[JackSpratts]

Quotes Of The Week

"There are lots of ways that people are [trading music online]." - Lee Rainey

"We've been seeing shifts to the smaller sites. Some of the smaller sites also use encrypted files, so it provides a little more protection." – Mike Goodman

"That's not true, that may be what the MPAA would like the copyright law to be, but that's not what the law says." - Wendy Seltzer on the MPAA’s classroom motto ''If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it," taught to disadvantaged school kids by Junior Achievement volunteers under a grant from Big Media.

"Commercialism has no place in the classroom. This program is a time vampire. Is it more important for kids to hear the movie industry's message or should they be learning to read and pass new test standards?" - Alex Molnar

"It's rather like inviting the American insurance industry into the classroom to tell kids about the future of health care." - Fred von Lohmann

"People tape movies on their VCRs and swap it with friends without getting arrested for piracy." – Wendy Seltzer

"The technology side of this story is very organic; it's changing and there will be new ways for people to share music for free online." - Lee Rainey

"When asked if he was bothered about the money it cost him, he replied that any real musician should be in it for the music, and you had to question the motives of certain groups and singers who were up in arms about music downloading." - New Music Express

"Un-fucking-believable." - JackValenti









Table Dancing

I’ve been listening to my new audio set-up. It’s a simple thing really, proving once again most good ideas usually are. A few years ago I bought one of Henry Kloss’s excellent table radios he called The Model One. I purchased it for my parents for some occasion or another and liked it so much I went back to the store and got one for me. I put it next to my computer and there it sat, but soundlessly and out of a job, like a big paper weight. See, the PC is the source for nearly all of my audio, radio and otherwise, and it’s piped throughout my home. It’s been this way for five years. Whether it’s music radio, talk radio or just plain songs, it all starts on my computer system before making its way around the house. Tunes In Every Room is the motto around here, and has been since I was old enough to wrap two wires together. So I don’t really need a radio. The thing is though for someone who grew up listening to over-the-air broadcasts a little something is lost when sound emanates from every point in space. In my mind I think somehow it’s not real if it isn’t coming out of hanger-sprouting box struggling to hold a jittery signal. I’m a product of my environment; years spent nodding off to sparky AM signals drifting in and out of a tough bakelite radio and an impressionable consciousness. Now it’s so easy; sound just appears, anywhere, everywhere, at the slightest touch, noiselessly, perfectly, continuously uninterrupted and forever pristine. Sounding exactly as good on the 100th play as the very first. Everyday is virgin-vinyl day at Jacks’ place. This is not a bad thing. But for me and others like me, it is a different thing. Progress is funny that way. We seem to move in a direction that answers a need but we do it in a way that changes the rules. I have my perfect radio now, but it’s so unlike what I think radio is supposed to be I forget what I’m listening to, and in a way feel robbed of the wish that has spectacularly come true. The solution was so easy I don’t know why I just didn’t do it to begin with. The Kloss Model One has an auxiliary jack in the back for playing other sources like a CD, but it’s a bit of a pain because it isn’t switchable like most aux inputs. If you plug a wire into it it only plays that source – and nothing else – until you unplug the wire. It’s inconvenient so I’ve never used it. Until now. I simply plugged a cable from the headphone output jack in my sound card into the aux jack on the back of the Model One and presto – faster than you can say Radio Luxemburg whatever my computer was playing came right out of the radio on my table, sounding like a radio, and not some sterile PC stream. It made all the difference. All of a sudden I had the best radio on the planet, and even friends well aware I stream 24/7 wanted to know how I was getting the tasty stations.

Now the Model One is a great little unit - simple to use with new technology and excellent sound - but from my point of view what makes it cool is it looks and acts like a regular, old fashioned radio, complete with big round dials and knobs, making everything I hear remind me of how far we’ve actually come in just a few short years, because all of a sudden the magic is tangible. It’s a real warm-sounding analog radio alright, only better. No commercials, no screaming idiots, no wandering signals, no static at all. Just what I want whenever I want, whether it’s streamed from Switzerland, Paradise California or my own PC and the 100 plus gigs of audio I keep around. It’s great for listening to old radio dramas and mysteries too. I’m a bit young to have caught them the first time around, and I really wished I’d been able to make them when I was working in radio but for some reason nobody thought there was an audience. Lucky for us there are thousands of hours of saved programs captured from transcription discs available everywhere on the peers, so being able to hear the boys of the Tear Gas Squad barking out my table radio is truly a hoot. I turn down the lights and I’m in there with them, coughing roscoes at the grifters and warming my suit on a smoking dame.

But that’s not the half of it. Since the advent of peer-to-peer I’ve discovered forgotten bands I hardly knew existed. It’s not surprising - during the last four decades record companies flooded the market with more than 50,000 albums a year - over 600,000 songs, some 10,000 per week. Well over 1000 new songs released each day. That’s a huge amount of music, making it easy to see how more than a few great tunes could get lost along the way. Which is a real shame because some of that flotsam was spectacular stuff. The good news is that thanks to peer-to-peer, “lost” doesn’t mean nearly as much as it used to a few short years ago.

Coming soon, some of those “new” discoveries.













Enjoy,

Jack.












U.S. vets will get no break from the RIAA/MPAA.

Army Chides Soldiers for Using P2Ps
Brooks Boliek

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - The U.S. Army is telling soldiers to get off the popular peer-to-peer networks because file sharing is hurting the worldwide war on terrorism, according to Pentagon memos and an article published by the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command.

"Since the start of the global war on terrorism, the most pressing issue from service members in the field has been the shortage of bandwidth to transmit battlefield intelligence to combatant commanders," according to the article published by the technology command. "Unauthorized use of P2P applications account for significant bandwidth consumption. It limits the bandwidth required for official business and storage capacity on government systems. While those who monitor the Army networks agree that copyright infringement is a valid issue, they do have other, more important concerns."

The article quoted a white paper written by the Army's Computer Network Operations Intelligence section saying that unauthorized P2P applications on government systems "represent a threat to network security."

According to the article, the soldier illegally downloading the files and the GI's company commander can be held liable for copyright infringement, and both could be disciplined under military charges that prohibit stealing.

Calls to the command headquarters in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., were not returned Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=4996708


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Ah, OK, now it's clear…

Exiting MPAA Chief: Pirates A Security Threat
Susan Crabtree

In what is likely his last performance in the congressional hot seat, outgoing Motion Picture Assn. of America topper Jack Valenti Thursday labeled piracy a national security threat and implored a Senate spending panel to devote more resources to fighting it....

Subscription - http://www.variety.com/index.asp?lay... oryID=13&cs=1


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CNET Launches Music Download Service
Reuters

Online technology company CNET Networks on Monday launched a free digital music service, allowing people to search and download what it said were thousands of songs contributed by independent and unsigned artists.

The service, based on CNET's Download.com Web site, has been collecting music for the past few weeks, encouraging musicians to register on the site and upload their songs.

The music download service will be separate from the MP3.com Web site, which CNET has said it will relaunch soon as a music information site. CNET also is the publisher of News.com.

The former MP3.com, which CNET acquired late last year, offered similar functions to those in the new music download platform. Many artists and fans of the site complained when it was closed down, fearing that hundreds of thousands of songs would be lost permanently.

CNET said it plans to add new technology and community features to its download service, which it intends to be the largest free-music download platform, over the course of the year.

Pay-for-download services have become the hottest trend in digital music, with one, Apple Computer's iTunes music store, having sold 50 million downloads in less than a year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5199634.html


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RIAA Threats Push Music Traders Elsewhere
Jay Lyman

The Recording Industry Association of America is succeeding at pushing Internet users away from illegal music downloads, but those in search of free file trading are also moving to lower-profile applications and other platforms, such as e-mail and instant messaging, according to the latest research.

The Pew Internet and American Life project reported that the recording industry campaign against downloaders and online music traders has made an impact on several fronts, according to phone surveys done by the research firm. Sixty percent of those polled who had never downloaded a music file said they would not do so because of concern over the RIAA's lawsuits against individuals.

The RIAA strategy might keep those users from any online music offerings, the research suggested, including the array of legitimate services that have become available in the last year. However, the Pew research showed that the number of North Americans downloading music and sharing files online has actually increased, with many heading to legitimate sites and services while others turn to smaller, unlicensed services that provide more anonymity.

"There is some movement to the less popular, less prominent, less monitored peer-to-peer systems," Pew director Lee Rainey told TechNewsWorld. "There are lots of ways that people are [trading music online]," Rainey added, referring to e-mail, instant messaging and user groups, "although I think the incidence is smaller compared to peer-to- peer or even the paid services."

The Pew researchers said that while the RIAA lawsuits have pushed many away from online music, some of those who were using popular services such as Kazaa , Morpheus or BearShare are moving to smaller file-sharing applications such as iMesh, BitTorrent and eMule.

"While it's clear that the industry's legal campaign has made a lasting impression in the minds of American Internet users, we are also seeing evidence that a segment of users are simply moving away from the most popular and highly monitored file-sharing networks and are instead using alternative sources to acquire files," said Pew research specialist Mary Madden, co-author of the report.

Fellow co-author Rainey said that, over the long term, the number of online music fans is going to increase as Internet users discover and use the variety of legitimate services and business models.

In the meantime, the smaller P2P applications -- which have evolved in terms of increasing anonymity and privacy -- will continue to draw more users, as will other alternative file-trading methods, such as e-mail, instant messaging and discussion groups, Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman told TechNewsWorld.

"We've been seeing shifts to the smaller sites," Goodman said. "Some of the smaller sites also use encrypted files, so it provides a little more protection."

Goodman added that while illegal music downloading might be down overall, there are significant amounts of free file trading taking place through the smaller applications and through the other, non-P2P applications.

"I think there's a lot of it not being accounted for," Goodman said.

Analysts also have referred to the international aspect of free file-trading, where services and users might be out of reach of legal prosecution.

Goodman said that the anonymity of free services is likely to continue improving, perhaps to the point where the application and file trading are totally anonymous.

Rainey agreed that new free file-trading models are likely to emerge and then copyright owners such as the RIAA will change their aim in an ongoing "arms race."

"The technology side of this story is very organic; it's changing and there will be new ways for people to share music for free online," Rainey said. "I don't have a sense yet of where this is going to end up."
http://www.crmbuyer.com/perl/story/33532.html


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Ad Guru Opens iPod To The World
Steven Deare

A quick-thinking Sydney developer is cashing in on the iPod and file-sharing phenomena, and has launched what he claims is the iPod's first Web server.

The DOT-POD software, available in server and client versions, lets users share tracks from their iPod with others via the Internet. The software betters a standard Web server by displaying track data in HTML, and offers specialised searches and user controls.

