Quotes Of The Week
"Hollywood wants BitTorrent dead." – Xeni Jardin
"You have the largest radio giant now running the news provided by one of the largest media empires, Exhibit A of what's wrong with media consolidation." - Josh Silver
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today." – Michael A. Keller
"These people are parasites leeching off the creativity of others." - John Malcolm
"There appear to be many current and potential business and consumer applications for P2P file-sharing technology." – U.S. Federal Trade Commission
"Due to the current climate and current conditions the unfortunate, difficult and sad decision has been taken to close Phoenix Torrents down." – Phoenix Torrents site announcement
"Even if the respondents (KaZaa Media Desktop) were to shut down, these user programs would still be present in user computers and would still be able to maintain the overlay network without any help from an outside server. FastTrack will likely persist for many years even if the respondents stopped distributing or updating the KMD. New users could also access FastTrack by acquiring a copy of a different FastTrack user program such as Grokster, iMesh etc. If either Sharman or the owners of FastTrack were to be shut down, it is likely that the new hacked versions of the software would continue to proliferate in the Internet." – Keith Ross
A Flickering Light
The news rockets across IRC’s and Internet chat rooms as one by one, sites go dark. I watch in mournful silence as a spreading malignancy of 404’s flickers across my screens. Is it my ISP? Did I screw something up when I loaded that program? No FFS, it’s the MPAA. Strong-arming hosts into capitulating before the threatened deluge of asset wrecking legal actions washes over them. Nature dilutes and strives for balance. Man distills and thirsts for power. After decades of worldwide media consolidation we have this, the
concentrated, global effort to silence individuals, backed by lawmakers from Washington to China, Australia to Europe, in thrall of common mammon.
These aren’t just URL’s these torrent sites, they are the seeds for a growing future in which we, as free people, rip the reigns of our own culture away from those who control, pervert and force it back upon us in ways that darken our very dreams. From the highest halls of power to the fetid cubicles of the media baron’s factories we are up against a determined foe willing to hold back nothing to keep us in chains.
There will be in this fight many slips before we seize what is rightfully ours. That this is one of those painful times we cannot dispute, but it will not last. As bleak as today is, and it is bleak indeed, it is nothing compared to the brilliant, electrifying bliss that awaits us and our children at the end of our journey. We have stepped awkwardly, but we will soon run. Remember this week but remember too, triumph is our future, and we shall have it.
Jack.
Hollywood Wants BitTorrent Dead
Xeni Jardin
Hollywood movie studios launched new legal action Tuesday against operators of sites that help connect people to movies on three major peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, the Motion Picture Association of America, the main lobbying arm of U.S. film studios, filed civil lawsuits against more than 100 operators of BitTorrent "tracker" servers that point to locations where digital files of movies, music and other content can be found.
The MPAA also targeted operators of servers for the eDonkey and Direct Connect networks. The group's actions include criminal complaints and cease-and-desist orders issued to ISPs on four continents. Acting in cooperation with the MPAA, French law enforcement authorities took related action Monday, and actions by authorities in Finland and the Netherlands followed Tuesday.
BitTorrent, eDonkey and Direct Connect allow millions of internet users to share copies of movies, music, software and games. The services don't host the files themselves; instead, they point users to other users who have the files available for sharing. In BitTorrent's case, users tap tracker sites that keep dynamic lists of where files are stored and available for download. The MPAA is trying to cripple BitTorrent and its peers by suing people who host the tracker servers. Because of its efficiency in helping users handle very large files -- such as digital copies of feature-length films -- BitTorrent has attracted the enmity of Hollywood.
"We believe the internet will be a powerful tool for the legitimate use of content," said MPAA head Dan Glickman. "Our actions today are aimed solely at those who have knowingly chosen to use the net for illegal activity."
MPAA anti-piracy chief John Malcolm said the trade organization's actions were not aimed at criminalizing P2P technology itself, citing "legal torrent" services that specialize in public-domain material as examples of the technology's non-infringing potential.
Malcolm described the operators of the targeted servers as "traffic cops connecting those who wish to steal a movie with those who have a copy of it."
"These people are parasites leeching off the creativity of others," said Malcolm. "They generate ad revenues by way of pop-up ads (and) banner ads, and they solicit online donations."
Previously, the MPAA had filed hundreds of suits against individual downloaders. The new actions against server operators come just days after the Supreme Court agreed to take up the landmark MGM v. Grokster file-sharing case. MPAA representatives said the timing of Tuesday's news was unrelated.
In August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that peer-to-peer companies cannot be held responsible for intellectual property infringement that may take place on their networks, because the technologies can be used for legitimate, non-infringing purposes.
After urgent requests from the MPAA, the Recording Industry Association of America and a class of 27,0000 songwriters and musicians, the high court agreed last week to decide the case on appeal.
The original architecture of the defunct Napster network relied on a central index that kept track of which user had which file, to help would-be downloaders find the content they sought on other members' computers. The recording industry argued that the "indexing server" Napster maintained made the company responsible for acts of infringement committed by users.
Other P2P networks do not depend on a central repository. This difference is one of the reasons the courts have not yet banned such decentralized networks as Grokster and StreamCast Networks.
An earlier iteration of the eDonkey network relied on Napster-style central indexes that are the subject of the MPAA's new legal efforts. But on the more recent editions of the service, matchmaking happens on individual users' computers -- with no one server in charge of managing traffic.
BitTorrent also operates without a central index. With BitTorrent, a user who wants to share a movie must first use the BitTorrent software to prepare a "torrent" file that contains identifying information about that digital movie, along with the address of a tracker server that directs upload and download traffic related to the movie file. The user then distributes this torrent file by placing it on a website, e-mailing it to others or posting it in a chat room.
Each torrent file contains data about where to find a tracker server, which manages activity related to a particular file. Trackers are often run by the party that posted the original file in the first place, but can also be run by anyone else in the network. Without the tracker server, no uploads or downloads of that movie file can take place. These servers do not host the files themselves, but they enable users who want a file to obtain it.
The MPAA's legal actions are aimed at people who operate tracker servers, not individual downloaders of BitTorrent content.
Critics argue that people hosting trackers may not be aware of exactly what data flows through it. If the tracker server operator doesn't know what's happening inside the box, it may not be possible to hold the operator liable under current law.
All three services included in Tuesday's round of legal action -- BitTorrent, eDonkey and Direct Connect -- have been in the MPAA's sights for some time. As the popularity of eDonkey and BitTorrent boomed in recent months, the trade group escalated its attempts to compel ISPs to take action against activities within their domains long before Tuesday's announcements.
MPAA representatives said Tuesday the organization had no plans to pursue legal action against BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66034,00.html
Police Swoop Closes Down Finland’s Largest File Download Site
The National Bureau of Investigation, Finland’s central criminal police, have shut down the country's largest file-sharing server, which specialises in the peer-to-peer transfer of music-, film-, and software files using BitTorrent.
Police made more than a dozen searches of properties occupied by people involved in the Finreactor online operation around the country. The site was obliged to close after machines and hard drives were confiscated.
Police believe that as many as 6,000 different torrents or products have been distributed illegally and in breach of copyright through the site in the past couple of years. The number of users is thought to be in excess of 10,000.
The police were on this occasion acting on a request from the Business Software Alliance, representing the rights of the software manufacturers. Those who may possibly face charges arising out of the raids, which were also held in several other European countries on Wednesday, could be looking at anything from fines to a maximum of two years’ imprisonment.
