"MP3 turns 10 years old." – ecoustics
"There are still more people using some variety of file sharing tools than there were in the heyday of Napster." – Eric Garland
"Thanks to statutory damages, a single iPod filled with infringing songs could give rise to more than half a billion dollars in damages." – Fred von Lohmann
"We haven't really altered our direction as a result of the judgment. We have a strict open-source goal now, and that really frees us up from a lot of responsibility. We're not trying to make revenue, so it's hard to try to sue us." – Jonathan Nilson
"There's no way to stop people from getting digital content illegally. People will always be able to get this stuff illegally. If you want to do a legal service, then you have to add value to it." – David Goldberg
"We are moving from a text-based culture -- where people have been allowed to borrow and take snippets from books and magazines and journals -- into a visual culture. Those same kind of rights, to quote from a movie or TV show and annotate it or comment on it, have been stripped away." – J.D. Lasica
"Why can't she slither out through the window like everyone else?" – Kelefa Sanneh
July 23rd, 2005
MP3 Turns 10 Years Old
Posted by Admin
Happy Birthday MP3!
On July 14th, the name "MP3" celebrates its tenth anniversary. On this day back in 1995, the researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS decided to use ".mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Soon MP3 became the generally accepted acronym for the ISO standard IS 11172-3 "MPEG Audio Layer 3".
.mp3 emerged as the unanimous winner of an internal poll at Fraunhofer IIS. In an email dated July 14th 1995, the new file extension was proclaimed:
quote:
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:29:49 +0200
Subject: Layer3 file extension: .mp3
Hi all,
this is the overwhelming result of our poll: everyone voted for .mp3 as extension for ISO MPEG Audio Layer 3! As a consequence, everyone please mind that for WWW pages, shareware, demos, and so on, the .bit extension is not to be used anymore. There is a reason for that, believe me :-)
Juergen Zeller
(translated from German)
This naming can be seen as the conclusion of years of research and development in a team of up to 40 engineers. The format's international standardization in 1992 ensured worldwide compatibility - this fact and the public MP3 source code guarantee that billions of existing MP3 files can still be played by generations of audiophiles to come.
In 1992 MP3 was in fact so far ahead of its times, that the industry considered the technology far too complex for practical application. It turned out, however, that its development was the bottom line advancement in audio coding - no other coding method so far could uncrown MP3 as the standard for digital music on the computer and on the Internet.
With the MP3 player, a brand new market was created. In 2004 more than 3 million MP3 players were sold in Germany alone. And the success story will continue: the prognosis for 2006 estimates over 80 million MP3 players to be sold worldwide.
http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messag...81/147931.html
Big Champagne CEO Talks Up the Digital Revolution
Jennifer LeClaire
The equation is simple and not mysterious at all. The MP3 has become over the past few years the de facto consumer standard, like a compact disc or a cassette tape. This is a form of storage medium that is compatible with everybody's life. Because MP3 has become such a consumer standard, people know it works.
More than 2 billion people around the world own or use mobile phones. And increasingly, people are using their mobile phones for multimedia -- not just for communication, but also for entertainment, news, and information services. Click here to find out more about Nokia's developments with Mobile TV!
Long after Napster, mainstream software giants like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) are beginning to get into the online music fray with file-sharing applications, and Internet giants like Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) are moving to subscription models for digital downloads.
While we've not quite seen a digital revolution yet, file-sharing pundits say we're inching closer to what was promised several years ago. Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, a firm that tracks Internet file sharing, has been watching the drama unfold for the past five years and says the best is yet to come.
TechNewsWorld caught up with Garland to discuss the impact of recording industry lawsuits on file sharing, the key drivers behind the phenomenon, and emerging trends surrounding the technology.
TechNewsWorld: File sharing has come a long way over the past few years. No one can forget the Napster controversy. Now it seems a digital revolution is impending. Did you see this coming?
Eric Garland: I would be lying if I didn't admit that I absolutely did see it coming. We all left otherwise productive careers and took this tremendous left turn to start our company at that time. The only thing that we got completely wrong in our estimation or prognostication was the timing. I did not think that six or seven years after the start of Napster that we would still be stuck in second gear.
For instance, we predicted that there would be a period of awkward adolescence with intense litigation and legislation. We saw that happen when Napster got sued and we said that there would be more of this. But we thought after a few years there would be a radical shift and a great opportunity to champion these new tools and this social phenomenon. But here we are today in many ways in the same place we were in 2002 with similar court battles. We never anticipated widespread litigation against parents and kids and average folks.
We also underestimated how much pain the entertainment industry would feel. I never thought that what were 5 percent and 10 percent annual declines for the recording industry starting in 2000-2001 would turn into a condition of the business . Every year we are looking at increasing double-digit declines. I have watched almost everyone I worked with in the entertainment businesses go on to do something else with their lives. Thousands of people have been laid off. They are high school teachers and real estate agents and entrepreneurs now because there are no jobs out there. We had never guessed any of that.
We thought Napster would be a hugely disruptive force and that over the course of a few years we would see digital music take a seat alongside compact discs. We thought it would be a coup but largely a bloodless coup. We thought the industry would figure out a way to embrace and work with new technologies. There were moments when it looked like it would go that way, like when Bertelsmann actually invested in Napster. There were 11th-hour negotiations that almost saw the recording industry take Napster in house. It is fascinating to think what might have been if the recording industry had tweaked Napster as a licensed distribution platform while all of us were experimenting with it.
TNW: How are record industry lawsuits impacting file sharing?
Garland: We can quantify the effect it's had on file sharing as a behavior. But then you have to talk qualitatively in softer terms about an even more interesting thread: the enormous impact it has had on the popular consciousness; our attitudes, our thinking and our understanding about all these previously mysterious issues, like intellectual property and online copyright and what constitutes infringement.
I think the record industry would be quick to claim a win. They think they have inhibited the growth of file sharing. But they haven't reversed the trend. There are still people using these tools. There are more people using these tools and more media on these networks than there were prior to litigation campaigns. But the recording industry would point out that maybe there would be even more of it today if it hadn't started litigating. In other words, maybe the rate of growth has been slowed.
Depending on which reports you read, NPD Group says that from March of 2004 to March of 2005 file sharing activity is up 25 percent. Our view of the same phenomenon puts it somewhere closer to 20 percent growth. But it's significant growth. There are still more people using some variety of file sharing tools than there were in the heyday of Napster.
TNW: There seems to be a discrepancy in the data on file sharing. Why do different firms have such different numbers?
Garland: A lot has been made of this apparent discrepancy. In my view it is not a discrepancy. There are many different ways of taking the tape measure to a phenomenon like this. I think that most of the different researchers are expressing the same story in different terms.
TNW: What is driving the growth?
Garland: In many ways we created a mystery where there doesn't have to be one. The entertainment industry has agonized over this presumed magic formula. The record industry is asking, "Why is it so popular? Why do they keep taking our music despite all of these very well intended efforts to offer them the alternatives?" It has little to do with P2P, per say. People don't know what's under the hood of their computer music tools any more than they know what is under the hood of their cars. People don't care about peer to peer as architecture. That is the domain of geek developers and programmers.
The equation is simple and not mysterious at all. The MP3 has become over the past few years the de facto consumer standard, like a compact disc or a cassette tape. This is a form of storage medium that is compatible with everybody's life. Because MP3 has become such a consumer standard, people know it works. That leads to simplicity, usability , and compatibility, and no restrictions on use. Restriction on use is a layer of complexity that is unfamiliar to music buyers who have for generations bought a piece of recorded music done whatever they wanted to do with it.