DOT-POD was launched this month by Jeff Ayling, who may be more familiar to Australians as one of the voices of the PlaySchool theme song. An e-commerce guru, Ayling's family marketing business has composed well-worn jingles for Tip-Top, Berocca and many others.

Ayling uses his iPod to store his compositions for review. It was through collaborating on these jingles that Ayling had the idea for DOT-POD.

"We work from home [recording] studios and I'm on the other side of Sydney [to my dad]," he said.

"So the idea came to me when I put together parts of jingles and was sending them to Dad to collaborate."

Sharing and reviewing compositions through other methods like e-mail was less convenient, he realised.

Ayling created DOT-POD so he could select multiple files from his iPod (connected to his computer) and publish them to the Web, or drop them to his desktop.

The Web server URL is then e-mailed to his father, who can stream or download any of his son's tracks at a glance.

"We've been using it for about six months internally," said Ayling.

He believes many iPod owners have, or will, encounter a fundamental problem with the iPod, the one that led to DOT-POD's development.

"You can't take songs off your iPod," he said. "You just can't move them to your Macintosh."

This is due to a hidden folder on the device that prevents any content being uploaded, presumably to protect copyright owners, said Ayling.

DOT-POD can also run from the iPod, which allows the owner to share their songs via any available Macintosh.

Most importantly for Ayling, the software also has access controls that gives access to only his father, thus protecting their compositions.

"Peer-to-peer systems like KaZaA are designed to enable anonymous third parties to share music. This is much more closed off," said Ayling.

"The only way you can access my music is via the URL and password."

While Ayling admits DOT-POD could still be used to infringe copyright, he has chosen not to receive the IP addresses of users following legal advice. This puts him outside the file-sharing process, like the developers of Web servers like Apache. DOT-POD also presents users with several warnings on copyright infringement.

Accordingly, DOT-POD has a different market focus than common forms of music file-sharing software.

"We're after the professional and amateur music market," said Ayling, referring to users who want to control the distribution of their songs. He has priced DOT-POD server at $29. The client software is free.

In its first couple of weeks, DOT-POD has sold nearly 100 copies, with most sales coming from the US, said Ayling.

Ayling has also just launched a related product for another perceived limitation in Apple's music software.

Apple music programs such as GarageBand will generally only export tracks to the Macintosh's iTunes folder, claims Ayling.

He's developed the DOT-TUNES Web server (also $29), which allows users to publish music from this folder to the Web.

DOT-TUNES works in the same way as DOT-POD, allowing songs to be 'broadcast' to remote users via a Web browser.

"We feel it'll eventually be bigger than DOT-POD," said Ayling. "Only about 3 million people have an iPod but a lot more have iTunes [folders]."

Windows versions of both DOT-POD and DOT-TUNES should be available within a month, and later Linux, he said.

He later hopes to expand his Web server software to sharing Macintosh movie and photo files.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index....69;fp;2;fpid;1


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RIAA Files 477 More File-Sharing Lawsuits
Grant Gross

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed 477 more lawsuits against people trading unauthorised music online, including lawsuits against 69 people who allegedly used university networks to download music.

Fourteen universities across the US were home to those 69 file-traders, according to the RIAA.

The RIAA would continue to work with universities to educate students about legal music download services, according to RIAA president, Cary Sherman.

"Along with offering students legitimate music services, campus-wide educational and technological initiatives are playing a critical role," Sherman said. "But there is also a complementary need for enforcement by copyright owners against the serious offenders - to remind people that this activity is illegal."

The RIAA has filed more than 1500 lawsuits against file-traders since January. As with other recent lawsuits, the RIAA filed "John Doe" lawsuits against unnamed file-traders identified through their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. In December, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the RIAA did not have the authority under US law to subpoena the names of alleged peer-to-peer file traders from ISPs (Internet service providers). Copyright holders previously were allowed to file a subpoena request with a clerk of court and find out the name of an alleged copyright violator without going before a judge to request a subpoena.

The university networks allegedly used in the 69 cases were Brown University, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Gonzaga University, Mansfield University, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Sacred Heart University, Texas A&M University, Trinity College in Connecticut, Trinity University in Texas, University of Kansas, University of Minnesota and Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Brown University issued a statement reacting to the lawsuits: "Brown University has not yet received notice of the lawsuits announced today by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). If the University is served with a subpoena that meets the requirements of the law,

Brown will comply as fully as possible. Until the University is served, however, it does not know the extent of the RIAA action. Any Brown student found in violation of the law will also be subject to University disciplinary action."
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php?i...9&fp=16&fpid=0


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Duma Adopts Amendments To Copyright Law

MOSCOW, April 21 (Itar-Tass) - Deputies of the State Duma lower house of Russia’s parliament on Wednesday adopted in the second reading amendments to the Law on Copyright and Allied Rights in order to counteract intellectual piracy in Russia.

The bill on amendments specifies criteria for providing protection in the Russian territory to publications and objects of allied rights depending on the citizenship of the author, place of origin and location of a publication or object of allied rights. The amendments introduce the principle of retroactive protection.

The bill enhances the copyright duration to 70 years after the author’ s death instead of the current 50 years stipulated by Russian legislation.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=725118


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EMI Cries Foul Over Tunes In EA Sports Games

EMI, one of the world's largest music companies, has filed a federal lawsuit against Electronic Arts, the world's largest video game publisher, over claims of copyright infringement in EA's highly successful sports games.

The suit, filed in federal court in New York on Wednesday, says a number of EA's recent sports titles, including "Madden NFL 2004," "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004" and "MVP Baseball 2004" use songs that "embody copyrighted musical compositions that EMI owns, co-owns, administers or otherwise controls."

EA and other publishers have increasingly made music an important part of their games, debuting new songs by both up-and-coming and established artists in their games before the artist's CD is released. Some have established divisions dedicated to producing and acquiring music for their titles.

"This entire lawsuit is related to a single song that samples lyrics from another song," Electronic Arts said in a statement. "Our use of that song was licensed directly from the artist. We have agreements for every song used in our games."

EMI claimed in the suit that EA sought licenses throughout 2003 from EMI for the use of certain songs for its sport games, but then released the games before the licenses were granted.

Subsequently, EMI said, EA renewed its license requests in mid-February of this year. EMI countered with a letter in early March claiming its rights had been infringed and withdrawing any outstanding licensing offers.

The suit seeks damages and the potential award of a percentage of EA's profits on those games, which EMI said was "believed to be tens of millions of dollars."
http://news.com.com/2100-1043-5198041.html


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Republican National Committee Advertises On E-Donkey

Share and share alike, right?
Charlie Demerjian

ONE OF THE major themes for politicos of all stripes this year is digital rights management. When you and I think about it, we think of annoying things that keep you from exercising your rights and using the media that you legally purchased. Fair use? Not anymore.

Politicians think about easy speeches wrapped in patriotic and capitalistic phrases, backed up by large checks from the entertainment industry. The RIAA and MPAA fret, fume, and sue 12 year olds while shoveling wagonfulls of cash to get laws changed. If it weren’t so comical and sad, it would make me smile.

So, is this a stupid rant? Far from it, it is documentation of hypocrisy. While certain political organizations are decrying things that our judicial system has declared legal, other wings of the same organization fund them. See?

Does this mean E-Donkey is the official file trading network of the Bush administration? Is this open war on Hollywood liberals? Tune in next week for another episode of "How the Money Flows". Next week’s episode, "Condi, Ed Gillespie did WHAT?"
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15399


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Debate Rages On Over Swapping Of Music And Videos
Reid Kanaley

Despite the growth of legitimate, paid music-downloading services online, the legal, moral and economic debate over free Napster-like music- and video-swapping shows no sign of being resolved soon. We looked for sites to tell us what's up with downloads.

Zero Paid

To check out the current scene in file-sharing, this Web site offers news reports on the various legal and technical issues -- including computer viruses that target downloaders -- and links to many of the sites that provide so-called peer-to-peer software or that host file-swapping services. Proceed at your own risk.

www.zeropaid.com

Zero effect

A recent study by Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero." Here is the study report.

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/Fil...-March2004.pdf

Virtual Tuner

Not ready for downloading, but in search of Internet radio? This site links to online audio stations all over the world, including Radio Noord-Holland, various police scanners, the Boston Fire Department and Infidel Radio. There really is something for everyone to listen to out there.

www.virtualtuner.com

http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/8518891.htm


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Spanish Judge Rules X-Box Mods 'legal'
Lester Haines

A Spanish judge has ruled that modifications to games consoles to allow them to play DVDs and games from other countries "are not illegal".

According to El País, the ruling comes after the Guardia Civil charged Barcelona video games shop Innovagames with offering its clients "alteration of Play Station 2 and X-Box games consoles to allow them to read games from other parts of the world or downloaded directly from the Internet... by carrying out modification of their components as per diagrams found on the premises".

The judge noted that such modifications "might constitute a crime against the intellectual property of the equipment manufacturers", but he concluded that there is a legal loophole in the "Ley de Propiedad Intelectual" (Intellectual Property Law) which means that they are, by default, legal.

The loophole exists in article 270 of the penal code, which mentions "the manufacture, distribution or possession of means to crack computer programme security codes". It does not, however, cover "components of video games players nor, in general, equipment designed to run image or sound software".

The judge concluded, therefore, that he must reject the Guardia Civil's case.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04...odding_ruling/


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U.S. Court Asserts Jurisdiction Over Spanish Music Site
ILN News Letter

The District Court for the District of Columbia has asserted jurisdiction over the owners of puretunes.com, a Spanish based site that allowed users to download music. The court ruled that the registration of a local resident for the purpose of the suit was sufficient to meet the specific jurisdiction standard. The court added that "the 24 hour availability of downloadable files and transfer of files to those customers in the District is exactly the sort of purposeful, active, systematic, and continuous activity in the District of Columbia that constitutes 'doing business.'" Interestingly, the court also ordered disclosure of credit card transaction from a third party provider that would have provided evidence of sales in the jurisdiction. Case name is Arista Records v. Sakfield Holding Company.

Decision at http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/03-1474.pdf

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China

Website Loses Case Over MP3 Downloads

BEIJING, April 26, (Xinhuanet) -- A domestic MP3 website has to pay compensation of 160,000 yuan (US$19,000) to two Hong Kong-based entertainment companies for copyright infringement, the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court has ruled.

The website - www.chinamp3.com - well-known for providing MP3 downloads, will now be required to stop infringing on intellectual property rights of the Hong Kong Go East Entertainment Co and Sony Music Entertainment (Hong Kong), according to a judgment in the first instance made by the court over the weekend.

The judgment was made according to the Copyright Law and a judicial interpretation issued by the Supreme People's Court over Internet-related copyright lawsuits, the court said.