File-swapping networks are a cause of concern for the recording and the movie industry as well as for software makers, and concerted efforts are being made to stamp out piracy, including the peer-to-peer sharing of files - the downloading of music or other material illegally.
Broadband connections and faster speeds have made it quite feasible to download high quality recordings (not merely low-grade MP3 files) and entire movies or television programmes, often before they are aired or released in the countries concerned.
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/engli.../1101978018778
Dutch Raid eDonkey Sites, Seize Servers
Jan Libbenga
Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN, along with FIOD-ECD (Economic Inspection Service of the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service), has raided two popular sites in the Netherlands that offered links to allegedly copyright-infringing content. FIOD-ECD has arrested eight people and seized eleven servers.
The two sites, ShareConnector and Releases4u, offered thousands of movies, games and music files to 50,000 registered users. However, they only contained links to PCs hosted by users of the popular P2P service eDonkey and not any content themselves.
BREIN says it had talks with the people behind the sites for some time, but they refused to take them down. "We simply ran out of patience," Tim Kuik, director of BREIN, said. BREIN will not only press charges against the owners of the sites and also against Dutch hosting provider Mindlab, which according to Kuik didn't want to co-operate, either.
The Dutch raids coincide with actions of the Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) against server operators of BitTorrent, eDonkey and DirectConnect sites in Finland and France.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...edonkey_sites/
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German Police To Take 16,000 Warez Buyers To Court
Jan Libbenga
German police have exposed the names of thousands of users of an illegal Internet piracy site, in a crackdown on swapping illegal copies of movies, games, music and computer software.
Three months ago German police arrested a 46 year-old lawyer who, along with two brothers from Thuringia, offered bootleg software, games and movies through the high speed download service Ftpwelt.com for over a year. Among the releases offered were movies shot in cinemas with digital camcorders. According to the police the men, who are still in custody, grossed over € 1m.
At the time the German society for the pursuit of copyright infringements said it had a list of 45,000 customers who knowingly paid for illegal content. Estimates are that the police now have the names of at least 16.000 copyright violators who could face heavy fines or even prison terms, although it is still unclear when charges will be pressed.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12...rez_customers/
Pirates Exposed By German Swoop
Correspondents in Berlin
GERMAN police have exposed the names of thousands of users of illegal internet piracy sites as part of a crackdown on swapping bootleg copies of movies, games, software and music.
A spokesman for the state crime office in the eastern region of Thuringia said that an ongoing probe of four Germans had allowed authorities to crack the online address book of the site, unmasking thousands of suspects.
"We don't know yet if we are talking about 8,000 or 20,000 people," the spokesman said, saying that copyright violators could face heavy fines or even prison terms.
The four men, aged 19 to 46, at the centre of the probe were detained in September. Three have since been remanded in custody.
Authorities believe their internet site, which was not named, took in revenue of nearly €1 million ($1.8 million).
The Hamburg Society for the Prosecution of Copyright Infringements (GVU) said that smashing the ring had wiped out a major part of the German-language internet piracy industry.
A GVU spokesman said the group had the largest operation in German-speaking Europe, with the most up-to-date music and films on offer.
Prosecutors said that they believed that legitimate copyright holders had lost revenue running into tens of millions of euros as a result of the illegal site.
In June, a young man was convicted and fined in Cottbus, eastern Germany for posting thousands of copyrighted songs on an internet music swap site in a legal first for the country.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html
'Warez Lawyer' Had Double Agenda – Claim
Jan Libbenga
More details have emerged on the arrest of a German lawyer and three businessmen who masterminded an international warez network and grossed €1m.
A spokesman for German anti-piracy organisatin GVU told Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel on Friday (17 Sept) that the crackdown may have been the biggest blow ever against internet pirates anywhere in the world.
The main suspect, Bernhard Syndikus, a lawyer, was arrested for criminal breach of copyright,money laundering and membership in a criminal conspiracy. He didn't request a lawyer himself after his custody, a spokesman told press agency DPA.
Police last week raided the offices of Gravenreuth & Syndikus (http://
www.gravenreuth.de/home.html), a Munich law firm, of which Syndikus is a partner.
According to German reports almost all the funds of the warez site Ftpwelt.com were channeled through an offshore company Internet Payment Systems Ltd, registered on the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, and ended up in a small eastern German town, Breitungen.
Although hackers discovered the link between Ftpwelt.com and Syndikus, a posting (
http://www.emuleforum.net/archive/topic/69777-1.html) earlier this year already revealed the relationship between the lawyer and several illegal sites, including Ftpwelt.com and what was advertised as Germany's biggest Bittorrent site, Bitfilme.com. A search (
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF- 8&q=%22Bitfilme%2Ecom%22) in Google reveals this site was extremely popular among illegal movie swappers.
The domain name Ftpwelt.com was registered by Software Development Consultants Limited on Tortola, which uses the same postbox address as New Internet Businesses Limited, the company behind (
http://www.whois.to/bitfilme.com) it that registered Bitfilme.com.
Syndikus is also the director of Global Netcom, a German company that developed diallers (
http://www.spywareguide.com/product_show.php?id=857) for pornographic vendors.
German anti-dialler internet forums such as Computerbetrug.de (Computerfraud) and Dialerschutz.de (Dialler protection) have often issued warnings against these dialers, many of which are activated by closing a unwanted "pop-up" window. Not surprisingly, anti dialler sites urge victims to ignore bills they receive from rogue dialler companies. However, Syndikus argued that refusing to pay (http://
http://www.dialerschutz.de/home/Aktu...=output&id=159) these bills is against the law.
Syndikus represents Firstway Medien GmbH, a German firm which released a hobbled version of the open source file sharing program eMule. The hacked eMule was disabled, and could only be activated once you paid for the product. Worse, the program couldn't be removed from Windows without corrupting (
http://www.slyck.com/ news.php?story=393) the internet connection.
Earlier this year, Firstway asked Gravenreuth & Syndikus to issue to Marcus Falck - the owner of the German website eMule.de - a cease and desist letter, demanding that the website would give up its domain name. What was considered to be a free name - part of the open source project eMule - had been furtively trademarked (http:/ /www.slyck.com/misc/Trade_Mark_Register.htm) by Firstway Medien.
Even more remarkable is the reputation of Syndikus's partner Günther Freiherr von Gravenreuth (real name: Günter Werner Dörr) who, according to his own biography, advised the European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research and German Association for Entertainment Software. von Gravenreuth was behind the much publicised Tanja campaign (
http://www.domes-dos.de/ index_gt65.php?desturl=%2Fprivate%2Fcpc%2Foddities%2Fodditie s_e.php) against software piracy.
He tricked mostly adolescent male computer users into sending a list of pirated software to a fictional girl named "Tanja", and subsequently dragged them to court. The teenagers received a cease and desist notice along with a request for payment, in most cases between €1,000 and €5,000.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09..._warez_lawyer/
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P2P Group Launches Site To Combat Child Porn
John Borland
A peer-to-peer industry trade group is launching a Web site aimed at educating consumers about the dangers of child pornography online and helping them report it to law enforcement.
The Distributed Computing Industry Association's P2P Patrol site will go live Monday, as part of a larger approach to the issue, DCIA Chief Executive Officer Marty Lafferty said.