A peer-to-peer network offers you ease of use in the MP3 format, unlimited selection, no complicated fine print, and, of course, last but not the least the price is right it. It's free. The entertainment industry has a tough time providing that consumer wish list. The entertainment industry doesn't like the MP3 file format because it doesn't adequately protect their content. They can't provide an unlimited selection because of copyright laws. Then there's all the fine print with running a subscription service. File sharing is simple and it works for everybody and all the good stuff is there.
TNW: Are legitimate music swapping sites making a positive impact on the market?
Garland: That is a tough question to answer. On one hand these businesses are really nascent. They started from nothing about 18 months ago. Before Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes there was nothing on the horizon in terms of paid download services. We all caught the bug and everybody bought an iPod. The problem is the iTunes music store didn't do the kind of volume that everybody thought it would.
Apple has sold more than 12 million iPods but only about 500 million songs. Even though it holds 10,000 songs, people are only spending $25 over the year. That's about the price of two CDs. It is not like a digital music revolution that accounts for half of music revenues. So the problem is now there is an expectation in the industry that .99 cents isn't enough. You might as well be giving away music for free.
Now they are scrambling to raise the price. How do you think the users will feel about this now that they have gotten used to .99 a song? So they are talking about bundling songs. If you want one song you can't buy it individually. You have to buy it as a three-pack. But that could kill the golden goose because in an attempt to raise the price you might drive them away.
Another approach is the subscription model. Every man, woman and child pays $20 a month to rent music. That's a good deal because they are spending over $200 a year. The recording industry is hoping the subscription model will catch fire. Consumers in focus groups we've hosted have said it is an appealing model, but they still want to be able to swap files so they can listen to it and then build a permanent collection of MP3s.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/44617.html
Firefox Marketing Site Hacked
Joris Evers
SpreadFirefox.com, the community marketing Web site for the open-source Firefox Web browser, was hacked earlier this week, potentially exposing user data.
Attackers broke into the Web site by exploiting an unpatched security vulnerability in the software that runs SpreadFirefox.com, the Mozilla Foundation said in an e-mail alert to registered users of the site late Thursday. Mozilla coordinates Firefox development and marketing. The authenticity of the e-mail was confirmed Friday by a Mozilla representative.
The attack actually occurred on Sunday but was not discovered until Tuesday, according to the e-mail alert. The SpreadFirefox.com was subsequently taken down for a few days to investigate the attack, according to a notice posted on the site.
The necessary patches have now been applied to the software that runs SpreadFirefox.com, Mozilla said. According to its e-mail, the group has also "reviewed our security plan to determine why we didn't previously apply those fixes in this case, and have modified that plan to ensure we do so in the future." The exploited flaw was a vulnerability in PHP, the language in which Drupal, the content management system that Spread Firefox uses, is written.
Mozilla believes the machine was hacked to use it to send spam, according to the e-mail. However, it is possible that attackers obtained usernames and passwords and any other information people may have provided to the site, such as e-mail and home addresses, birth dates and instant- messaging names, Mozilla said.
The hack is an embarrassment to Mozilla, which uses security as the main selling point for the Firefox Web browser.
SpreadFirefox is the online Firefox marketing hub. Mozilla has successfully used the site to mobilize volunteers to popularize the browser through free marketing techniques such as Web site buttons and by collecting money for an ad in The New York Times.
As a result of the attack, Mozilla is urging the estimated 100,000 SpreadFirefox users to change their passwords. If those people use the same passwords for other Web sites, they should be changed there too, Mozilla advises.
http://news.com.com/Firefox+marketin...3-5790030.html
Hollywood, Tech Still Sparring Over Grokster
Roy Mark
Almost a month after the Supreme Court ruled that peer-to-peer (P2P) developers are liable for copyright violations if they actively induce piracy with their technology, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley continue to snipe over the meaning of the decision.
"The court said if you build a business plan based on inducement, you're going to be held responsible for that," Don Verilli, who argued Hollywood's case before the high court, told a noon luncheon briefing today for congressional staff members.
Verilli added, "It's not about technology, it's about how businesses use it."
The unanimous MGM v. Grokster, ruling held that technology itself was not an issue. Instead, it upheld the high court's 20-year-old Sony Betamax ruling about video recorders that established the principle that technology is neutral, even if some use the technology for illegal purposes.
Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the influential digital rights group that supported the P2P companies, told the overflow crowd he was glad the court upheld the Betamax case. But the justices "did not answer many of the hard questions."
First and foremost, von Lohmann contended, the ruling left technology companies and their legal staffs to "pick their way" through a dangerous legal minefield when it comes to inducement.
"If your lawyer guesses wrong, you're finished," von Lohmann said. "That's an effective ban on technology. Technology executives don't want to make that decision and venture capitalists don’t want to make that decision. It's called uncertainty."
He also pointed out secondary liability in copyright cases can bring "apocalyptic" results for developers through mandatory statutory damages. In addition, content owners can pierce the corporate veil and individually sue corporate officers, directors and investors.
"Thanks to statutory damages, a single iPod filled with infringing songs could give rise to more than half a billion dollars in damages," von Lohmann said. "These risks raise the stakes for both innovators and investors in legitimate, multi-purpose digital products."
Verilli dryly noted that developers need to be "more careful" in drafting business plans.
"Grokster sought to attract individuals who had previously utilized the Napster file-sharing service," Verilli said. "They made no efforts to curtail the massive amount of infringing conduct occurring on its system and they profited from the infringing use of its system."
Or, as the Supreme Court said in its decision," the unlawful objective was unmistakable."
Not surprisingly, Verilli said no further action from Congress, such as last year's battle over Sen. Orin Hatch's Inducement Act, is needed. "The lower courts can get at impermissible conduct and protect creative products. It's not time for intervention by Congress."
Equally unsurprising, von Lohmann wants Congress to abolish statutory damages for secondary copyright claims.
"This would leave copyright owners actual damages and injunctive remedies, putting them in no worse a position than litigants in most other areas of civil law," he said. "Technology companies and investors, meanwhile, would be able to make reasonable business decisions about manageable levels of legal risk, rather than face the prospect of crushing statutory damages based on unpredictable legal standards."
Ultimately, through, von Lohmann said the solution for Hollywood and the P2Ps to make peace.
"Congress needs to clear the way for collective licensing of P2P file sharing, allowing P2P users to pay a reasonable fee to 'get ligit,'" von Lohmann said. "Today, one in five American Internet users are downloading from P2P networks, despite more than 12,000 lawsuits filed by the entertainment industry. More lawsuits will not resolve the P2P dilemma."
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news...le.php/3521421
Digital Media Execs Debate Content at AlwaysOn
Matt Hicks
Though 350 miles away, Hollywood was in the air as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, executives and venture capitalists predicted the direction of digital media.
But the two industry centers appeared half a world away in the discussions at the AlwaysOn Summit being held here this week.
To a panel of multimedia leaders, the major entertainment and media companies are continuing to miss the fundamental shifts that are giving consumers more power and dismantling traditional approaches to creating, distributing and marketing everything from music and movies to radio programs.
"[The entertainment industry] lost when the Internet was created, because the Internet was created to resist control, and as more people are on broadband you're just not going to have that control and you need to adapt your business model to that reality," said Michael Weiss, the CEO of StreamCast Networks Inc., which makes the Morpheus P2P file-sharing application.
While panelists shared skepticism about traditional media and entertainment companies, they disagreed on whether technology and Internet companies should go so far as to tackle the creative side of creating content themselves.
