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Old 12-02-04, 10:41 PM   #3
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France Jails P2P Music Pirate
AFP

A Paris court has sentenced a Frenchman who illegally sold CDs made up of songs he downloaded off the Internet to six months in jail and fined him EUR 1,000 (USD 1,250).

Bruno Dugas, 38, was found guilty of breaking copyright by setting up his web-based business, in which he offered to sell CDs containing MP3 files of songs obtained from free peer-to-peer sites.

His fine was to go to the SPPF, a French body representing music producers and studios, according to the verdict handed down January 28. He was also ordered to publicise the judgement in two newspapers.

European music companies are following their US counterparts in cracking down on music file-swapping on the Internet.

They complain that the illegal practice, facilitated by sites such as Gnutella and Kazaa, is eating into their profits and threatens artists' livelihoods.

So far, legal action in Europe has been limited to prosecuting people who have tried to make money off the trend, but recording companies have warned that home users adding to their own and others' personal music collections could be next, as is already happening in the United States.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_...&story_id=4266


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Paris Hilton Sues Internet Company Over Sex Tape
Reuters

Reality TV star Paris Hilton has sued a Panama-based internet company for $US30 million ($A39.47 million), claiming that it illegally distributed a now-infamous tape of her having sex with an ex-boyfriend.

Hilton, who describes herself in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit as a model and actress, sued Kahatani Ltd for violation of privacy, illegal business practices and infliction of emotional distress.

The 22-year-old socialite - best known as star of the Fox reality TV show The Simple Life - seeks $US15 million ($A19.74 million) in actual damages and another $US15 million ($A19.74 million) in punitive damages.

Hilton, whose grandfather founded the Hilton hotel chain, asserts in the lawsuit that the grainy, black-and-white videotape depicts her and then-boyfriend Rick Solomon in "intimate relations" and was not meant for others to see.

"Hilton intended the videotape only for personal use and never intended or consented that it be shown to anyone else or distributed to the public," the lawsuit says.

Solomon, a video entrepreneur, in November sued Hilton and her family, claiming that they slandered him by suggesting that he took advantage of her.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...175064025.html


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China Gears Up For RFID
ZDNet China Staff


The Standardization Administration of China has created a working group that will establish a national standard for radio frequency identification tags.

Called "electronic tags" in China, these small transmitters--essentially high-tech bar codes that can be scanned from a distance and even through the walls of boxes--are seen by many as the key to a far more efficient supply chain than is achievable today.

There is no single standard for RFID. The SAC said that it will try to draft its standard so that it will be compatible with similar technologies.

RFID companies are likely to closely monitor how the standardization process moves forward. Recently, the Chinese government demanded that the Wi-Fi chips sold in the country contain an encryption standard controlled by 11 local companies. To sell Wi-Fi parts in the large and rapidly growing market in China, foreign companies necessarily have to partner with Chinese companies or license the technology from them.

With manufacturers and distributors scrambling to meet those retail and military mandates, research firm IDC said it expects RFID spending for the U.S. retail supply chain to grow from $91.5 million last year to nearly $1.3 billion in 2008.

Privacy advocates, however, assert that the radio-tag technology could allow companies to track individuals. Although many in the industry have said this is more difficult than it sounds (RFID tags can be disabled by a trip through a microwave), some companies have backed away from trials.

Another controversy with RFID is finding companies to make the tags. Intel, IBM and others are very interested in the technology, but because it will allow them to sell more servers and software for managing networks of tags. The RFID tags themselves will only sell for a few cents when volume production begins.
http://news.com.com/2100-1008-5154776.html


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Kazaa Files Motion To Delay Copyright Proceedings
AAP

Peer to peer music group Kazaa today attempted to delay proceedings for alleged

copyright breaches brought against them by the Australian record industry until a similar case in the United States is finalised.

The Federal Court last week gave five major Australian record labels permission to raid 12 premises in three states to collect evidence against Kazaa, the world's largest file sharing network.

The raids were conducted by Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) which is owned by Universal, Festival Mushroom Records, EMI Music, Sony Music, Warner Music Australia and BMG Australia.

But Kazaa, owned in Australia by Sharman Networks, today filed a notice of motion in the Federal Court in Sydney to stay the legal action until Federal Court of Appeal proceedings in the US are finalised.

"These proceedings, if they are to go ahead at all, ought not to go ahead until the end of the American proceedings," counsel for Sharman Networks, Francis Douglas, QC, said.

Outside the court, the trial lawyer in the US case, David Casselman, said the record labels wanted another opportunity to sue Kazaa after losing hearings in the US and the Netherlands.

"Now that they're losing in the United States they seek to come here and fight the same battle on Australian soil," he said.

Mr Casselman said suing Kazaa for breach of copyright would be no different to taking legal action against the producers of photocopiers.

"It's no different than the Xerox corporation when students use their copiers and they know that students use their copiers to make photocopies of protected works," he said. "Is the university liable if they know this?"

MIPI general manager Michael Speck confirmed that two people were assaulted during last week's raids.

He said the incidents had been referred to the NSW Police. The legal case was adjourned until February 20.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...175148175.html


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Perth Company Gives SCO Australia Deadline To Withdraw IP Claims
Sam Varghese

Perth-based open source company Cyberknights has written to The SCO Group in Australia giving the latter a deadline of February 13 to withdraw its claims that it owns IP in the Linux kernel which users should licence if they wish to use Linux legally.

Cyberknights director Leon Brooks made an initial approach to SCO on January 21 and then repeated the ultimatum on February 2.

On Monday, Brooks sent a registered letter to Kieran O'Shaughnessy, the SCO Group's regional general manager, Australia and New Zealand; he said he had received legal advice to do so. He also sent the same text by email.

In the letter, Brooks said: "The heart of the matter is that The SCO Group Australia and New Zealand (hereinafter TSG-ANZ) has widely published claims to "intellectual property" in Linux, and claims that users of Linux are required to purchase a licence from TSG-ANZ in the amount of AUD$999.00 for each single-CPU server running Linux," today's communication said.

"Take notice that such claims are fraudulent, and unless they are retracted as publicly as they were made, CyberKnights Pty Ltd (hereinafter CK) will vigorously pursue a conviction of fraud against TSG-ANZ," it said.

SCO filed a case against IBM in the US last March claiming breach of contract. It also claimed that Linux is an unauthorised derivative of UNIX and warned commercial Linux users that they could be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright.

SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to US$3 billion in June when it said it was withdrawing IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX. In July last year, SCO demanded that Linux users obtain licences for using what it claims to be its own UNIX code. Later in the year, SCO extended the deadline for obtaining these licences.

Novell has contested SCO's claims to ownership of UNIX and says that even though SCO has some UNIX rights, Novell has retained the right to compel SCO to waive or revoke any of its (SCO's) rights under the contract.

In his letter, Brooks quoted from IBM's latest submissions to the court and pointed out that, "a contract case has nothing to do with any other entity than the contracting parties, TSG and IBM."

He said that SCO's actions in claiming to own and control software which was essential to his business was damaging the reputation of CyberKnights and "engendering fear and uncertainty amongst clients and potential clients of CK as to the ownership, control and possible licence costs of said software, both directly and through association with statements by your parent company TSG Inc, TSG-ANZ is causing damage to CK which CK fully intends to recover."

Contacted for comment, O'Shaughnessy said he had not yet received either the latest letter or the version sent by email. "In any case, I have no comment and no interest in having a debate with Brooks through the media," he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...175146841.html


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New Zealand Journal

That P2P Snitch May Be A Neighbour Not A Cop

Little offending material officially classified by censors
Stephen Bell, Wellington

If you are unwise enough to trade illegal material through peer-to-peer networks, the person who dobs you in may be a fellow user rather than a government official.

Keith Manch, general manager gaming and censorship at the Department of Internal Affairs, says “approximately 95%” of the alleged offences on P2P were not detected in the first instance by the Censorship Compliance Unit but reported by “external sources”, including other government departments, overseas agencies and members of the public.

This makes the tactic explored by P2P users of denying the DIA “authority” to access their computers under the “anti-hacking” provisions of the Crimes Act passed last year a weapon of doubtful effect. However, Manch says the DIA unit must check for itself that the material in question is likely to be objectionable and is being offered by an New Zealand user, as alleged.

Manch says there have been, to date, no unsuccessful prosecutions for trading illegal material via peer-to-peer (P2P) links. However, in five of the 12 cases investigated as at December last year, “charges were not laid because inspectors issued warnings to the offenders”.

Computerworld requested the clarification on prosecution numbers and investigatory procedures because of another media report, which drew on our story. It implied, to Manch's reading, that there had been 111 completed investigations of P2P trading and only two successful prosecutions with another five in train. DIA refuted that and copied the letter to us. The department continues to progress through the rest of the 111 investigations, Manch says.

He also confirms previous indications that very little of the material that is the subject of online prosecutions is ever submitted to the official censors, the Office of Film and Literature Classification or OFLC, for a formal ruling on its “objectionable” status.

“If [the defendant] disputes that the material is objectionable, the court refers it to the OFLC for classification. To date, very few offenders have chosen to defend the charges on any grounds. Neither of the people convicted as a result of P2P activity defended the charges.”
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news....6?OpenDocument


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User reportedly turns in hub.

