment.
http://www.business-standard.com/ice...69&story=32982
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Internet Lite
A look at the Net's gated communities
The idea of a common Internet _ the Internet _ is losing its validity. For a long time now I've thought of the Internet as a series of networks that happen to pass data to each other _ but there's nothing that consistent about them.
If countries like China and Vietnam cut off their citizens' access to various parts of the Internet, then they are essentially on an Internet Lite, so to speak. Similarly, some countries have adopted their own domain name system for Internet addresses using different character sets. This is also a way of possibly creating a segregated network, or a walled community if you like.
IPv6, the next generation of Internet addressing, has the potential to create other divisions. While the developer community is trying to ensure that there will be compatability between IPv4 and IPv6, there will always be some parts of the network that are more advanced and off-limits to those without the right technology. Similarly, researchers out there working on so-called Internet2 and other research networks are essentially working on a private network.
But perhaps the biggest move to private networks, and a trend that might see even further fragmentation of the Internet, is in the area of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, also known as file sharing networks.
The music industry crackdown on the swapping of music files is creating a new series of underground P2P networks that are closed to outsiders. According to some reports I've been reading, these new networks are using encryption technology to make sure that all of the activity on the network is hidden, and you have to be invited by an existing member to join the club.
One of the hidden spin-offs of the file sharing crackdown is a move to encrypted spaces and easier encryption tools, according to Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University who also has a popular mailing list on media, culture and technology. He says that while earlier pushes for encrypted communications failed _ a result of user apathy and the fact that most users don't have too much to hide _ it is now being taken up in large numbers.
Shirky writes: ``In response to the RIAA's suits, users who want to share music files are adopting tools like WINW and BadBlue that allow them to create encrypted spaces where they can share files and converse with one another. As a result, all their communications in these spaces, even messages with no more commercial content than "BRITN3Y SUX!!!1!", are hidden from prying eyes. This is not because such messages are sensitive, but rather because once a user starts encrypting messages and files, it's often easier to encrypt everything than to pick and choose.''
According to Shirky, the music industry's attempts to control what users do on the Internet will have two lasting effects. One will be an increasing move towards more widespread P2P networks _ ie, an even more fragmented Internet _ while the other is widespread adoption of encryption, which will often work seamlessly in the background. In other words, there will be even more gated communities in the future.
Another report I was reading on this cited an upcoming release of the file-sharing program Blubster that apparently seamlessly encrypts files before they are transferred and then decrypts them for the end user. One more example cited is a program called Waste, which can be used to set up an encrypted instant- messaging and content-sharing network of up to 50 users.
EMAIL TUESDAYS
Of course, there's an even easier way to keep users from communicating on the Internet _ it's called Chinese New Year. Trying to get email out of anyone in China, Singapore and even sometimes here in Thailand was almost impossible last week. Another time I always avoid sending email is on Friday afternoons. I figure that often the person is wrapping up for the day and then when they see the message on Monday _ and the fact that it is already a couple of days old _ they're more inclined to ignore it.
It just so happens that my suspicions on this were confirmed via a recent report from EmailLabs, which apart from surveying email habits also makes its own email software. According to its survey, Tuesday is the most popular day for companies to send out emails, while Wednesday is the most popular day for opening them. And as you can imagine, Saturdays and Sundays are out.
Apparently the reason for the mid-week popularity is that companies avoid Mondays and Fridays for sending, but usually draft up their email on these days, leading to Tuesdays and Wednesdays being the most common send days. But the only problem with this, as EmailLabs points out, is that you will also be competing for attention with all the other emails sent on this day if you follow the strategy.
And if you're waiting for an email out there right now (mindlessly passing the time reading this column, obviously), we can report that the most popular send time is 9am, which leaves this 11pm sender scratching his head.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/...04_data05.html
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Online Music Industry Is Focusing on Europe
Victoria Shannon
CANNES, France, Jan. 25 - Europe is the next battlefield for portable digital music, with its eager consumer market and attractive demographics, but complex cross-border legal and financial obstacles are delaying the entry of the biggest names, including Apple Computer.
Still, the online music industry is hungry for the European market, according to many executives at an international music conference that started here on Saturday, and it is preparing to take on the established European leader, On Demand Distribution, a company co-founded by the musician Peter Gabriel that is known as OD2 and powers most existing music services in Europe.
No one involved doubts that the European appetite exists. Last week, the Coca-Cola Company began an Internet-based music downloading service in Britain that attracted 10,000 downloads in its first 24 hours.
Europe is the world's second-biggest music market, behind the United States, and has sales of about $11 billion. According to Forrester Research, European download sales were just 24 million euros ($30.5 million) last year.
The diverse languages and cultural tastes seem the least of the hurdles in Europe. Here, a lower percentage of households have personal computers, are connected to the Internet or have fast, broadband network connections than in the United States.
"A majority of the U.K. population has yet to experience downloading," said Rafael McDonnell, head of strategic marketing alliances for Coca-Cola in Britain, at the conference here, known as Midem. "We need to drive that habit."
Executives at Apple and Napster said over the weekend that they would love to help Coke do that, but they are still held back by arranging downloading rights across Europe. Eddy Cue, Apple vice president for applications and Internet services, said that the company still planned to offer its iTunes Music Store in Europe some time this year, but he declined to give a specific date.
"Different prices in different countries, different release dates, there are obstacles we are still sorting through," Mr. Cue said. "They're not insurmountable."
Chris Gorog, the chairman and chief executive of Roxio, which owns the new Napster service, said he, too, would open for business to Europeans this year as well - as soon as the licensing hurdles are overcome and consumers can get the same kind of choice as the United States version.