Internet and technology companies already have focused widely on distribution of digital media through software and services ranging from peer-to-peer networks and online music stores. New online marketing and mobile approaches also are emerging.
To Mike Homer, chairman and co- founder of Kontiki Inc., focusing more on the creation of content should be the next step.
"If you have all these new distribution opportunities and marketing opportunities and mobile opportunities, then why not think of new digital content to sell [consumers]?" said Homer, whose company makes software for distributing digital media and has created a site called Open Media Network for user-generated digital content. He added that content has to be "targeted to a narrow audience."
The emergence of Weblogs and podcasting, among other trends, has led to more user-generated content.
But Mark Cuban, the co-founder and chairman of high-definition television network HDNet, warned against focusing exclusively on the Internet and digitally distributed content.
While a certain amount of specialized content might make sense for Internet-only distribution, companies wanting to reach a broad, mainstream audience must deliver content the way consumers want it.
For a movie, such as the first release out of Cuban's HDNet Movies offshoot, that means movie theaters and DVDs along with video on demand and the Internet, Cuban said.
"The problem is where digital and the Internet meets brick and mortar," Cuban said. "Where the two connect is where things are falling down, and where we're all looking for a holy grail."
For example, Cuban said, a consumer can't go into a store today and burn a DVD on demand because the economics don't match the demand.
Other executives were dismissive of the idea of moving into content creation, noting that Silicon Valley's specialty is technology innovation and not the creative side of content.
"To get involved in the creation of content is a good way to lose money fast," said Jordan Greenhall, founder and CEO of DivX Inc., the company behind the DivX video compression format and video software.
One area where Hollywood is making its presence felt is on the legal side, the panelists said. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in the case between MGM and Grokster is drawing more attention to the potential liability software makers could face if users infringe on a copyright.
When asked how much time they spend on legal issues related to copyrights, all the panelists said they spend at least one-third, if not a half or more, of their time on legal issues.
David Goldberg, Yahoo Inc.'s vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music, said that ultimately the legal battle is futile in ending digital-media piracy, even if the movie studios and recording companies win court cases.
"There's no way to stop people from getting digital content illegally," Goldberg said. "People will always be able to get this stuff illegally. If you want to do a legal service, then you have to add value to it."
The AlwaysOn panel drew criticism from one audience member, a former attorney for a traditional entertainment company, who said that a representative of Hollywood should have been included on the panel.
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1839357,00.asp
Time For Lawmakers To Act On Grokster?
Anne Broache
Does Congress need to lay down new laws after last month's landmark Supreme Court decision on file swapping? Depends on whom you ask.
A spectrum of outlooks came from lawyers who squared off at a panel discussion hosted Tuesday by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee.
The debate focused on the unanimous Supreme Court ruling last month that file-swapping companies that actively promote their products' copyright infringement capabilities (in legal terms, "active inducement") can be held liable for their users' illicit activities. The case now heads back to lower courts for another look.
Justice Stephen Breyer in his concurring opinion on the MGM v. Grokster case noted that "the legislative option remains available." But so far, members of Congress have applauded the court's unanimous opinion and indicated they plan to leave rule-making to the lower courts for now.
And that's the way it should be, said Don Verrilli, who argued the high court case on behalf of the entertainment industry.
"This is not the time for intervention by Congress," Verrilli said, because the Supreme Court set a "common sense standard" that gives the lower courts sufficient fodder to tackle illicit behavior. "I think (the) court has done a good job in striking the balance with the standard of inducement that it has set forth here."
Not so, countered Fred von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who represented StreamCast Networks in the suit. The Supreme Court left too many unanswered questions, von Lohmann said, adding, "I don't believe that uncertainty is balance."
"We need clear, bright-line rules so that technology companies can know in advance what they are and are not allowed to build," von Lohmann said.
He suggested two possible legislative routes: First, Congress should implement a "collective licensing" system for peer-to-peer file sharing, wherein users would pay a "reasonable fee," which would in turn be passed on to the copyright holders. Second, lawmakers should scrap the idea of statutory damages--that is, money awarded to copyright owners because of provisions in the law--but leave open the option of awarding actual damages and injunctions through the court action.
"We shouldn't have a remedial system where, if Microsoft or Apple or Slingbox bet wrong, they go out of business," von Lohmann said.
But he acknowledged that the legislative route would not be easy, as the "technology and content industries are still rather far apart" on the issues in question.
Patent lawyer Andrew Greenberg echoed those sentiments at the panel, saying, "The technology industry and the music industry have both been absolutely incapable of working together to articulate credibly, clearly and understandably what the rules of the road are."
As for legislation, Greenberg took a more moderate stance. Before deciding whether to take action, "Congress should monitor carefully" what the lower courts do, Greenberg said, adding, "I think it's time to wait and see."
http://news.com.com/Time+for+lawmake...3-5795314.html
Legal Peer-to-Peer Emerges from the Grokster Fire
Libe Goad
The fallout of the recent Grokster v. MGM Supreme Court decision hasn't meant much to the wellspring of new legally minded peer-to-peer companies who are looking to turn a pirate's territory into a legitimate delivery system for music, movies and video games.
While Grokster and StreamCast face more time in court, legal P2P software companies like Peer Impact, Weed and Mercora make strides into turning their file-sharing services into a legitimate industry with the potential for plenty of profit to spread to music labels, musicians and in some cases, to the users. ADVERTISEMENT
Peer Impact has been working to create a legal peer-to-peer download platform that allows music lovers to search for music, pay for it and then download it from other Peer Impact users.
The company has also instilled a recommendation feature that can pay off for active consumers.
Users can e-mail 30-second clips of music to friends as a recommendation. If the friend buys the track, then 5 percent of that profit goes to the sender.
Aside from loading its software with various user- friendly features, Peer Impact has spent a large amount of time earning the approval of the music industry.
CEO Greg Kerber and CTO Kirk Feathers said they spent many hours in front of music executives' doorsteps negotiating deals, which they have now done with the Big Four labels, e.g. Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI.
This week, the company announced its deal with Trymedia Systems, a digital distribution service for PC video games.
Kerber and Feathers have also taken their business plan to the RIAA to prove its legitimacy as a legal online music distribution system.
Based on history of the organization with file-sharing services like Napster and Grokster, this seemed to be less of a harrowing experience than expected.
"The salt and pepper in our hair probably helped a little," Kerber quipped. Overall, he said the RIAA has been "very cooperative."
"We've had hundreds of meetings with them, and every time we're there, [RIAA members] say 'we are not luddites; we are not against technology; we just want artists to get paid for their work," he said. "They have really taken the brunt of some bad PR."
In the meantime, the group is in talks with "every major content provider out there," and is looking to sign similar deals with the film and TV industry.
Mercora is another legal peer-to-peer service on the rise. Instead of relying on the more-traditional music download service, the company allows users to search for specific songs from a large network of peers and then stream them over the Internet.
CEO Srivats Sampath said the peer-to-peer aspect of the company makes it different—and superior—to regular Internet radio services, saying the users can listen to up to 6 million tracks on any given day.
"People come onto network and bring content in," he said. "It's different because it's not just for downloading streamed songs for listeners; they're streaming songs to other people and other people come in and listen."
Much like Peer Impact, Sampath said their company also has a very cordial relationship with the RIAA.
"When we first came out a year ago, they were very curious about how we've done it legally," Sampath said. "We explained that this is what we do and [the RIAA] realized that we've put a tremendous amount of effort into making this legal."