Popular Filesharing Hub Shut Down
Adam Lewis

For some university students, Friday night was the night the music died.

The university's hub of the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system Direct Connect was shut down this weekend after it was reported to the Office of Information Technology and CDReward, an anti-piracy rewards program run by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The hub was shut down by the system's administrators in an attempt to avoid legal action from the university.

Direct Connect is a free computer program that can be used to facilitate P2P sharing. Individual hubs allow those in close proximity to connect to one another's computers and share music, movies, computer programs and other files within a contained community.

The hub that was shut down this weekend was restricted to students at this university and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

OIT officials acknowledged that an inquiry into the extent of the hub's technology is ongoing.

"We have become aware of it and of students' concerns about it, and we are taking a look at the matter," said Amy Ginther, a spokeswoman for OIT's Project NEThics. "The matter is being investigated."

One of the system's administrators, university student Joe Barrett, released a statement on his website concerning the shutdown.

"We had hoped that nothing like this would happen, but with several thousand people using the service, it's not impossible that one individual can mess things up for everybody," the host wrote.

CDReward, run by the RIAA, is designed to reward people with up to $10,000 for information about to the illegal manufacture and sale of music CDs belonging to its member companies.

"People need to realize this activity is illegal and that musicians deserve to be compensated for their work," an RIAA spokeswoman said. "We have not been in touch with the university on this particular matter."

The person who reportedly turned in the hub, university senior Pavel Beresnev, was a longtime user of Direct Connect.

Angry students posted fliers at The Diner with Beresnev's picture and contact information this weekend, vilifying him for his role in taking Direct Connect away from university students.

Beresnev could not be reached for comment for this article.

The hosts of the university Direct Connect hub hope to clear the air about any rumors that have been floating around the campus regarding the demise of file sharing.

"The server has not been shut down by the RIAA," said a university student who identified himself as one of the system's administrators. "It's a common misconception. We're worried about the health of Direct Connect."

Barrett, a member of the university's Gemstone program, has been involved with research of P2P technology as part of the Network Securities Gemstone Team. The team has undertaken an investigation of uses of anonymous P2P file sharing systems and communication, which is expected to culminate in a final presentation and research project, according to Barrett's website.

Despite a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in their way, the hub's administrators are resolute in their commitment to bring Direct Connect back to the campus.

Barrett refused to comment for this report.
http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamo.../10/news2.html


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Downloaders Can Get Nothing for Something From Apple
David f. Gallagher

The top-of-the-line iPod music player from Apple Computer can hold four solid weeks of music. But what if you just want a little peace and quiet? As it turns out, Apple sells that too - sounds of silence for 99 cents.

Steve Halberstadt of Raleigh, N.C., made such a purchase last week after discovering that Apple's iTunes store, the Web's leading downloadable music outlet, had added "The Whitey Album," a 1995 release by Ciccone Youth, a jokey side project of the rock band Sonic Youth. The album's second track album, "Silence," consists of 63 seconds of exactly that. (The band has said, with tongue in cheek, that the track is a version of John Cage's famous silent composition "4'33"," only speeded up.)

After checking out the 30-second preview, which "seemed to be very representative of the rest of the song," Mr. Halberstadt said he could not help but make the purchase.

He described it as "the best 99 cents I've ever spent'' in an e-mail message last week to Jack Miller, the editor in chief of the news and gossip Web site As the Apple Turns (www.appleturns.com).

Mr. Miller mentioned the silent track on his site, and soon readers were submitting others they had dug up among the more than 500,000 selections in the iTunes store.

Most of the tracks were clearly meant to be breathers between songs, not silence for silence's sake, but in the automated process of chopping albums into files they had been given their own price tags.

Several were from an album by the hip-hop group Slum Village, and like all of the album's tracks, they bore an "explicit" label indicating profanity - or in these cases, explicit silence.

Using the readers' suggestions, Mr. Miller compiled a playlist of "nine tracks of professionally encoded silence, a total of 6 minutes and 44 seconds of the yawning void," downloadable from iTunes for just $8.91. He noted that as with all iTunes purchases, antipiracy measures allow the silence to be enjoyed on no more than three computers.

Late in the week, Apple made it impossible to buy the Ciccone Youth silent track by itself. An Apple spokeswoman, Natalie Sequeira, said such decisions were up to the artists, and "in this case they recently told us that they wanted it to be available only as part of the album."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/09/bu...09silence.html


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Product review

For iPod, 6 Flavors of Flattery
David Pogue

EVEN this early in the campaign, the battle for the popular vote is really heating up; the incumbent is being challenged by lesser-known candidates from all over the country. The winner will be the candidate with the best balance of new ideas and appealing looks - and battery life.

I am referring, of course, to the battle for supremacy among portable music players.

So far, Apple's iPod is by far the best seller among high-capacity players. You can't stand in a public place without seeing a pair of those telltale white earbud cords pass by; for once in its life, Apple gets to find out what it's like to be Microsoft. The iPod's success has spawned an entire industry of iPod cases, iPod accessories, iPod software - and now, inevitably, iPod imitators.

The rivals come from electronics makers (Samsung) and from fellow computer makers (Dell, Gateway), as well as from veteran music-player makers (Rio, Creative Labs, iRiver).

Most have the familiar iPod ingredients: a screen, a tiny hard drive and a rechargeable battery, all packed into a rectangular case and accompanied by earbuds. Most come with jukebox software that loads your collection of music files - which you've either downloaded or "ripped" from music CD's - onto the player over a U.S.B. 2.0 cable.

The other notable feature of these competitors is a marketing message that's either "just like the iPod, only cheaper" or "just like the iPod, only better."

Now, you're a busy person, so here's the gist: most of these rivals are cheaper - usually $100 less. But "better" is another story. The iPod is still smaller, more attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the upstarts.

It's also much more than just a music player. The iPod can also display your calendar and address book, serve as a text reader and alarm clock, help you pass the time with a suite of games, and so on. And that's before you tap into the universe of add-on shareware programs. (One intriguing example is iSpeak It for the Mac, which converts any text file, Web page or Microsoft Word document into a spoken-word soundtrack, using synthesized voices.)

Even so, certain audiences will prefer the iPod alternatives. For many people these days, "cheaper" is better than "better." Maybe you crave this bell or that whistle that the iPod lacks - a built-in FM radio, say, or a built-in microphone. Or maybe your Windows PC doesn't have Windows 2000 or XP - a requirement for iTunes, the iPod's companion software. (The iPod works with both Mac and Windows; most of the rivals are Windows-only.)

Furthermore, if you want to shop at one of those $1-a-song music Web sites, buying an iPod pretty much limits you to Apple's iTunes music store. (The Apple store's AAC files play only on the iPod. The other stores, like Napster and Musicmatch, deliver WMA files that work on any player except the iPod.) Of course, that's like being "forced" to drive a Lexus or "limited" to staying at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, but you get the point.

Finally, most of the iPods-in-training can run 13 to 16 hours per charge (manufacturers' estimates), compared with the iPod's eight. That may be important if you routinely commute from, say, New York to Tokyo, although bigger batteries add bulk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/te...ts/12stat.html


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As Newcomers Swarm, Sony Girds for a Fight
Ken Belson

KUNITAKE ANDO, the affable and self-deprecating president of the Sony Corporation, laughs as he holds up his digital camera to show off pictures of himself playing golf in Hawaii.

Yet when talk turns to the challenges facing Sony, Japan's best-known company, Mr. Ando, 62, turns deadly serious. And for good reason. At a trade show in Las Vegas in January, he got yet another glimpse of the chaos enveloping the consumer electronics business. Companies from Dell to Microsoft to Nokia want a piece of the market for home-entertainment hardware that Japanese companies, including Sony, once dominated.

For a company that has long flexed its muscles and built a reputation on being first, Sony is now in the awkward position of having to play catch-up, and Mr. Ando knows it. But, he says, Sony will prevail by leap-frogging the competition and developing a new generation of products that few consumers can now imagine.

"It's not scary for us" to compete against so many others, Mr. Ando said. "Offense is the best defense. Everyone is coming into this field, so we just can't wait and see what's going to happen."

Mr. Ando might have added that Sony has little choice. It is under attack from a number of electronics and software companies, many with billions of dollars to throw around, and it risks being marginalized if it sits tight. Just as worrisome, each new entrant to the business threatens to steal not just market share, but also the mantle of originality that Sony has built so carefully.

A few years ago, Sony would have sniffed at a low-cost computer maker like Dell producing flat-panel television monitors or a cellphone manufacturer like Nokia making hand-held video games. Not anymore. Sony executives know that these newcomers to the home-entertainment business can produce what they say they will, and do it for less than any company in Japan. Apple Computer's success with iPod, the digital music recorder, is also a reminder that Sony no longer has a monopoly on tech cool.

Sony, of course, has been under attack before, and often has rebounded in ways that few analysts had expected. Rarely, though, have so many competitors joined the home-entertainment market at once. Thanks to the commodification of the electronics industry, companies can buy components easily from suppliers in Taiwan, South Korea, China and even Japan. Having honed their cost-cutting skills, these companies can often produce products faster and more profitably than Sony can.