"We debuted with over half a million tracks in the U.S., and we'd like to start with the same in Europe," Mr. Gorog said. "The music studios are rolling out the red carpet, but the primary obstacle now" is getting agreements from music publishers that represent songwriters, country by country. "Our approach to the market will be to create local, national services reflective of the culture," he said.
William Booth, head of music publishing for EMI, said Sunday that he expected a single royalty agreement that covers most of Europe's publishing collection agencies to be settled within the next three to four months.
Coke solved the problem by offering its service on Mr. Gabriel's OD2 platform. OD2 has worked over the last several years to extract agreements throughout Europe, and so far it is the only service to have done so. The OD2 platform is branded largely by Web portals and Internet service providers in individual national markets, like Wanadoo in France, Tiscali in Italy and Virgin Downloads in Britain.
Charles Grimsdale, chief executive of OD2, noted that the company has had to develop support for various release dates by country, 6 pricing systems and 13 payment mechanisms. Purchases made via Carte Bleu, for example, the leading payment card in France, are cleared only by French banks.
On Monday, Cable and Wireless will introduce a music-download package for the European market. Like OD2, Cable & Wireless is aiming at companies that want to brand their own service, like Internet service providers or retail companies.
"From our analysis, there's plenty of business to be done," said Andrew Wilding, an executive with Cable and Wireless, which is a partner with the 24/7 Music Shop. "The vagaries of the European market have been factored into the platform," he added. Cable and Wireless's first customer is expected to be Phonofile, a Danish Web site.
Negotiations with holders of music licenses have not been concluded. Even before all the digital music participants are in place - Sony has said it will begin its Connect downloading business in the United States, Europe and Asia this spring, and the Rhapsody service from RealNetworks intends to export its service to Europe - analysts are predicting the inevitable shakeout.
Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said participants like Coke in Britain and Wal-Mart Stores in the United States are unlikely to be long-term players. (Coke has said it has no plans to expand the service beyond Britain.)
"This is not part of Coke's core business," Mr. Bernoff said. "The connection to music is valuable to them, but it doesn't make sense to me that a soft drink company would be the leading download site in Europe."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/te...y/26music.html
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New Digital TV Rules Draw Fight
AP
To most couch potatoes, digital television means a sharper picture. Broadcasters see another advantage, though: They could offer up to six times as many channels.
Broadcast networks say they'll offer more channels if the government requires cable companies to carry them. More channels would mean more choices, stiffer competition and better programming, they say.
But cable companies, which have room for only a limited number of channels, say a federal mandate could force them to drop cable services to make room for extra broadcast channels. Those channels might carry nothing but infomercials or home shopping shows, they say.
The cable industry, which serves more than two-thirds of the 108.4 million U.S. households with television, insists that it, not the government, should decide which channels find homes on their systems.
The issue is before the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to decide by spring whether cable companies must carry the extra broadcast channels.
The fight is due to the transition to digital broadcasting, which will be standard in most areas by 2006. A digital signal can carry more information than the current analog transmissions without using any more space on the broadcast spectrum.
While some stations may use their digital signals for larger and sharper high-definition broadcasts, others may use the spectrum to air to up to six channels.
Broadcasters said the newer networks -- Fox, the WB, UPN and Pax -- became viable only because cable companies were forced to carry the UHF channels with that programming. Requiring cable to carry the digital broadcast channels will offer even more alternatives, they said.
``Cable is definitely afraid of competition from free local broadcast channels,'' said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. ``Consumers ought to be afforded the choice.''
The cable TV industry said those extra broadcast channels may eventually wind up on cable systems, but the First Amendment gives operators, not the government, the power to make that decision.
``Generally speaking, cable wants to carry compelling programming,'' said Dan Brenner, senior vice president for law at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. ``If broadcasters have compelling programming, we'll carry it.''
Consumer advocates worry the extra channels would give the largest broadcasting companies even more control over what people see and hear. Instead of four network-controlled channels in a market, viewers could see up to 24 if each of the four major networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox -- opts for the maximum six channels.
``Until steps are taken to reduce broadcasters' dominance over the most important sources of local news and information, they should not be given the benefit of more channels that cable operators are forced to carry,'' said Chris Murray, legislative counsel for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.
The FCC ruled in 2001 that cable companies only have to carry a single network digital channel. Of the current five commissioners, Chairman Michael Powell was the only one on the panel then. Powell supported the original ruling but has said he will consider new arguments.
The head of the FCC's media bureau, W. Kenneth Ferree, said the complexity of this issue ``makes it very difficult to predict how any of this may come out.''
In urging the FCC to reverse course, broadcasters cited the benefits of the extra programming they planned to produce if they are guaranteed space on cable systems.
ABC, for example, touted its Fresno, Calif., station that offers separate local news and weather channels. NBC's affiliates said they might carry channels devoted to city council meetings, high school sports and local traffic and weather, or use the extra channels to bring the WB, UPN and Spanish-language networks to communities. DIC Entertainment, producer of such cartoons as ``Madeline'' and ``Inspector Gadget,'' said it would create a children's network using the extra digital channels.
On the other side, networks that can be seen only on cable or satellite systems and not on over-the-air television worry that their programs will be sacrificed to make room for the extra broadcast channels. Discovery Communications, for example, says its Discovery Kids network could be dropped from cable systems if they are forced to carry DIC's children's channel.
In the months leading up to the expected decision, lobbyists for the broadcasting and cable industries have submitted thousands of pages of documents and met with commissioners and their staffs.
