Quotes of the week: "It's like the pope of software meeting the Dalai Lama of integration, that's why I'm here to kiss the corporate ass. I don't kiss everybody's." – Bono, on Apples’ iTunes for Windows.
“Hell froze over.” – Steve Jobs
Review: New Napster Returns a Bit Buggy
A test version of Napster 2.0 launched with more than a half- million songs from all the major music...
Matthew Fordahl
Anyone who thinks music should cost nothing will be disappointed with the reincarnated Napster online music service, which has emerged from the ashes of the old free-for-all as a legal, recording industry-sanctioned, pay-to-play store.
That's not to say Napster 2.0, available to the public Oct. 29, has lost all traces of the old. The headphoned kitty logo is still there - in fact, everywhere. Its new owner, Roxio Inc. (ROXI), also has maintained some of the spirit of old Napster. Minus the theft, of course.
Several old Napster features that helped build community and encourage musical exploration give its successor a slight edge over the competition, including Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes Music Store, which has been available to Macintosh users since April and will soon be available to the Windows crowds.
But the basic service provided by all the online stores - selling difficult-to-steal songs for 99 cents - is more or less the same, thanks to very similar licensing deals struck with the record labels that have, after many years, started to see the light and profit potential.
Napster, which works only on Windows-based computers, will launch with half a million songs - more than its rivals. Still, that number pales in comparison to what was available on Napster 1.0 or today's illicit file-swapping networks.
As with the other legal services, songs purchased on Napster are more reliably a higher quality than those downloaded from a peer-to- peer network where you're never quite sure if the file was properly labeled, ripped on an underperforming computer or contained a virus.
And like the rest, Napster's digital rights management technology limits what can be done with each file. Each purchased song can be shared on only three computers but can be burned to a CD as long as the play order occasionally changes. The tunes also can be transferred to a portable music player an unlimited number of times.
(Napster can be used to move songs to Samsung's Napster-branded player. Owners of other players, which must support Microsoft's secure Windows Media Audio format, have to switch to Microsoft's Windows Media Player to transfer songs.)
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/200...D7U7AEBO0.html
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Apple Launches iTunes for Windows
John Borland and Ina Fried
Apple Computer unveiled the Windows version of its closely watched iTunes music jukebox software and song store Thursday, in a rare foray away from the Macintosh platform.
Like the iTunes Music Store service it unveiled for the Macintosh computer last April, the new jukebox software for Windows is free and offers a one-click access to downloads of an expansive music catalogue, with most songs priced at 99 cents. The company had promised to launch the Microsoft version, widely anticipated to be unveiled at Thursday's event, by the end of the year.
The new Windows iTunes jukebox, which is compatible with Windows 2000 and XP, has the same look and feel of the Mac version. It supports Apple's copy-protected Advanced Audio Coding format as well as MP3--but not Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format.
The performance of the Windows-based iTunes service will be closely monitored as a bellwether of Apple's future outside its traditional computing product line and also as an indicator of the future of the digital music business.
"This is not some baby version of iTunes or the music store," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said at the Moscone West convention center here. "This is the whole thing." In his typical marketing hyperbole, Jobs declared, "iTunes for Windows is probably the best Windows application ever written."
Acknowledging that developing products for the dominant Windows platform marks a deviation for Apple, Jobs began his introduction by pointing to an image with the words "hell froze over." The company later handed out posters with that phrase below a picture of a Windows PC that's running iTunes.
As expected, Apple also announced new accessories for the iPod, including a microphone and a reader for removable flash memory cards that will allow users to store--but not display--digital photos on the devices. PC accessories maker Belkin is making both accessories, which Apple is selling through its site.
The release of the iTunes service will be closely monitored as a bellwether of Apple's future outside its traditional computing product line but also as an indicator of the future of the digital music business. Like Microsoft and Sony, Apple characterizes its products as the centerpieces of digital home entertainment systems. The leap onto the Windows platform--which has a PC market share of more than 90 percent compared with Apple's less than 5 percent--marks an expansion of that ambition.
Apple's launch of its online music store in April jump-started a digital music industry the collapse of numerous start-ups and restrictive licensing terms had demoralized.
In large measure due to Jobs' negotiating power and his stature in Hollywood as CEO of the successful Pixar Animation Studios, Apple was given a much freer hand than were its predecessors. As a result, iTunes was hailed as the first consumer-friendly digital music store. In less than six months, the company said it sold 13 million songs, far more than any online song store in a similar time frame despite only being available to the relatively small market of Macintosh users.