Having been upstaged by Apple, Samsung and others in certain product categories, Sony is taking action. Mr. Ando is one-half of a two-man team heading the company's ambitious, multipronged strategy, called Transformation 60. It is an effort to bolster profits, revamp the company's product lineup and repair what many critics see as a damaged reputation. To be completed by Sony's 60th anniversary, in 2006, the plan includes eliminating 20,000 jobs, cutting billions of dollars in expenses and quadrupling operating margins, to 10 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/bu...ey/08ando.html


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The Virus Underground
Clive Thompson

This is how easy it has become.

Mario stubs out his cigarette and sits down at the desk in his bedroom. He pops into his laptop the CD of Iron Maiden's ''Number of the Beast,'' his latest favorite album. ''I really like it,'' he says. ''My girlfriend bought it for me.'' He gestures to the 15-year-old girl with straight dark hair lounging on his neatly made bed, and she throws back a shy smile. Mario, 16, is a secondary-school student in a small town in the foothills of southern Austria. (He didn't want me to use his last name.) His shiny shoulder-length hair covers half his face and his sleepy green eyes, making him look like a very young, languid Mick Jagger. On his wall he has an enormous poster of Anna Kournikova -- which, he admits sheepishly, his girlfriend is not thrilled about. Downstairs, his mother is cleaning up after dinner. She isn't thrilled these days, either. But what bothers her isn't Mario's poster. It's his hobby.

When Mario is bored -- and out here in the countryside, surrounded by soaring snowcapped mountains and little else, he's bored a lot -- he likes to sit at his laptop and create computer viruses and worms. Online, he goes by the name Second Part to Hell, and he has written more than 150 examples of what computer experts call ''malware'': tiny programs that exist solely to self-replicate, infecting computers hooked up to the Internet. Sometimes these programs cause damage, and sometimes they don't. Mario says he prefers to create viruses that don't intentionally wreck data, because simple destruction is too easy. ''Anyone can rewrite a hard drive with one or two lines of code,'' he says. ''It makes no sense. It's really lame.'' Besides which, it's mean, he says, and he likes to be friendly.

But still -- just to see if he could do it -- a year ago he created a rather dangerous tool: a program that autogenerates viruses. It's called a Batch Trojan Generator, and anyone can download it freely from Mario's Web site. With a few simple mouse clicks, you can use the tool to create your own malicious ''Trojan horse.'' Like its ancient namesake, a Trojan virus arrives in someone's e-mail looking like a gift, a JPEG picture or a video, for example, but actually bearing dangerous cargo.

Mario starts up the tool to show me how it works. A little box appears on his laptop screen, politely asking me to name my Trojan. I call it the ''Clive'' virus. Then it asks me what I'd like the virus to do. Shall the Trojan Horse format drive C:? Yes, I click. Shall the Trojan Horse overwrite every file? Yes. It asks me if I'd like to have the virus activate the next time the computer is restarted, and I say yes again.

Then it's done. The generator spits out the virus onto Mario's hard drive, a tiny 3k file. Mario's generator also displays a stern notice warning that spreading your creation is illegal. The generator, he says, is just for educational purposes, a way to help curious programmers learn how Trojans work.

But of course I could ignore that advice. I could give this virus an enticing name, like ''britney--spears--wedding--clip.mpeg,'' to fool people into thinking it's a video. If I were to e-mail it to a victim, and if he clicked on it -- and didn't have up-to-date antivirus software, which many people don't -- then disaster would strike his computer. The virus would activate. It would quietly reach into the victim's Microsoft Windows operating system and insert new commands telling the computer to erase its own hard drive. The next time the victim started up his computer, the machine would find those new commands, assume they were part of the normal Windows operating system and guilelessly follow them. Poof: everything on his hard drive would vanish -- e-mail, pictures, documents, games.

I've never contemplated writing a virus before. Even if I had, I wouldn't have known how to do it. But thanks to a teenager in Austria, it took me less than a minute to master the art.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/08/magazine/08WORMS.html


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Ohio Considers Electronic Tracking of Cats
AP

More stray cats could find their way home under a proposed plan to implant microchips that would electronically identify the cats' owners.

Democrat Renee Greene introduced legislation Monday to implant microchips beneath the fur of 1,000 cats, giving the animals a permanent identification tag. A runaway cat's owner would be identified by scanning the chip, which would be about the size of a grain of rice, then checking the scan against a voluntary registry maintained by the city.

Buying and installing the microchips would cost the city nearly $10,000. The City Council still must approve the legislation.

The legislation is an amendment to a cat law passed about 18 months ago that added cats to the city's laws governing dogs and gave the city's animal wardens the right to capture free-roaming cats, which can be killed if they aren't claimed. The Summit County Animal Shelter, where stray cats are taken, already has the scanners that would be used on the microchips.

The cat law was considered controversial by some residents, and a nonprofit organization called the Citizens for Humane Animal Practices was formed to fight the law. The group has filed a lawsuit against the city, which is set to go to trial on May 17 in Summit County Common Pleas Court.

Greene said she introduced the amendment to ensure that ``the animal kingdom is well-represented and protected by this City Council.''

The legislation includes a $10 penalty for owners whose cats are picked up and returned to them.

Jeff Fusco, the city's deputy service director, said the city likely would charge about $10 for a microchip, which the Summit County Veterinary Medical Association would implant. Microchips normally cost between $70 and $120. The city would not charge residents to maintain the registry of owners.

The city also plans to host four free or low-cost spay-and-neuter clinics throughout the year, Fusco said.

Public hearings regarding the legislation will take place on Feb. 23.

Polly Grunfeld Sack, an attorney representing CHAP, said Monday she was grateful that the city is re-examining its cat law. However, Sack said 1,000 microchips cover only a fraction of the cats belonging to city residents.

``Certainly, it's a step in the right direction ... but there are so many better ways to spend that money,'' Sack said. ``The low-cost spay-and-neuter is starting to get to the problem --that's the only effective way to deal with free-roaming cats.''

Mayor Don Plusquellic said the legislation will help fulfill the city's responsibility to ensure that pet owners, regardless of their financial situation, won't lose their animals.

``We think we're fulfilling our obligation,'' Plusquellic said.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...ter-Chips.html


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Trippi: Net Politics Here to Stay
Noah Shachtman

Forgive the hundreds of thousands of people who gave Howard Dean more than $40 million in contributions last year. They might have thought they were trying to elect a president, but they were wrong, according to Dean's former campaign manager, Joe Trippi.

Instead, he said, all that money was used to beta test a new, online revolution in American politics.

Speaking at the Digital Democracy Teach-In -- part of this week's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in downtown San Diego - - Trippi issued a spirited defense of the former Vermont governor's campaign, and his role in Dean for America's mercurial rise and fall.

After Dean's worse-than-expected showing in Iowa, it became an instant media cliché to equate his campaign to the high-flying, fast-falling Internet bubble companies of the late 1990s. But Trippi said such comparisons were all wrong.

"This wasn't a dot-com crash," he said. "The Howard Dean campaign was a dot-com miracle."

"Revolution 1.0 was the 1700s," Trippi said. "We're in the middle of the beta stage of 2.0, where people have the tools to say, 'enough.'"

Many in the audience -- who gave Trippi a standing ovation after his talk -- seemed to agree.

"I was always a firm believer that there was always a future, a movement, a something, that happened afterward," said Robert Walikis, who writes the One Father for Dean weblog.

"The cat is out of the bag," said Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup.com. "People have it in their brain that they can organize themselves."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,62225,00.html


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9th Circuit Reverses AOL DMCA Safe Harbor Decision
ILN

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court decision which had ruled that AOL qualified for a DMCA safe harbor in a copyright infringement action brought by science fiction author Harlan Ellison. The court ruled that it was difficult to conclude that AOL had "reasonably implemented" a policy against repeat infringers as required by the safe harbor provisions. The court did uphold the dismissal of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims against AOL.

Case name is Ellison v. AOL. Decision athttp://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0255797P.pdf


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Judge Cracks Hold on Windows Trademark
Brenda Sandburg

Microsoft Corp. suffered a setback in efforts to enforce its Windows trademark when a Seattle federal court ruled that a jury must consider whether the word was a generic term 20 years ago.

The software giant, which is suing Lindows.com for trademark infringement, had argued that the present-day usage of the word should be considered in determining whether it is generic. But U.S. Chief District Judge John Coughenour, of the Western District of Washington, ruled Tuesday that he would instruct a jury to consider whether the mark was generic in November 1985 when Microsoft Windows 1.0 entered the market.

"If the term is found to be generic, 'it cannot be the subject of trademark protection under any circumstances,'" he wrote, citing the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 1999 opinion in Filipino Yellow Pages Inc. v. Asian Journal Publ'ns, 198 F.3d 1143.

Coughenour added, however, that "there is substantial ground for difference of opinion" as to the timing of the word's generic designation, and certified his order for interlocutory appeal to the 9th Circuit. The case, Microsoft Corp. v. Lindows.com Inc., 01-2115, had been scheduled for trial March 1.

Lindows.com attorney Daniel Harris, a partner at Clifford Chance's Palo Alto, Calif., office, said that before Microsoft launched its product, "windows" was commonly used by companies to describe an operating system's graphical user interface.

"People forget there were all these windows systems out there in the 1980s," Harris said. Now, "after $1.2 billion in advertising," people think of Microsoft when they hear the word.