Those supporting the broadcasters include the lawyer-lobbying firm of Shaw Pittman, whose members include former Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla. Cable industry advocates include Laurence Tribe, who represented Al Gore before the Supreme Court in the 2000 Florida recount case.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...igital-TV.html
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Government Planning Cyberalert System
Robert Lemos
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to announce details of a cyberalert system on Wednesday, two days after a virus called MyDoom spread rapidly across the Internet.
The system, which will be detailed by the department's National Cyber Security Division, could mimic the color-coded scheme the government uses to warn citizens and alert law enforcement authorities of terrorism threats, a source familiar with some details of the plan said.
The latest e-mail virus, MyDoom, underscores the need for a system to alert and inform Internet users. The mass-mailing computer
virus took off on Monday, spreading faster than any previous virus, security experts said this week. The alert system could include a common way for home and business users to report security issues and Internet threats.
Details of the early warning system will be outlined by Amit Yoran, the division's director, according to a press release issued by the department Tuesday.
The announcement comes about two months after officials met with technology industry experts to form plans in five areas: awareness for home users and small businesses, cybersecurity early warning, corporate governance and security, technical standards and building better security into software.
Those meetings built upon the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, a policy blueprint the Bush Administration released almost a year ago. While the strategy has been criticized as being soft on an industry keen to avoid regulation, several administration officials talked tough at the National Cyber Security Summit in December.
The National Cyber Alert System will be announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C., early Wednesday.
http://news.com.com/2100-7348-5148708.html
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TiVo Acquires Start-Up Strangeberry
Richard Shim
Digital video recording company TiVo announced Tuesday that it purchased start-up Strangeberry for an undisclosed sum in equity. San Jose, Calif.-based TiVo is acquiring intellectual property assets and engineering staff from Strangeberry, which has been using home networking and broadband technologies for content delivery and other entertainment services on televisions. The deal allows TiVo to step up a strategy, which it outlined at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, of expanding the TiVo service beyond digital video recording.p>
TiVo separately announced the issuance and sale of 8 million shares of common stock at $9.30 per share to institutional investors managed by a firm headquartered in Boston. Proceeds of the offering will go toward general corporate purposes, primarily to fund sales, marketing and customer acquisitions as well as research and development, capital expenditures and working capital.
http://news.com.com/2110-1041-5148579.html
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P2Pca$h?
Cash Is Not King: The Future Of Consumer Electronic Payments
Honnus Cheung and Ben Arber
Yahoo's regional financial controller Honnus Cheung and HSBC vice president Ben Arber discuss the future of consumer electronic payments.
- While many payment solutions have been on offer in the recent past, most of them have proven unsuccessful due to overambition and failure to focus on the customer.
- However, the advent of e-mail brought versatility to these solutions for merchants and has proven attractive to customers who appreciate online auctions.
- E-mail money allows cross-border payments for customers, and holds additional corporate opportunities with its cost savings, risk reduction and increased efficiency.
- However, the growth of such solutions may be inhibited by the lack of inter-operability, customer registration, regulatory environ-ments, and security issues.
No more coins and notes. That is the banner under which numerous new business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) electronic payment solutions have been launched. Even for a close industry watcher, the sheer weight of new schemes launched is difficult to keep up with, particularly as most have names that end in "-cash" or start with "pay-". Many failures litter the landscape. Yet there have also been some notable success stories, and the potential benefits remain attractive for both consumers and merchants.
So why have so few of these payment solutions succeeded? What is the promise of such initiatives? And how relevant are they to the corporate treasurer - now and in the future?
The Story
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Revamping Costs and Rising Yen Hurt Sony Profit
Ken Belson
Profit at the Sony Corporation fell 26 percent in the October to December quarter, hurt by restructuring costs, a stronger yen and declining revenue in the movie and video game divisions.
Sony's profit of 92.6 billion yen ($874 million) in the quarter was, however, larger than expected, in part because of improved sales of home electronics during the holiday shopping season. Sales over all rose 0.7 percent, to a quarterly record of 2.32 trillion yen ($21.9 billion).
Sony, the world's second-largest electronics maker, also raised its profit goal for the financial year ending in March by 10 percent, to 55 billion yen ($519 million), because of the yen's decline against the euro. The company did not alter its revenue goal of 7.4 trillion yen or its operating profit forecast of 100 billion yen.
While the declines in revenue from PlayStation 2 consoles and movies were expected, the recovery in home electronics sales was encouraging for investors. Sony, which generates more than 60 percent of its sales from audio-visual equipment and other electronics, has been hurt by low-cost competitors and a lack of hit products.
Sony's performance, while far from robust, suggested that the company's biggest worries had eased. For the first time in three years, sales of electronics grew by more than 10 percent in every major region in the world.
"Our year-end performance was stronger than expected," Sony's chief financial officer, Takao Yuhara, said. "What is important is that we continue to perform well in the coming quarters and remain on a growth trend."
Sony's movie studio has also had trouble keeping pace with its record run in 2002. Recent releases like "The Missing" and "In the Cut" have done poorly at the box office and have fallen far short of previous hits like "Spider-Man" and "Men in Black II." Profits from the movie unit fell 82 percent in the quarter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/bu...ss/29sony.html
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P2P Companies Say They Can't Filter
John Borland
Responding to sharp criticism from legislators, a group of file-swapping companies told Congress that they had no ability to block copyrighted files or child pornography from their networks.
As part of a lengthy letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-N.C., the P2P United trade association said Wednesday that file-swapping companies should not be held to a standard that is technologically infeasible.