Entertainment industry insiders say the judgment will encourage more music producers to safeguard their rights against illegal online MP3 downloads.

Bai Nian'en, the lawyer representing the accused Beijing-based Shiji Yuebo Scientific Co, which owns the website, said there will be an appeal to a higher court and the judgment was not accepted as final.

The website provided downloads for 35 songs by famous singer Kelly Chen, whose copyright is owned by Go East, and 11 songs by Lo Hau Yam, who is distributed by Sony Music.

"The two Hong Kong companies never authorized any person to use them online," the court verdict said.

But Bai claimed that the website only provided a link for downloads, instead of direct download services.

"We did not intentionally violate the intellectual property rights of the two entertainment companies, so we need not shoulder responsibility for rights infringement," Bai said.

Judge Liu Yong said that the accused website's MP3 download service provided not only links to downloads, but direct download services.

"As a large-scale professional music website, the accused is subjectively wrong," Liu said.

The judge said he believed that the court's decision to confirm it was illegal to provide online links to MP3 downloads would help regulate online linking behaviour.

The record industry was happy about the decision.

Famous domestic music producer Song Ke said the result was a milestone in the entertainment industry's development.

Former vice-president of Warner Music, Song said Warner and other major domestic music producers had never brought MP3 websites to court before the court decision at the weekend.

"This is because MP3 websites were mainly created by music fans in the past and at the time we thought it was not that bad," he said.

"But the current condition is quite different. They (website operators) even intended to make money from the websites and are violating our copyright in broad daylight," Song said.

He said he expected that more entertainment companies will follow the Hong Kong companies that won the court case and fight against copyright infringement over MP3 downloads.

Song, as the managing director of newly-established Taihe Rye Music, said that besides MP3s, discs, tapes, and ring tone downloads for mobile phones would also be focused on in future efforts to safeguard intellectual property rights.

Wang Ziqiang, spokesperson for the State Intellectual Property Office said earlier that anyone who provides music downloads online without authorization would be held to be responsible according to law.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_1439710.htm


China Shuts Down 8,600 Internet Cafes In Two Months
AFP

BEIJING : China has shut down 8,600 Internet cafes in the last two months as part of an ongoing crackdown on the media, state press said Tuesday.

"Since our video conference on this issue on February 19, we have banned 8,600 underground Internet bars," the People's Daily quoted Minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng as saying.

"At present, there still exists many problems with the management at Internet cafes and Internet service providers."

Sun suggested the campaign was far from over and urged governments at the grassroots level to crack down on Internet bars providing services to under-age users and to impose stiffer fines on cafes violating regulations.

Overseeing the crackdown was a special bureau headed by Sun, which has linked up with 10 other ministries responsible for areas including education, law, finance, civil affairs, youth and telecommunications, the paper said.

The crackdown comes after the propaganda ministry annnounced last October a new "educational campaign" aimed at reaffirming Communist Party control over the press, including television, print and the electronic media.

Despite government restrictions, China is second only to the United States in the number of people online, with users rising to 79.5 million by December 2003 from 59.1 million a year earlier.

Internet cafes are often the only way to access the web for many Chinese due to the prohibitive costs of home computers, especially in rural villages and towns.

Besides cracking down on anti-government and subversive material, the measures are also aimed at curbing pornography and banning those under 16 from Internet gaming bars that have become magnets for rural and village youth.

In the last two months, the government has also greatly restricted web logs (blogs) and discussion forums, banned Internet bars from operating within 200 meters (660 feet) of schools and set up video surveillance cameras in Internet cafes in Shanghai.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stori.../82025/1/.html


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Australia Copyright Code Stalled By FTA
Kate Mackenzie

A LONG-awaited review into digital copyright laws has been released, but recommendations for ISPs who may be hosting copyright-breaching material have been clouded by the new Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the US.

The Digital Agenda Review, carried out by legal firm Phillips Fox, discusses the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000.

While the review says the laws are generally achieving their purpose, it says an industry code could address uncertainties around ISPs' obligations on receiving take-down notices for alleged breaches of copyright law, if for example an ISP's customer was storing pirated software or music on its servers.

However, it says in the absence of a code of practice, "there is a clear existing need for a simple and effective procedure by which parties can quickly and effective and effectively deal with allegations of infringing material".

The report says take-down notices should identify the copyrighted material and its location, provide contact details for the complaining party, and be accompanied by a Statutory Declaration. If known, contact details for the alleged infringer should also be included.

ISPs should also confirm whether the copyrighted material is hosted by
them, confirm the identity and contact details fo the alleged infringer, and inform the complainant if they cannot locate either, the report says. ISP must contact the alleged infringer who may themselves respond with a Statutory Declaration.

Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos said his organisation, which represents the ISP industry, had commenced developing a Copyright Code of Conduct but the process had been stalled by the Free Trade Agreement signed between Australia and the US earlier this year.

"We're still keen to finalise a code, but unfortunately the FTA tended to distract everyone from what was happening in Australia," Mr Coroneos said.

The time taken for the federal Government to negotiate the FTA and release the full text of the agreement meant the IIA had been unable to develop a code, because major copyright holders in the music and software industries wanted to know the details of the bilateral agreement first.

"(Phillips Fox) had a timeline that they had to meet, but I think everyone's pretty clearly of the view that the FTA trumps the DAR, so in a sense it wouldn't matter what the DAR concludes, if the FTA concludes otherwise, that's what the Government has bound itself to implements," Mr Coroneos said.

In addition, Mr Coroneos said, neither Australia nor the US had ratified the FTA. He said he hoped the federal Government would opt for an industry code of conduct rather than a legisative approach to take-down notices.

Despite the prescriptive nature of the FTA, Mr Coroneos said he believed there would still be room for a "somewhat customised appraoch" for Australia to develop its own take-down procedures.

"If that's correct, then we (IIA) become players again in terms of code development," he said.
http://news.com.au/common/story_page...E15306,00.html


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Norwegian Court Fines Teen For Privacy Violation

A Norwegian court has fined a 17 year old girl for having posted an offensive message on an Internet chatboard in violation of national privacy legislation.

From the news site– knock yourself out lol. The gist of it is thus: the 17 year girl had called another girl a whore on a website, and that she hated the other girl, as well as her sister and mother. The court thought that this sort of language is not covered by freedom of expression. - Jack.

Historisk dom for sjikane på Internett
Ann Kristin Ernes

Oslo (23.04.2004) Som den første i Norge er en mindreårig jente fra Hamar idømt en bot for nett-sjikane.

Jenta har skrevet på nettstedet hamarungdom.no at hun hater en annen jente og i tillegg beskrevet henne som hore.

Ifølge Hamar Arbeiderblad er den 17 år gamle jenta dømt av Hedmarken tingrett til å betale en bot på 4.500 kroner for å ha krenket en annens fred gjennom hensynsløs atferd.

På nettstedet hamarungdom.no skrev 17-åringen at hun hatet den fornærmede, og hennes søster og mor. Meldingen ble skrevet som et tilsvar til en annen persons melding der den fornærmede ble beskrevet som «en hore».

Retten fant at meldingen fra den tiltalte ikke kunne betraktes løsrevet fra de andre meldingene som omhandlet den fornærmede. Meldingen var etter rettens mening med på å forsterke den krenkende effekten ved å følge opp og avslutte meningsutvekslingen.

– Jeg kjenner ikke til lignende saker, men det overrasker meg ikke at man kan bli dømt for sjikane over Internett, sier advokat Kyrre Eggen hos advokatfirmaet Wiersholm, Mellbye & Bech til digi.no.

Eggen har tatt doktorgrad om ytringsfrihet.

– Internett har ingen amnesti og blir heller ikke spesielt beskyttet av ytringsfriheten. Det er ikke oppsiktvekkende at hun fikk en bot for sjikane, men jeg tror likevel de fleste velger en annen forfølging framover enn å bruke politiet og påtalemyndighetene, sier Eggen.

Hedmark tingrett kom også til at meldingen fra den 17-år gamle jenta ikke skal vernes av ytringsfriheten. Meldingen har etter rettens mening ingen positiv eller samfunnsgagnlig effekt, og ligger langt fra de hensyn ytringsfriheten hviler på. Meldingen var heller ikke fremsatt i en beskyttelsesverdig foranledning, da den tiltalte forklarte at den fornærmede aldri hadde gjort henne noe vondt. Etter rettens mening hadde meldingen heller karakter av offentlig sjikanering og mobbing, som retten ikke fant burde vernes.
http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=103087


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Graphics Patent Suit Targets Dell, Others
Matt Hines

Forgent Networks has launched a patent infringement lawsuit against 31 major computer and electronics vendors, seeking damages related to its claim to the technology underlying the widespread JPEG file format.

The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, contends that Forgent deserves royalties from the hardware and software makers based on its patent holdings that cover the compression technology behind JPEG. The format is one of the most popular methods for compressing and sharing images on the Internet.

Austin, Texas-based Forgent, which makes scheduling software, filed the suit through its Compression Labs subsidiary. The defendants read like a Who's Who list of the hardware business, including Apple Computer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, along with a slew of well-known electronics manufacturers such as Canon, Creative Labs, JVC and Xerox. Several software makers are also named in the suit, including Adobe Systems and Macromedia.

Forgent representatives said the company previously attempted to strike licensing deals with all of the vendors named in the suit but felt the process had reached a dead end.

"We've been pursuing negotiations for over a year, but that effort was no longer moving forward," said Michael Noonan, a company spokesman. "Litigation was a last resort and unfortunate but necessary."

Forgent has engaged in an aggressive pursuit of royalties related to JPEG since first announcing its claim to the patents in July 2002. In February 2003, the software maker won a $16 million licensing agreement from Sony based on U.S. Patent No. 4,698,672.

The company asserts that it has generated more than $90 million in licensing fees related to the patent over the last two years. Noonan said that one of the companies from which Forgent was created, Vtel, had earlier purchased the patent rights, which were granted in 1987.

The claim to the JPEG standard has long irked the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee, which has worked to create standards related to the file format since it was devised in 1986. When the company first staked its claim to JPEG, the committee denounced attempts to derive fees from the standard and expressed disappointment at Forgent's attempts to do so. The U.K.-based group could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest suit.

The actual patent held by Forgent relates to digital image compression; fields of use include any device, such as digital cameras, used to compress, store, manipulate, print or transmit digital still images. Forgent also asserts that its patent rights extend beyond digital cameras to include other devices such as personal digital assistants, cell phones, printers and scanners.

"We believe we will prevail in this litigation as the '672 patent is valid, enforceable and infringed," Richard Snyder, chief executive of Forgent, said in a statement. "It's unfortunate that despite the many opportunities these companies have had to license the patent, they have all declined to participate, leaving us no alternative but to litigate."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5198582.html


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Mind control from Major Tom.