Previously, the group has worked with law enforcement to help find online child pornographers and has helped create a tool that pops up a warning to computer users if they are searching for a term frequently associated with the illicit material.
"This is focused on good citizen users, helping show them how to recognize, remove and report child pornography that is inadvertently encountered," Lafferty said.
The issue of child pornography available through file-sharing networks has repeatedly dogged peer-to-peer companies. Lobbyists from the recording industry and Hollywood studios have told legislators that the networks need to be regulated, in part because of that illegal content.
The issue has also come up in Kazaa parent Sharman Networks' trial in Australia, where executives have questioned the effectiveness of their own policies against child porn.
The DCIA was originally created by Sharman Networks and joint venture partner Altnet but has since broadened to include a handful of other smaller peer-to-peer companies and Internet service providers.
http://news.com.com/P2P+group+launch...3-5488290.html
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Record Label Tells Music Fans, Go Ahead and Steal our Music, We Will Not Sue - Seriously
Press Release
While the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the major record labels are busy trying to put a stopping to illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file swapping and downloading, a hip-hop and reggae record label has taken a different approach. TCOOO (Taking Care Of Our Own) Productions are telling fans that they could download any TCOOO release illegally, without worrying about a lawsuit, but should they choose to obtain the music through the proper channels, they could be greatly rewarded.
Imagine a record label telling a music fan ‘you can download and share our music through Kazaa, Grokster, Limewire or any other P2P system without worrying about a lawsuit, in fact, you might be rewarded for doing so’. Sounds strange coming from an industry that has filed lawsuits against everyone from grandmothers to young teenagers. But this is exactly what TCOOO told their fans when they made their music available via the Weed Share (WEED) system. The WEED system allows a fan to download a song for free and listen to it three times, if after three listens the fan decides that the song is a keeper, then they are asked to purchase the song before playing it a fourth time. If a fan buys a song and shares with a friend, that friend would also be able to play the songs three times and then decide if they want to buy it. That is where the real reward comes in, once a fan shares a music file with a friend who ends up buying the file, the sharer gets rewarded twenty percent of the selling price of the file.
TCOOO who currently have two top selling songs on Itunes and Napster, ‘Party all Night’ by Dre and ‘Stepping Razor’ by Bookman believes that the Weed File sharing is simply the best digital distribution model available today. Richard Morgan the vice president of marketing at TCOOO had the following to say, ‘Weed allows music fans not only to be a fan of a certain artist or group, but they can also become an independent distributor by promoting and sharing the artist’s songs with others and to top it all off there is a financial incentive for their efforts. This is indeed a digital revolution’. Well that is fine and well if fans decide to use this system to share music from the TCOOO label, but what if they trade the music through Kazaa or other P2Ps without going through the whole WEED process, would TCOOO follow the footsteps of the major record labels and go after the illegal file swappers? ‘Definitely not’ replied Richard Morgan, ‘we will never go after fans for sharing our music, that is what we want them to do, of course we prefer when they do it legally so we can be paid for our work, that is why we got our music ‘weedified’ so our fans can share in our financial success. They are in no danger or threat of a lawsuit if they download our music illegally, but we are trying to encourage them not to’.
TCOOO hopes their songs ‘Party all night’ by Dre and ‘Stepping Razor’ by Bookman will enjoy huge success via the WEED system as it is currently enjoying on Itunes and Napster. The label believes that has the bigger labels become less fan friendly, it is actually an opportunity for TCOOO to reach out to the fans and let them know that they are appreciated, and no record label or artist could exist without them. Currently TCOOO has releases from some of the hottest hip-hop and reggae stars including Dre, Bookman, Vineyard and Big Mook.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/12/prweb180829.htm
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In brief
RIAA files 754 New File-Swapping Suits
John Borland
The Recording Industry Association of America said Thursday that it sued another 754 alleged file-swappers for copyright infringement. The lawsuits bring the total number of individuals sued by the group for trading songs through peer-to-peer networks to 7,706.
As in previous rounds, the organization highlighted suits against individuals at universities, this time including 20 people at seven schools.
http://news.com.com/RIAA+files+754+n...j=news.1027.20
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iTunes Hits 200-Million-Song Benchmark
Erika Morphy
Apple says it has now sold more than 200 million songs through its iTunes digital music download service, which launched in May 2003. The company has expanded aggressively this year, offering the service in Europe and Canada.
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtm...id=177.5151762
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Nintendo Adds Media Playing To DS
BBC
Nintendo is releasing an adapter for its DS handheld console so it can play music and video.
The add-on for the DS means people can download TV programmes, film clips or MP3 files to the adaptor and then play them back while on the move.
The release of the media add-on is an attempt by the Japanese games giant to protect its dominance of the handheld gaming market.
Nintendo said the media adapter will be available from February in Japan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4101079.stm
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Microsoft Software to Remove Spyware
Ted Bridis
Microsoft Corp. disclosed plans Thursday to offer frustrated users of its Windows software new tools within 30 days to remove spyware programs secretly running on computers. But it might cost extra in coming months.
In a shift from past practice, the world's largest software manufacturer said it may charge consumers for future versions of the new protective technology, which Microsoft acquired by buying a small New York software firm. Terms of the sale of Giant Company Software Inc. weren't disclosed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Dec16.html
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The Trial
Sharman Witness: Tech Can Protect Copyright
Kristyn Maslog-Levis
Sharman Networks has called former Napster expert witness Justin Tygar to give his testimony during the ongoing trial against the peer-to-peer software provider for alleged copyright infringement.
When asked by Justice Murray Wilcox on what he thought should be the solution to the P2P "dilemma", the University of Berkeley professor of computer science and information management said that technology is the answer to keep users from infringing copyright.
Justice Wilcox said the peer to peer "dilemma" was how not to impinge on people sharing non-copyright material and at the same time reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of sharing of infringing material.
"My own belief is that the best way to address these issues is through technology that keeps users from infringing copyright in that way and there's extremely rapid progress being made in this area. For example, Windows now offers WMA format files that have something called Digital Rights Management. The digital rights management system makes it very difficult for users to exchange those files," Tygar said.
"Watermarking technology that's been developed can help assist in catching cases where infringement happens. I believe that the problem is so pervasive of copyright infringement in our society that legal mechanisms alone can never address this. My belief is that as long as there is a substantial non-infringing use of a technology, it's not the technology that can be shut down but individuals who pursue additional technologies," Tygar said.
Justice Wilcox admitted he had no idea as to the extent of use of the P2P technology for infringing copyright.
"In this case we don't even know the extent of the non-infringing use. If somebody asked me tonight what is the proportion of infringing material compared to non-infringing I would have to say, I haven’t got a clue. The evidence does not reveal that. I don't know whether it's 99.5 percent infringing or 0.45, I have no idea. This is part of the problem, that we know so little about it," Justice Wilcox said.
In his affidavit, Tygar said that it is generally not possible to accurately verify in the Kazaa system that the country the user specifies is actually the country in which the user is using the computer.
Kazaa distributes its Web pages using the Akamai server network.
According to Tygar, Akamai technology allows the creation of a list of IP addresses accessing a particular Web page or set of Web pages. He said that it is possible for Akamai to create a list of IP addresses of computers accessing Kazaa Web pages.
However, he believes that even if Akamai created such a list of IP addresses, Akamai has no way of knowing what files the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) users make available for uploading or what files KMD users download.