Both companies do not seem to think that the recent Grokster ruling will have any impact on the business, especially since the ruling seem to be hinged on the company's "intent" to promote piracy, rather than just being a file-sharing service.
Kerber said that the ruling will enable the second generation of peer-to-peer companies to play a part in entertainment distribution and that it will help consumers feel safe when downloading files from a peer-to-peer service.
"If we induce our customers to steal, then we are responsible for it," he said. "Inducing our customers to steal is never something we would have put in our model – if the system does get hacked, we will make every measure to protect the people that have entrusted us to deliver our core business."
Sampath also said they were "very happy" with the way the court ruled – in that it ruled more on intent than on technology that happens to have non-infringing uses.
"The ruling never bothered us because if you look at the law, and look at the application, it's 100 percent compliant with the law," he said. "It definitively does send a strong message with the P2P guys and opens opportunities for new models to evolve."
Gartner research director Mike McGuire says that he can't predict if any peer-to-peer services, even legal ones, will really be in the clear until Grokster and others receive a final verdict in the lower courts.
With the increasing popularity of other online music sites and radio stations, will peer-to-peer be able to shake off its bad reputation enough to appeal to the average consumer?
McGuire says that if it's done right, consumers won't be able to tell the difference between peer-to-peer services and regular direct-download music stores like iTunes.
"Consumers are not really going to care either way," he said. "Consumers care about searching, finding and getting the stuff they want."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1835324,00.asp
Open-Source P2P Projects Keep Swapping
John Borland
The ripples of anxiety from last month's landmark Supreme Court ruling on peer-to-peer software haven't quite made it to Jonathan Nilson's home in Tallahassee, Fla.
Nilson, a programmer who has been working on peer-to-peer software called Shareaza for several years, says the loose band of developers who share responsibility for the open-source project haven't been dissuaded from their work by the court ruling, which is casting a dark legal cloud over the future of companies such as Grokster and LimeWire.
Nilson cautions that neither he nor anyone else can speak with authority on behalf of the project as a whole. For the most part, that's exactly why he and the others feel sheltered. As is the case with many loosely organized, open-source programming projects, there is no central entity, no "Shareaza" company or organization that issues paychecks or answers lawyers' telephone calls.
"We haven't really altered our direction as a result of the judgment," Nilson said. "We have a strict open-source goal now, and that really frees us up from a lot of responsibility. We're not trying to make revenue, so it's hard to try to sue us."
Indeed, as the dust settles over the post-Supreme Court landscape, a decided split is emerging in the peer-to-peer development community.
The legal threat facing many of the most popular file-swapping software companies may well radically change their operation and strategies. Yet open-source projects like Shareaza, which create software of similar function and popularity, are continuing unabated.
That optimism threatens to mute the court ruling's effect on the file-swapping world, because millions of people a week are already downloading and using those independent programs.
Of course, the open-source developers' confidence may not be justified. Jeffrey D. Neuburger, an intellectual property attorney at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner in New York, said they risk drawing legal attention if they make even a small slip over the line of piracy "inducement."
"I think individuals behind it could be liable," Neuburger said. "They have to be very careful about how they position themselves. They have to release the software out there and not say anything about it."
Split decision
For now, the ruling's admonition that software companies that encourage copyright infringement by their users could be liable for that piracy has put commercial file- swapping developers in a very nervous mood.
The defendants in the Supreme Court case, Grokster and StreamCast Networks, are headed back to federal court in Los Angeles, where movie studio and record label lawyers will ask a judge to end the case in their favor. A hearing date has not been set.
Companies that haven't been sued, such as LimeWire and eDonkey parent MetaMachine, are anxious as well. Lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have made it clear that they view those companies as potential lawsuit targets.
"We are evaluating all our options," said MetaMachine CEO Sam Yagen. "There are things we can do to reduce the likelihood of a lawsuit. We're going to do our best to figure out what's best for the company."
In the noncommercial, open-source world, programmers have discussed the court case, but few appear ready to abandon their projects. Some are taking extra precautions not to appear as though they are advocating copyright infringement, going so far as to ban users who discuss piracy from online forums.
Development and distribution of the file-swapping software itself continues, however.
"My impression is that people aren't that worried about it," said Ian Clarke, the British founder of the Freenet project and a longtime stalwart of the open-source community. "The primary impact is likely to be on commercial developers of P2P software. Even then, the impact is really to make them more careful about what they say both within their companies and externally about aspirations for their software."
An RIAA spokesman declined to comment specifically on the open-source projects.
Walking a fine line
Open-source peer-to-peer software development takes many forms, ranging from obscure hobbyist projects with only a few users to software programs that have been downloaded tens of millions of times. Many of the most influential peer-to-peer ideas, such as the hydra-headed decentralization of Gnutella or the speedy "swarming" downloads of BitTorrent, have come from this community.
At one end of the spectrum are projects like Shareaza, which are wholly decentralized, without a controlling entity at all that bears legal or financial responsibility. On the other are companies like LimeWire and MetaMachine, both of which have open-source development products, but have revenue-generating businesses based on selling software and associated products.
Somewhere in the middle are younger companies such as Aelitis, the French company recently formed by developers of the Azureus BitTorrent client, the most popular piece of software tracked by Sourceforge, a well-trafficked open-source software development hub. According to that site, Azureus has been downloaded more than 78 million times, and more than 2.4 million times in the last week alone.
"The open-source guys are always going to be there. I don't think anyone expects that to go away completely."
--Jeffrey D. Neuburger, attorney, Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner
BitTorrent, a file-distribution technology developed in 2002, is widely used to swap copyrighted works such as movies and games. But it's also increasingly used for authorized purposes such as distributing open-source operating system files and was even recently built into Opera Software's Web browser.
Olivier Chalouhi, the founder of the Azureus project, said his team has made few changes since the ruling and will continue to develop and distribute the core swapping technology.
"The ruling never said that P2P technologies were bad or should be avoided," Chalouhi said. "As software developers, and as technology makers, we've not changed anything."
The company has taken some precautions, however. Chalouhi said its programmers had readied a range of "extensions"--essentially add-ons that would add new features to the program--when the ruling was released. In order to be wholly safe, he has decided not to release several of those.
Nilson noted that Shareaza warns people about copyright and intellectual property issues when the program starts up, and that the project asks people not to discuss any illegal activities. Chalouhi said he actively bans users from the Azureus forums who talk about piracy, and he's not about to shutter his work.
"The Grokster (court decision) gives content companies another arrow in their quiver in challenging commercial infringers, the people making profit and selling ads," said the lawyer Neuburger. "But the open-source guys are always going to be there. I don't think anyone expects that to go away completely."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5789087.html
Cracking down on file-sharing
Universities May Offer Legal Services For A Price
Kathryn Balint
The University of California and California State University systems are paving the way for their campuses to offer legal music and movie downloads in an effort to curb illegal file sharing.
On Monday, the two systems signed an agreement with Cdigix, an Englewood, Colo., company that provides legal music and movie downloads to two dozen college campuses.
Under the agreement, the 13 University of California campuses and the 23 Cal State campuses will each decide whether to offer the service to students. Students would pay a fee for the service.
San Diego State University, Cal State San Marcos and the University of California San Diego said yesterday they are looking into the idea. None of the three has committed to offer such a service.
Illegal file sharing not only clogs the computer network, but puts students who are sharing the files at risk of being sued by the record or movie companies.
Universities typically don't monitor every file sent on their computer networks, so it's difficult for them to quantify how many illegal downloads there are.