Laying Down The Copyright Law -- To Children

Film studios back antipiracy course
Kathleen Sharp

ENCINO, Calif. -- The $90 billion entertainment industry is teaching middle-school children a course in copyright law that some education specialists say is one-sided and promotes commercialism in the classroom.

In the past year, the Motion Picture Association of America has spent approximately $200,000 to launch its program called ''What's The Diff?" to combat digital piracy. Despite the criticism, the trade group plans to continue the program next school year.

The 45-minute class is taught by volunteers from the nonprofit business group Junior Achievement, and reaches about 900,000 children in primarily disadvantaged schools from Boston to Los Angeles. The volunteers, some of whom work in the entertainment industry, talk with students about the liabilities of downloading music and films from the Internet.

Critics say that the program does not adequately explain the public's rights in copyright law, nor does it discuss the proliferation of legal websites that offer free music and films. Worse, say the program's detractors, is that it rewards those students who parrot the industry line with trips and free DVDs. At the end of the school year, students are asked to write an essay ''to get the word out that downloading copyrighted entertainment is illegal and unethical," according to the teachers' guide. Prizes include an all- expenses-paid trip to Hollywood, worth about $1,000; a Sony DVD player and library of 14 hit movies on DVDs, worth about $350 total; and a selection of 21 Hollywood classic DVDs, valued at $250. Teachers whose students win the contest will also be rewarded with prizes, such as a year's worth of free movie theater tickets for the teacher and a guest.

''It's inappropriate to offer tips, gifts, and prizes in exchange for adults pushing a commercial agenda in the classroom," said Melinda Anderson, spokeswoman for the National Education Association. ''It speaks to a new era of commercialism in classrooms."

Others claim that the entertainment industry, whose revenues depend on copyrighted material such as films and music recordings, should not be teaching students about copyright law without inviting alternative views. ''It's rather like inviting the American insurance industry into the classroom to tell kids about the future of health care," said Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit technology group. ''The entertainment industry has a strong financial incentive to control a biased discussion."

The industry is dominated by five studio-based conglomerates that also own major recording labels, television networks, radio stations, and other media subsidiaries. Its antifilm-piracy curriculum was developed to preempt problems suffered by the music industry, which for years has claimed that it loses as much as $4 billion a year from illegal copying. ''We know we are losing a great deal of money in illegal movie downloads, too," said Rich Taylor of the Motion Picture Association of America.

He said that 500,000 movies are being downloaded every day around the world, although he wasn't sure how many of those are illegal. ''We know that one area we have to attack is on the educational front." Like its cousin, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America has started to sue those who download content illegally. But unlike the recording industry, the film industry is tapping a nonprofit business group to bring its antipiracy message to young people.

Earlier this year, Junior Achievement volunteers debuted the industry's program in California classrooms. One volunteer, Steve Dolcemaschio, an executive with E! Entertainment Television Inc. (jointly owned by Comcast Corp., The Walt Disney Co., and Liberty Media Corp.) worked with Diedre Ndiaye, who teaches speech and drama to sixth- through eighth-grade students at Markham Middle School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Many children in the class indicated they had never downloaded anything before.

The volunteer and the teacher worked from a 25-page classroom guide to explain the concept of using a computer to download files, which they called ''morally and ethically wrong." The students played roles such as ''The Film Producer," ''The Starving Artist," and were asked questions such as ''Has anyone ever copied your homework? How did this make you feel?"

By the end of one session, the teacher asked one boy: ''Will you stop copying music online and download the right way?"

''Yes," he answered. ''I'll go to the music store and buy more CDs."

Students learn to repeat the program's motto: ''If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it."

''But that's not true," said Wendy Seltzer, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ''That may be what the MPAA would like the copyright law to be, but that's not what the law says."

The ''fair use" doctrine allows the public to use copyrighted material for educational purposes. One can use another's work to parody, review, or critique that material. You can even legally swap material, as long as it's not for commercial gain, said Seltzer. ''People tape movies on their VCRs and swap it with friends without getting arrested for piracy," she said.

Copyright law has become increasingly controversial because companies are trying to gain more control over creative material, Seltzer said. Meanwhile, many artists are turning away from corporate recording labels and studios and allowing people to download free independent films and music.

Artists at Creative Commons, garageband.com, and other websites encourage free downloads of their material, as long as people don't use the material for profit. . ''There are hundreds of thousands of artists who are desperately hoping that people will [watch and] listen to them," said George Ziemann, owner of a music production company, MacWizards.

Then there are questions surrounding piracy itself. Despite the companies' claim that downloads cost them billions of dollars, there is no reliable evidence proving that claim, according to Ziemann, von Lohmann, and others.

One study used industry figures to show that major recording labels in the last few years have been releasing as many as 25 percent fewer CD titles, while increasing the price of CDs. Excluding promotional CDs, the average price of a CD between 1998 and 2002 rose 19 percent, according to the study published by Sound & Vision magazine. These higher prices, combined with fewer titles being released, have probably hurt music sales, said von Lohmann.

Independent studies verifying financial loss from film piracy are also scarce. One study, performed by AT&T Labs, found that adults, not children, are the biggest illegal file- swappers.

Commercialism has no place in the classroom, said Alex Molnar, a professor who is director of commercialism in education at Arizona State University. ''This program is a time vampire," he said. ''Is it more important for kids to hear the movie industry's message or should they be learning to read and pass new test standards?"

Yet Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president of Junior Achievement, defends the industry's antipiracy program by saying it's not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law. Rather, the idea is to encourage student debate. ''We are learning ways to enhance classroom discussions."
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...ildren?pg=full


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TiVo Faces Clone War As Market Heats Up
May Wong

Debra Baker tells people she has TiVo. But she really doesn't.

The 33-year-old New York tax consultant has a variant --a digital video recorder offered through her cable company. She didn't know what "DVR" stood for until then.

"I thought DVR was Time Warner's name for TiVo," she said.

So, like many others, Baker simply uses the leading DVR brand as the catchall term for the new love in her lounging life: a machine that lets her easily record her favorite TV shows and watch them whenever she wants.

It's a flattering curse for TiVo, whose revolutionary technology records TV programs without the hassles of videotape, letting users pause live TV, do instant replays and begin watching programs even before the recording has finished.

As more clones crop up, the pioneer that helped popularize DVRs is in danger of becoming marginalized.

"TiVo was the proponent of time-shifting TV and their name is synonymous with it, but everyone else in the world that puts together a set-top box is doing the same thing and that's not helping TiVo," said Mike Paxton, analyst at In-Stat/MDR.

The key ingredients of a DVR are a hard drive to store video, an electronic programming guide to facilitate recording, and software to tie together the technology and give the user navigational control.

DVRs are primarily reaching the mass market through cable companies, and TiVo has yet to get its software, including its widely touted user interface, into their DVR-equipped set-top boxes. They are instead using unbranded DVR software from their longtime set-top-box suppliers -- Scientific Atlanta and Motorola.

"The cable train has left without TiVo onboard, and I don't think they're coming back for TiVo," said Sean Badding, an analyst with The Carmel Group.

TiVo's code also is missing from Panasonic's combination DVD Recorder-DVR and Mitsubishi's upcoming HDTV receiver with a 120-gigabyte DVR. Sharp is building DVR capabilities directly into some of its LCD TVs, again without TiVo.

At the end of 2003, more than a third of the 3.5 million U.S. households with DVRs had TiVo's software and services, according to Forrester Research. More than half of that comes though TiVo's partnership with DirecTV, which has been offering DVR services with its satellite offerings for years.

But as DVRs gain in popularity -- Forrester predicts nearly half of American households will have a DVR by 2009 -- TiVo may be hard-pressed to hold on to its leading market share.

Time Warner Cable was the first cable operator to launch a DVR in July 2002. Just 18 months later, 370,000 DVR customers were paying an extra $4.95 to $9.95 a month for the service. Comcast Corp., Charter Communications Inc. and nearly every major cable operator all plan to widely deploy DVRs this year.

"If Time Warner hadn't come out with a DVR, I would have considered a TiVo by now," said Robert Meyer, a 42-year-old finance portfolio manager from New York.

Dave Watson, a Comcast executive vice president, said choosing Scientific Atlanta and Motorola's technologies was simply the fastest path available to deliver DVR services. Comcast did a brief test with TiVo in 2000 and remains "in touch with TiVo, but there's nothing specific beyond that," Watson said.

TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., has knocked on the cable industry's doors for years -- and admittedly changed its take-my-TiVo approach to a more flexible tactic of designing its software around the cable industry's needs.

"It's a kinder, gentler TiVo now," said TiVo president Marty Yudkovitz. "It's about building what your customer wants."

But why should cable companies pay more to get TiVo's technology and brand name when they already have apparently good enough DVR features from their entrenched partners?

TiVo's co-founder and chief executive, Mike Ramsey, maintains that clones can't compete with such hallmark TiVO features as automatically recording shows based on keywords, such as favorite actor, director or sports team. Unlike cable DVRs, TiVo machines also can guess what programs a user might enjoy based on viewing habits.

"This brain-dead knockoff stuff is not going to work," said Ramsey. "People's expectations are going to rise. They're going to hear about TiVo's (features) and they're going to want it."

But customers of cable's offerings seem satisfied.

Baker, a TV-holic who never owned a TiVo before, considers her new cable DVR system "the greatest invention" -- and easy enough to use that she never needed an operating manual.

Baker and her husband also appreciated the lack of upfront investment costs to get the cable DVR.

The cable company installed the digital cable box for the Bakers and charges $8.95 a month. TiVo charges subscribers $12.95 a month or $299 for the life of the unit, on top of the $150 or more to get the standalone equipment.

With all this competition from cable companies, now is a critical time for TiVo to turn its No. 1 brand into real sales, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff said.

An additional threat may also be lurking if DirecTV decides to instead use the xTV DVR technology from its new sister Rupert Murdoch company, NDS Group.

TiVo executives are confident their deal with DirecTV is secure, but allying with cable remains a top priority. Getting into cable boxes would give TiVo a broad footprint to help drive its advertising business, which Ramsey sees as key to TiVo's future.

The company, meanwhile, says it has 60 foreign and domestic DVR-related patents and more pending, and won't hesitate to use them in court against competitors it deems infringers.

TiVo sued Echostar in January, claiming the satellite TV operator's DVR violates TiVo's patent for a "multimedia time warping system" that allows a user to store a TV program and watch another program at the same time.

But for now, even without a cable deal, TiVo is thriving and aims to become profitable by the end of 2005.

The company also estimates it will more than double subscribers almost 3 million by the end of January 2005. The company has earmarked $50 million in marketing and promotional rebates.