The question, he said, is "whether it is valid to create a trademark by buying a word out of the English language."

Microsoft applied for registration of the Windows trademark in 1990 and was issued the trademark in 1995. Microsoft put a positive spin on the court's order. "We're very encouraged that the judge granted our request to ask the court of appeals to provide guidance before we go to trial," said Stacy Drake, a spokeswoman for Microsoft. She said the company intends to go to trial no matter how the 9th Circuit rules.

Microsoft had asked Coughenour to specify the proper time to consider whether its trademark is generic. "It is one of the world's most famous brands," Drake said. The term should be evaluated according to "usage and the understanding of present day consumers," she said.

Founded in 2001 by Michael Robertson, the founder and former CEO of the online music site MP3.com Inc., Lindows.com markets an operating system called Lindows OS. The system can run software applications developed for both the Linux and Windows operating systems.

Coughenour ruled in favor of Lindows.com two years ago when he denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction. At that time he said there were serious questions as to whether Windows is a non-generic name.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1076428297954


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Comcast Bids For Disney

No. 1 cable operator offers $54 billion for media company; Disney says it will evaluate the offer.
Paul R. La Monica

Comcast Corp. made a surprise, unsolicited offer to buy Walt Disney Co. for $54 billion Wednesday, a deal that would create one of the world's biggest entertainment companies.

Comcast, already the nation's biggest cable operator, if successful, would own one of the three dominant broadcast networks -- ABC -- as well as the Disney film studio, ESPN, and other Disney assets.

"This is a unique opportunity for all shareholders of Comcast and Disney to create a new leader of the entertainment and communications industry," Comcast president and CEO Brian Roberts said in a statement.

The proposed deal clearly puts more heat on Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, who is already facing trouble at home with dissident ex-Disney directors Roy Disney and Stanley Gold. They are leading a hostile campaign urging shareholders to oust Eisner.

Comcast said Disney Chairman Michael Eisner has been unwilling to discuss a merger.

Disney said in a statement that it "will carefully evaluate the unsolicited proposal from Comcast Corp." and urged shareholders to take no action.

But Disney (DIS: up $3.48 to $27.56, Research, Estimates) stock jumped about 15 percent and traded above the price Comcast offered, a sign that investors believe the bidding for Disney could go higher.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday that his company would not bid for Disney, according to Reuters. (For CNN/Money columnist Justin Lahart's take on a possible bidding war for Disney, click here.)

Under the deal, Comcast said it would issue 0.78 of a share of its Class A stock for each Disney share, valuing Disney at about $26.47 a share, or a total of $54.1 billion, based on Tuesday's closing prices. That's about 10 percent above Disney's closing price Tuesday.

Comcast would assume nearly $12 billion in debt under its proposal. (Click here to read Comcast's letter outlining its proposal).

But will the cable giant be able to pull off a deal? At least one industry analyst wasn't too excited about Comcast's offer.

George Smith at Davenport & Co. said the premium to Disney shareholders " was not sufficient."

"It will take a good deal more than that for such a large company like Disney. Some think that Disney's stock is undervalued as it is even without Comcast's bid. A premium closer to 30 percent could really heat up the talks."

Compounding matters for Comcast is that Disney reported sharply higher earnings Wednesday. Disney had been scheduled to announce results after the closing bell but moved up the release, reporting earnings of 33 cents a share, up from 2 cents a year earlier, and well above most Wall Street forecasts.

Matt Hemberger, an analyst with the Arbitrage fund, a mutual fund that invests in takeover situations, said that a fairer price for Disney is probably $30 to $32 a share. "I imagine that Disney's board would most likely reject the deal at this level," said Hemberger. "Comcast will have to come back to the table, especially in light of Disney's earnings."

But during a conference call to discuss the deal, Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif-Cohen congratulated Comcast, saying a merger would be "an amazingly brilliant combination."

Shares of Comcast (CMCSK: down $2.63 to $30.31, Research, Estimates), which also reported results Wednesday, sank 8 percent. Comcast posted a net profit of $383 million, reversing a year-earlier loss. Revenue came in at $4.74 billion, in line with Wall Street's forecast.

Deal would create a media powerhouse

Disney (DIS: Research, Estimates) shareholders would own 42 percent of the combined company under Comcast's proposal.

Roberts said during the conference call that he has yet to speak with Roy Disney, Gold or any other Disney shareholders, adding he hopes Disney's board "would do the right thing". Gold and Roy Disney were not immediately available for comment.

Disney and Gold blame Eisner for mismanaging Disney over the past decade, noting the recent breakdown in talks with Pixar Animation to extend the computer animation collaboration that has brought Disney such hits as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo."

In an open letter Tuesday, Disney director and former Senator George Mitchell said the company's board met in January to consider a succession plan for Eisner and planned to explore the matter in greater depth in April.

During Wednesday's call, Comcast Cable president Stephen Burke, who worked for Disney for 12 years before joining Comcast, said Comcast's first goal would be to restore Disney to the level of profitability it had a few years ago.

"We are not talking about taking Disney to unseen heights," Burke said.

Comcast could do a better job of getting distribution for some of Disney's cable channels, such as ESPN, ABC Family and the Disney Channel, Burke said, adding Comcast could operate the ABC network on a break-even basis and boost how much cash it generates.

But Patricia Lee at CreditSights, a fixed income research firm, said that the biggest plus for Comcast would be control of ESPN. Several cable companies have been involved in contentious negotiations about the rates that ESPN wants to charge cable companies to carry its networks. Comcast competitor Cox has been especially vocal about this topic.

"This deal offers Comcast the ability to control sports programming costs and that's a major expense for cable guys," Lee said.

She said Comcast has the financial flexibility to do a deal for Disney. The company has about $27 billion in debt but it reduced its debt load by $7 billion last year. Much of that debt was from Comcast's last major acquisition, the purchase of AT&T's cable operations in 2002.

Comcast could also sell assets to reduce debt if needed, including shares of entertainment company Liberty Media and a stake in Time Warner Cable, which is owned by Time Warner, the parent of CNN/Money.

But one fund manager said he was skeptical a merger would be a success.

After all, big media deals such as Vivendi-Universal and AOL-Time Warner have had their share of problems, said Alex Vallecillo, co-manager of the Armada Large Cap Value fund, which owns Comcast shares.

"On paper, marrying content with distribution makes a lot of sense but in reality it's been a tough nut to crack," said Vallecillo. "If Comcast can figure out a way to get margins back to where they were five years ago, then it's a great deal. But that's a mammoth if."

-- Staff writer Parija Bhatnagar contributed to this story.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/11/news...omcast_disney/


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Gates Hooks Up With Mickey Mouse
ILN

Microsoft and Disney have agreed to would work together to develop new ways of securely distributing digital entertainment via the Internet, on portable devices and on future versions of the DVD. Under a multiyear agreement, Disney agreed to license Microsoft's Windows Media. The two companies also have agreed to collaborate on a broad set of issues related to electronic distribution of entertainment.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...423860,00.html


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Court Is Urged to Change Media Ownership Rules
Stephen Labaton

Broadcasters and public interest groups on Wednesday urged the federal appeals court here to order the Federal Communications Commission to rewrite its new rules that govern the size and reach of the nation's largest media conglomerates. Many of the parties joining the fight against the F.C.C., however, are doing so for diametrically opposed reasons.

The case has enormous implications for the newspaper, television and radio industries. The new rules make it significantly easier for the biggest companies to acquire other companies both in their existing markets and in new ones. The rules have been supported by some media companies, opposed by others, and have been heavily criticized by many civic organizations on the grounds that they could reduce competition and diversity of views on the airwaves, as well as lead to reduced news coverage of local affairs.

At a hearing lasting more than eight hours, public interest groups and some smaller broadcasters urged a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to restore the federal restrictions that had prevented a company from owning a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same market. Asserting that the commission used the wrong standard of review and flawed theoretical models about consumer behavior to create the ownership rules, the opponents also asked the court to reverse rules that would make it easier for a broadcaster to own more television stations in one market.

On the other side, a group of newspapers, television networks and other broadcasters, including Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest broadcast radio company, argued that the commission had not deregulated the industry enough. They urged the court to return the rules to the commission and order it to apply a higher standard of review in trying to justify all of its media regulations.

Trying to steer a middle course, the commission's general counsel, John A. Rogovin, asserted that the new regulations were grounded in law and competition policy and should be affirmed by the court.

The announcement on Wednesday by Comcast of Philadelphia, the nation's largest cable company, that it was making a $54.1 billion bid for the Walt Disney Company, cast a shadow over the court proceedings, even though that proposed deal is not affected by the rules at issue in the court case. Two years ago, a federal appeals court struck down the restrictions barring a single company from owning a cable operator and a broadcaster in the same community.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/bu...a/12media.html


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Guilty Plea For eBay Pirate
John Borland

A Minnesota man has pleaded guilty to selling pirated copies of movies on eBay, in the first such criminal copyright case brought by federal prosecutors.