The Recording Industry Association of America says that music theft – the illegal sharing of songs without paying for them – is an epidemic on college campuses. The music trade group for the largest music labels says that students who use a college or university computer network are among the most frequent users of illegal file-sharing sites.
In April, the RIAA filed federal lawsuits against 405 students at 18 universities, including 25 at UCSD. In May, the group filed suit against 91 students at 20 universities, including two at UCSD.
More than 50 colleges and universities across the country have made deals to offer legal music services to their students in an effort to curb the illegal downloads.
The UC and CSU systems are negotiating with other providers, including Napster, Sony and Mindawn, so that their campuses will have a choice of offerings.
The biggest question is whether students would pay for a music and video service, especially when illegal downloads are still available.
"It remains to be seen whether this will help reduce the number of illegal downloads that are shared," said Anthony Wood, director of academic computing services at UCSD. "Other campuses that have offered the service say the take rate hasn't been very high."
Cdigix spokeswoman Laurie Rubenstein acknowledges that stopping illegal downloading will not be "an overnight change."
Wood said UCSD is exploring the idea of offering music and video downloads to students for the school year that begins in September.
But he said the university still has some questions that must be answered. Among them: What would students have to pay for the service? Would the university have to install new network equipment? Would some students prefer to subscribe to a service on their own rather than through the university?
Perhaps his biggest concern is that Apple's iTunes is not on the list of services the university can make available to students.
"ITunes is not one of the vendors, yet from my observation, the iPod is an extremely prevalent device here," Wood said. "I'd think we might be wasting our effort if we don't include a program that includes iTunes for the future."
SDSU and UCSD also said they need more time to evaluate the service before determining whether they'll offer it.
"We just have to have some time to look at the parameters of the deal," said Rick Moore, spokesman for Cal State San Marcos. "I'm not sure we're headed down the road to doing it at all. We need to study it more."
Each campus would negotiate its own deal with a service provider.
Cdigix typically charges $3 a month for all the music a subscriber wants to listen to from the company's database of 1.5 million songs. The songs are available to the user as long as the subscription is up-to-date. Other online music companies generally charge about $10 a month for such a subscription service.
Cdigix also allows subscribers to purchase songs for 89 cents each.
Pay-per-view movies range from $1.99 to $3.99 each. A monthly subscription of television shows costs $5.99.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/b...1b20music.html
iTunes Downloads Top 500 Million Mark
CNET News.com Staff
Music downloads from Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store topped 500 million, the company said Monday. Amy Greer of Lafayette, Ind., purchased Faith Hill's "Mississippi Girl" as the 500 millionth song sold from the online music store. The milestone download has won her 10 iPods, a gift card for 10,000 songs and an all-paid trip for four to a concert by Coldplay, which is on a world tour.
The store crossed the 250 million mark six months ago. Launched two years ago, iTunes took 11 months to sell the first 50 million songs. The downloads picked up subsequently, hitting the 200 million mark by last December.
http://news.com.com/iTunes+downloads...3-5792960.html
Men Arrested For Internet Pirating Appear In Court
A federal magistrate in San Jose issued a bench warrant today for a Connecticut man authorities claim was the operator of an illegal Web site where pirated movies, games and software could be downloaded.
David Fish, 24, was one of four men scheduled to be arraigned this morning on multiple felony charges related to Internet piracy. He failed to appear in U.S. District Court in San Jose and Magistrate Harold Lloyd issued a warrant for his arrest but stayed it for 24 hours in the event of a reasonable explanation for the failure to appear. U.S. attorney's office spokesman Luke Macaulay would not comment on whether authorities believe Fish, of Watertown, Conn., has fled.
The other three men, Fremont resident Chirayu Patel, 23, William Veyna, 34, from Chatsworth in Southern California and Colorado resident Nathaniel Lovell, 22, all appeared before Lloyd this morning and were arraigned.
The four men were arrested in June as part of Operation Copycat, which itself is part of a larger international law enforcement Internet piracy crackdown known as Operation Site Down. A federal grand jury indicted the men on multiple felony charges on Wednesday.
Operation Copycat targeted "warez" groups, which prosecutors say are the source of the majority of pirated movies, music and software distributed and downloaded on the Internet. Once a warez release group prepares a stolen work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure servers throughout the world. From there, within a matter of hours, the pirated works are distributed globally, filtering down to peer-to-peer and other public file-sharing networks accessible to anyone with Internet access, according to federal authorities.
Directory lists from computer servers used in the undercover operation revealed that more than 750 copyrighted movies, including recently opened movies such as "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," "Batman Begins" and "Bewitched," had allegedly been uploaded by the warez groups, some within hours of theatrical release.
The lists also contained more than 1,250 pirated computer games and more than 180 software titles allegedly pirated from companies including Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Microsoft and Symantec.
Conservative estimates of the value of the works seized by authorities reach more than $50 million, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/071405_nw_fed_bust.html
Overseas MP3s
For Pennies A Tune, You Can Build A Primo Music Library And Support Free Enterprise In Russia
Jason Bracelin
When the Supreme Court ruled against internet sites that enable peer-to-peer file-sharing last month, it did music downloaders a favor. As anyone who's ever visited P2P sites like Grokster and Morpheus can attest, sound quality is maddeningly dodgy and the catalogue is hopelessly disorganized. The imminent shutdown of these sites should provide the kick in the pants you need to find a better alternative.
Russia is where it's at. Benefiting from lax copyright laws, Russian mp.3 sites offer a wide array of music to download at a nominal fee. The music isn't free, but it's close. And because the sites are run as businesses rather than loose collectives, they're much more user- friendly.
With so many Russian sites to choose from, we decided to share a few of our favorites. Of course, the biggest concern in using foreign mp.3 sites is giving your credit-card number -- you don't want some dude named Boris buying new rims for his Lada 110 on your dime. But with all the sites below, you can use PayPal for secure internet payments or call a toll-free number and have the charges added to your telephone bill. So get your wish list together and join us online.
Site: Allofmp3.com (5 to 10 cents per song)
Selection: A solid blend of the latest hot releases (R. Kelly, Missy Elliott) with a back catalogue deeper than Lake Erie. One of the rare sites to have the complete works of artists like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of others. There are also plenty of rare finds, like Rage Against the Machine's Bombtrack EP. It's among the most comprehensive collections of music on the web.
Why you should try it: By allowing you to listen to everything for free before you buy, this is an ideal site to help you build up a library of music. It's easy to navigate, and you can download complete albums instead of assembling discs song-by-song.
Site: club.mp3search.ru (10 cents per song)
Selection: Heavy on the rarities and out-of-print discs, from Mountain to Sugar Ray. Doesn't have as many contemporary hits as some other sites, but where else are you going to find that elusive Milli Vanilli remix LP? Also has a vast selection of audio books and ringtones.
Why you should try it: It's nicely interactive and informative. There's a message board where you can request specific songs and albums, and the site operators will do their best to get them for you. Moreover, when you select an album by a given artist, the site gives you a full discography of the performer, a rating of the discs, and a ranking of the most popular songs -- like iTunes, but without the 99- cent fee. Log on and learn more about Ace of Base than you ever wanted to know.
Site: mp3spy.ru (10 cents per song)
Selection: A huge collection of electronica that spans everything from the latest Deep Dish LP to a vast array of European singles and compilation discs. You can get some albums before their official release, like the hotly anticipated new disc from Swedish metal group Arch Enemy.
Why you should try it: The site may be lacking in older material, and it's weak on hip-hop (virtually no Public Enemy, De La Soul, N.W.A., etc.), but it's great for dance music and material only available overseas. Aspiring DJs can build entire sets here.