"This is it. This is their shot to get a whole lot of new subscribers before cable DVR subscribers really take off," Bernoff said. "And we'll see if they'll be a hitting a dribbler back to the pitcher or a home run."
http://www.crn.com/components/weblog...rticleID=49681


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Turner, NBC Downplay Impact of TiVo

Turner Entertainment Group isn't worried yet about TiVo's impact on traditional advertising models, said Keith Chandler, VP of business solution at Turner Entertainment Group, during a session Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. "We view it as a positive at this point," he said.

That's because TiVo has raised viewership of the Turner networks, he said. "Right now we don't have any big guns aimed at the TiVo world. We think it's been slightly positive because it increases viewership," he said. Mr. Chandler added that Turner expects positve results from the coming cable upfront.

Brandon Burgess, executive VP of business development at NBC, was also on the panel and said NBC is expecting a strong upfront too for both cable and broadcast. He added that 2006 will be the year to watch the possible impact of TiVo on ad revenues because penetration of DVRs will reach 10 percent then. "That's when it starts hitting the radar screen," Mr. Burgess said.

Sony in Talks to Buy MGM

Sony has teamed up with a pair of private-equity firms to acquire venerable film studio Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer Inc. for $5 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation.

The deal terms floated Wednesday involved Sony and buyout firms Texas Pacific Group and Providence Equity Partners splitting a $1.5 billion cash payment, with the consortium borrowing the rest. If successful, Sony would then merge MGM into Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Officials from Sony declined to comment, while spokespeople for Texas Pacific and Providence could not be reached.

MGM shares rose 12 percent Wednesday to close at $19.75 a share on a day in which trading volume was 10 times the daily average.

With more than 4,500 film titles, MGM has long been an asset sought after by other media companies. Indeed, Sony came close to acquiring the studio once before, but the deal faltered over issues of who would control the combined entity.

In terms of television, sources said the benefits of combining the two operations are a bit more dubious. While both companies have distribution internationally, they are lacking it domestically. In addition, neither MGM nor Sony has a robust television production operation on the level of a Warner Bros. or Twentieth Television.
http://www.tvweek.com/news/web042104.html


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Glad that’s settled…

Trust Us, It’s “Confidential”

Complaint:
Objections to a cinema commercial that showed a man holding a brand in a fire while a voiceover said "The pirates are out to get you. Don't touch their brand". The man held the brand against a pile of video cassettes; as they burned and exploded, the voiceover said "Piracy funds organised crime and will destroy our film and video industry"; as they exploded a second time, the voiceover said "Piracy funds terrorism and will destroy our society and your future enjoyment. Don't touch the hot stuff. Cool is copyright. Copyright is a matter of FACT ...". The complainants:

1. challenged the claim "Piracy funds terrorism" and

2. objected that the commercial, particularly the claim "Piracy ... will destroy our society", exaggerated the effect of film piracy and caused undue fear and distress. Codes Section: 3.1, 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2 (Ed 11)

Adjudication:
The advertisers said the commercial had been given a "U" certificate by the British Board of Film Classification; they believed it did not appeal to fear unduly or without good reason. They said they could not send all the substantiation they held about the link between piracy and terrorism because it was confidential. The advertisers sent a report, published on the European Union website, that stated "Terrorist groups also commonly become involved in counterfeiting and piracy as a mean of financing their activities". They sent the Executive Summary of a report, by the Alliance Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, entitled "Proving the Connection"; that report claimed "There is evidence of proscribed groups in Northern Ireland using intellectual property fraud as a fund raising activity for their criminal activities. The PSNI (Police Service Northern Ireland) has established an Organised Crime Task Force specifically to address this area of illegal activity and its role in funding paramilitary groups". The advertisers also sent the text of a public testimony by the Secretary General of Interpol to the Congress of the United States and the US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations; that document stated "Generally, [intellectual property crime] is organised and controlled by criminals or criminal organizations. In Northern Ireland, however, paramilitary groups are known to control some manufacturing through their links to organised crime groups" and concluded "It is ... possible to state with certainty that paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have financially benefited from [intellectual property crime]".

1. Complaints not upheld
The Authority noted that intellectual property crime had funded some paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and that videos, DVDs and VCDs made up a significant proportion of the counterfeit goods seized in Northern Ireland. It considered that, because the advertisers had shown that intellectual property crime, which included film piracy, funded terrorism, the claim was acceptable.

2. Complaints not upheld
The Authority considered that, because some terrorist groups might benefit financially from film piracy, the claim "piracy ... will destroy our society" was unlikely to mislead by exaggeration or to cause undue fear and distress.

http://www.asa.org.uk/adjudications/...ation_id=37673


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The Internet Jukebox

Does Rhapsody Have The Answer To The Downloading Wars?
Clive Thompson

Streaming audio has long been regarded as the sorry second cousin to the heroic MP3. For years, Net users complained that streaming made music sound like it was being broadcast from the bottom of a bathtub, and the slightest congestion caused annoying pauses, burps, and warbles. But just as important, for decades we've treated music as our personal, tangible property. We buy albums and CDs, lend them to our friends, and sell them once we get bored. Forking over $10 a month to listen to music on demand—as the streaming-audio services at Rhapsody and the new Napster require—doesn't jibe with our sense that songs ought to be part of our stuff, not a service you pay for like cable TV.

But as music fans are finding out, when you buy a song online, it usually isn't property any more. It's a license, an agreement to let you use the song. And those licenses impose some maddeningly Byzantine limits on how you use your music. Most legal downloads will work only on approved devices. A song bought at iTunes in "AAC," or Advanced Audio Coding, format won't work on anything but an iPod, while songs bought at MusicMatch or Napster in Microsoft's "WMA," Windows Media Audio, format won't work on iPods or many older MP3 players. And what if you get bored of that Strokes album you downloaded? Too bad: You can't sell it to anyone. That, too, would violate most of the licensing agreements. Worst of all, licenses on downloaded music can be rescinded. If the music companies want, they can "turn off" your right to listen to the music you've bought.

By using licenses, the labels and their download sites are secretly transforming music into a service—something to which you subscribe, and about which they can change the rules any time they want. But it's a particularly crappy service. Who wants to "own" this sort of pseudo- property, these annoying, stubborn, mulelike music files? In contrast, a music-streaming site advertises itself as a service, with an entirely different sort of consumer logic and much more satisfying results.

I recently tried Rhapsody, a streaming-audio service that gives you quick jukebox-style access to any song on its 30,000-album collection, for the price of 10 iTunes songs a month. My fears of lousy audio were unfounded. Rhapsody first went online in late 2001, and by now the service has vanquished any technical problems. Songs began playing in barely a second when I clicked on them, and no matter how aggressively I used my Net connection—surfing Web sites and checking e-mail while I listened—the audio never skipped or lagged. Rhapsody achieves this partly by cunning use of caching: The player uses up to a gig of space on your hard drive to store parts of your most-requested songs, the better to play them at a moment's notice. The catalog is pretty good, too, and includes everything from modern diva histrionics to postwar jazz. Rhapsody is like the mutant child of broadcast radio and a record store, with the best DNA of both.

Using a streaming service such as Rhapsody also allows you to opt out of the AAC vs. WMA war, a face-off that is queasily reminiscent of the fight between Betamax and VHS. You probably remember the sad fate of the losers who bought Beta movies. The downloading services are forcing you to similarly gamble about which music format will win. Right now, because of iPod and iTunes, AAC looks pretty solid. But what happens if WMA triumphs, iPods die out, and the only music players available in 2014 won't play the thousands of songs you legally bought at iTunes? (Or vice versa.)

Some people have already been locked out of their music, after they slammed into the "three computers" rule: Almost all download sites let you listen to a song on only three different computers. Author and blogger Cory Doctorow buys a new Apple iBook every year, but when he recently had to send one of his machines in for repair, he got stuck: His old computer couldn't play his archive of legally paid-for songs because there was no easy way to "de-authorize" the computer he'd sent in for repair and "re-authorize" the old, still-functioning one. His stuff was there, sitting on his computer, but he couldn't use it.

Downloaded music is designed to work with a demographically average computer user, someone who uses only one or two computers most of the time. It actively discriminates against the sort of globe-trotting power-user whose life sprawls over lots of devices—even though those are surely the people most likely to blow tons of cash buying digital music.

In contrast, streaming services tend to be much more flexible. You're allowed to install the Rhapsody software on as many computers as you want, though you can only stream to one machine at a time. You could show up at your friends' party, set up the software on his computer (it takes less than a minute), then compose a massive 300-song mix for the entire evening. Like cable TV, Rhapsody's goal is to keep you so happy that you come back each month with another 10 bucks.

Sure, I've got complaints about Rhapsody. You can't tweak the bass or treble on the sound, the search engine is lame, and the music library has many weird bald spots: only one song from Nevermind and almost no Madonna? (Napster, Rhapsody's main streaming rival, has a slightly different mix of music, but I find the interface clunkier.) And Rhapsody is truly suited only for people who are around broadband computers all day long. That excludes teenagers or anyone who doesn't work near a screen. More important, there are philosophical problems with music as a service. People want songs as property because they understandably want control. They don't want a music label to take their stuff away at the press of a button.

So, no matter how good streaming might be, it won't end the download wars. (In fact, Rhapsody itself offers 79-cent AAC downloads of most songs, though it's not the service's central focus.) The flexibility of "unlocked" MP3s remains the gold standard for online music. Since you can store and play MP3s any way you want, they're the most like real stuff. There are legal routes to getting MP3s online: eMusic sells tunes in that format, but it specializes in super-alternative music. That's why many users are cracking the digital-rights limits on their paid-for downloads. You can, for example, burn your legal downloads onto a CD and then rip them back into MP3s. It's a pain, but I've done it myself, because my old MP3 player won't play WMA or AAC files. Meanwhile, geeks are beginning to create software like PlayFair, which strips the digital-rights limits from iTunes files.

But hard as it may be to believe, streaming is the best online-music option for the desk-bound. I've long been a slightly guilty user of KaZaA, but so many of the files there now are "decoys"—files of junk noise masquerading as real songs, sneakily seeded into the network by music labels—that finding a pristine version of a song has become a serious chore. I'd rather pay a reasonable fee for instant gratification.

Besides, put on your Jules Verne cap. Think about what it'll be like when wireless companies finally roll out broadband networks nationwide and streaming is possible out in the streets. Imagine subscribing to something like Rhapsody on a mobile device that lets you access any song, anywhere, instantly. What will you think of your iPod and its 1,000 songs then?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2099282/


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Sellers Claim Software Stops Illegal Song Trading
John Borland

Network-security company Palisade Systems this week will launch software that can identify and block copyrighted songs as they are being traded online.