Lawmakers "have been deliberately misinformed by self-interested industry about the technological capability of peer-to-peer services," said Adam Eisgrau, P2P United's executive director. "It is not that we won't filter out copyrighted material and inappropriate sexual material. It's that we can't."
The group's claim, backed up by considerable technical documentation, comes as calls for filtering of file-swapping networks are rising in Congress and in courts.
Graham and a quartet of other legislators sent a letter to P2P United's member companies last November, asking for assurances that the file-swapping companies would attempt to stop illegal material from being traded through their networks.
Most pointedly, the letter asked that the companies work to create some kind of filters that could block copyrighted material and pornography.
File-swapping companies have contended that this kind of filter is impossible in a decentralized system such as Gnutella or Kazaa.
In older file-swapping services such as the original Napster, in which searches were routed through a central point, a filtering mechanism was more feasible.
But in wholly decentralized networks, in which searches radiate out through a constantly shifting array of "nodes," or individual computers, filters are impractical, the group said. Only by forcing the networks to change into something else--a centralized system, for example--would effective filters be useful, the group added.
However, some companies say they have the ability to do some effective filtering.
A company called Audible Magic, which installs song-recognition software inside Internet service provider networks, with the promise of identifying and blocking trades of copyrighted songs, demonstrated its software to members of Congress and the press in Washington D.C.
The demonstrations, set up by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), were intended to refute the notion that filtering is impossible on file-swapping networks.
"Audible Magic proves (filtering) can be done," RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol said. "This is not speculation; it's a real live technology that's on the market today. If the peer-to-peer community is serious about becoming legitimate, one would think they would explore this kind of technological tool to help address the piracy problem."
P2P United's Eisgrau said that neither the RIAA nor Audible Magic had contacted the organization or its members with any information about the technology. He said that the file-swapping members would be happy to do a live engineering test under the auspices of Congress.
"If the equivalent of cold fusion has been invented in the software context, it ought to be a matter of science and engineering to see if it works," Eisgrau said.
The two sides may be talking about different types of filters, however.
As currently offered, Audible Magic's technology functions inside telecommunications or corporate networks, essentially serving as the equivalent of a roadblock, looking into cars--or in this case, data packets--as they pass and obstructing unauthorized information. That could stop file swappers on a given service provider's network, but would do little to impede swapping overall.
By contrast, a filter that worked universally throughout a distributed file-swapping network such as Kazaa would likely have to be integrated into the software itself. Additionally, unless a gigantic and constantly changing database of songs, movies and other material were to be included along with every piece of file-swapping software, it would require the software filters to check in with a central server each time a trade or search was initiated.
Peer-to-peer companies say they don't intend to add those centralization features to their software and note that a federal judge has said that decentralized file-swapping network tools such as Gnutella are legal to distribute. An appeals court in Pasadena, Calif., will re-examine that ruling next week.
http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5149720.html
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Sun Sees Jxta Gathering Steam
More than 2 million developers have downloaded the free code
James Niccolai
Sun Microsystems Inc. says its Jxta technology for peer-to-peer computing is gathering steam and may soon make its way into some of its own products.
The number of developers who have downloaded the free Jxta code from the Web passed 2 million recently, up from about a million last March, said Juan Carlos Soto, director for advanced technologies at Sun. The number of developers who have registered at
www.jxta.org is much lower, however, at about 16,200, up from 12,000 a year ago.
"There's a lot of interest in Jxta out there and a lot of developers are working with the technology," Soto said.
A key goal at Sun has been to make Jxta better suited for use in commercial applications. In December it released version 2.2 of the J2SE (Java 2, Standard Edition) implementation of Jxta, an upgrade which focused on improving security and performance. A further release, with the code name Churrasco, is due in March.
Unveiled almost three years ago by Sun's then chief scientist, Bill Joy, Jxta provides a communications mechanism for linking peers -- such as a PC, server, phone or PDA -- in a distributed network. Such peer- to-peer networks typically aren't run by a central server, and Jxta provides a way for the peers to locate and communicate with each other directly.
It is offered under an open source license, which means developers can tinker with the code. It is also free, making it attractive to some. But the fact that it is free has also been a source of criticism. Some analysts have wondered what Sun gets in return for its investment in developing Jxta, and why it hasn't made use of the technology itself.
That may be about to change. Jxta is mature enough that Sun will soon be using it in some of its own desktop and server products, Soto said. "What you are going to see is more and more Sun products start to include the Jxta technology in them," he said.
Sun has already shown how Jxta could work as part of its N1 system for managing data centers. Installed on a group of servers, the technology can be used to indicate when servers go on and off-line, and help to allocate computing jobs accordingly, Soto said.
Jxta may also find its way into Sun's Java Enterprise System, a bundle of server software formerly called Sun ONE. For example, it could be used to improve the performance and scalability of the instant messaging component, in part because Jxta is unhindered by firewalls and NATs (network address translators), Soto said.
"Some of these things will be coming out pretty soon," he said, declining to be more specific.
In an effort to show that interest in Jxta is growing, Sun is also highlighting companies using Jxta in their applications. One of them is Verizon Communications Inc., which is using Jxta as part of an upcoming service called iobi, an advanced call management service designed to help customers juggle calls between their work, home and cellular phones.
As part of the service, due later this year, iobi will be able to set up a data channel automatically between two PCs, so that callers can exchange files or collaborate on documents. Iobi uses Jxta to locate those PCs on a network and establish the connection, said Nosh Minwalla, a Verizon senior architect.
Linking the PCs in a peer-to-peer fashion is preferable because it saves the expense of running an email server and storing files there, he said. Jxta also helps "tag" the data files so they are tied to a particular voice call. At the end of the day a user can view all related calls and file transfers in one list, Minwalla said.