According to the Department of Justice, 20-year-old Andre Pnewski testified that he downloaded the films from the eDonkey file-trading service and sold them on CDs through eBay. He was sentenced to six months of home detention with electronic bracelet monitoring and must pay $7,170 in damages to the Motion Picture Association of America.
http://news.com.com/2110-1025_3-5156977.html


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TiVo Wins Pause Technology Patent Suit
Richard Shim

Digital video recording service company TiVo announced Tuesday that it received a favorable ruling in a patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by Pause Technology in 2001. Judge Patti Saris of the District of Massachusetts ruled TiVo does not infringe on Pause's patent, according to San Jose, Calif.-based TiVo. Pause's patent covered the pausing of live television, replaying portions of a program while it is being recorded, and fast- forwarding through recorded segments to "catch up" to a live broadcast being recorded. Pause said it first contacted TiVo about the infringement in April 2000 and then again in May 2001.

TiVo plans to file a motion requiring Pause to pay all of TiVo's attorney's fees and costs.
http://news.com.com/2110-1041_3-5156906.html


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Downloads Outsell DVDs And Vinyl
BBC

Sales of legal music downloads have reached a new high to become the second most popular singles format in the UK.

More than 150,000 downloads were sold last month, exceeding sales of 12-inch, seven-inch and DVD singles, the Official Charts Company reported.

This included a record 50,000 downloads in the week after the 19 January launch of online music service MyCokeMusic.

CD singles remain the most popular singles format, however, with 341,461 sold during that week.

The Official Charts Company (OCC) began compiling legal music download figures in October, with a view to developing a separate download chart.

It said download sales had risen each month since October, but the January 2004 figures were the first to have been published.

The OCC also intends to integrate downloads into its Official Singles Chart later this year.

Meanwhile sales of CD albums rose by 5.6% in the UK last year, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) reported.

New British artists and falling retail prices have helped the UK buck the worldwide decline in recorded music sales, it said.

The rise in sales resulted in a UK record industry revenue of £1,112m last year, an increase of 2.1% on 2002.

"This is an exceptional result considering the huge pressure the recorded music market is under worldwide," said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.

Between 1998 and 2002, the last full year for which data was available, worldwide sales of recorded music fell by 18%. Over the same period the value of sales in the UK rose by 6%.

Mr Jamieson said the UK music industry was going through a "strong patch" thanks to high sales of albums by rock bands The Darkness and Lostprophets, and jazz stars Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua.

Traditional singles sales continued to fall last year, however, with the value of non-download singles sales dropping 33.6% last year to £64.4m.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3475337.stm


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Why the RIAA Likes the Per-Song Model
George Ziemann

As I wait patiently for the RIAA's top-notch accounting and fiction writing team to serve up the year-end statistics for our amusement and derisive comments, I'm giving this compulsory licensing thing a lot of thought.

After reading the analysis of Prof. Fisher's plan, I really don't understand the RIAA's reluctance to be pushing that route. It's like guaranteed income for them, just by virtue of the fact that they own most of the music out there. Fisher cut them into a $1.68 billion piece of pie that many of us think they don't deserve in the first place.

Remember, they turned Napster's 5 cents per song offer down. At today's Kazaa file-swapping levels (4 billion songs a month, last I heard), which works out 133 million songs a day, times a nickle, which gives us $6.7 million a day in royalty income. For a full year, that's a tidy sum running in the neighborhood of $2.5 billion.

So Fisher's $1.67 billion is a lot less than they could have taken from Kazaa. In fact, over the four years they've been fighting about p2p, the RIAA's members have effectively passed up on almost $10 billion in income that wasn't good enough for them.

While Forrester Research claims that unauthorized downloading costs the recording industry a mere $700 million a year, the RIAA likes to pretend that it's in the billions.

Reality, of course, is probably (but not necessarily) somewhere in the middle. It is all a guess though. There is simply no way the RIAA can reasonably or accurately estimate how many downloads would have actually turned into a sale had they not been available or, conversely, how many downloaded songs prompted consumers to go out and actually buy a CD.

But we can see how much they've lost by being arrogant, greedy bastards. It's easy, just add a nickle for every Kazaa download that goes by.

$10 billion and counting.

Personally, I would be glad to have a mere nickle for every time my songs were downloaded. For most of last year, that would have produced two or three hundred dollars in income every month. Not just for myself, but for several of the artists on my sites.

And Kazaa tried to negotiate with them to end the stupidity. Again, the copyright cartel refused to budge from their platform - "We own everything ever recorded."

So what is the RIAA actually after? It must not be the money because they have passed up so much of it. To make the puzzle even more conflicted, consider the down side of the iTunes Music Store, Napster, etc.

With CDs priced at $18.98 and averaging 12 songs each, you're looking at $1.58 per song. At CD quality, if anyone cares. 99 cents would be less, thus devaluing the physical CD, at the same time the RIAA is consistently trying to raise prices. Of course, the RIAA is ALWAYS trying to raise prices, so that's an easy jab.

So while they're still pretending to try and sell CDs in real record stores (okay, in Walmart), they're letting the online services shave about 33% percent off of the going retail price for a song, all the while screaming about fewer sales dollars.

So why Napster 2? Why iTunes? What makes these pay-per-song models so attractive to the industry?

Demographics and targeted marketing.

To buy music you have to pay for it, and until we figure out how to feed cash directly into the Net, that means a credit card. It also means you have been identified.

They can study your habits, to the point of offering you selections based on your prior listening preferences. This also gives them access to the wide-scale demographics -- who's buying what, where are they from, how old are they and what is their credit rating?

The RIAA will not get that valuable information from a $5 fee on your cable bill. Or even from traditional record stores, where they still accept that ancient anonymous payment mode known as cash.

But spend $5 at iTunes, and they've got your number. In return, you get digital rights management.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/10227


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China Plans New Anti-Piracy Seals To Combat Rampant Counterfeiting

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Is it a cheap fake, or the real thing?

Since buyers here can't always tell, authorities are planning new, high-tech identification seals for legal copies of audio and video products in China's latest effort to combat rampant piracy of movies and music, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday.

Despite tightened laws and repeated promises to crack down on widespread theft of trademarks, copyrights and other intellectual property, illegal copies of movies, cassette disks and books are widely available. Many of the counterfeit items carry seemingly authentic, but fake seals.

The new seals, made with a special ``biologically engineered'' printing ink and carrying 13 unique markings, will be used beginning Sunday to help consumers and inspectors to distinguish between illicit and legitimate products, said Chen Tong, division chief of the ministry's Audio and Video Products Department in Beijing.

According to Beijing-based Orient Anti-Forgery Technology Co., the company that made the new seals, each of the 13 markings will employ a different advanced technology, including ``stealth'' bar codes and handwritten Chinese characters.

The ministry will authorize 300 audio and video product makers and publishers to use the seals, which replace less sophisticated ones used since 1996, Chen said in a phone interview.

The old ID seals will be banned a year from now, he said.

Will the new markings prevent piracy? ``It's hard to tell,'' Chen said. ``At least it will make faking markings and sales of pirated products more difficult because it will be easier to tell which products are unlicensed.''

The ID marks used so far seem to have done little to prevent production and sales of pirated products. Peddlers of pirated CDs and DVDs sell their wares from openly sidewalk kiosks, and many bookstores have sections that specialize in pirated movies.

Movies like ``The Last Samurai'' are screened in Shanghai homes long before their premieres in local theaters. Sometimes, the laughably mismatched subtitles, poor sound and giggles from cinema audiences where the illicit copies were filmed are dead giveaways. But with some seemingly authentically packaged copies, it can be hard to tell.

Last month, Blockbuster Inc., the video rental unit of entertainment giant Viacom Inc., announced it was ending its Hong Kong business and dropping plans to enter the mainland Chinese market, citing rampant counterfeiting and high costs.

``The mainland is certainly an attractive market looking at the demographics,'' said Michael Wong, Blockbuster's marketing manager in Hong Kong. Research showed, though, that with pirated movies selling for less than 10 yuan (US$1.20) apiece, there was no way to earn a ``viable return,'' he said.

Chen, of the Culture Ministry, acknowledged that the identification seals would be no cure-all for the problem.

``Look, anti-counterfeiting technology for currency is already very sophisticated,'' he said. ``But there are still people faking it.''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/7918904.htm


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Flak Over Flags

The FCC has green-lighted a flag that imposes copy controls on digital television. And there was much rejoicing?
Anush Yegyazarian

I remember when the term digital applied to clock radios and not much else. These days, it seems to modify every aspect of life, from dating, address books, datebooks, music, and photos to videos and broadcast TV. We've all been told that analog is passé, and that the quality, versatility, portability, and longevity of all things digital clearly make that media the superior choice.

And therein lies the rub. Digital media really can live up to the hype (we're mostly there). Copies of digital content are identical to the originals, and there's none of the degradation we lived with in the bad old analog days--which is why the people who create content that gets encoded digitally are so nervous. The free-for-all music grab that was Napster casts long shadows, and they'll be with us for quite a while.

Enter the broadcast flag, the latest of the entertainment industry's attempts to tame the lawless digital frontier. Approved by the Federal Communications Commission back in November, the broadcast flag applies to digital TV broadcast signals--which are supposed to be more or less universal by the end of 2006, although many experts predict that won't happen. It's supposed to restrict content copying, so that you can't transfer the latest, high-quality, digital episode of CSI from your TiVo to your PC and then let it loose on that crime facilitator known as the Internet.