As part of the launch of the Windows service, Apple also announced a pair of new marketing partnerships that are aimed at driving iTunes use deeply into the mainstream. Apple and America Online have agreed to put iTunes "buy this song" buttons next to every song that's listed in AOL's music service, which its 25 million subscribers can access. Clicking the button will automatically launch the iTunes music jukebox and begin downloading the song; billing will be handled through the customer's existing arrangement with AOL.
Beginning early next year, PepsiCo will launch a separate promotion, giving away 100 million iTunes songs as part of a sweepstakes it will launch in connection with the 2004 Super Bowl. Pepsi will produce 300 million specially marked bottles, 100 million of which will contain caps that entitle the customer to download one free song from Apple's music store.
The company's San Francisco launch also drew on endorsements from music stars. U2 singer Bono, rap artists Dr. Dre and Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger each gave a live endorsement of the iChat videoconferencing software. Singer Sarah McLachlan also appeared live to sing several songs and to talk about how she used the iPod.
This marketing blitz will be needed. Several rivals are seeking equally relaxed terms from the record labels, and Apple's Windows version of the digital song store will have considerable competition it lacked in the Macintosh world.
Already, Musicmatch and BuyMusic are offering similar access to downloaded music, and Napster is slated to launch later this month. Sony, RealNetworks, Dell and Amazon.com, among others, are all expected to provide their own music stores.
The rhetorical battle lines between Apple and its rivals are already being drawn.
Most of those other services for Windows are distributing music in Microsoft's WMA format, for which Microsoft also produced the digital rights management software. That means that songs that are purchased from BuyMusic.com, Musicmatch, Napster and other rivals can be played on any music device that supports Microsoft's WMA--a list of about 40 different portable devices--and played in most major MP3 software programs.
By contrast, songs that are purchased from Apple, wrapped in its proprietary FairPlay content protection technology, can be played only on the iPod, which represented 31 percent of all MP3 players sold in July and August. Songs sold through the service can be played on any software player that supports Quicktime, Apple's longstanding audio and video format, the company said.
Microsoft and other device makers say this Apple strategy limits consumer choice--although the selection of devices available with other services is resulting in a de facto industry standardization on Microsoft's own audio software and digital rights management.
"I think one of the expectations of a Windows customer, really something that people see as one of their basic rights, is choice of multiple services and being able to mix and match," Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media division, said in an interview shortly before the Apple launch.
The impact of Apple's entry into this unfamiliar Windows environment wasn't lost on the artists who endorsed the iPod and the iTunes store.
"It's like the pope of software meeting the Dalai Lama of integration," cracked U2's Bono. But Apple produced a genuinely good service, the singer added. "That's why I'm here to kiss the corporate ass. I don't kiss everybody's."
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5092414.html
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Grokster Chief Faces Critics; 60 Minutes Films Campus Visit
Chris Lewis
A cadre of songwriters and musicians, angry at being ripped off by online song swappers, confronted the head of a major file- sharing service during his speech Monday at Vanderbilt University — a drama that was caught on film by a 60 Minutes camera crew.
Wearing a headset microphone, Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, paced a campus classroom, railing against the recording industry for trying to block new peer-to-peer (P2P) software services, such as his, then suing the computer users who trade songs for downloading.
His speech was punctured by a flurry of piercing questions from music professionals sprinkled among the audience of mostly college students. They took him to task for sponsoring a service that does not pay them royalties for their intellectual property.
“This is something that’s affecting the economy here. This is something that’s affected me, it’s affecting incomes,” said Denny Sarokin, who recently went to Washington D.C. on a lobbying mission with the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Rosso remained defiant throughout, stressing that P2P technology developed by Grokster and similar software services, Morpheus and Kazaa, have survived lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, just as the VCR survived past legal attacks by the music and film industries.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you I condone copyright infringement. I’m going to tell you that, the way to stop unauthorized content from moving across peer-to-peer networks is simple. You authorize it. You license it,” he said.
Rosso urged songwriters to direct their anger to the record companies, which he said have refused to negotiate with him on licensing. He has formed an advocacy group, P2P United, to lobby Congress to force the record labels to license their songs for use by P2P users, who swap digital files without having to log onto a central server.