Site: 3mp3.ru ($9.95 for 200 songs or $29.95 a month)
Selection: All the current hits, plus a huge selection of bootlegs and live albums ranging from Metallica to Miles Davis. For completists, this site has tons of rare and unofficial releases, without the high prices associated with nonsanctioned discs -- meaning you no longer have to pay top dollar for a demo version of "Enter Sandman."
Why you should try it: It's one of the best values on the web. If you upload two albums that the site doesn't have, you get a week's worth of free downloads. By offering unlimited downloads for a low monthly fee, the site allows you to compile a massive catalogue in weeks. A great place to start building your collection.
http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/200...oundbites.html
European Commission Criticises Czech Republic Copyright Law
The European Commission has sent a warning letter to the Czech Republic in which it voiced surprise at the method for enacting European Union directives on copyright law from 2001. The letter sought further clarification from Czech leaders.
This is the first stage of legal action against the Czech Republic for violation of EU legislation, which could end up at the European Court. The Czech Republic must react to the warning within two months.
Czech Culture Ministry spokeswoman Katerina Besserova told CTK that the problems pointed out by the commission should be resolved by an amendment to the nation's copyright law.
She said the ministry will review the letter from the commission and will react to it.
The EC requires EU countries to enact sanctions against "hackers" and computer pirates into their legislation and ensure the protection of works published in electronic form.
The letter said that although the Czech Republic has placed the EU directive into law there are doubts about application of the law.
According to a Czech diplomatic source, existing Czech legislation does not include all the elements of the EU directive, and the national copyright law will have to be amended.
Besserova said an amendment has already been drafted that has passed the comments stage and the government should discuss it at one of its next meetings. It is one of 40 bills and draft amendments the government has prioritized and intends to discuss by the year's end.
http://www.praguemonitor.com/ctk/?id...-copyright-law
China Attempts To Sink MP3 Pirates
The move by Baidu.com to delete thousands of links to pirated music is a response to requests from R2G, a Chinese digital rights management company, which is currently preparing for a U.S. initial public offering expected to raise around $55 million.
Baidu.com, China's answer to Google , has announced that it is to delete thousands of links to Internet sites offering pirated music.
The move is a response to requests from R2G, a Chinese digital rights management company, which is currently preparing for a U.S. initial public offering expected to raise around $55 million.
But most analysts have suggested that the move is a sticking plaster treatment for a growing problem rather than a cure.
Salman Momen, director at Capgemini's media and technology division, said: "Baidu maintained weblinks to music files much like the original Napster maintained a central register of MP3 locations for file sharing.
"Removing the links makes it harder to find the files, but history shows that the centralized model of peer-to-peer sharing was soon replaced by decentralized and distributed applications such as BitTorrent."
Lee Myall, media services director at European telco Interoute, maintained that China's piracy problem needed to be targeted at source.
"The best way to limit damage is to stop the content being copied/pirated in the first place," he said. "Step one is at the pre-release stage where content is at its most desirable and likely to spread most virulently."
But ironically the music industry may never be profitable in China until it finds a legitimate way of online distribution.
"The problem for the music industry in a country such as China is its sheer size, and it is unlikely that any retailer could cover every single region," said Momen.
"Until retail outlets/channels of legitimate products are made more universally available and accessible, it may simply be easier to buy an illegal copy."
http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=37390
Korea
Music Labels to Sue 4,000 Internet Users
SEOUL (Yonhap) _ Sixty domestic music labels are preparing for a collective suit against 4,000 Internet users who illegally distributed or used music files, the companies said Tuesday.
The move would mark the first action taken by the recording industry against netizens after a revised copyrights law recognizing expanded transmission rights to creative digital contents took effect in January.
The government threatened to clamp down on those who illegally upload or download copyrighted digital contents starting in July, after a six-month grace period ended.
The revised law grants rights to transmit music files to music players and recording companies, which were previously limited to copyright holders like composers and lyric writers.
``We demanded Naver force its personal blog service users to delete music files they illegally uploaded on their blogs,’’ a representative from the labels told reporters. ``But Naver passively reacted to our demands, and we decided to file a lawsuit against 4,000 Internet users for violating copyright law.’’
Naver, one of the country's largest Internet portals, said it has posted a notice about the planned suit on its site last month at the request of the 60 labels.
The message asked Naver's bloggers to voluntarily delete any unauthorized music files on their blogs or face the risk of legal action. The warning was ignored by most of the bloggers, Naver said.
``We intend to prevent recurrence of copyright infringement by giving warnings to online service providers rather than seeking certain payment or legally punishing individual bloggers,’’ the companies said.
They said other leading portal service providers would be the next lawsuit target.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/cult...1321011680.htm
Bush Creates High-Level Anti-Piracy Post
Senior position to target global piracy and counterfeiting, which costs US companies billions.
President Bush has created a new senior-level position to fight global intellectual- property piracy and counterfeiting that cost American companies billions of dollars each year, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Friday.
"Intellectual-property theft is a major problem around the world. We believe that it is costing U.S. businesses about $250 billion in lost sales," Gutierrez told Reuters in an interview with reporters and editors.
Bush has tapped Chris Israel, currently deputy chief of staff for Gutierrez, to head up the administration's anti-piracy efforts. China -- where 90 percent of music and movies are pirate copies -- will be a chief priority, Gutierrez said.
"Frankly, our goal is to reduce (China's piracy levels) to zero," Gutierrez said. He declined to specify a timetable, but acknowledged it could be a lengthy effort.
Gutierrez got a personal glimpse of rampant piracy in China during a visit earlier this month, when he was offered the chance to buy a pirated copy of the newest Star Wars movie for $1 dollar, an aide said.
The United States will closely monitor a long list of anti-piracy pledges China made at this month's high-level Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting, including a promise to increase criminal prosecutions, Gutierrez said.
The skyrocketing U.S. trade deficit -- which reached a record $618 billion last year -- has compounded U.S. concerns about piracy and counterfeiting. Companies that produce movies, music and software and other intellectual property account for a growing share of what the United States has to sell to the rest of the world.
U.S. manufacturers of products ranging from shampoo to auto-safety glass also complain that they often have to compete with counterfeit versions of their own products in China and other markets around the world.
The Commerce Department estimates nearly 7 percent of the goods in the global market are counterfeit.
Israel was a public policy executive at Time Warner (Research), a media company with strong interests in intellectual property rights protection, before joining the Commerce Department. He also has worked in Congress as a legislative aide.
Time Warner is the parent company of CNN/Money.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/22/news...reut/index.htm
At the Podcast Party, More Guests Arrive
Alex Mindlin
On June 29, Apple released a new version of its popular iTunes software that allows users to download podcasts, which are audio files that can be automatically loaded onto computers and devices like iPods.
In the two days after the software's release, Apple said users signed up for more than a million podcast subscriptions (the company would not release the exact number), a figure far greater than the total number of podcast users in 2004, as estimated by the Diffusion Group, a research firm.
Each new subscription collected by Apple does not necessarily represent a new podcast user, but even by conservative estimates, it seems likely that Apple is causing an explosion in the number of podcast devotees.
"The reality is coming in even faster than we expected," said Marc Freedman, an analyst with the Diffusion Group, who wrote a report estimating that there would be 56.8 million podcast users by the end of the decade.
When people suggest his predictions are too high, he said, "all I have to do is point them to iTunes."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/te...y/18drill.html
Pirate radio
Record Internet Radio with Radio2MP3. Discover new music without using peer-to- peer (P2P) networks.