"For this reason, Akamai cannot know -- and consequently cannot inform Sharman -- whether its Kazaa Web pages are being accessed by users exchanging public domain files, copyright files with authorisation, copyright files without authorisation, or by users not uploading or downloading any files. Furthermore, a list of IP addresses would not yield information about end users," Tygar said.
Tygar added that Sharman's Web site plays no critical function in the file transfer. "As Sharman does not have access to any nodes or supernodes -- other than those it might operate itself-- the vast majority of file sharing traffic occurs beyond its knowledge or control. Even by examining a supernode, Sharman would only be able to identify that users at particular IP addresses had files with certain metadata. An IP address is not sufficient to identify a user," he said.
Metadata is the annotations added onto files. For instance, files containing sound recordings contain extensive annotations -- especially in the case of musical recordings. These can be annotated with genre information such as folk, rock, classical; the title of the recording; the recording artist; band or orchestra etc.
Tygar said he did not find any evidence that Sharman collects information that would allow it to identify most users and that KMD does not include any features that collect information on Kazaa users or their operations that is sent to Sharman Networks.
He added that if Sharman were to cease to distribute the Kazaa application on its Web site, users could continue to obtain it through several methods.
"First, it is widely available on the Web. Second, it can be exchanged from user to user. From a technical standpoint, Sharman has no control over the distribution of these copies," Tygar said.
"In any case, Sharman is not in a position to stop infringing activity. Even if Sharman were ordered closed immediately, Kazaa users could continue to search for files."
Patent and Trademark attorney Michael Bates also testified for the applicants [record labels] today saying that he noticed there were several changes to the computer's registry after the installation of the Kazaa software.
"Some of the changes to the registry correspond to use of the software and others are made without any user activity, from time to time. These include changes to the supernode IP addresses and access controls that could permit remote access to the user computer. The changes made to the registry when there is no user initiated activity is unable to be controlled or cancelled by the user. The updating of supernode IP addresses occurs without the user's knowledge," he said.
Bates also said that during his examination of the Kazaa software, he observed "abnormally high CPU usage on the test computer".
"I observed abnormal computer function with the computer not responding to my commands. I then checked the CPU processes and observed when I did that the Kazaa software application at that time had taken the majority of the available computer processing capacity at a load of 96 percent."
Justice Wilcox has scheduled a special Saturday morning session to take evidence from visiting US academic Professor Keith Ross, who is testifying for Sharman Networks.
Ross is being cross-examined on allegations that he included material in his sworn affidavit which had been written by solicitors. Draft documents quoted him saying to Sharman parties' solicitors "I was not aware of this, even after our testing. But if you say so, then fine with me."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/leg...9180708,00.htm
Focus Group: Kazaa Will Meet Napster's Fate
Kristyn Maslog-Levis
Legal representatives of both the Sharman Networks parties and the music industry drew out the 13th day of the copyright trial with arguments on which pieces of evidence should be admissible.
Australia's music industry is suing Sharman for copyright infringement related to the use of Sharman's peer-to-peer software, Kazaa.
One document that stirred some heated objections was an e-mail sent to executives and employees of Sharman Networks and Altnet, one of its partners, regarding the results of an Australian focus group that convened in May 2003 to talk about the use of Kazaa.
The e-mail states that the focus group sees Kazaa's image as a "free music concept" that "would come to an end similar to Napster."
The document said that the focus group perceived Kazaa as having the "largest variety of music and number of users."
Very few of the 18 members of the focus group admitted to having noticed the information placed on the Web site regarding the difference between the so-called Gold and Blue icons, even when "know your icons" was flashing on the screen. The icons are supposed to help users differentiate, among other things, between music that has been determined by Kazaa as legal to download and music that may or may not be legal.
Music files with Gold icons are distributed mainly by Altnet, also a respondent in the case and a peer-to-peer distributor of "legal and licensed secure digital media that originates from content owners." Music files with Blue icons, on the other hand, are provided by Kazaa users. A message on Kazaa.com states that with Blue files, "it is the responsibility of each individual user to responsibly and legally decide which files to share and which are to be downloaded."
The focus-group e-mail said that only one out of all the members of the group downloaded a Gold file, while a few "had heard of them but thought they needed to be paid for."
The e-mail was sent to Sharman's chief executive officer, Nikki Hemming; Altnet's chief executive, Kevin Bermeister; Sharman technical officer Phil Morle; and Altnet's chief technical officer, Anthony Rose, among others.
In the document, the Sharman parties recommended "to educate users about Gold icons," emphasizing that these files are "better-quality files, rights-protected (particularly for local artists) and 80 percent of it (is) free."
Universal Music Australia lead barrister Tony Bannon pushed for the admission of the document, saying that "it is one link in the chain showing (the respondents) are genuinely and specifically aware users are using (Kazaa) as an engine of piracy and they are taking no steps to restrain it. In fact, they are encouraging it."
The party considered putting a "sample a Gold icon link" on the home page for users to test. The document stated that the Sharman parties think the "largest challenge is to step users up from not paying to paying (for the music files)...however, if educated about the benefits, particularly x percent are free, and the content in this range is desirable, the users will be more likely to download, and this download is more likely to become habitual."
Following Justice Murray Wilcox's order to implement a subpoena that releases the documents being held by Sharman Networks parties' former lawyers from Philips Fox, the respondents asked for more time to sort out the documents that need to remain private because of lawyer-client confidentiality.
The respondents agreed to make a list of documents where the legal professional privilege can be waived. It will be presented in court Friday morning. The documents contain the legal advice that Sharman Networks received from Sydney-based Philips Fox regarding copyright infringement.
Justice Wilcox also announced today that closing statements will be held March 22 and 23.
http://news.com.com/Focus+group+Kaza...3-5493797.html
Kazaa Will 'Live On' Regardless: Sharman Witness
Kristyn Maslog-Levis
Sharman Networks' expert witness has revealed that the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) and FastTrack peer-to-peer system will continue to spread even if both systems were to be shut down.
Keith Ross, professor of computer science at the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn New York, said during the special Saturday session in the ongoing trial against the peer to peer software provider for alleged copyright infringement, that FastTrack and Kazaa have "a life of [their] own" and do not require any intervention from a centralised authority.
FastTrack is another P2P file sharing technology. The FastTrack protocol is implemented in a FastTrack software module, which belongs to Joltid. Ross said there are currently many graphical user interface (GUI) that operate with FastTrack, including Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh, Kazaa Lite, mlDonkey, Morpheus, X-Factor, Poisoned and Trusty Files.
A GUI combined with FastTRack constitutes a FastTrack user program, which runs on a single computer. All of these FastTrack user programs combined shared files with each other using the FastTrack protocol.
FastTrack is one of the software components included in the KMD. It handles key P2P file sharing functionality, namely searches, downloads and uploads. The Kazaa GUI is a graphical interface between the user and the FastTrack module.
Ross said that unlike Napster, "FastTrack cannot be shut down by simply pulling the plug on a centralised server farm".
He added that there are in excess of 400 million FastTrack user programs that have already been downloaded.
"Even if the respondents were to shut down, these user programs would still be present in user computers and would still be able to maintain the overlay network without any help from an outside server. FastTrack will likely persist for many years even if the respondents stopped distributing or updating the KMD," he said.