“I think the only thing that’s going to really make this whole thing work is something called compulsory licensing. Radio stations pay a licensing fee. (The proceeds) go to a fund to be distributed accordingly. We should be treated like radio,” Rosso said.
He said the P2P services would protect the content with digital rights management software, distribute the files for a fee, and share a percentage of revenue from the licensing arrangements with both content creators and content owners.
His comments were met with skepticism by the songwriters and musicians, who accused him of contributing to the theft of 2.5 billion song files a month.
“He’s spinning this whole deal to make it sound like they’re going to do the right thing. There’s no possible way they can do the right thing by doing a compulsory license on this. It wouldn’t work,” said Bruce Bouton, a member of the American Federation of Musicians.
Rosso has been shadowed by a CBS television crew filming a 60 Minutes episode on file sharing, which hasn’t been scheduled to air yet.
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/in...&news_id=27459
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Grokster Chief Heads To Spanish P2P Firm
John Borland
The head of file-swapping company Grokster, Wayne Rosso, has resigned from his post and will take the helm of younger Spanish peer-to-peer technology rival Blubster.
Rosso has long been one of the most colorfully outspoken executives in the file-trading world, known for comparing recording industry executives to Josef Stalin and the fight over digital file trading to the Vietnam War protests.
But in recent months, he's also taken issue with the market leadership of Kazaa parent Sharman Networks and the FastTrack file-swapping technology, which his own company originally licensed to launch Grokster.
As head of Blubster parent Optisoft, he'll take on Sharman and FastTrack more directly, licensing the fast-growing, newer technology to other file-swapping companies in hopes of creating a new giant, he said.
"We've got our sights on FastTrack," said Rosso, who held the title of president of Grokster. "We want to knock them off, and we think we can."
Rosso, largely through flights of well-placed rhetorical excess, has given Grokster a public profile that exceeds its relatively small share of the file-sharing download market.
But that profile was solidified when the company won a key legal battle in April, where a federal judge ruled for the first time that companies that offered software tools for file-sharing, as opposed to operating networks directly as Napster once did, were not responsible for copyright infringement that took place using the software. Record labels and movie studios have appealed that decision, but the ruling gave new optimism to demoralized peer-to-peer developers.
Optisoft and Blubster are largely the creation of Pablo Soto, a 23-year-old Madrid programmer who has muscular dystrophy. Soto created the technology with an aim to eliminate many of the networking inefficiencies of previous generations of file- swapping services, while greatly improving people's privacy.
As the Recording Industry Association of America prepared to file lawsuits against individual file swappers this summer, Blubster touted its technology's ability to shield its users from prying legal eyes. However, at least one Blubster user was included in the RIAA's lawsuits.
Optisoft and Blubster have already begun the process of building a network that rivals the FastTrack technology, which is used by Kazaa, Grokster and iMesh, and reaches tens of millions of people. According to Download.com, a software aggregation service operated by News.com publisher CNET Networks, Blubster has been downloaded more than 3.9 million times. Piolet and RockItNet, two newer software programs, also tap the same network.
Rosso promised that he would be just as vocal in his new position, and he predicted that Optisoft would soon be the target of industry lawsuits.
"I will continue fighting for the rights of the little guy," he said.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5091358.html
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Rockitnet Joins Private P2P Network MP2P
Offers Privacy Protection for P2P Users
Press Release
Optisoft, S.L., announced today that Rockitnet has joined the MP2P Network, uniting with popular software programs Blubster and Piolet. Rockitnet is a new P2P (Peer-to-Peer) software application that provides superior privacy to its users. (
www.rockitnet.com)
Rockitnet launches onto the MP2P (Manalito P2P) Network, the most efficient private P2P network in the world, as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) continues its misguided and unprecedented legal battle against music consumers. MP2P network will provide Rockitnet with the proprietary protocol that forms the sea of user traffic that media is accessed from. MP2P brings Rockitnet users to more than ten million sources of media and entertainment already hosted on the peer-broadcasting network.
"The recording industry is bypassing judge and jury in their legal assault against music consumers, so we're especially gratified that we can provide enough privacy to our users that they are not needlessly attacked by predatory litigation," said MP2P developer Pablo Soto.
Rockitnet 1.0 provides a sleek and easy to use interface to create playlists from audio and video files that can be viewed and enjoyed on the internal media player. Users can communicate with others all over the world through voice chats, instant messaging, and file sharing. Rockitnet ensures fast searches, no failed downloads, the highest quality MP3 and OGG files, and quick media previews.