Gene Lursky
Press Release - The fallout of the recent RIAA lawsuits and shut down of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, download music fans turn to a more legal way of downloading new music tunes. Using new streaming recorder software called Radio2MP3. Have you used your cassette recorder to record a favorite song off of the radio? Or a VCR to record a show you regularly watch? Now you can do the same thing with streaming Internet radio on your home computer!
Radio2MP3 records internet radio stations, burns music files to a CD, converts media to different format and splits songs into individual MP3s. The software also tags each file with the artist, title, genre and album.
"It's is a new way to capture streaming music as individual MP3 files," says Radio2MP3 founder Gene Kursky . "Simply listen to your favorite online radio station and let Radio2MP3 do all the work. Now music fans can avoid RIAA lawsuits without using peer-to-peer networks. It's a great way to discover new music."
Radio2MP3 allows you to choose what genre of music you would like to record. You can then search the Internet for radio stations and setup schedule recordings when you are out. Walk away and return later to find dozens, even hundreds of your favorite songs neatly stored on your computer as MP3 files.
Features of Radio2Mp3 streaming music recorder:
- Record Internet radio songs or talk shows as MP3 files
- Play on your computer with Audio Player
- Burn a compilation CD to play in your car or CD player
- Duplicate file remover automatically removes duplicate songs.
- Add your own stations manually.
- Split large files into individual tracks.
- Schedule to record a favorite radio station at a certain time of the day
- Record up to 30 Internet radio stations at one time
- Convert to various file formats (MP3, WAV, WMA)
Radio2MP3 is available for instant download online at
http://www.radio2mp3.com.
http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messag...81/148181.html
As Clear Channel Enters the Fray, Online Radio Looks to Be Coming of Age
Bob Tedeschi
AFTER giving its Internet competitors a huge head start, Clear Channel is ready to play catch-up.
The radio industry's dominant company, with more than 1,200 stations, has begun introducing its first meaningful online strategy after what could be the most protracted example of Internet indifference among major media businesses. At long last, Clear Channel is building more original programming and other features into its stations' Web sites to lure listeners and, it hopes, a new stable of advertisers.
"This is an easy way for Clear Channel to increase their stations' midday audiences, by making the stations available to office workers who have either no radio or bad reception in their offices," said Kurt Hanson, publisher of the Radio and Internet Newsletter. "And it opens up a whole new set of advertising opportunities."
Competitors and industry analysts say they welcome Clear Channel's initiatives, because online radio has just begun to attract the attention of listeners and advertisers. And they lay odds that the company will succeed despite its late start.
Clear Channel Radio, which is owned by Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, has been going through the motions online for years. The company's stations have dedicated Web sites, but they offer little more than pages cluttered with advertisements, song lists, entertainment news and pictures of D.J.'s.
This month Clear Channel began replacing those Web sites with simplified sites, featuring fewer ads and highlighting original programming, live Webcasts and other elements meant to keep visitors engaged.
The relative dearth of ads makes it easy for visitors to find "Stripped" and "Sneak Peek," two new online-only features introduced in recent weeks. "Stripped" is Clear Channel's version of MTV's "Unplugged" series: a live performance that visitors can either watch or listen to as a straight audio feed.
"Sneak Peek" offers Clear Channel's online visitors the chance to listen to tracks from albums that have not been released. Last month, 375,000 people logged on to the company's sites to hear a new album from the Backstreet Boys four days before its debut in stores.
Given the pedigree of the man leading Clear Channel's new online radio strategy, such changes are not necessarily surprising. Evan Harrison, Clear Channel's executive vice president of online music and radio, was lured away from AOL last year; while there, he oversaw the company's highly successful Radio@AOL division.
Mr. Harrison said that when Clear Channel Radio's chief executive, John Hogan, hired him, "he made it clear it was time to do something serious."
Offline, Clear Channel Radio reaches about 110 million people each week. Online, the Clear Channel's Web sites reach eight million each month. Mr. Harrison said he expected that the new online-only features would help the company's Web sites "quickly compete with all the online entertainment destinations." He added, "After we build the audience, we'll be able to bring in our advertising partners."
Clear Channel is also cashing in on the podcasting trend. Podcasts, or downloadable audio files, have generated considerable interest in recent months, partly because they allow professionals and amateurs alike to create miniature radio programs and distribute them freely.
Music companies are still trying to determine how to allow for widespread distribution of songs within podcasts while complying with copyright laws. In the meantime, though, Clear Channel and its chief offline rival, Infinity Broadcasting from Viacom, have found early success with nonmusic podcasts.
In May, Infinity, which owns many of the country's most popular news stations, introduced in San Francisco a Web site, KYourRadio.com, and converted a station, KYCY-AM, to exclusively feature podcast content submitted by listeners. And this month, Infinity began offering podcasts of news, weather and other clips to listeners of its biggest news stations.
Clear Channel last month countered with free podcasts of "Phone Taps," a daily prank call featured on Z100 FM in New York. As of last week, more than 500,000 people had downloaded at least one episode of "Phone Taps," and Clear Channel had begun working on delivering 15-second ads with each podcast.
Overall Internet radio usage, while growing, remains comparatively small, according to Arbitron. In a January survey, 22 percent of Americans had watched or listened to Internet radio broadcasts in the previous month, compared with 10 percent in January 2000.
Yahoo claims the biggest online radio audience, with about 2.8 million weekly visitors in March, according to an Arbitron/comScore Media Metrix survey. AOL was second, with 1.8 million listeners, while MSN and Live365 also attracted sizable audiences.
As Clear Channel vies for more online visitors, the competition is hardly standing still. In May, Yahoo started a $5-a-month subscription service, Music Unlimited, which offers commercial-free radio, personalized playlists and a feature that lets people transfer music tracks to portable devices.
AOL, meanwhile, last month began allowing nonsubscribers to listen to its 200 radio stations on AOL.com around the clock, as part of the company's overall strategy of attracting more non-AOL members to its free Web site. Previously, nonmembers could listen for two hours daily, according to Bill Wilson, AOL's senior vice president of programming.
Last week, AOL announced that later this month it would begin carrying 20 stations from XM Satellite Radio on AOL.com's radio service.
A handful of major advertisers, including Nestlé and Cingular, have signed on for significant online radio campaigns, but for the most part, marketing dollars continue to flow elsewhere. Mr. Hanson of the Radio and Internet Newsletter estimated that online radio advertising revenues would amount to about $25 million this year.
Karim Sanjabi, executive vice president of marketing innovation for Carat Interactive, an advertising agency based in San Francisco, said: "Definitely the audience is there, but we haven't seen the excitement from clients yet, which is strange, because online radio is a very good option. It feels like there hasn't been a champion of Internet radio - someone who's really pushed it out there."
If any company fits that description, it is Ronning Lipset Radio, a New York advertising sales firm that last year created an online radio network composed of AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Live365 and Windows Media, and began selling ads across those sites to national marketers.
Ronning Lipset's stable of 60 advertisers includes RadioShack, NBC and Nestlé. According to Eric Ronning, one of the company's principals, the firm's advertising fees have quadrupled, reaching prices that are competitive with offline radio. "It's truly normalized," he said. "We're not getting bought because we're cheaper than the other guys."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/te...gy/18ecom.html
Cumulative Shipments of Portable Multimedia Players to Top 13 Million Units by 2010
Barriers such as High Price and a Lack of Compelling Video Content to Slow Adoption
Press Release
High prices and limited video content will inhibit demand for HDD (hard disk drive) portable multimedia players (PMPs), which will reach only 17% of U.S. online households by 2010, according to Parks Associates’ Portable Multimedia Players: Analysis and Forecasts.