"If the Kazaa Web site were shut down, then new users would not be able to obtain the KMD and access FastTrack through a Kazaa GUI obtained from Sharman Networks. However, existing Kazaa users would be able to continue to use FastTrack. New users could also access FastTrack by acquiring a copy of a different FastTrack user program such as Grokster, iMesh etc. If either Sharman or the owners of FastTrack were to be shut down, it is likely that the new hacked versions of the software would continue to proliferate in the Internet," Ross said.
In his affidavit, Ross said that the only control one could have over the files downloaded by users of the Kazaa system is to prevent a user node from getting the information necessary to get the file (i.e. IP address, port number, and Contenthash).
"That information is distributed through other nodes. Particularly in FastTrack architecture, the information comes from supernodes that have in turn collected the information from their child nodes. So the only way the respondents [Sharman Network and parties] could prevent a node from receiving that information would be for the respondents to communicate with the supernodes and cause them to withhold the information. Based on my knowledge of the software architecture, I am not aware of anything that would allow the respondents to cause a supernode to withhold that information."
Ross added that Sharman Networks and parties do not know what a particular user's search request is. "This is because the search request is sent by an ordinary node to a supernode and the response comes back directly from that supernode. So there is only a direct communication between the ordinary node and supernode. The 'dialog' that takes place is very localised, and third parties, including the respondents, do not get to 'see' it."
He added that the requests are also encrypted so that even if the respondents were able to capture the requests, they would not be able to determine what was being requested, unless they had access to the encryption.
"If it becomes known to Sharman that a user is infringing copyright --although it is not clear to me how they would obtain such knowledge -- Sharman could not stop this user from unauthorised distribution of files. Sharman has no control over the user, and there is nothing it can do to prevent the user from putting unauthorised files in its My Share Folder and from connection to the FastTrack network," Ross said.
Ross believes that the KMD could not be designed to collect and report the identity and other information about the users. He said that it would be necessary to alert both KMD and FastTrack to create the functionality suggested by the applicants' expert witnesses.
"At present, the KMD can, at best, collect in response to a particular search the IP addresses for peer nodes that are sharing and the corresponding alias names of the users who have files with metadata matching the search terms," Ross said.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9173722,00.htm
At trial, Altnet-Kazaa Link Examined
Kristyn Maslog-Levis
Sharman Networks' parties on Wednesday called on an expert witness from KPMG's forensic division to testify about the role of Altnet in Sharman's business.
Australia's music industry is suing Sharman, owner of peer-to-peer software Kazaa, for copyright infringement. The industry has charged that Altnet and Sharman are tightly integrated in facilitating copyright- infringing behavior.
KPMG forensic director Rodney McKemmish, however, said a key search function on the Altnet system was restricted to licensed music files (known as "Gold" files), meaning that locating and searching for unlicensed music files (or "Blue" files) was restricted to the Kazaa software.
Altnet's so-called TopSearch Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files, which reside on the user's computer, are integral to the search for a list of periodically updated Gold files.
"The TopSearch DLL is only concerned with the search for Gold Files, and as such it is Kazaa that is solely responsible for locating Blue files and displaying the search results for both Gold and Blue files," McKemmish said in his affidavit.
While the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) utilizes technology provided by Altnet, McKemmish said, the Altnet technology has been designed to be independent of any one peer-to-peer product. Kazaa is also not dependent on Altnet technology to operate as a peer-to-peer application.
"(KMD) is not dependent on the TopSearch DLL to function with respect of versions 2.7.1 and 2.7.2," McKemmish said. "By removing the TopSearch DLL file from Kazaa, a search can still be performed, with only Blue files being present in the search results...I do not believe that Kazaa version 2.6.6 is reliant upon the TopSearch DLL to undertake a search for, and download of, any file other than Gold files."
Expert witnesses for the applicants had previously asserted that TopSearch is a compulsory feature of KMD and that "KMD is designed so that any attempt by a user to remove TopSearch will result in a failure of the KMD, with the user being required to reinstall a fresh version of KMD, which will necessarily contain the TopSearch."
Altnet, one of the respondents for the case, says it is a peer-to-peer distributor of "legal, licensed secure digital media that originates from content owners" and reaches an estimated 70 million users. Altnet's products integrate with Web sites, applications and peer-to-peer networks that allow Internet users to locate, download, try out and purchase digital content. Altnet is a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, another respondent.
Through Altnet's exclusive relationship with Sharman, other major peer-to-peer networks, and search engines, Altnet-distributed files are given preferred search listing placement. Users searching for files using specific words see Altnet files listed first, at the top of the results window, as Gold icons indicating they are "legal to download, virus-free and high-quality."
A user clicks the Gold icons to download the files. TopSearch keywords can include specific terms, such as the title of a song or the name of a band, or they can be generic terms. Altnet said that the Gold files are copyright-protected.
In other developments Wednesday, a document surfaced detailing Altnet's proposal to the FBI on filtering child pornography in P2P networks. According to the report, prepared by Altnet's executive vice president for worldwide operations, each time a user searches for a keyword that is associated with child pornography, Altnet can "insert a contextual message that appears at the top of the search results."
"The FBI can prepare public-service announcement videos and pictures," the report said. "Altnet will turn these into files, give them Gold file icons and associate them with keywords known to be used by those seeking child porn."
In the report, Altnet also acknowledged its largest partner, Sharman Networks, as the leader in the industry in deploying tools to allow users to "filter out unwanted files."
"It is the first Internet application to offer a 'family filter,' which allows parents to set restrictions on what types of files their children may search for," the report said. "By default, the adult filter is set 'on' when a user installs Kazaa."
Altnet's report showed that an Altnet central server exists as a "fallback" to the peer-to- peer system.
"While the peer-to-peer (network) is a highly efficient way to distribute files and greatly reduces bandwidth expenses over traditional systems, a central server is still required in order to initially 'seed' files to peers and as a fallback to the peer-to-peer system. Altnet customers may use their own seeding and fallback server or hire Altnet to perform this function on their behalf."
Before adjourning for the day, Justice Murray Wilcox heard a legal argument in relation to a subpoena, issued by the applicants, requiring documents from the former lawyers for the Sharman parties, Phillips Fox. Justice Wilcox subsequently ordered Phillips Fox to produce--by tomorrow--all material relating to the infringement of copyright arising from the distribution or operation of the Kazaa software.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5491677.html
KPMG Expert Unwinds Altnet-Kazaa Link Claim
Kristyn Maslog-Levis, ZDNet Australia
Sharman Networks' parties today called on an expert witness from KPMG Forensic division to testify over Altnet's involvement in the ongoing trial against the peer to peer software provider for alleged copyright infringement.
KPMG forensic director Rodney McKemmish said -- in remarks tackling the music industry's premise that Altnet and Sharman are tightly integrated in facilitating copyright-infringing behaviour -- that a key search function on the Altnet system was restricted to licensed music files (known as so-called 'Gold' files), meaning that locating and searching for unlicensed music files (or so-called 'Blue' files) was restricted to the Kazaa software.
Altnet's so-called TopSearch Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files, which reside on the user's computer, are integral to the search for a list of periodically-updated Gold files.
"The TopSearch DLL is only concerned with the search for Gold Files, and as such it is Kazaa that is solely responsible for locating Blue Files and displaying the search results for both Gold and Blue Files," McKemmish said in his affidavit.