"We created MP2P to be the fastest means of transmitting media around the Internet and in light of recent lawsuits against children, the elderly, and the misidentified, I'm elated that the protocol makes it difficult for them to wage a war against the people who use Rockitnet, Blubster, or Piolet," said Pablo Soto.
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...lease_id=58553
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Record Industry Warns Of New Lawsuits
John Borland
The Recording Industry Association of America has begun preparing a second round of file-swapping lawsuits, notifying 204 individuals that they are in line to be sued for copyright infringement.
Unlike with the previous wave of suits, the record labels' trade association is giving the lawsuit targets warning this time around, offering them a chance to settle before the suits are filed. The change in tactics comes after considerable criticism from federal lawmakers and others concerning the group's first batch of court actions against 261 individuals last month.
"We take the concerns expressed by policy makers and others very seriously," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "In light of the comments we have heard, we want to go the extra mile and offer illegal file sharers an additional chance to work this out short of legal action."
The advance notification preceding this second wave of suits marks only a small concession to critics of the RIAA actions, which have been the most controversial tactics taken by copyright holders in years of fighting piracy online.
The first round of suits, launched early in September, targeted 261 individuals whom the RIAA said had been identified as the most "egregious" file swappers, often offering more than 1,000 songs for download over peer-to-peer services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
But as the identities of those individuals hit the press, criticism arose. The case of a 12-year-old girl living in New York public housing quickly became emblematic of what critics called the RIAA's excessive enforcement action. A 60-something Boston woman, accused of offering hardcore rap songs for download through the Kazaa service, was dropped from the lawsuit lists after it emerged she actually used a Macintosh computer, which did not support Kazaa.
A Los Angeles area man is also challenging his lawsuit, saying that the RIAA's suit identifies him as using an Internet address that was not his, and that he can prove it.
In congressional hearings last week, RIAA executives promised they would begin sending letters to potential targets of lawsuits in advance of the actual filings, allowing those who wish to settle early to do so, and giving people who believe they were misidentified a chance to make their concerns known.
The letters, sent out in two batches Monday and Friday, are primarily focused on settlement.
"We have gathered substantial evidence that you have been using a peer-to-peer network such as Kazaa or Gnutella to download and upload music owned by our clients," reads a sample letter provided by the RIAA. "We are writing in advance of filing suit against you in the event that you have an interest in resolving these claims through settlement."
The letter reminds potential defendants that "ignorance of the law is not a defense," and that the law provides for minimum damages of $750 for each copyrighted recording that has been "shared." It also warns potential defendants not to destroy any evidence, such as MP3 files stored on computers, that may relate to the lawsuits.
It says that the RIAA will "proceed to litigation" if it does not hear from the recipient of the letter within 10 days after the date of the letter.
From this point on, the lawsuits against accused file-swappers will proceed on a rolling, weekly basis, rather than in waves of hundreds, an RIAA spokeswoman said. To date, the organization has reached settlement agreements with more than 50 of the people sued in the first round.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5093078.html
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Lime Wire Launches Content Portal
Tony Smith
Peer-to-peer software provider Lime Wire has launched a 'legal download' portal, in a bid to make it easier for its users to find content they are authorised to download.
Lime Wire's MagnetMix content portal uses a URL-style location system to pin-point content on the Gnutella network. Content owners who want their material - be it audio tracks, video, photography, written content, a game or other software - can submit the source of their material to the portal.
For content owners, it's a way of making their material rise out of the morass of illegally shared songs and pirated DVDs - something that's hard to do even if you host your material on the network yourself. The other option would be to offer your material on your web site, but this way you potentially get closer to your audience.
Lime Wire, meanwhile, shows itself to be promoting the use of P2P for legitimate purposes rather than the dodgy ones for which it and its ilk are infamous. At launch, MagnetMix was only able to offer maybe a handful of items in each category, little of it compelling or not widely available from other download sites. But Lime Wire no doubt hopes that content owners will begin adding material in earnest, now the service is up and running.
Of course, the snag is that by emphasising what they are allowed to give away - out-of-copyright novels, unsigned bands' demo tracks, royalty free photos, and so on - Lime Wire is highlighting the fact that almost all of the good stuff on offer, the contents that's worth having, isn't legal.
And is downloading the complete works of Shakespeare from Gnutella any better than taking it from Project Gutenberg? Or downloading a software update or shareware tool via MagnetMix any better than getting it from the manufacturer or downloads.com?