But neither copy protection proponents nor critics are happy with the ruling, and both sides are gearing up for further battles.

Quick Flag FAQ

So what can you do when the broadcast flag gets activated? Here are answers to common questions about the technology:

Q. Can you still copy your favorite program, so you don't have to watch it at its scheduled time?

A. Yes.

Q. Can you copy it to a DVD?

A. Yes. Even if you stored it on a hard disk first, you should still be able to transfer that content to a single DVD--and possibly make a back-up copy, but that will depend on the specific restriction given to your recording device by the flag. I wouldn't count on lots of backups.

Q. Can you then copy that DVD for a few hundred of your closest friends?

Q. No. Not only is the flag likely to prevent that, but also existing copyright law prohibits that level of reproduction.

Q. Can you legally invite a few friends to watch the DVD you made of your favorite show?

A. Sure, as long as you don't charge admission.

Q. Can you legally play that DVD on your PC or your notebook when you travel?

A. Yes--that still counts as personal use, and you're not making multiple copies. However, if you recorded the DVD with a device that recognizes the flag, you won't be able to play it if your PC and notebook DVD drive can't read the flag.

Q. Can you legally transfer that episode from your networked personal video recorder to a peer-to-peer network to be accessed by millions of impatient freeloaders who can't wait for their local syndicators to get it?

A. No, precious. That's what they call piracy. And the flag is supposed to remove that temptation from your path.

Q. Can you legally transfer that episode from your networked PVR to another TV or recorder in your own home?

A. Maybe. The FCC isn't clear on that, although the ruling does allow for that possibility. It's only supposed to affect indiscriminate, widespread redistribution (read: via peer-to-peer). There seems to be no outright guarantee, however, that the glorious, easy-to-use home entertainment network promised by consumer electronics and computer vendors alike--the network that lets video and music content get shuttled around seamlessly from your living room DVD recorder to your upstairs TV to your PC in the office to your stereo in the den--will actually be possible.

Q. Do I have to get new equipment?

A. That's practically guaranteed. You should be able to view flagged content on legacy equipment (as long as that equipment can handle digital signals), and you'll still be able to record that content on your VCR. However, if you buy a DVD recorder or a new TiVo device that recognizes the flag- -as they're all supposed to do by mid-2005--and use it to record your favorite episode, you probably won't be able to play that disc back on older DVD players. In other words, once you've recorded it with a device or medium that sees the flag, that content is locked to devices that can't see the flag.

Q. Will every program be flagged?

A. Nope. That's up to the individual content provider. Pay-per-view content will likely have the most restrictions, and older reruns less--maybe even none. One curiosity: News programs probably will be flagged, even though there is no syndication issue with them and timeliness is, clearly, of the essence.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the Center for Democracy and Technology offer their own broadcast-flag-specific FAQs. As you might imagine, their views differ somewhat. (On its Web site, the CDT offers both a Cliff's Notes version of its broadcast flag proposal and a more in-depth report.)

For more on digital media do's and don'ts, see "Consumer Watch: To Copy or Not to Copy."

Nobody's Happy

Neither side particularly likes the broadcast flag as is.

Copy protection proponents, including the MPAA, think it leaves gaping holes through which the piracy-minded can easily swipe content. For example, the encryption standard just has to be strong enough to deter average users, not experts; the MPAA doesn't think that's good enough. Some digital rights management companies, like Digimarc, go one step further, arguing that the flag itself lacks both the flexibility and the robustness to really protect content. (Digimarc sells, and naturally champions, rival rights management technology known as watermarking.)

For the MPAA, that issue pales in comparison to what it calls the "analog hole." All of the rules discussed in my Q&A restrict digital content recorded by digital devices. If you re-record that content onto analog media or record it to analog in the first place, you bypass the flag and the protection. That doesn't even address the fact that most content today is analog--and it will likely stay that way for several years, digital TV deadline or not. As you may expect by now, the MPAA intends to pursue legislative relief for this, too.

The CDT, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, and other consumer rights groups worry that the flag's guidelines are too broad and may end up not only restricting what consumers can do, but also what technology can do. No more nifty new products if technology innovation is stifled by government rules, regulations, and red tape. Moreover, what's the incentive for someone to buy a new device that does less than the one they currently own? If consumers won't buy, innovation again loses.

The Fall of Fair Use?

In recent years entertainment companies have been fighting to define the notion of "fair use"--which lets people make copies of music, video, and other content they've paid for, as long as it's for personal use--more and more narrowly, or get rid of it altogether. Consumer groups are concerned that this type of government-endorsed regulation will drive another nail in fair use's coffin.

And then there's the privacy issue. Although TiVo can tell you how many of its users replayed Janet Jackson's MTV half-time show and what commercials didn't get skipped, people who watch over-the-air broadcasts don't get their viewing habits tracked to that extent. It's possible that the broadcast flag could be used to track who's recording content and what they're doing with it.

The Flag and I

For the moment, let's ignore the question of whether the FCC has the authority to set rules in this case. Like all government regulation, the broadcast flag is imperfect. Tensions between consumers and copyright holders are at an all-time high and, to be honest, both sides have good reason to feel threatened. No one likes to have their work stolen; and no one likes to be presumed a thief when they in fact have done nothing wrong. Hauling 12- year-olds into court doesn't help, either. This is not supposed to be a death match: Movie and music makers have something I want (their products), and I have something they want (my money).

Some degree of copy control is inevitable. Artists and the companies who employ them have a right to be paid for their work, and to prevent its distribution to the four corners of the world by any Joe or Jane with an Internet connection.

But entertainment companies have to remember that we are their customers, not their adversaries. There are things I want to do with content that makes it worth the money: Take these things away, and I'm less willing to pay.

Moreover, my needs are not static: I'm busy, and I'm not willing to consume things only when they're offered to me or in the way they're packaged. VCRs, TiVo, portable music players, CD burners and the like have taught me I don't have to. And these technologies also have implications for syndication as it exists today--namely, that it may not be able to exist tomorrow. None of this means, however, that I'm unwilling to pay for the flexibility I want and the programming I enjoy.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114649,00.asp


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Mac info

File Sharing Tips from the Newest Take Control Ebook
Glenn Fleishman

Even non-techies know about file sharing, mostly due to music that's illegally uploaded and downloaded through peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella and Kazaa. Other types of file sharing exist, but they don't tend to make the covers of mainstream magazines. This article is about those other types - the routine file sharing that takes place in homes and offices for tasks such as managing project files shared by individuals in a group and creating a central archive of important files.

File sharing usually engenders frustration: we only think about sharing files when it doesn't work, or when a system we think we know acts unexpectedly. I'm fascinated by the topic, so I wrote "Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther" with the hope of taking the sting out of file sharing frustration and introducing you to time- saving techniques that will improve security, increase flexibility, and simplify file transfer. To give you an idea of what's in the ebook and provide some useful help, here are three of my best stand-alone tips from the book.

IP over FireWire for Small Ad Hoc Groups -- Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can use FireWire cabling as a networking method, just like Ethernet or AirPort. Because even FireWire 400 is a few times faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, IP over FireWire can be a great way to hook up small networks on the fly.

You may already know about FireWire Target Disk Mode, in which you connect a laptop, for instance, to another Mac, and then power up the laptop while pressing the T key on the keyboard. When the laptop finishes booting, it shows a FireWire symbol on its screen (and nothing else) and on the other machine, the laptop's drive appears in the Finder just like any other mounted hard disk.

IP over FireWire extends and simplifies the Target Disk Mode notion and eliminates the need to put one Mac into a special state. You can daisy chain from 2 to 63 Macs together using standard FireWire cables, or link the computers via FireWire hubs.

You enable IP over FireWire just like any other network connection:

Open System Preferences.

Click the Network preference pane.

Choose Network Port Configurations from the Show menu.

Click New.

Choose Built-in FireWire from the Port pop-up menu. You might name the service "IP over FireWire".

Click OK and then click Apply Now.

Now, when you plug Macs together with FireWire cables, each computer assigns itself its own address, and the Rendezvous auto-discovery services enable each computer to see resources on other machines. You can even use Internet sharing (in the Sharing preference pane's Internet tab) to share an Internet connection over FireWire.

Turn Off Guest Access in Personal File Sharing -- There's a fundamental problem with Panther's built-in AppleShare server: when you enable it, a guest user - one without a user name and password - can connect and view or copy files from any user's Public folder. This is a security hazard, and one I think Apple should offer an easy way to disable through a checkbox.

Until they do, however, you can follow this procedure for turning off default AppleShare guest access:

Open the /Library/Preferences folder.

Find the file named com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist and copy it to the Desktop or another folder by pressing the Option key while dragging. (You may be able to edit it in place by authenticating when saving, but it's best to have a backup copy anyway.)

Open the file in TextEdit or any text editor, such as BBEdit.

Find the lines in the file that read:

<key>guestAccess</key>
<true/>

Change <true/> to <false/>.

Save the file.

Drag the original com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist file to the Trash or save it in a backup location elsewhere.

Move your edited version back into /Library/ Preferences.

If you've already turned on Personal File Sharing, restart it by stopping it and then starting it in the Sharing preference pane.