While the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) utilises technology provided by Altnet, McKemmish said, the Altnet technology has been designed to be independent of any one peer-to-peer product. Kazaa is also not dependent on Altnet technology to operate as a peer-to-peer application.
"[KMD] is not dependent on the TopSearch DLL to function with respect of versions 2.7.1 and 2.7.2. By removing the TopSearch DLL file from Kazaa, a search can still be performed, with only Blue Files being present in the search results....I do not believe that Kazaa version 2.6.6 is reliant upon the TopSearch DLL to undertake a search for, and download of, any file other than Gold files," McKemmish said.
Expert witnesses for the applicants had previously asserted that TopSearch is a compulsory feature of KMD and that "KMD is designed so that any attempt by a user to remove TopSearch will result in a failure of the KMD with the user being required to reinstall a fresh version of KMD which will necessarily contain the TopSearch."
Altnet, one of the respondents for the case, says it is a peer-to-peer distributor of "legal, licensed secure digital media that originates from content owners" and reaches an estimated 70 million users. Altnet's products integrate with Web sites, applications, and peer to peer networks which allow Internet users to locate, download, trial and purchase digital content. Altnet is a subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, another respondent.
Through Altnet's exclusive relationship with Kazaa, other major peer to peer networks, and search engines, Altnet-distributed files are given preferred search listing placement. Users searching for files using specific words see Altnet files listed first, at the top of the results window, as Gold icons indicating they are "legal to download, virus free, and high quality".
A user clicks the Gold icons to download the files. TopSearch keywords can include specific terms such as a title of a song or a name of a band and can also be generic terms. Altnet said that the Gold files are copyright-protected.
In other developments today, a document surfaced detailing Altnet's proposal on filtering child pornography in P2P networks to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the report prepared by Altnet's executive vice president for worldwide operations, each time a user searches for a keyword that is associated with child pornography, Altnet can "insert a contextual message that appears at the top of the search results".
"The FBI can prepare public service announcement videos and pictures. Altnet will turn these into files, give them Gold file icons and associate them with keywords known to be used by those seeking child porn."
In the report, Altnet also acknowledged its largest partner Sharman Networks as the leader in the industry in deploying tools to allow users to "filter out unwanted files".
"It is the first Internet application to offer a 'family filter' which allows parents to set restrictions on what types of files their children may search for. By default, the adult filter is set 'on' when a user installs Kaza," the report said.
Altnet's report showed that an Altnet central server exists as a "fallback" to the peer to peer system.
"While the peer to peer networks is a highly efficient way to distribute files and greatly reduces bandwidth expenses over traditional systems, a central server is still required in order to initially 'seed' files to peers and as a fallback to the peer to peer system. Altnet customers may user their own seeding and fallback server or hire Altnet to perform this function on their behalf."
Before adjourning for the day, Justice Murray Wilcox heard legal argument in relation to a subpoena, issued by the applicants, requiring documents from the former lawyers for the Sharman parties, Phillips Fox. Justice Wilcox subsequently ordered Phillips Fox to produce -- by tomorrow -- all material relating to the infringement of copyright arising from the distribution or operation of the Kazaa software.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/busines...9174229,00.htm
Sour Notes In Kazaa Case
Simon Hayes
PHIL MORLE was well into day two on the witness stand in the Federal Court when the gun question came up.
Not a smoking gun, but a loaded gun, pointed at the heads of the world's major music labels.
The chief technology officer of Sharman Networks, owner of the Kazaa file sharing network, was in a position few techies would envy, being grilled by Tony Bannon, senior counsel, for the music industry.
The "gun" – as Mr Bannon termed it – was the move by Sharman business partner Altnet to make a marketing presentation to Interscope, a subsidiary of Universal Records.
"In the time it takes to make this presentation 365,000 Interscope tracks will be downloaded without paying you one cent," the Altnet presentation read. "Altnet can change that."
The presentation was aimed at licensing so- called "gold files", or paid downloads, for distribution on Kazaa.
Artists such as Helen Reddy, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and the Beach Boys are licensed and distributed on the network.
The implications of what would happen if the record companies did not licence their music was what was exercising Mr Bannon.
"Sharman and its partner, Altnet, were holding a gun at the head of the record companies, saying, in effect, 'our users are downloading your music for free, you have to sign up with Altnet'," Mr Bannon argued.
Mr Morle, who said he was not aware of the negotiations, denied being part of a "media campaign" to promote Kazaa, and thus force the labels into a deal. The cross-examination of Mr Morle formed the core of a week in which expert witnesses from both sides testified.
The case resumes tomorrow with more expert testimony.
The case is expected to wrap up in February, when the court hears amicus briefs from the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and the Australian Consumers' Association, and closing arguments.
T-shirts bearing slogans including "Kazaa is the technology, you are the warriors" also got the music companies fired up.
"It suited Sharman's commercial purpose in trying to blackmail record companies into doing a deal with Sharman's partner, Altnet," Mr Bannon argued.
The numbers behind peer-to-peer are compelling. A study released last year by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) showed 3.4 million Australians downloaded music from file-sharing networks in the first half of 2003, with 1.8 million accessing file-sharing in a single month in 2003.
Research by UK firm CacheLogic shows file-sharing is the largest generator of data on the internet, outweighing web surfing, and growing rapidly. At any time, about eight million users are logged on to the main file-sharing networks.
In essence, the music companies claim Sharman can control the network, can filter content to stop much of the pirated material that presently circulates, and can change user software and the infrastructure of the FastTrack network that runs behind the Kazaa desktop to introduce those extra measures.
Sharman claims it only controls the user interface and not the underlying network, and is unable to force upgrades and changes on existing users. It also argues filtering would be ineffective.
Filtering is a vexed issue. Kazaa provides a filter to stop child pornography, and has testified to a US Senate committee hearing that the filter is "comprehensive".
That led Mr Morle into difficult territory, since he had argued filtering was not effective.
Mr Bannon: "It's a false statement to the extent that it suggests that Kazaa has a capacity to bar child pornographers and their computers from accessing Kazaa and other Kazaa services. That's false is it?"
Mr Morle: "Yes, I haven't seen this statement before and I don't believe it could be done."
Mr Morle was also grilled over the extent of control Sharman had on the underlying FastTrack network – which is also used by a number of other peer-to-peer front- ends, as well as several hacked versions of Kazaa – which is developed by a third party. Estonian developer Blue Moon Interactive is responsible for upgrading FastTrack, under licence from the owner, Joltid.
The music companies argued Sharman was able to request changes from Blue Moon, and by implication could introduce a filter.
The music industry is also chasing Sharman's ownership.
Mr Bannon argued Sharman was controlled by Kevin Bermeister, the Australian expatriate who heads up US software company Brilliant Digital Entertainment and subsidiary and Sharman partner Altnet.
Mr Bannon: Mr Bermeister "was and still is in the habit of issuing requests, in your presence, to Ms Hemming and yourself?"
Mr Morle: "I wouldn't say it ...
Mr Bannon: "You regard him as the person ultimately controlling this business, don't you?"
Mr Morle: "I do not."
The court was presented with an email written by a Sharman employee saying Kazaa users could be "compelled" to upgrade, but it also heard testimony from an expert witness for the respondent, Doug Tygar, that users could not be forced to download upgraded software.
Forcing users to upgrade by using a pop-up box would not work, he said, as many browsers blocked pop-ups.