Verizon explored other technologies, including Gnutella and some peer-to-peer tools that Microsoft Corp. recently introduced. It picked Jxta mainly because "it's very extensible -- there aren't a lot of restrictions on how we run our applications," Minwalla said. It also liked that the software is open source, and that it can handle firewalls and NATs straight out of the box, he said.
Another company using the software is Nokia Corp., Soto said. The company installed Jxta on some of its infrastructure servers used internally, creating a peer-to-peer server network. "When one of these servers comes online or goes offline it is automatically discovered, and when it does come back online you can send the latest software to it," Soto said.
Yet another company, Brevient Technologies Inc. of Milwaukee, used Jxta as a communications protocol for its file sharing and Web conferencing product.
To give users more visibility into what's coming, Sun has also published a roadmap for Jxta at
http://platform.jxta.org/. It has also switched to releasing updates on a quarterly release cycle, as it does with its other products.
"Our main focus is around the areas that we think will enhance the capabilities for enterprise use -- that's around enhanced security, enhanced performance and simplifying the APIs (application programming interfaces)," Soto said.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/...sunjxta_1.html
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US DOJ Probing DVD Group
ILN
The US Department of Justice has started a preliminary inquiry into the activities of a DVD industry group, led by Sony, Matsushita, and Philips Electronics. The inquiry is part of a global battle, involving powerful companies from the consumer-electronics, high-technology and movie industries, over a new format for DVD players.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...410861,00.html
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Stores Nix Disposable Flicks
Katie Dean
A Texas grocery chain has decided to stop selling disposable DVDs, a product that outraged environmentalists and apparently didn't sell too well, either.
About 20 H-E-B grocery stores in the Austin area sold the EZ-Ds, vacuum-sealed movies that, once opened, play for 48 hours before a chemical reaction on the surface of the discs renders them unplayable.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of Disney, has been test marketing the product since September. More than 30 movies are now available in the disposable format, including Chicago, Freaky Friday and The Waterboy. The discs sell for about $7.
H-E-B stores will stop selling the EZ-Ds in the next two or three weeks, according to Susan Ghertner, environmental affairs manager for the grocery chain.
Ghertner said the decision was not made for environmental reasons; rather, company officials "made the decision strictly on sales."
"It just wasn't a good fit for us," she said. "It didn't turn out to be an item that our customers were looking for."
A Buena Vista representative declined to comment.
Environmentalists cheered the news. "We consider this a big victory," said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, which has protested outside stores that sell the EZ-Ds. "We are calling on other retailers to follow the lead of H-E-B."
"There are clearly less-wasteful alternatives to marketing movies than disposable DVDs," she said.
Flexplay, the company that manufactures the discs, has touted the product as a solution for those who find renting movies inconvenient and are sick of paying late fees. "Make it EASY on yourself," the EZ-D website reads.
The disposable movies are currently available in three other markets around the country: Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; and Peoria and Bloomington, Illinois. Stores that sell the movies include 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Winn-Dixie, Sam Goody and Cub Foods, among others.
Last October, Wired News surveyed a handful of stores that sell the EZ-D and found that the product hadn't really caught on with shoppers.
Buena Vista and Flexplay offer several options for those conscientious customers who want to recycle their expired EZ-Ds. Movie fans can mail old EZ-Ds to GreenDisk to be recycled, or they can drop off the useless DVDs at drop-off sites listed on the EZ-D website.
Customers also can participate in the EZ-D Incentive Program, which awards a free disposable DVD to customers who send back six expired movies.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62083,00.html
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MikeRoweSoft Names His Price
AP
Mike Rowe, a 17-year-old resident of Victoria, British Columbia, has agreed to pick a new name for his website, currently called
www.mikerowesoft.com, said Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler on Friday.
Mike's father, Kim Rowe, confirmed that his son had struck an agreement with Microsoft. Rowe said his son could not be interviewed Friday because he had to study for final exams.
Mike also is working feverishly to put together a new website, his father said.
Desler said Microsoft would cover Mike's costs of changing to a new website and redirecting traffic from the old site. Microsoft also had agreed to help the teen get Microsoft certification training and other gifts, including an Xbox game console, he said, and has invited Mike to a technology festival in March at the corporation's headquarters in suburban Redmond, Washington.
"We wanted to do this in a way that's going to foster his interest in technology," Desler said.
In a posting on his website earlier this month, the teen said he received a 25-page letter from Microsoft informing him he was committing copyright infringement, and threatening legal action.
Desler said Friday that Microsoft believes it's important to take steps to prevent widespread infringement of its name. But he conceded Microsoft's original approach was "admittedly maybe impersonal."
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62044,00.html
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Six Plead Guilty To Stealing And Distributing Computer Software
David Tirrell-Wysocki
CONCORD, N.H. — Six people have pleaded guilty to stealing and distributing computer software around the world after undercover agents got into the operation and sorted through millions of computer transactions to build cases against them.
Dozens more arrests are expected in the schemes in which suspects copied and shared the software through stolen Internet links at banks, communications companies and data centers, including at the Nebraska Department of Roads.
"We have records with respect to thousands of people," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Arnold Huftalen. "Everyone we are looking at is involved in high-priced software applications. It's not a $5 song. We've got pieces of software on servers with retail value in excess of $115,000 per copy," everything from games to IBM and Microsoft programs, he said.
Huftalen said the case developed with the help of a New Hampshire resident involved in one of the schemes.
He said the software industry estimates it loses $12 billion a year to pirates, who generally are not in it for money.