Restore Jaguar-like Server Browsing -- Panther 10.3 through 10.3.2 creates a split in the way that you mount shared file servers compared to earlier versions of Mac OS X. Under Jaguar and previous releases of Mac OS X, all file servers were "hard mounted." A hard-mounted file server appears as an icon on the Desktop (assuming you have that option turned on in the Panther Finder's Preferences window), and is for most purposes exactly like a local hard disk. But with hard-mounted servers, if the server becomes unavailable - your network connection goes down, the server crashes - your Finder can lock up for quite some time, even under Panther, until it decides to release the missing server.

You can still hard mount servers under Panther by choosing Connect to Server (Command-K) from the Finder's Go menu and entering the server's details manually, but Panther also offers an interesting, but flakey, new option for mounting servers on a local network, long available in Unix: "soft mounting." A soft-mounted server is more like a folder. Instead of it showing on the Desktop, you browse to it using the Network browser (the Network icon in the Finder's sidebar). If the server or your network becomes unavailable, Panther doesn't complain or pause even when you try to access the unavailable server, of course - it's just not there any more. When the server becomes reachable once again, you can browse that folder and find the server's contents in it.

Originally, I thought that soft mounting was an excellent alternative to servers on the Desktop because soft-mounted servers are always available without any login process. But in practical use, I continually find strange behavior: having to re-enter a password, not finding servers that I think were soft mounted, mounting servers as both hard and soft at the same time. It's too much to manage compared with the relative ease and few disadvantages to hard mounting servers.

To avoid soft mounting entirely and to skip entering machine numbers or names in the hard-mounting dialog, you can mostly restore the Jaguar-style Connect to Server browsing dialog. My colleague Dan Frakes gave us this one-line AppleScript script which triggers a version of the old software interface.

From the /Applications/AppleScript folder, launch Script Editor.

Enter the following in the default Untitled window that opens:

open location (choose URL) with error reporting

Save the file in /Library/Scripts/Finder Scripts/ as "Old Hard Mount" or whatever you choose.

Turn on the Finder Script menubar menu by running Install Script Menu from the /Applications/AppleScript folder.

While in the Finder, select the script from the Finder Scripts submenu of the Script menu, and there's the beautiful old Jaguar network browser. This version, however, makes you select which type of server you want to browse for through a pop-up menu.

"Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther" -- In addition to the tips above, the 96-page ebook covers all the built-in methods of sharing files using the Web, AppleShare, Samba, and FTP (it even gives a few pointers on NFS and several lesser-known options), while guiding you through changing configuration files and using third-party software to avoid pitfalls and problems. For example, I give steps for changing Apple's configuration files to enable WebDAV file sharing using Panther's Apache Web server and to use Apache to share folders other than the defaults (a useful option that I also demystify for AppleShare and Samba).

For Panther users who find themselves in mixed Mac and Windows networks, the ebook covers both how to connect to a Panther system running the built-in Windows-style Samba file server, and how to connect from a Panther machine to a Samba file server running on a Windows computer (or another Mac or Unix system, even).

In researching the ebook, I found that Panther changed the equation for many aspects of file sharing, from browsing on a local network for servers to turning servers on with the right amount of security. I addressed these problems with specific, step-by-step instructions, plus I wrote a long section detailing how to connect to Panther servers from major platforms, including Panther, Jaguar, Mac OS 9, and Windows XP. The book also covers sharing music and photos with iPhoto and iTunes, both in ways that Apple recommends and in alternative, more flexible ways. I hope you find the book helpful!

<http://www.tidbits.com/ takecontrol/ panther/ sharing.html>

[Editor's note: If you've been following our Take Control ebook series, you've noticed that previous books have carried a $5 price. This one costs $10, but the increase is not simple price inflation of the sort Consumer Reports loves to document ("Smaller size, bigger taste, same great price!"). At 96 pages, Glenn's ebook is nearly twice as long as the others, was considerably more work for all of us, and will probably grow even larger when we release free updates. -Tonya]
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07537


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2003 Overall Music Sales Declining among Teens -- and Their Parents
Press Release

Less excitement about new releases and more competition for entertainment spending dollars causing teens to spend less on CDs, says The NPD Group

According to recent news reports, the music industry began to show some positive signs of fiscal recovery beginning in 2003. The NPD Group, Inc. reports, however, that teen consumers are not on the leading edge of this industry upturn.

Overall dollar sales of music CDs fell eight percent last year compared to 2002. NPD estimates that three quarters of this decline can be directly attributed to unit sales declines last year, while the rest is attributed to recent retail price reductions. Among teens aged 13 to 17 years old, sales declines were even steeper reaching 15 percent in 2003.

"Certainly illegal peer-to-peer music file sharing continues to plague the music industry, but that's only part of a larger story" said Russ Crupnick, vice president of The NPD Group. "Another aspect of these sales declines is based on competition we're seeing from alternative entertainment-related spending options for teens, such as cell phones and video games. As music sales continued to fall, video games software unit sales rose 12 percent in 2003 among teens aged 13 to 17 years old."

NPD's information also suggests that the 2002 repertoire of new releases was more appealing to young consumers than were last year's releases. Thirty releases sold more than 500,000 units to teens in 2002, compared with only 15 releases that reached that level in 2003. Top- selling 2003 releases to teens included albums by such artists as 50Cent, Good Charlotte and Simple Plan; however, the overall music line up last year did not reach the levels seen in 2002, when Eminem, Nelly, Avril and Linkin Park dominated the charts.

Sales to the 35- to 44-year-old age group also declined sharply (down 13 percent), while gift purchasing of music among this demographic fell 20 percent. According to NPD's data, the younger age groups buy more music, but the 35- to 44-year-old group is the most important in terms of buying music for others. No artist approached the gift levels of Avril, Nelly and Pink among this age demographic.

"There are two negative effects here," according to Crupnick. "If kids aren't clamoring for music, not only do we lose sales to younger consumers, but also parents will be less likely to shop the music section on behalf of their children. On top of that, DVD's are to older demographics what video games are to teens. An October 2003 NPD survey showed that 26 percent of DVD purchases were made by 35 to 44 year olds. That's fierce competition for the consumer's entertainment dollar."

One bright spot in the CD sales landscape was found within an older demographic group. Dollar sales to the 55- to 64-year-old age group actually increased six percent, driven strongly by the continued sales of Norah Jones's 2002 release. In addition, new releases from Clay Aiken and Rod Stewart were also popular among this demographic, as were country music artists, like Alan Jackson and Toby Keith.

Source: The NPD Group's MusicWatch tracking service, which reports consumer buying patterns for music based on NPD's online panel. The data represent annual 2002 and 2003 periods, from a sample of over 100,000 music purchases per year. The video games data is sourced from NPD Funworld Video Games service.
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/...&newsLang =en


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Altnet Reaches Milestone with Technology that Combats Online Piracy

300 Million Authorized Files Downloaded Through Peer-to-Peer Software
Press Release

Altnet, the secure peer-to-peer platform provider, announced today that it has reached a milestone of 300 million downloads of authorized content using Altnet technology.

"Having a legal downloading alternative is the most effective form of anti-piracy there is," said Derek Broes, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Operations for Altnet. "Fortunately, technology exists with a proven success rate for distributing fully licensed, compensated content over peer-to-peer software."

"Providing high-quality, legitimate files for easy downloading on software like Kazaa and Grokster is an effective anti- piracy method," Broes continued. "For every licensed file downloaded, that means one was not pirated. Consumers want the ease and convenience of downloading and the community features of file sharing. Altnet provides that and simultaneously provides the music and motion picture industries a way to profit from a distribution method that can efficiently reach millions of users. In this way, we are curbing piracy, one file at a time."

Altnet's technology works by obtaining preferred listing spots in the search results of the most widely used peer-to- peer software, including Kazaa, the largest and most popular file sharing application in the world, and Grokster, Edonkey and Overnet. Altnet technology delivers search results into the file sharing software when a search request is initiated. The Altnet results appear first, before any results appear from the shared directories on the user's computer. The Altnet results appear as gold icons and can occupy the top 50 slots when relevant content is available in Altnet's catalog. Other results provided by the shared folders of other users are not controlled by Altnet or the peer-to-peer application and these appear as blue icons which Altnet cannot monitor due to the decentralized nature of the technology. Altnet's current catalog consists of 5,000 files. The company is in the process of adding another 20,000 files over the next few months.

"The 5,000 music, video and other files Altnet now offers translates into 50 million authorized files being downloaded through peer-to-peer each month at current rates," said Broes. "We believe that inserting licensed files into peer-to- peer software is the most effective form of anti-piracy, and our download numbers support that. If the record labels were to provide their entire catalogs for distribution through Altnet, we estimate the number of legal downloads could soar to more than one billion per month, providing a significant revenue stream for the industry."
http://www.primezone.com/pages/news_....mhtml?d=52309


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Intel Reports a Research Leap to a Faster Chip
John Markofb

Intel scientists will announce on Thursday that they have built a prototype of a silicon chip that can switch light on and off like electricity, blurring the line between computing and communications and bringing sweeping changes to the way digital information and entertainment are delivered.

For the first time, Intel researchers said, they have shown that ultra-high-speed fiber optic equipment can be produced at the equivalent of low-cost personal computer industry prices. Industry executives said the advance could lead to commercial products by the end of the decade.