Created by software firm Audible Magic and backed strongly by the Recording Industry Association of America, the song-filtering software has already triggered interest in Washington, D.C., along with strong scepticism in the peer-to-peer world and among some students and universities.

Palisade's new tool is the fruit of a cross-licensing deal struck early in the year, which also gave Audible Magic rights to use Palisade's network-monitoring technology to offer a similar product. Palisade executives say their university customers in particular are interested in the song-blocking capabilities.

"It's the kind of thing we hear from universities or customers that act more as an ISP," said Doug Jacobson, Palisade's founder and chief technology officer. "They want to take the position of not filtering out all peer- to-peer [traffic], stopping copyrighted works but not the other content."

Audible Magic's technology, which will be released as an option in the newest version of Palisade's PacketHound network-management services, has formed the centrepiece of an ongoing debate over the future viability of peer-to-peer networks. As the filtering technology begins to appear this year inside university and other networks, the intensity of that debate is likely to grow.

For much of the early months of the year, RIAA executives helped guide Audible Magic chief executive Vance Ikezoye around Washington, D.C., offices, advocating the song-blocking technology as a tool for stopping copyright infringement on file-swapping networks. If built into file-trading programs such as Kazaa or Morpheus, it could help block large numbers of illegal trades, the record industry group said.

File-swapping companies -- some of which have contended that filtering their networks is impractical or even impossible -- said they were sceptical of the claims, noting that neither RIAA nor Audible Magic had given them a demonstration of the filtering tools. Industry trade group P2P United says it has repeatedly contacted the company asking to see the filters in action.

Ikezoye said he still has not demonstrated the technology for the peer-to-peer companies.

"What we're looking for is a real serious business discussion," Ikezoye said. "At this point, it doesn't look like anybody's interested in real business."

Palisade's version of the technology sits inside a network, rather than inside a file-swapping program. If installed in a university, for example, it could look inside students' emails, instant messages and peer-to-peer transfers, seeking audio "fingerprints" that could be compared with information in Audible Magic's database.

If a match is found, it would block the transfer of the song midstream. Jacobson said the identification process would not work on an encrypted network, such as is used in several newer file-swapping programs. However, the Palisade software could also act to block those applications from using the network altogether, instead of blocking individual song transfers, he said.

Palisade's PacketHound software will be available to customers this week, the company said.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/sec...9152667,00.htm


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“Bad Faith” Fair Use
Jason

The Second Circuit Court of appeals today issued a ruling that republication on the Internet of quotes from an illegally acquired seminar manual can still be fair use, despite the fact that they were acquired in bad faith. The Court held that while good/bad faith does factor into the equation, the overall issue of transformation is what is most important to deciding what is fair and what isn't.

While the majority opinion will only hold interest for the true lawgeeks in the audience, I recommend reading Judge Dennis Jacob's concurring opinion which contains many spirited exhibitions on fair use, including this gem:

"Fair use is not a doctrine that exists by sufferance, or that is earned by good works and clean morals; it is a right--codified in § 107 and recognized since shortly after the Statute of Anne--that is “necessary to fulfill copyright’s very purpose, ‘[t]o promote the Progress of science and the useful arts . . . .’”
http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/003214.html


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Bringing Up Baby, but Not Giving Up Movies
Micheline Maynard

Up on the big screen, Jim Carrey sat behind his steering wheel, sobbing uncontrollably as the opening credits for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" rolled by.

In the theater some members of the audience cried, too. One, Sophia Lee, waved a clean cloth diaper at Mr. Carrey, a not inappropriate gesture considering that Sophia is only 9 1/2 months old.

These pint-size patrons, accompanied by their mothers and a stray father or two, were at the Madstone Theater for their weekly morning movie outing one Tuesday in early spring.

It used to be that new parents were fated to watch "The Lion King" or "Finding Nemo" endlessly on video while waiting for current, more adult fare to be released for the home market. But now thousands of moms and dads across the country are taking advantage of new programs that enable them to see first-run films with their children.

Theater chains like Loews Entertainment, Showcase Cinemas and the Madstone group and some individually owned theaters have begun holding weekly showings for parents and babies, usually 2 and younger.

"Regular paying customers don't want crying babies in their theaters, and parents don't want to be the ones who have that crying baby," said Staci Torgeson, Madstone's director of audience services. "This was a market that was waiting for movies to come out on DVD. They were not going to the movies."

Loews Entertainment, which has expanded its Reel Moms program to 24 theaters in 20 cities in the last two years, has shown romantic comedies like "Along Came Polly," action films like "Hidalgo" and the thriller "Spartan."

The showings are most popular at its theaters in New York, Chicago and Washington, cities with lots of young parents, said John McCauley, the senior vice president for marketing at Loews.

"There are a fair number of intelligent people who want to get out during their day with their kids," said Rachel Thompson, a health care consultant, who took her 7- month-old son, Charlie, to the Madstone in Ann Arbor.

In today's family-friendly culture, which no longer has sharp separations between adult- and child-centered activities, and in which children can be spotted at museums and tony restaurants, mommy-and-me movies are a natural. Ms. Thompson, for instance, already attends a mom-and-baby yoga class and a mother-and-child music program with Charlie. (He generally sleeps through the films, said Ms. Thompson, though he did wake up and wail during a loud moment in "Big Fish.")

Crowds vary according to the movie, said Mr. McCauley of Loews, adding that up to 600 mothers, fathers and babies attend showings. As a father of two young children, he has been one of them. He started the Loews program in late 2001 at its theater on 34th Street in Manhattan after the birth of his daughter, Jane, now 2 1/2.

Mr. McCauley, who was previously senior director of marketing and entertainment for the National Football League, used to see as many as 40 movies a year with his wife, Hope, before their daughter was born. They also have a 7-month-old son, Drew.

When his wife was preparing to return to her job after her first maternity leave, Mr. McCauley said he was distressed to learn that she hadn't seen a single film during her time off. " `How am I going to the movies? I can't bring her to the movies,' " he recalled her saying about their daughter.

Now, he said, he receives frequent e-mail messages from parents telling him that they have entered their movie outings in their baby books.

National Amusements, which owns Showcase Cinemas, began its program, Baby Pictures, last year at a single theater in Randolph, Mass., where the company is based, and has since expanded it to five states, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio and New York.

The Madstone chain, whose nine theaters nationwide are in cities and suburbs, mostly features independent films. It began its BYOBaby (Bring Your Own Baby) program in December, drawing 50 to 100 parents with children to its movie theaters like the one in Ann Arbor.

Culture-deprived parents, not to mention moviegoers sick of other people's noisy children, are happy as are theater owners, who are attracting customers when their houses would otherwise sit empty. (Parents pay the matinee price, about $6 in most parts of the country, while babies get in free.)

"It feels very normal to buy your ticket and get some popcorn, even if you have a baby on your lap," said Amy Kett, of Ann Arbor, the mother of 8-month-old Henry John, adding that she had skipped just one movie since the program began.

At the Madstone on that Tuesday morning, dozens of mothers began arriving with babies in strollers, car seats and on their shoulders about half an hour before the 10:30 a.m. showtime.

Soon there were babies everywhere. Some were crawling around on blankets, other sat quietly with their mothers, like Sophia Lee, who was perched on the lap of her mother, Jen.

At the back of the auditorium, a line formed to use a changing table, with baby wipes, powder and lotion provided by the theater.

Eventually, the lights went down, but only part way, so parents could keep an eye on their children and retrieve them when they crawled too far. That wasn't a problem for Walden Jones-Perpich, who at 6 weeks was attending his first film, rocked throughout by his mother, Katie Jones.

Mindful that its youthful audience is aging, Mr. McCauley is working on a ReelToddlers program. But it will be more difficult with slightly older children, said Ms. Torgeson at Madstone, which is also exploring the concept.

Toddlers are more active than babies and have shorter attention spans. "They won't be able to sit still for an hour and a half," she said, and "kids will be seeing things that they shouldn't be seeing." By sticking with babies, she said, the chains can continue to show a variety of fare, which at the Madstone theaters includes foreign films along with mass-market ones.

Ms. Torgeson said lighter movies like "Jersey Girl" tend to draw more moms and babies than darker, more serious films like "Osama." But many parents will come no matter what is being shown, happy for the chance to get out of the house with their little ones.

"After 10 years of working 80 hours a week," before having a child, Ms. Thompson said, "it's nice to be able to go to the movies on a Tuesday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/movies/27BABI.html


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The Sound of The Industry

Brand-New Lag

Late as usual, labels learn that downloading is their friend
Douglas Wolk

The music business is finally figuring out how to profit from the previous generation of peer-to-peer technology. Companies like Webspins and BigChampagne monitor the most-traded songs on file-sharing networks (last week's No. 1 was Hoobastank's "The Reason"), and record labels have noticed that unauthorized MP3 traffic is a pretty good sign of what people want to hear. Billboard recently reported how, for instance, Maverick Records parlayed the heavy trading of Story of the Year's "Until the Day I Die" into airplay and, eventually, a gold album.

Not that the Recording Industry Association of America is grateful. On March 23, it sued another 532 uploaders, 89 of them college students; a week later, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry took legal action against 247 more swappers in Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Italy. On top of that, the RIAA has abruptly shut down its "Clean Slate" amnesty program, in which file traders could turn themselves in, delete their unauthorized files, agree not to do it again, sign an affidavit, and open themselves up to potential lawsuits from everyone else. No great loss—only 1,108 people had ever signed up for it anyway.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department formed an intellectual- property task force at the end of March. On April 21 and 22, the DOJ and FBI's "Operation Fastlink," in collaboration with law enforcement groups from 10 other countries, seized upwards of 200 computers involved with what John Ashcroft called "the international online piracy world." By that, he didn't mean college students trading String Cheese Incident MP3s, but "warez" groups, who specialize in cracked software, games, and movies.

Music geeks have been moving past old-fashioned peer-to-peer MP3 trading anyway. Audioblogs like Soul Sides and Said the Gramophone have proliferated over the last couple of months. They're just like regular weblogs, except that every day they present a special MP3 or two (often not-yet-released or out-of-print treats), usually with extensive explanatory comments. Most audioblogs only make songs available for a week or so; few, if any, have experienced legal hassles so far, although they occasionally get asked to remove a song.

The music business may have more reason to fear two other developments that have been around for a few years but are reaching critical mass. The first is FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec—a way of making sound files smaller without compromising sound quality. (Metallica are selling FLAC as well as MP3 downloads of every show on their current tour; by comparison, Prince's online store, which sells only Windows Media files, seems positively Stone Age.)