"Statistics seem to indicate that these pop-up blockers are quite popular, so it is in fact not technically possible to force a decision on a user by the user of pop-up boxes," he said.
Professor Tygar, a professor of computer science and information management at the University of California, Berkeley, also denied that Kazaa could track individual users through the use of cookies delivered to their browsers.
Shown a tracking proposal, he said he did not believe it was possible with the present Kazaa code.
"If we mean it in terms of absolute identification of a machine, finding out characteristics of the machine, knowing where the machine is located, knowing the user of the machine, no, I don't agree," he said.
"If we mean it in terms of correlating it, yes, there do exist abilities to do that."
Professor Tygar, who provided an expert report in the Napster case, argued there would never be a simple solution to the issue of peer-to-peer copyright piracy.
"Systems are shut down such as Napster but other even broader systems emerge in their wake.
"I don't believe that a simple solution exists to this problem, and to the extent that we can hope to deal with it, I hope it's by making a positive contribution of offering technology that can better protect the rights of intellectual property owners."
The Kazaa case is a watershed for record companies, with the music industry's legal strategy foundering after the initial success in shutting down Napster.
The industry has not had much success with high-profile overseas cases recently.
Its first setback came in 2003 when the US Federal Court ruled two other peer-to- peer networks – Grokster and StreamCast – were not responsible for copyright violations committed by their users.
That decision was upheld on appeal in August.
In December last year the Dutch Supreme Court upheld a verdict dismissing legal action by an industry association against a company owned by Kazaa's Dutch creators, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.
Another case in the US District Court is still pending.
If the music companies are successful in closing or modifying the operations of Kazaa, they will have bought time before the next technology comes along.
If they are not, the music industry must change, and change fast.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...nbv%5E,00.html
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Little Big Man
New Toshiba Hard Drive Uses Perpendicular Technology
Yoshiko Hara
Toshiba Corp. has developed a 1.8-inch hard disk drive that achieves a 40 Gbyte capacity by employing perpendicular recording technology for the first time.
The drive provides a 133 Gbits recording density per square inch, which is 37 percent higher than a 30-Gbyte drive based on longitudinal recording, according to a Toshiba spokeswoman. Perpendicular recording could pave the way for higher capacity drives and overcome the density limits of longitudinal recording, the spokeswoman added.
Toshiba plans to mass produce the 40-Gbyte, single-platter drive (designated MK4007GAL) beginning in the second quarter of 2005. In the third quarter, Toshiba will follow with an 80-Gbyte, dual-platter drive designated the MK8007GAH.
Earlier this year, Alps Electric Co. Ltd., a major HDD head supplier, developed a giant magnetoresistive (GMR) thin-film HDD head for perpendicular recording that achieves densities of 120 Gbits per square inch. Though Toshiba would not disclose the name, it has been working with a head manufacturer about perpendicular recording heads and intends to use the head supplied by the manufacturer.
Toshiba eventually plans to incorporate the perpendicular recording technology in a 0.85-inch hard disk for camera phones. The move promises to increase storage capacity while being less expensive than solid state memory. Though Toshiba will initially produce the 0.85-inch drive with a 2-Gbyte capacity using a longitudinal recording technology, the company said it expects use of perpendicular recording will result in multiple platter drives with a 6- to 8-Gbyte capacity.
http://eetimes.com/article/showArtic...cleId=55800018
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And Who Said Betamax Had No Future?
John Paczkowski
Who should be held liable for the copyright infringements occuring on peer-to-peer networks -- the networks or the people who use them? That's the question the U.S. Supreme Court will decide when it hears a case filed by the music and film industries against two file-sharing outfits -- Grokster and StreamCast. On Friday, the high court agreed to hear oral arguments in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster -- a case that could shape the future of content delivery in the digital age. This spring, the court will review a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that found that distributors of P2P software could not be held liable for "contributory" or "vicarious" infringements. To arrive at that conclusion, the appeals court relied heavily on a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that shielded Sony from copyright infringement charges arising from illegal use of its VCR technology. That ruling, known as the Betamax decision, did much to promote technological innovation. It's certain to figure prominently in the court's consideration, and will perhaps even get a bit of an overhaul -- which could be dangerous business. "There's a lot more at stake here for the technology industry than for the copyright industry," said Fred von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney who has represented StreamCast Networks on the issue. "This case will not be determinant of the future of peer to peer around the world, but it will be determinant of the future of a whole host of future digital products." Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group agreed. "The big content companies are trying to accomplish in this case what they have failed to do in the 20 years since Betamax, and what they have failed this year to accomplish in Congress – to put restrictions on new technologies that suit their purposes not the needs of consumers. The evidence that file-sharing has significantly hurt the large content companies is very thin. But the trade-off of giving content companies more control over the development of technologies and of overturning Betamax, would be very significant and very harmful to consumers and to our economy."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...v/10407354.htm
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Non-exclusive agreements
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
John Markoff and Edward Wyatt
Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.
It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections.
Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has agreed to underwrite the projects being announced today while also adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library.
Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict the project could take at least a decade.
Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Like Google, they might seek the right to offer online access to library materials in return for selling advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help in digitizing their collections for their own institutional uses.
"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.
The Google effort and others like it that are already under way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend to potentially democratize access to information that has long been available to only small, select groups of students and scholars.
Last night the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of one million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.
"Having the great libraries at your fingertips allows us to build on and create great works based on the work of others," said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library that is also trying to digitize existing print information.
The agreements to be announced today will allow Google to publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.
Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan. The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about 40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford will be limited to an unspecified number of books published before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will involve fragile material not under copyright that library officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars.
The trend toward online libraries and virtual card catalogs is one that already has book publishers scrambling to respond.
At least a dozen major publishing companies, including some of the country's biggest producers of nonfiction books - the primary target for the online text-search efforts - have already entered ventures with Google and Amazon that allow users to search the text of copyrighted books online and read excerpts.
Publishers including HarperCollins, the Penguin Group, Houghton Mifflin and Scholastic have signed up for both the Google and Amazon programs. The largest American trade publisher, Random House, participates in Amazon's program but is still negotiating with Google, which calls its program Google Print.
The Amazon and Google programs work by restricting the access of users to only a few pages of a copyrighted book during each search, offering enough to help them decide whether the book meets their requirements enough to justify ordering the print version. Those features restrict a user's ability to copy, cut or print the copyrighted material, while limiting on-screen reading to a few pages at a time. Books still under copyright at the libraries involved in Google's new project are likely to be protected by similar restrictions.
The challenge for publishers in coming years will be to continue to have libraries serve as major influential buyers of their books, without letting the newly vast digital public reading rooms undermine the companies' ability to make money commissioning and publishing authors' work.
From the earliest days of the printing press, book publishers were wary of the development of libraries at all. In many instances, they opposed the idea of a central facility offering free access to books that people would otherwise be compelled to buy.
But as libraries developed and publishers became aware that they could be among their best customers, that opposition faded. Now publishers aggressively court librarians with advance copies of books, seeking positive reviews of books in library journals and otherwise trying to influence the opinion of the people who influence the reading habits of millions. Some of that promotional impulse may translate to the online world, publishing executives say.