"It's a combination of ego and a sense of culture that they've grown up with," he said.
It took authorities three years to compile the case — entering secret networks, seizing computers, tracking connection records and matching coded transactions with suspects.
"We used informants, cooperative witnesses and undercover agents who assumed false identities through the Internet to infiltrate a number of software piracy groups around the country," Huftalen said.
Agents seized computers two years ago, he said, and had three computers of their own working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a year recording transactions.
Without the knowledge of the businesses, the servers used to distribute the software were based at the Bank of America in Boston; Verio Data Center in Sterling, Va.; Qwest Communications lab in Balston, Va.; a cable television company in Maryland; a computer communications company in Brandon, Fla.; an apartment at Tulane University in New Orleans; and the Nebraska Department of Roads.
Others were based at a North Easton, Mass., house and an Ames, Iowa, apartment.
Business or university computers generally are used, he said, because they have larger bandwidth, or Internet connectivity, and heavy Internet traffic is unlikely to be noticed or detected.
Seven people from at least four states have been charged. Six have pleaded guilty to violating federal copyright laws. Most were computer system operators at their companies, Huftalen said.
Three entered pleas this week: Jordan Zielin, 30, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a computer support employee at the Bank of America; John Neas, 49, of Holbrook, Mass.; and Kenneth Woods, 31, of Warrenton, Va., who worked at Verio Data.
Three others pleaded guilty previously, one is expected to plead next week, and dozens more may be arrested, he said. "We're far from finished."
Huftalen said operators steal an organization's computer services and often convert their employer's computer equipment to run the operation.
He said a New Hampshire resident who managed a piracy group began cooperating with the FBI in 2000. The witness had access to several sites and introduced undercover agents to them. The agents made other contacts and spread their links to more sites.
Huftalen said getting into a network was the easy part. The tedious examination of seized computers and their data lengthened the investigation.
Huftalen said the individual sites contained information ranging from enough to fill about 275,000 floppy discs to more than 700,000 floppy discs. Packed neatly, he reported, 700,000 discs would fill about three dump trucks.
Here's how a system generally worked:
A pirate removed anti-copy protection from software and posted it on a private site.
"Once posted ... and the cracking group or individual responsible takes its, or his bow, so to speak, for having been the first to crack it, the software is thereafter made available for distribution to other" sites, Huftalen said in his presentation.
"And so it goes, on and on, until the cracked software has been posted to hundreds, if not thousands" of sites, he said.
The networks are protected by security codes and connections that hide their addresses and only allow access from users with a password who use pre-registered computers.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/co...ate-days_x.htm
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Comcast Targets Internet 'Abusers' But Won't Reveal Limits
Matthew Fordahl
By all accounts, George Nussbaum demands a lot from his Internet connection. He streams video and transfers large files from his office. His family downloads movie trailers and his stepson listens to and buys music online.
Nussbaum subscribes to his cable TV provider's high-speed Internet service, which, he thought, was built for such high-bandwidth activities. Then, in November, he got a letter from the provider, Comcast Corp., ordering him to dial down his usage or face service termination.
Until last summer, the service was advertised as "unlimited."
But Comcast, citing a fuzzy "acceptable use" policy, is now cracking down on the heaviest users on the premise that their consumption could degrade neighbors' service.
A number of broadband providers are beginning to offer different tiers of service, charging high- volume users more. Some, particularly wireless providers, charge extra for heavy use.
Comcast, critics say, is trying to impose limits without telling consumers that the service is limited.
Nussbaum, who at first had no idea how many gigabytes he consumed, was willing to cut back. He called to find out by how much, but customer service had no answer. Then he asked how much he used. Again, Comcast wouldn't provide a number.
Last month, Nussbaum got a second letter threatening suspension or termination, so he decided to sign up for a digital subscriber line offered by his phone company, Verizon Communications.
"How am I supposed to know what my limits are?" said Nussbaum, an engineer from Plaistow, N.H. "It was actually kind of ridiculous."
Comcast's letters have been a hot topic of discussion on BroadbandReports.com, a popular online forum. More than 5,000 messages have been posted since the warnings started arriving last summer. Most offer comments, though some are reports of having received a warning.
"They have the right to control their service and offer different services to different people," said David Willis, an analyst at the Meta Group. "The problem is you can't keep changing the rules all the time."
Most broadband companies have vague policies, but Comcast's appears to be the most aggressively enforced. It provides no tools for monitoring bandwidth, and does not give any specific guidance.
Comcast says the few people who receive the warning letters typically consume 100 times more than the average user.
"The total number of customers who have had their service disconnected is well below one one- hundredth of one percent of our overall Internet customer base," spokeswoman Dana Ryan said, reading from a prepared statement.
But the nation's largest cable company refused to reveal the average consumption among its 4.8 million high-speed Internet subscribers. Ryan also would not say how many received warnings or exactly how many have had their accounts suspended or terminated.
A senior Comcast technician, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, said letter- triggering usage is typically about 100 gigabytes a month, though it varies from city to city.
A hundred gigabytes of usage a month may not strain the system but some abusers, he said, consume more than a terabyte of data each month -- equal to about 1,000 gigabytes, or 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Many run Web servers or offer copyright music or videos. Thirty minutes of high-quality video can consume up to a gigabyte.
Excessive use is a problem for Comcast and other providers because they must predict bandwidth use and buy the capacity. If too much is consumed, not only can the local network bog down; it also could affect Comcast's profit margin.