No, it's not, and that's the problem Lime Wire and co. face trying to build a solid business out of P2P. Only by providing a large enough collection of legal content can they persuade us that the $20 they charge for the ad-free version of their client apps - or the revenue they make from ad sales - isn't ultimately being made on the back of illegal content swaps. But in doing so they de-emphasise exactly what differentiates them from all other legitimate download services.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33434.html
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CD Fair Warning
Stereophile Magazine
NARM publishes new brochure it hopes will smooth over some consumer fears about the coming wave of restricted-use CDs.
Whether listeners like it or not, record labels, including major players like BMG and Arista Records, are now making moves to rein in how their CDs are played and used. Unfettered CDs have been on the shelves for almost two decades, and some industry observers note that changing how they work at this late stage could be a recipe for trouble with consumers.
Recognizing that the flash point for much of this trouble will be at the record counter—imagine the scenario when angry customers bring back new discs that won't rip to their iPods—the National Association of Record Merchandisers (NARM) has decided a little proactive propaganda is in order.
In a letter to music retailers, NARM's Jim Donio explains, "Consumer education in regards to copy-management technology [is] a key priority for the industry. With this introduction of copy-management technology into the marketplace comes a wide array of questions that retailers and their employees who interact with customers—as well as the customers themselves—need to have answered."
To address some of these questions, NARM has published a new brochure intended for both store personnel and consumers. Questions such as "Why copy-management technology?" (piracy, of course) and "Why are music labels deciding to move forward with copy-management now?" are answered from the record industry's point of view.
Also included are warnings about possible compatibility issues and simple explanations of how the restrictions work. The brochure notes, "These discs play just like an enhanced CD. Certain products tested last year had playability issues with DVD players, car stereos, and game consoles. These discs play on nearly all DVD players, car stereos, etc. Anywhere an enhanced CD will play, these discs will play."
One major drawback of the restricted disks, however, is non-compatibility with the Apple iPod. Since the new discs are based on SunnComm's MediaMax, which itself is rooted in Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) applications, the brochure leaves it up to iPod owners to read between the lines, explaining only, "It will play on any device that supports Windows Media DRM. These include Creative Labs Nomad players, Compaq iPAQ personal audio players, RCA personal audio players, Sanyo personal audio players, RIO personal audio players, and eDigital personal audio players."
NARM's brochure assures consumers that the restricted discs are not compromised when it comes to sound quality, but warns, "The technology will continue to be upgraded, not just from release to release, but in some cases from shipment to shipment of the same release."
Donio's note concludes, "As other titles are released with copy-management technology, NARM will actively work with companies to ensure that retailers, their employees, and customers all have access to information that answers any and all questions that may arise. Our ultimate goal is to achieve a positive consumer experience as the industry transitions to this new technology."
http://news.designtechnica.com/article1453.html
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Is the Music Industry Stuck in the Past?
Companies must embrace digital distribution, report says.
Macworld.co.uk staff
The music business needs to adopt new business models that embrace digital music distribution, rather than engage in costly legal action, a research firm claims.
In its report, 'Thinking outside the disc', Dallas-based analyst firm Parks Associates suggests the music industry has "so far failed to adapt" to the digital age. The analysts argue that the businesses fight digital piracy by creating a free music-on-demand service that relies on advertising for its income stream.
Research analyst John Barrett said: "Digital music has changed the market, and business models need to change too or the industry will suffer the consequences.
"Even if file-swapping networks were to magically disappear, the traditional revenue models would still be under strain," he warns.
Barrett argues that the recording industry has always been able to sell the same musical works multiple times to the same consumer simply by repackaging it. "Digital music allows consumers to repackage music themselves," he warns.
The music business is unlikely to adopt such a business model, however, as industries reliant on advertising have been hard hit by an advertising slump in recent years.
Industry insiders also point out that conventional audio CDs have only finite shelf-lives, and that digital music collections can themselves be lost, through computer error or theft. "If consumers want to keep music, they should buy vinyl--it lasts for years," a music executive told Macworld.
In related news, Roxio will launch its Napster 2.0 beta service Thursday morning in New York. The service will launch fully October 29, the company Web site claims.