The second is Bram Cohen's program BitTorrent. It's a tool for "swarming downloads": a way to quickly mass-distribute very large, popular files without using too much bandwidth from a single host. Initially spread by sites like the jam-band tapers' mecca etree.org it's become the program of choice for trading TV shows, movies, and concerts. Cohen has noted that using BitTorrent for illegal trading is "patently stupid," because users can't hide their IP addresses. (Evidently, there's a lot of stupidity out there.)

Let's say you want to get a copy of the Pixies' first reunion show, the Minneapolis gig from April 13—it's in demand right now, and therefore a likely candidate for BitTorrent. Once you've located a "torrent" file for it (which tells the program what it's looking for, and is usually a few dozen kilobytes), the program seeks out a bunch of other users who have the concert on their hard drives and downloads little pieces of it from each of them simultaneously. Before too long, you've got the whole 27-song set as CD-quality FLAC files, and in the meantime you're passing bits of it on to other Pixies buffs.

BitTorrent has legitimate uses for sure: A few weeks ago, Blizzard Entertainment used it to distribute a new 2-gigabyte game. But it also means that full-length, full-quality albums, with graphics, are now almost as easy to replicate over the Internet as MP3s. If the major labels are smart, they'll figure out a way to make money from swarming-download technology—but they don't have long.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0417/soti.php


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'Imminent' Lawsuits Force Syracuse University Officials To Explore Legal File-Sharing
Katy Stech

Despite legal threats from the recording industry, SU students continue to burn CDs and download music. And university officials are looking into ways to keep students from getting burned.

Sixty-three percent of Syracuse University students illegally download songs, movies and software from the Internet, according to a study conducted in the fall of 2003 by Computing and Media Services and the School of Information Studies.

But next fall, officials will research the idea of subscribing to downloading services such as Napster and Apple iTunes to prevent potential legal suits against SU students, because students seem apathetic toward possible punishments and a questionably suffering music industry.

So far, only a handful of students have experienced negative repercussions as a result of illegal downloading.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sent SU about 25 letters each month asking that a certain student's Internet port be disconnected because it facilitated illegal file-sharing.

But asking for the names of the students who use file-sharing ports is also an option for the association, which could result in issuing subpoenas and fines, or even jail time. The average punishment is about $3,000.

It's only a matter of time until the RIAA targets an SU student with more severe charges, said Deborah Nosky, manager of IT communications and professional development.

"I think students are gambling that it won't be their name when the time comes," Nosky said. "They certainly will ask us for the names - there's nothing magical about us to prevent it."

After receiving a letter, CMS engineers turn off the student's Internet access until he or she visits the CMS office. At the office, each offender receives a brief speech on the legality of file-sharing and signs a statement to the RIAA stating that they will not illegally download again.

Exceptions to the general punishment protocol do exist, though.

"Punishments can vary based on how serious the offense is," Nosky said. "You'll be in a lot more trouble if we catch you sharing 'Kill Bill Volume 2' than if you were downloading a Fleetwood Mac song from 1978."

A second-time offender's sanctions can include probationary status, temporary denial of access to the university network and assignment of an educational project, said Juanita Perez Williams, director of the office of Judicial Affairs.

The university's method of punishment, though, doesn't act as an effective deterrent to students, said Williams.

First-time offenses are not treated seriously enough, and the odds of being caught more than once are small, so steeper penalties may not be effective in scaring or stopping students, Nosky said.

The university itself doesn't actively look for students who are file-sharing, but Nosky said the university should crack down on file-sharers to protect them from future RIAA punishments.

On March 23, the RIAA issued 532 subpoenas to people who were allegedly file-sharing. Eighty-nine ports were associated with 20 different university networks - but none to SU students.

Nine of the 532 suits filed in March were against New York University students. NYU officials initially refused to release the students' names, but after a three-week investigation, NYU officials will most likely comply, according to an article in NYU's The Washington Square News.

SU officials, however, wouldn't refuse to cooperate with a legal request from the RIAA if one were lodged against an SU student, Nosky said.

"When the university is confronted with legal documents, we will follow rules of the court," Nosky said. "If we get that subpoena, we will comply."

Aware of the risks that file-sharing students face, universities - including SU - are looking into accepted alternatives to minimize the possibility of litigation.

Pennsylvania State University was the first institution to subscribe to an online file-sharing service, allowing its students to temporarily stream songs for free or to pay 99 cents a song for a permanent copy.

PSU's subscription to Napster, which began Jan. 12, facilitates about 100,000 downloads to about 18,000 students that live on campus, said Tysen Kendig, a spokesman for PSU.

Students initially criticized the program because it required that they pay a dollar for each song burned onto a CD. But eventually many students opted to keep the music files on their computers, Kendig said.

"The biggest thing was getting past students' mind-set that everything they get on the Internet is free," Kendig said. "Students on campus have grown up with the Internet and have gotten used to stealing music and not thinking twice about it."

PSU funded the program through an annual student technology fee, after rearranging its budget so that it would remain constant over the next few years.

Motivating students to respect copyright laws is becoming increasingly harder in light of advancing technology and a sense of invincibility that young people have, Kendig said. But the program not only protects students from the subpoenas but reinforces the idea that file-sharing is illegal.

"It's serving ethics education while providing a tangible music service," Kendig said.

But a study released March 29 found that file-sharing had little effect on the recording industry's revenue, and studies like these take away the RIAA's most powerful argument, he said.

In the study, OpenNap, a file-sharing network, analyzed which songs and movies were being downloaded most frequently over a period of four months then correlated the numbers with the sales statistics of 680 albums.

The study is the first to use technology-based research as opposed to survey-based research, said Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard Business School, who led the study with Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

But RIAA officials were quick to criticize the OpenNap study, saying that four months was too short a time to detect an economic trend.

"It's like noticing that the sky is clear and concluding this has been the sunniest decade in history," said an RIAA memo released April 2.

Many songs, however, aren't popular for more than a few weeks, and four months is a long time in the music industry, Oberholzer-Gee said.

The SU study on file-sharing, however, found that students' attitudes towards the recording industry haven't changed over the years.

"We asked about whether people think that CDs are a rip-off or if they think that artists are making too much money," said Jeffrey Stanton, assistant professor in the School of Information Studies who led the study. "We looked to see if people were cynical about the whole record company deal."

The study also found that the varying opinions people had toward the industry did not affect the amount of money students budgeted for CDs and movies.

"There's a common claim by the record companies saying that people will always take something for free if they can and that, in some sense, we are a bunch of selfish jerks," he said. "Our data did not show that at all."

The Harvard/UNC-Chapel Hill study was too limited in simply studying file-sharing networks, said David Rezak, an SU music industry professor, adding that peer-to-peer sharing is one of many factors in the trend. DVD sales, piracy and legitimate sales of downloads over the Internet also contribute to the trend.

"The industry worldwide is experiencing a downturn," Rezak said. "It would be foolish to say that illegal file-sharing has no impact on the recording industry."
http://www.dailyorange.com/news/2004...g-666530.shtml


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Court Sets Date In Napster Damages Cases
Reuters

A federal judge in San Francisco set June 14 to hear motions to dismiss lawsuits claiming investors in Napster kept the song-swap site going, costing the music industry $17 billion in lost sales. Napster went bankrupt in 2002 and was bought by software firm Roxio, which relaunched it as a pay-for-use service last year. Roxio was not named in these latest cases. But Napster's renegade past is at the heart of lawsuits by music publishers, songwriters and labels that claim that German media company Bertelsmann's $90 million investment in Napster in 2000 kept the service operating eight months longer than it would have done otherwise. In addition to the Bertelsmann case, Vivendi Universal's Universal Music and EMI Group sued Hummer Winblad, claiming the venture capital firm's $15 million investment and installation of a chief executive at Napster in 2000 promoted piracy.
http://news.com.com/2110-1027-5201817.html


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Music Rivals Prepare To Fight iTunes
John P. Mello Jr.

The iTunes model is called a la carte. Listeners peruse a library of songs, pick a few and buy them. But another model is emerging that, its proponents say, will supplant the Apple approach in the future. That is the subscription model. With that model, listeners pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a music library.

When Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) raised the curtain on its online digital music store a year ago this week, there were more than a few skeptics in the audience. Why, they asked, would websters buy something they could get for free through numerous file-sharing networks?

Well, after selling 50 million songs from its iTunes store, it's apparent that Apple is doing something right -- and its success has spawned a coterie of pretenders itching to carve into the Cupertino, California-based company's 50 percent share of the online music market.

Apple's song-selling success in the last year hasn't surprised some observers. While there was plenty of free music before iTunes opened shop -- and there still is, for daredevils willing to risk the legal wrath of the Recording Industry Association of America -- music downloading was a gamble at best, according to Jarad Carleton, an IT industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, California.

"When you're buying from iTunes or any of its competitors, you're getting a digital file with a guaranteed level of quality," he told TechNewsWorld. "For people who want a good listening experience, something like that is important."

When you download a free file, Carleton explained, "Chances are, the recording will have pops and snaps in it, or it will cut off early, or its volume will fluctuate."

But Apple's success at selling songs online may be less important than its success at getting the music industry to buy into the proposition. "The music industry was hard-core set against selling songs online," Carleton said. "Something happened in those negotiations between Steve Jobs and the record label executives where Steve Jobs was able to soften their position on it.

"After Steve Jobs softened their position on it, they began to roll out similar models to different online storefronts," he added.

The iTunes model is called a la carte. Listeners peruse a library of songs, pick a few and buy them. But another model is emerging that, its proponents say, will supplant the Apple approach in the future. That is the subscription model.

With that model, listeners pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to a music library.

"What we think is going to be interesting in this next year is the rise of subscription services," said Bob Ohlweiler, senior vice president for business development at MusicMatch, the San Diego-based maker of a popular media player and operator of an online music store.

"People will be spending more of their music consumption dollars subscribing to services," he told TechNewsWorld.

For the cost of a CD, subscription services give listeners access to any kind of music they want, observed Brad Duea, president of Napster, a Los Angeles-based online music provider.

"That's what's going to be driving subscription, and that will be the model of choice going forward," Duea told TechNewsWorld. "I foresee every online home having at least one music subscription and, depending on how many folks in their family, maybe more."

Ohlweiler admitted, though, that subscription services are a hard sell because music consumers are accustomed to owning their music, not leasing it from someone. "That's the reason why the adoption of subscription services is running slower than the adoption of a la carte download sales," he said.

"It's a bit of a harder sell," he noted. "It's more difficult to communicate the simple value proposition. But once people realize that for $10 a month -- the price of buying one album -- they can access an entire catalog of music that's available, word will spread like a virus."

Whatever models emerge for selling music online, some things never seem to change. Case in point: the latest news that major record labels are mulling over raising prices for songs sold online.

"I don't think it makes sense to raise prices on the Internet right now, because really what we're doing is competing with free distribution, with piracy," Ohlweiler contended.