Competition from existing devices such as portable DVD players and mobile phones with multimedia functions will also limit adoption of HDD-based PMPs, as reported in this new study, which estimates the cumulative U.S. shipments of these devices will reach 13 million units by 2010.
“The PMP market will not experience the rapid growth typical of portable MP3 players,” said Harry Wang, research analyst at Parks Associates. “We anticipate a flatter adoption curve and lukewarm demand over the next two years, with meaningful increases in consumer interest by late 2007 or early 2008.”
Although the forecast for PMPs is not as upbeat as hoped, manufacturers could stimulate interest to some extent, according to Wang, by bundling unique video content with the device or by raising product awareness among consumers who are receptive to the concept of multimedia content on the go.
Portable Multimedia Players: Analysis and Forecasts probes market demand for PMPs, evaluates product and pricing strategies, analyzes market drivers and barriers, and estimates adoption rates and market potential over the next five years. Moreover, the report profiles key players in emerging market segments and features consumer data from the recently completed survey Mobile Entertainment Platforms and Services.
http://news.ecoustics.com/bbs/messag...81/145343.html
How To…
Never Miss An Episode With Bittorrent And RSS
In this post you will learn how you can never miss an episode of your favorite shows ever again. This will be accomplished through the magic of BitTorrent and RSS.
I’m bad at watching TV. I always miss my favorite shows like The West Wing and Enterprise. I can never remember when they’re on and when I do, they’re already three-quarters through. My solution thus far has been to go to TorrentSpy and download the torrent. This, of course, requires that I remember that to do that, and then I have to wait three hours. Wouldn’t it be better if the morning after the show aired a high quality copy of the show sat sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to watch it? The answer is yes, yes it would.
The are many solutions to this problem, but this is how I do it. Basically what’s happening is that the BT client checks an RSS feed for torrents that match certain criteria. When it detects those criteria, it begins to download the torrent. The result is something like TiVo, but free.
The how-to:
You will need to use Azureus. It’s a pretty good BT client and I’d recommend using it anyway. It is a Java application and works on most platforms.
You will also need the RSS Import plugin for Azureus. Installing it is a matter of dragging the unzipped folder into the plugins folder in your Azureus directory and restarting Azureus.
In Azureus, go into the preferences and expand the plugins tab. Choose RSS Importer.
Check the Activate RSS Importer Plugin box.
Enter
http://www.tvtorrents.net/rss.php as the RSS Channel to import. You can also enter http://
www.btefnet.com/backend.php, each some shows that the other doesn’t. The BT-EFNet one, for instance, has The Daily Show. Chacun a son goût.
In the next text box, Filter …, enter a regular expression that matches the name of torrent of the the show you want to download. A quick guide to the kinds of regular expressions that are expected here is provided on the RSS Import page. For The West Wing, for example, I put in west.wing.hdtv — which means download any file that include the letters west, followed by any single character, followed by the letters wing, followed by any number of characters, followed by the letters hdtv, to make sure I get the HDTV version and not the VCD version. For multiple shows, separate them with a semi-colon, so west.wing.hdtv;enterprise.*hdtv would download The West Wing and Enterprise.
Under Recheck channels… I would recommend putting in 60, so as not to bombard the TV Torrents server with more requests than necessary.
And you’re set. Don’t worry about the other options. Now you just have to wait for the next episode to air. Depending on your download speed, you should have it in your downloads folder after a couple of hours.
Now all you have to do is watch them.
http://pealco.net/archives/2004/11/0...orrent_and_rss
Darknet Casts Hollywood as Heavy
Jason Silverman
Hollywood is terrified of your computer. Movie industry bigwigs know your PC can help you create your own movies, or, worse, copy and tweak theirs. So, like a jealous lover, the entertainment industry worries: Is your computer offering you the fulfillment we can't? Are you going to buy fewer of our movie tickets, DVDs and CDs?
Author J.D. Lasica says Hollywood is waging battles on several fronts to make sure that doesn't happen. In his comprehensive, sometimes chilling new book, Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, Lasica details the entertainment industry's strategies for maintaining control of content in the rip-mix-burn age.
Darknet paints a picture of a culture war that pits Hollywood, which wants to lock down every byte of content, against its technologically empowered audience, which enjoys manipulating and sharing digital info.
While researching the book, Lasica interviewed hundreds of experts, including industry executives, lobbyists, lawyers and Silicon Valley insiders. He visited "darknets," the illegal file-sharing networks that have turned pirating Hollywood movies into a global sport, and checked in with regular folks who just want to pull a Disney film clip for their home videos.
Lasica spoke with a sprawling cast of characters. Jack Valenti, the silver-tongued former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, helped frame battles over content flow as being solely about piracy. The pseudonymous "Rev. John" uses pirated movies in his weekly sermons. Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, two Mississippi kids, spent seven years making a feature-length tribute to Raiders of the Lost Ark in their backyards. And David Clayton created the MovieMask software to snip out R-rated content from Hollywood films.
The software provided by MovieMask and its rival, ClearPlay, quickly came under attack by Hollywood, which argued that even in the privacy of their own homes, consumers don't have the right to mess with trademarked films. Though Congress came down on the side of ClearPlay (the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, passed last April, kept scene-scrubbing software legal), Hollywood's aggressiveness surprised even Lasica.
"(Hollywood's) view still is in the vein of, 'We are the artists. We are the creative professionals. You are the audience, and you don't have the right to change anything that we do in any small way,'" he said. "But that's just a holdover. It's 20th-century analog thinking -- that there isn't a place for the audience in the movie-viewing experience, that we are just passive receptacles for the artists. That won't work in the digital age."
Turf wars between the entertainment and technology industries are nothing new. Music companies sued to thwart the player piano in 1908. AM radio broadcasters marshaled their forces against the coming of FM. VCRs very nearly went extinct in 1984 until a 5-4 Supreme Court vote (with Sandra Day O'Connor passing the tiebreaker) kept them legal.
But the stakes have never seemed quite this high or the entertainment industry this proactive. Members of the public are learning to personalize, create and share their media. Hollywood, meanwhile, has all its chips invested in a top-down model of information and entertainment distribution.
"We are moving from a text-based culture -- where people have been allowed to borrow and take snippets from books and magazines and journals -- into a visual culture," Lasica said. "Those same kind of rights, to quote from a movie or TV show and annotate it or comment on it, have been stripped away."
Darknet outlines Hollywood's multi-pronged strategy for locking down content. The tactics include using technological advances (DVD encryption is one example) and strong-arming or co-opting tech companies.
Lasica finds that Hollywood also wields huge influence in Congress. In the book, he describes the 1998 passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which makes cracking encryption a federal offense. The DMCA, Lasica argues, overwrites fair-use laws, which protect scholars and artists who appropriate materials for purposes of education and political expression.
"That's a good example of how the public doesn't realize how their rights are being whittled away," Lasica said. "I'm pretty sure that even members of Congress aren't fully aware of what they were passing."
Lasica is confident that what he describes as the "digital rights" of consumers will eventually carry the day. Until then, Hollywood will resist. And finally, if history is any measure, Hollywood will prosper.
"The entertainment industry has always fought new technologies, and the technologies have eventually won out," Lasica said. "And then Hollywood benefits. Today, they think peer-to-peer technologies are a huge threat. In fact, it is more likely an unparalleled opportunity for the industry to expand its market share, to get movies and music in everybody's hands."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,68048,00.html