The enforcement comes as cable companies are trying to maintain their lead over DSL, which offers high-speed access over phone lines. Comcast and several other cable firms are doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits per second, which makes it easier for users to consume more bandwidth and cross any limits.
DSL providers are fighting back by dropping prices -- as low as $27 a month, compared to Comcast's $43. The phone companies stress that they don't restrict usage.
They're less likely to do so because digital subscriber lines are not shared until they reach the phone company's facility. Cable users share the same data pipe with their neighbors.
"I am not aware of any DSL provider that limits the number of bytes available or charges more if a circuit is used more," said Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe.
But cable companies have a history of limiting use. Until recently, for example, Comcast specifically barred its residential customers from using virtual private networking software, which creates secure connections for telecommuters, unless they upgraded to the business plan.
"The cable companies in the U.S. have this history of trying to engineer multiple, tiers, multiple grades of service," Willis said. "So far they've been highly unsuccessful in doing that."
People who received Comcast's bandwidth abuse letters and were willing to discuss their usage patterns publicly were shocked at the "Twilight Zone" experiences they had with customer support.
Randy Jackson of Colonia, N.J. received form letters with blank date fields. Longtime subscriber Tallon Nishihata of suburban Tacoma, Wash., said his letters referred him to a pricey business-grade service that's not available in his area.
One man, a British expatriate in Philadelphia who used to transfer home movies to family in Europe, asked for anonymity because he feared Comcast would unplug him, leaving him with nothing but a dial-up connection because he doesn't qualify for DSL.
"They play the card that I've been causing problems for people in the neighborhood," he said. "If that's the case, that's fair enough, but show me some evidence."
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7940
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Porn in pain.
Sex Site Sues Credit Cards Over Piracy
Adam Tanner
Internet piracy has devastated the music business, threatened the movie industry and may now undercut one of the most successful corners of the Web: pornography.
A California publisher of a pornographic magazine and Web site sued Visa, MasterCard and other financial institutions on Wednesday, alleging they facilitated the illegal sale of pirated sex images flooding the Internet.
Perfect 10, whose slogan is "The World's Most Beautiful Models Expose All", based the case on claims other Web sites were stealing their sexual imagery to make money, often through duplicitous advertising.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, the firm sued Visa International, First Data Corp., Cardservice International, MasterCard International, Humboldt Bank and Does 1-100.
"The defendants in this case ... are knowingly providing crucial transactional support services for the sale of millions of stolen photos and film clips worth billions of dollars that belong to Perfect 10 and third-parties," the suit reads.
The complaint says these firms have made large sums from the sale of pirated erotica and thus should have a responsibility for any related copyright violation.
"Perfect 10 has concluded that the only way to stop the proliferation of such Web sites is to go to the top, namely the payment card associations and the primary third-party processor, each of which is knowingly and effectively acting as fences for the sale of billions of dollars of stolen content," the lawsuit reads.
MasterCard officials did not return calls for comment. A Visa spokesman said he was unable to find company legal experts for their response.
A Losing Proposition
The publisher of Perfect 10, Norman Zada, said in an interview that he had lost $29 million since setting up his business in 1996, including $8 million on legal fees. He said the problem was that he was spending thousands of dollars for nude photography sessions while many Internet sites were stealing his and other images.
"The reason it was so hard to make money is because while we were paying for our content, there were many Web sites out there that were competing against us that were stealing theirs," said Zada said, whose business is based in Beverly Hills. "It's pretty impossible to compete in that situation."
The problem of Internet piracy has hit the bottom lines of many businesses, with the recording industry, Hollywood and software businesses the most prominent.
"There probably isn't a lot of sympathy for people in the adult magazine business and that might be part of the problem," Zada said. "But the thieves are stealing from everybody so all the copyright holders are suffering as a group."
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040129/80/eknjl.html
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Uber-Nerd Couture Takes Centerstage
D. Parvaz
Mike Urban/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The nature of fashion is insiderish -- it's all cliques, what's in, what's out. And like life, the definition of what's in can seem terribly limited and arbitrary.
Hence the creation of the nerd (aka geek, dork, etc). This awkward, frequently brainy outsider often comes into his or her own later in life, when nerddom can be celebrated with great gusto and expressed even in the form of fashion. That's where outsider chic (the less rebellious cousin of fashionista misfit chic, a la mass-produced John Galliano creations) comes into play.
Outsider chic is "sort of a realization that it (fashion) can be awkward but fun," says Brooke Fotheringham, one of 11 local designers who will be featured at Friday's Nerd Rock fashion show downtown.
The soft-spoken 28-year-old says she grew up shy and nerdy, but she found a way to get attention with her own odd style. She relied on her clothes as conversation starters (so she wouldn't have to take that no-doubt terrifying first step herself). Fotheringham's designs for tonight's show are informed by oceanography (nerds of the world, rejoice!), a sort of "nerds under the sea" theme.
A Joan of Arc purple sheath with a fishnet overlay is worn with a headdress Fotheringham (whose Late Night Creations/Insomnia Designs will be available at Belltown's Damsel Collective soon) says is inspired by a hammerhead shark and Holly Hunter's hairstyle in "The Piano."
"These are nerdy because ... they really don't belong anywhere," says Fotheringham. But her clothes are only one incarnation of outsider chic.
"Most of my girls are foxy," says designer Julia Carlisle, who describes her aesthetic as one that provides girls with "super sexy, super fun, super slutty" things to wear. A Carlisle girl isn't afraid to show off her body in "costumey, burlesque" pieces. Carlisle herself shows up to our interview with lots of leg wrapped in tights (with visible garters, of course) and smoky eyes and bright red lips.