"It's crazy, and it's highway robbery," added Frost and Sullivan's Carleton. "They have no packaging costs, no distribution costs, all they have is a fixed infrastructure cost. I think the record executives are being greedy," he said, "but, then again, that has pervaded the industry for a long time."
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/s...ech/33551.html


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‘Just Call Me Slick:’ An MIT Conversation With Slick Rick
Peter R. Russo

Before Saturday’s Spring Weekend concert, I sat down for a few minutes with Slick Rick (a.k.a. Richard Walters) to discuss his beginnings as a hip-hop artist, his current legal troubles, and his feelings on Internet file sharing. While perhaps now best known for his time spent in prison for an attempted murder conviction and immigration violations, Slick Rick was at the forefront of the East Coast rap scene during the mid-1980s. A collaborator with such luminaries as Run-DMC and Doug E. Fresh, he helped lay the groundwork for hip-hop as we know it today.

The Tech: I’m not sure what I should call you. Do you go by “Slick”?

SR: Just call me Slick...

TT: What do you think of MIT so far? Have you been around campus at all?

SR: Well, we just jumped out the limo right here. So I don’t really know what to expect yet...

TT: Are you planning on taking a look at campus at all?

SR: I don’t think we’re going to have too much time to look around. But I’m going to get to meet the kids after the show.

TT: I’m curious about your background. When did you decide to be a rapper? Was this during your time at LaGuardia [High School for Music & Art and Performing Arts]?

SR: No, it has always been a hobby. It was a hobby that turned into a profession. I had a regular job. Once I left high school, I didn’t bother to go straight to college. I didn’t know what I wanted to be. So I just did like a lot of other kids do, and went into the job market. I was a law library clerk and a mail clerk. But then my hobby just took off. It was just something I did as a play around thing. And next thing you know, I guess you stood out in a crowd, and you started generating finances, and I quit the job, and never looked back since.

TT: You were a close friend and colleague of Jam Master Jay. What was your reaction to his murder in 2002?

SR: It’s a sad day for hip-hop because I guess you don’t realize what you’ve lost until you lose it, because I think a lot of people overlooked Run-DMC. [Jam Master Jay was a member of the hip-hop group Run-DMC.] ... But then when an icon falls victim to such a heinous crime or whatever, then we realize the importance of icons in the game, and the whole root of the tree. ... So it was a sad situation to see a legend that was pretty much overlooked by mainstream to take such a fall.

TT: What about your own crime? [Walters spent six years in jail for an attempted-murder conviction in 1991.]

SR: My crime happened in 1990. I did my rag. I shot somebody that was trying to rob a liquor store or whatever the case. I’m not going to try to take the holier-than-thou route. I was wrong too. I injured some bystander I shot in the foot. But this was also in 1990. I served my time. This is 2004. So that’s 14 years ago. Now in 2002, ... now you want to deport somebody for something that happens over thirteen years ago? I mean, does that sound like human growth, or does that sound like backwards thinking? Thirteen years ago, and then to be on the street for over six, seven years with not so much as a traffic ticket? It shows that it’s illogical.

TT: How has your time in jail influenced your music?

SR: It opens your eyes to society, and errors that need to be fixed. ... There should always be laws. There should always be policing. We should always have boundaries. If you don’t have order, things will be chaotic. But if order is not run properly, then it could be defeating the purpose, just how like we see now with this fictitious war.

TT: What is your position on Internet file sharing, and do you think this is something that helps or hurts the music industry?

SR: Music is one of the last beauties left in the world, that is pretty much being spoiled now. ... The music industry, for a long period of time, has been cruelly manipulated and robbed. Like, a person could be born with a talent. He’s happy, he’s energetic, he goes and gives his talent to the world, and then when it comes time for him to get his paycheck, he’s totally robbed.

TT: By the industry?

SR: By the industry, exactly. They’re spitting their heart out to the world. The fans don’t know this. They want to see him a star. They’re admiring, they relate to you. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, these no-talent bums is robbing you and taking all your money, and making you put up a front like you’re wealthier than you really are, because you don’t want to let your people down. ... These stars, these god-given stars have been manipulated and robbed since the system became started. So when Internet sharing came, it was almost like God came and said, “Listen to me,” and he says “Look, you stole, you tried to gain and steal and profit off of everything you’ve given the world. This is a payback. You can’t control it. You can’t control Internet sharing.”

TT: So you think it’s affecting the industry more than it’s affecting the artists?

SR: We as artists, we was never getting a dime, regardless. We’re happy if we get, like Prince says. ... if Prince was to go and sell his own little records, even if he can sell a hundred-thousand records, he’s rich. If he sells it himself. In these industries, they tell you four million, five million, you’re not seeing the same money you would make if you sold your own records. Like if you sold 50,000 records, you’d be rich ... well, somewhat well-off. But if you let the industry, which is supposed to take their cut and give you your cut, do it, and they sell millions, they’re not giving you your fair share. They just keep on manipulating you. It’s like having a bunch of cows that are milked inappropriately. They lose their spirit to create. And the next thing, they’re just a dried-up cow, which means that you as a manager, industry, you have just manipulated, and brought despair upon your cows. Now they can’t create milk. ... I think Internet sharing is a blessing to humans. I think Internet sharing is a blessing to the average man. ... I think [Internet sharing] is a blessing in disguise.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N22/sli..._inte.22a.html


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Ban taxes on Internet access? Are you insane? What's that? It'll guarantee the tech vote? Well, why didn't you say so!?
John Paczkowski

Some say President Bush's call for a broad moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access is "an election-year two-step." And it may well be. But at least it's a two-
step in a good direction, right? On Monday, the President -- who said little to nothing on broadband issues in the first three years of his administration -- urged Congress to ban taxes on high-speed Internet access saying he wants to make high-speed Internet access available to every home within three years. "Broadband technology must be affordable," Bush said in a speech in Minneapolis. "In order to make sure it gets spread to all corners of the country, it must be affordable. We must not tax broadband access. If you want broadband access throughout the society, Congress must ban taxes on access." That Bush's remarks came on the very day the senate began discussing whether or not to renew a lapsed ban on Internet access taxes was, of course, not a coincidence. The debate over the moratorium promises to be a heated one, and those arguing in its favor need all the support they can get. With billions of state and local government tax revenue at stake, the opposition to the moratorium is already heavy, heavier still thanks to concerns that such a moratorium would exempt voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls from taxation as well. That's not such a big deal now. But it's going to become one very quickly, given the way things are going.

Did you substract the 1,977 we sued? According to the latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 17 million Americans said they have stopped downloading music over the Internet, nearly a third of them for fear of legal action by the recording industry. But at the same time, the number of Americans who do download music rose to an estimated 23 million -- a sharp increase from an estimated 18 million users in November and December 2003. Seventeen percent of those said they are using paid services, though not necessarily as their exclusive source of online music. The rest are getting their music from other sources. Top among them: file- sharing networks. "Last January, we reported that after the recording industry lawsuits were launched into the public eye, there was a considerable drop in the percentage of Internet users who said they were downloading music or sharing files," said Mary Madden, a Pew research analyst and co-author of the report. "And while it's clear that the industry's legal campaign has made a lasting impression in the minds of American Internet users, we are also seeing evidence that a segment of users are simply moving away from the most popular and highly monitored file-sharing networks and are instead using alternative sources to acquire files."

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Q U O T E D

"It's rather like inviting the American insurance industry into the classroom to tell kids about the future of health care."

-- Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, comments on The Motion Picture Association of America's efforts to teach middle school children copyright law.

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Red Hat: Sun COO full of it: "We are fully committed to open source and our code reflects that. Red Hat has no proprietary software built in our distribution. Our core strategy is built on open source and we will not deviate from that strategy." That's what Red Hat spokesperson Leigh Day had to say about Sun Microsystems President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz's claim that Red Hat peddles a proprietary Linux distribution. In an interview with eWeek, Schwartz said Sun worries about open sourcing Java under the GNU General Public License (GPL) because the GPL encourages forking. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, he said, is an example of that. "There is a fork in the Linux world: Red Hat and the others," Schwartz said. "Red Hat has pretty much forked the distribution. This has given Red Hat tremendous gains for now, but ultimately it's an impediment in the growth of Linux." Schwartz's comments obviously didn't go over well at Red Hat. Or anywhere else for that matter. Even Linux founder Linus Torvalds said Schwartz is mistaken. "Sure, RH definitely has their own vendor kernel," Torvald's told eWeek, "but it's not proprietary, and a number of the top Linux kernel contributors are Red Hat employees." So how did this little war of words get its start?

Before the IPO we had nothing. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish heap ... Google President Sergey Brin isn't very wealthy. Yet. This according to Brin's father who's apparently happy to grant interviews to media outlets that can't seem to score one with his son. "He does not have much money, I do not have much money," Michael Brin told Reuters. "Did we expect him to become, what's it called -- Time Magazine calls him a 'titan of industry'? No, I had no idea. I expected him to get his Ph.D and to become somebody, maybe a professor."

Oh, the irony: On Monday, the day that The Wall Street Journal reported that Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston would be the lead underwriters of Google's IPO (see "Spare change for Google shares?"), Frank Quattrone - the investment banker who helped build both firms into what they are today, was on trial for obstruction of justice in a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan. "Frank is the guy that put the word 'hot' in hot IPO," Andy Kessler, a hedge fund investor based in Silicon Valley who once worked with Quattrone, told The New York Times. "He may be gone and fighting for his innocence in court, but the firms he put on the map in the tech I.P.O. business live on."

"Time to pay the electric bill" supplants "I'm going to see a man about a horse" as most popular bathroom break euphemism: It's about the furthest thing from solar power that I can think of, but that's the way researchers are describing a new technology that can turn human waste into ... ahem ... "renewable" energy. Scientists at Pennsylvania State University have developed a microbial fuel cell that generates electricity by oxidizing organic matter. Currently, the device produces just enough electricity to power a circuit. But its creators say that with a little bit more work and the waste of 100,000 people it could crank out about 51 kilowatts of power.

Any food left in the space toilet? Of course, as any good biologist will tell you, human waste is good for generating more than power. Consider the Euroopean Space Agency's efforts to build a "space toilet," a device that will -- in a perfect world -- recycle astronauts' waste into food, oxygen and water. The Micro-Ecological Life Support Alternative system, as it's called in the industry, is basically a miniature ecosystem that contains plants and algae that will produce oxygen, water and food from decomposed waste. It's a less than appetizing prospect, but one that many believe will be integral to the future of space travel. "If we can't do it, we're not getting much further off this planet," Michael Dixon, a lead researcher on the project, told New Scientist.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...sv/8531925.htm