But at least initially, the search services are likely to be most useful to publishers whose nonfiction backlists, or catalogs of previously published titles, are of interest to scholars but do not sell regularly enough to be carried in large quantities in retail stores, said David Steinberger, the president and chief executive the Perseus Books Group, which publishes mostly nonfiction books under the Basic Books, PublicAffairs, Da Capo and other imprints.
Based on his experiences with Amazon's and Google's commercial search services so far, Mr. Steinberger said, "I think there is minimal risk, or virtually no risk, of copyrighted material being misused." But he said he would object to a library's providing copyrighted material online without a license. "If you're talking about the instantaneous, free distribution of books, I think that would represent a problem," Mr. Steinberger said.
For their part, libraries themselves will have to rethink their central missions as storehouses of printed, indexed material.
"Our world is about to change in a big, big way," said Daniel Greenstein, university librarian for the California Digital Library of the University of California, which is a project to organize and retain existing digital materials.
Instead of expending considerable time and money to managing their collections of printed materials, Mr. Greenstein said, libraries in the future can devote more energy to gathering information and making it accessible - and more easily manageable - online.
But Paul LeClerc, the president and chief executive of the New York Public Library, sees Web access as an expansion of libraries' reach, not a replacement for physical collections. "Librarians will add a new dimension to their work," Mr. LeClerc said. "They will not abandon their mission of collecting printed material and keeping them for decades and even centuries."
Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have long vowed to make all of the world's information accessible to anyone with a Web browser. The agreements to be announced today will put them a few steps closer to that goal - at least in terms of the English-language portion of the world's information. Mr. Page said yesterday that the project traced to the roots of Google, which he and Mr. Brin founded in 1998 after taking a leave from a graduate computer science program at Stanford where they worked on a "digital libraries" project. "What we first discussed at Stanford is now becoming practical," Mr. Page said.
At Stanford, Google hopes to be able to scan 50,000 pages a day within the month, eventually doubling that rate, according to a person involved in the project.
The Google plan calls for making the library materials available as part of Google's regular Web service, which currently has an estimated eight billion Web pages in its database and tens of millions of users a day. As with the other information on its service, Google will sell advertising to generate revenue from its library material. (In it existing Google Print program, the company shares advertising revenue with the participating book publishers.)
Each library, meanwhile, will receive its own copy of the digital database created from that institution's holdings, which the library can make available through its own Web site if it chooses.
Harvard officials said they would be happy to use the Internet to share their collections widely. "We have always thought of our libraries at Harvard as being a global resource," said Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard.
At least initially, Google's digitizing task will be labor intensive, with people placing the books and documents on sophisticated scanners whose high-resolution cameras capture an image of each page and convert it to a digital file.
Google, whose corporate campus in Mountain View, Calif., is just a few miles from Stanford, plans to transport books to a copying center it has established at its headquarters. There the books will be scanned and then returned to the Stanford libraries. Google plans to set up remote scanning operations at both Michigan and Harvard.
The company refused to comment on the technology that it was using to digitize books, except to say that it was nondestructive. But according to a person who has been briefed on the project, Google's technology is more labor-intensive than systems that are already commercially available.
Two small start-up companies, 4DigitalBooks of St. Aubin, Switzerland, and Kirtas Technologies of Victor, N.Y., are selling systems that automatically turn pages to capture images.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/te.../14google.html
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Fox News's Deal Will Make It a Radio Power, Analysts Say
Lola Ogunnaike
Industry analysts have said that Fox News Channel will become a significant player in radio as a result of its recent deal to provide news to radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. In the agreement, announced earlier this week, Fox will replace ABC News as the sole provider of broadcast news material for Clear Channel stations.
"You couldn't say enough about how phenomenal this is for Fox," Matt Feinberg, senior vice president for radio at Zenith Media, a buying agency in New York, said on Monday. "This is gigantic."
Fox News, a cable television channel owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, established its radio news service last year and currently provides news for 275 stations nationwide. Under the terms of the five-year, all-cash deal, which begins next year, Fox will be responsible for information programming on more than 100 Clear Channel news and talk stations, with a five-minute top-of-the-hour newscast and a nightly news broadcast; it will also be Clear Channel's primary source for breaking national news. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Fox estimated that it could have as many as 500 Clear Channel affiliates by the middle of next year. Since Fox has already distinguished itself as a leader in cable television news, the analysts said, the Clear Channel agreement will go a long way toward establishing it as a competitor to veteran radio players like ABC and CBS.
Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a radio industry trade journal, called the new deal a "marriage made in heaven," with Clear Channel, which operates approximately 1,200 stations, receiving the "benefit of the Fox image, and Fox jumping into the arena with a total head start."
Mr. Feinberg said the arrangement would "help Fox far more than it will hurt ABC or CBS." ABC, the second-largest news organization in the world (the BBC is first), has 2,500 radio news affiliates. CBS has more than 500. "It's not a good thing for them," Mr. Feinberg said of ABC and CBS. "But it's not going to put them out of business, either." ABC News executives would not comment on the deal.
Jack Abernethy, a Fox News executive who on Tuesday was named chief executive of Fox Stations Inc., said the network's decision to develop its radio division was a natural step in the company's evolution. "Talk radio is complementary to television," he said. "It's not competitive. And because so many people listen in their cars, you have a real opportunity to reach an audience which is watching you on television already."
In a survey conducted last year by Talkers, Fox News Channel was the primary nonradio news source for talk-radio news listeners, Mr. Harrison said. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a nonprofit, public interest, telecommunications law firm, was not surprised by the Clear Channel-Fox union, calling it "a logical fit."
"Large, monopolistic companies are comfortable with other large, monopolistic companies," Mr. Schwartzman said. "They have similar business models and similar business philosophies. Put another way, they deserve one another."
Industry experts said that Fox's decision to take an all-cash deal might have helped it best the competition. Normally, such agreements include both a fee and a barter arrangement, which would have required Clear Channel to provide Fox with advertising slots to sell. In recent months, Clear Channel, with its "less is more" campaign, has made clear its desire to streamline programming by reducing advertising. Mr. Abernethy said Fox's deal with Clear Channel was fairly simple: "You sell your own time and just pay us a fee."
Mr. Abernethy called the cash-only arrangement unique. One executive close to the deal said it involves more than $5 million a year. Fox would not disclose how much Clear Channel is paying.
In an e-mail message, a Clear Channel representative said, "With Fox we will not be paying for unnecessary entertainment and other programming in order to get their news service."
Still, not all in the industry were comfortable with the teaming of Fox News and Clear Channel, widely regarded as more conservative than a navy blue Brooks Brothers suit. Mr. Schwartzman said the union signified "the emergence of a conservative programming perspective from companies that are rather explicitly affiliated with conservative causes."
Fox declined to comment on this, and John Hogan, chief executive of Clear Channel Radio, said in an e-mail message, "We don't run our business to any political agenda - remember, we're the largest carrier of the Air America network on our Progressive Talk stations."
Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, a nonprofit organization working to increase public participation in media policy, said, "You have the largest radio giant now running the news provided by one of the largest media empires, Exhibit A of what's wrong with media consolidation." He added, "Now what Rupert Murdoch decides is news suddenly becomes news."
Correction: December 11, 2004, Saturday:
An article in The Arts on Thursday about an agreement for Fox News to provide reports to radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. misstated the chain's past and planned relationships with ABC News. ABC has been among several providers of news for Clear Channel and will remain one; Fox is to be added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/09/ar...ion/09fox.html