"This whole gray suicide city ... I'm over it," says Carlisle, 21, clearly not down with our more austere ways. Then again, neither is Fotheringham, who injects her fashion with crazy colors -- a filmy goldfish orange top here, an abbreviated salmon-skin jacket there (remember, these aren't wallflower nerd gear -- they're conversation pieces).
This naughty-kitty look, believe it or not, is Carlisle's response to living in Seattle -- you can check out her Heroin Swank Designs at Capitol Hill's Krystal Vintage.
Braylene Jones embodies the DIY element of outsider fashion. Can't find it? Make it. Her leather accessories -- cuffs, bags, change purses -- have a homespun look. With their exposed stitching and hand-stamped skull 'n' crossbones, they look anything but mass-produced.
"I just couldn't find anything that I liked -- or if I found something I always had to have it altered," says Jones, explaining her desire to construct sturdy leather bits. She says that in L.A., she sells the accessories in "ridiculous" colors like hot pink with floral attachments.
The Seattle market sticks with red, black and white as its faves (her stuff can be found at Capitol Hill's Hello Gorgeous and Double Trouble).
The three designers have come together as part of a large group of artists taking part in the Hometown Gravy fund-raisers (tonight's will be the first of eight) for a community arts school. Carlisle, Fotheringham and Jones, among dozens of others, are on board with the project. Hometown Gravy is a non-profit arts organization that aims to open a community arts education center in Fremont next year.
The driving forces behind Hometown Gravy are two self-professed nerds, Megan Newman and the Rev. Levi "Bubba" Greenacres (otherwise known as DJ Nerd Rock).
The two have been working with local artists and activists for some time, trying to get their project off the ground. They have the support of local artists, their Fremont location and now they're working on funding.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifest...derchic30.html
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Pay Service Turns CDs Into MP3s
Leander Kahney
Nova Spivack, a well-heeled New Yorker and technophile, had been dying to get an iPod for a long time.
The problem wasn't money, but Spivack's giant CD collection. He couldn't face the chore of converting 1,000- plus CDs to digital format.
Then Spivack discovered RipDigital, a firm that offers a surprising but timely service: For about a dollar a disc, the company converts entire CD collections to MP3 files, all nicely organized by artist and album.
Spivack boxed up his CDs and shipped them to Rip Digital. Four days later he got them back, along with an external hard drive containing MP3s of his entire CD collection.
"It's really changed my listening experience," Spivack said. "The nice thing about digital is it reminds you what you have, instead of it sitting in a case on your wall. I made a bunch of playlists, and I'm listening to music all the time again."
It may seem odd that a company could turn a profit by doing a chore that anyone can do. But RipDigital is another sign that music is steadily going digital. Instead of downloading MP3s from file-trading networks and ripping them to CDs, customers like Spivack are more interested in converting their CD archives into MP3s.
"I plugged (RipDigital's hard drive) into my PC, plugged in my new iPod and 10 minutes later I had my collection on my iPod," Spivack said. "I got my whole collection on my PC in about half an hour, instead of a month."
Spivack, the CEO of Radar Networks, isn't looking back. Having digitized his collection, Spivack tossed all the CD cases in the trash. He's keeping the original disks only as backup.
"I'm going to be buying music online from now on," said Spivack. "I'm never going to touch another CD. I'm not even going to look at another CD."
Dick Adams, one of the company's three co-founders, said the service has been growing in popularity since its launch in December.
"We've been overwhelmed with orders and scrambling to keep up," he said. "It's been fabulous."
Adams said the company initially targeted DJs, radio stations and institutions like hotels and libraries. Adams said they hoped for demand from audiophiles and collectors, but were surprised by the reaction from consumers.
"There are a lot of people out there who have more money than time," said Adams. "Most people don't roll their own cigarettes, and a lot of people don't want to do this themselves."
After receiving an order, RipDigital sends customers a box with spindles for their CDs (the jewel cases aren't shipped) and a shipping label.
Customers load up the spindles, ship the package to RipDigital, and about a week later they get their discs back, along with DVDs containing their songs in high-fidelity (224 kbps) MP3 format. If they prefer, songs can be loaded onto an external hard drive.
"The quality is good," said Neal Howard, a professional DJ from Atlanta, who is using the company to steadily digitize his collection of several hundred CDs.
Though RipDigital uses MP3 format by default, the company will rip songs using any codec the customer wants -- Microsoft's WMA or Apple's AAC, for example. Adams said so far, the WMA/AAC split has been about 50/ 50.
The ripping process is highly automated -- Adams declined to go into detail, citing "competitive reasons." He said each CD is ripped individually, and the files erased after they are dispatched to the customer. The company does not keep a library of files it has ripped, Adams said.
RipDigital marks each song with a digital watermark, which can be used to uniquely identify each client. Adams said the watermark is insurance should customers start loading songs onto file-sharing networks. The company is not using the information, and has no plans to do so, Adams said.
Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research, said he was surprised that anyone would pay for a service like this. Wilcox said he ripped 400 CDs of his own on a Sunday afternoon. "It's not that painful," he said.
Wilcox also doubted that CDs are doomed. Jupiter's studies predict that for the next several years the number of people downloading music will remain in single-digit percentages compared with the number of CD buyers, Wilcox said.
"Our data shows that CDs are going to be around for a long time," he said. "MP3s and other digital formats are still in their infancy."
But for Spivack, the CD is a thing of the past.
"I've become a total iPod fanatic," he said. "In the week I've got this, I've spent about $500 at the Apple music store. My productivity is going down. Now all I do is play with digital music."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62027,00.html
Until next week,
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js.
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