As the costs of communicating in cyberspace falls, the researchers said, existing barriers to creating fundamentally new kinds of digital machines capable of far greater performance, and not limited by physical distance, should disappear.

The advance, described in a paper to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that Intel, as the world's largest chip maker, is on the verge of developing the technology to move into lucrative new telecommunications markets.

"Before there were two worlds, computing and communications,'' said Alan Huang, a former Bell Labs physicist who founded Terabit, an optical networking company in Menlo Park, Calif. "Now they will be the same, and we will have powerful computers everywhere."

The advance, scientists and industry executives said, should free computer designers to think about the systems they create in new ways, making it possible to conceive of machines that are not situated in a single physical place. It will also make possible a new class of computing applications to transmit high-definition video to homes hundreds or even thousands of times as fast as over today's Internet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/te...gy/12chip.html


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Pirate Grrrl. She’s Baaack!

Yaaar!

The music pirates' manifesto.
Annalee Newitz

WITH A GROAN , I peeled the transparent sticker off my brand-new iPod. In the clean, cute font for which Apple is known, it read, "Don't steal music." Even the wrapping paper on my smooth little machine was full of antipiracy propaganda. But the software wrappings Apple places around the music the iPod plays are far worse than propaganda: they enforce, with no subtlety or charm, the licensing preferred by corporate copyright holders.

Once upon a time, Apple's slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn." meant "make as many copies as you want of your legally purchased music." Now it means "make the limited number of copies we deem appropriate." All that's being ripped, mixed, and burned are fair-use laws.

If you buy music from the Apple iTunes store, which is what Steve Jobs hopes you'll do, you pay 99¢ for a song but can only copy it onto three computers. What if those computers become obsolete or unusable in a few years? Too bad – no more copies for you. Your music dies with your computers. If you want to create a mix CD with your songs, you may burn only 10 copies, even though fair-use laws grant you permission to burn as many copies as you like for educational use. Ah, you say, but at least you can save iTunes songs onto as many iPods as you want! Isn't that fair? Not really – once you put music onto your iPod, you can delete it but you can't copy it anywhere else. The iPod is a one-way music device: music files go in but don't come out. It's all part of Apple's digital rights management (DRM) scheme ironically known as Fairplay.

Free-software activist Richard Stallman has dubbed DRM "digital restriction management," while the media industry views it as the latest killer app. For the past couple years the Recording Industry Association of America has been waging a losing war against people who share music over the Internet. The RIAA argues that music copyright holders like Virgin and Time Warner are losing millions of dollars a day because evil copyright infringers are freely trading music files on popular peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as Kazaa, eMule, SoulSeek, and BitTorrent. But the RIAA's efforts to stop music sharing have ended in a series of public relations disasters, including suing a 12-year-old "pirate" for downloading copyrighted nursery rhymes and sending burly ex-cops in RIAA "uniforms" to bust music peddlers on the streets in Los Angeles. So the RIAA has turned to kinder, gentler solutions.

And that's where the high-tech industry comes into the picture. Software companies, eager to lap up profits any way they can, realized there would be a huge market for programs that could be wrapped around digital media or put into players to prevent piracy. Microsoft, Apple, and RealNetworks are at the forefront of this burgeoning market with their DRM schemes for music. Apple packages iTunes songs in its Fairplay software, while RealNetworks (maker of the popular RealPlayer) has just opened a music store full of DRM-shackled songs to compete with iTunes. Microsoft markets the Media Rights Management software package and is planning to include a controversial and elaborate DRM scheme called the Next- Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly known as Palladium) in the next version of Windows.

So far, the RIAA's efforts have met with confusion and resistance. Many consumers are puzzled by DRM – iTunes, for example, only explains its DRM policies on a part of its Web site that few customers are likely to read – and wind up with unplayable music files because they have unwittingly used up all their copies. Among hackers, DRM is a target for ideological reasons. Ian Clarke, project coordinator for anonymous file-sharing system Freenet, said, "DRM turns computers against their owners. I don't want a Disney security guard sitting in my living room watching my every move."

Jon Johansen, a Norwegian programmer who wrote the DeCSS program to break DRM on DVDs, has released a little chunk of code called QTFairUse for circumventing DRM on iTunes songs. And Princeton University graduate student Alex Halderman published a paper explaining how to bypass SunnComm's MediaMax DRM scheme by holding down the Shift key while the CD is spinning up.

What fuels the ire of hackers are what they consider the music industry's blatant lies about who loses when people share music. The RIAA claims music-sharing drives down sales and deprives artists of potential earnings. But Tom Mennecke, who analyzes peer-to-peer (P2P) trends for Web site Slyck (www.slyck.com), said, "People can see through the RIAA's argument. They know artists aren't being hurt, and that in fact P2P helps artists by putting people in touch with their music."

DRM industry consultant Bill Rosenblatt, who publishes the DRM Watch online newsletter, agreed. "No one has put any figures on the industry's revenue loss due to consumer piracy that have any credibility," he said. "Music industry executives estimate that 80 percent of all pirated content is a result of inside jobs, people at studios or mastering labs or other production houses." In other words, employees of the music industry are pirating far more than the consumers the RIAA is suing for infringement.

But it would seem the RIAA's scare tactics are working. A recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project gathered statistics that revealed a precipitous decline in the number of people running P2P programs on their computers. One P2P program, Grokster, took a huge hit: according to Pew's figures, its users dropped by 58 percent over the past year. Mennecke disputed these figures, however. He pointed out that you can't track P2P use by measuring how many people download one or two programs since newer, better ones pop up all the time. "While some numbers were admittedly going down, a lot of P2P programs are doing quite well," he explained. "eDonkey has taken off, and BitTorrent is doing incredibly well. P2P is thriving."

Rosenblatt pointed out that the next move by DRM vendors will be to create P2P applications with built-in DRM. Entrepreneur and Napster founder Sean Fanning has been promising to roll out something like this with his music fingerprint database – a vast collection of copyrighted songs whose sounds have been digitally converted into unique "fingerprints." When a fingerprinted song passes through a P2P system, DRM software could recognize it no matter what format the song was in. Then the person downloading the song would be charged.

As copyright owners thrash around trying to protect the property they bought (often at painfully low prices) from artists, and DRM vendors get jiggy about selling their wares to paranoid RIAA members, consumers are left swinging in the wind.

I love music. You love music. So, why shouldn't we share it and help the artists we love get new fans? When Lynn let me rip one of her Mountain Goats CDs, I wound up buying five more of the band's CDs. After Victor gave me a copy of his solo album Bittersweet, I bought two copies of it for my friends. Charlie turned me on to funk music with a mix CD, and now I buy funk compilations at indie music vendor Amoeba Records. Steve gave me a pirated copy of an album by the Orb, and then I bought a legal version of it. I could tell countless other stories like this.

Activists like Stallman, along with vocal fair-use advocates like Seth Schoen and Fred Von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are now fighting for our rights to share information legally. Stallman's classic essay "The Right to Read" warns of a future where people pay licensing fees for every piece of information and face severe penalties for sharing any kind of media. The EFF has fought in dozens of court cases to make sure this doesn't happen.

But while Stallman writes essays and the courts hash out what constitutes "legal sharing," what is a music lover to do? The answer is simple: share safely and wisely. Use P2P networks that allow you to be anonymous or hide the files you're sharing. The most popular P2P networks aren't always the safest. Bram Cohen, author of BitTorrent, warned, "Pirating with BitTorrent is stupid. BitTorrent, due to fundamental architectural decisions, is quite incompatible with anonymity. The newer apps are more robust distribution tools, so they keep running despite failures, but they aren't designed to protect end users from legal attacks."

The only truly anonymous P2P network is Freenet. On networks that use Kazaa Lite and eMule, you can choose not to display a list of the files you're sharing. While this doesn't keep you anonymous, it will prevent the RIAA police from counting how many files you're sharing and branding you a pirate. Mennecke noted that networks like SoulSeek, which specializes in rare and obscure music, are also relatively safe because the RIAA is mostly looking to bust people who are sharing Top 40 music.

Services like PeerGuardian (www.peerguardian.net) offer file sharers access to a "blocklist" of IP addresses known to be associated with the RIAA and the companies it hires to spy on the file-sharing activities of P2P networks. By using the blocklist, you can keep known copyright-enforcement agents from invading your network and looking at the information people are sharing on it.

You can also attempt to compensate artists by buying only from independent record labels that aren't a part of the RIAA. At www.RIAARadar.com, you can look up what albums are owned by RIAA corporations.

Freenet creator Clarke said our right to share any information, including music, is nothing less than a political philosophy. He pointed out it's often hard for people to see the connection between copyright law and censorship until they realize the Church of Scientology uses copyright law to keep former members of its sect from describing their experiences; Freenet includes countless testimonials from former Scientologists about being brainwashed and bankrupted. More recently, electronic voting software company Diebold tried to use copyright law to suppress memos in which employees discussed the security flaws in its software.

"My idea is simple: free communication is good," Clarke said. "It's essential to the maintenance of a healthy democracy. I see government power and corporate power as extremely similar – both need to be regulated, and you can't regulate something if you don't have access to information about it."
http://www.sfbg.com/38/19/cover_noise_pirates.html















Until next week,

- js.













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