The digital distribution industry is an increasingly crowded place--AOL Time Warner yesterday revealed plans to launch a European music download service by next spring and an online radio station next week. This service will be available to AOL subscribers.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112857,00.asp
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New Discs Double DVD Storage
Martyn Williams
There is good news at this week's Ceatec Japan 2003 exhibition for users looking to squeeze extra data onto a recordable DVD disc. Companies are demonstrating dual-layer versions of both DVD-R and DVD+R discs that offer almost double the data capacity of today's standard blank DVD discs.
Pioneer, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, the latter better known by its Verbatim brand name, have said they have developed prototype discs that can hold up to 8.5GGB of data and will show them at Ceatec, according to statements from the companies.
Most DVD-R and DVD+R discs on the market at present offer a data storage capacity of 4.7GB. That's plenty of space for your family snapshots and word processor file backups, but this space gets filled up fast when large multimedia files, such as video clips, are recorded onto the disc.
Anticipating the need to store more data, the developers of the DVD format specified several additional types of discs when the format was decided on in the mid-nineties.
The simplest of these disc types, and the most common today, is the 4.7GB single-sided, single-layer disc--that is, a single recording layer that can be used on one side only.
Developers also included support for double-sided discs, double-layer discs, and a combination of the two. Mitsubishi Kagaku is already selling double-sided,
single-layer discs which double the data capacity to 9.4GB by allowing recording on both sides of the disc although these require the user to eject, flip-over and reinsert the disc when wanting to switch from side one to side two.
The prototype discs from Pioneer, Philips, and Mitsubishi Chemical have a single recording side, like current discs, but two recording layers. By adjusting the focus of the laser beam each layer can be targeted without disrupting data on the other. This allows for up to 8.5GB of data to be stored on a single-sided disc, which isn't quite the data capacity of a double-sided disc but can all be accessed without the hassle of turning the disc over.
Dual-layer discs are already supported under the DVD-Video format and some commercial video discs already use the format. If you've seen a momentary pause in the middle of a DVD movie that's likely the player switching from layer one to layer two.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...pcworld/112795
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Reality TV
Andrew Lee
A prototype digital video system producing images of such high quality that the human eye struggles to distinguish them from reality has been developed by Japanese engineers.
The system, called ultra high definition video (UHDV), achieves image resolution 16 times greater than even the most advanced video broadcasting technologies now available.
Its developers at the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) said the system could be used to provide an ultra realistic 'immersive' viewing experience when, for example, showing sporting events.
UHDV displays images with 4,000 horizontal scanning lines, compared to the 1,000 offered by the current state-of-the-art high definition television (HDTV) technology and just 625 for standard TV broadcasts. When horizontal and vertical scanning are both taken into account a UHDV picture contains 16 times the number of pixels ? individual image components - of HDTV.
NHK, which unveiled details of UHDV for the first time at broadcast technology conference IBC in Amsterdam, said its engineers had to custom-design a video camera, data-storage device and projection system, as no standard broadcasting equipment could cope with their extreme demands.
http://www.e4engineering.com/item.as...0014&type=news
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Note to Sony: Skip IPod Knockoff
Peter Rojas
A few years ago, Sony made a colossal mistake. Rather than build a hard-drive-based MP3 player, the Japanese company sat back while Apple Computer wowed the world with the iPod. The iPod quickly became not just the most popular MP3 player ever, but the epitome of portable audio, as Sony's Walkman had been in the '80s.
Sony was so worried about piracy, and sapping revenue from its Sony Music division, that it chose to do nothing and let Apple ascend. Apple made boatloads of cash from the iPod, while Sony struggled to remain profitable as revenues from its main cash cow, the PlayStation 2, plummeted.
But it's not too late for Sony. We don't mean the rumored hard-drive MP3 player that Sony supposedly will introduce next year. There probably isn't a whole lot the electronics giant can do now to unseat the iPod, but Sony does have a chance to leapfrog competitors in the next wave of entertainment gadgets: personal video players.
PVPs are basically hard drives with screens attached for watching videos. There are already a few models on the market from Archos, RCA and others, and it seems every month or so another obscure Taiwanese manufacturer announces another offering. Microsoft and Intel have developed a design of their own for others to build.
While there isn't as much demand for watching video while on the go, plenty of people will want a PVP to watch movies or catch up on TV while traveling or commuting.
With color LCD screens getting cheaper by the minute, the difference in price between an MP3 player and a device that can also play videos will be small in a year or two. Besides, having an MP3 player that can play videos is icing on the cake (just like it doesn't hurt to have a DVD player that also plays CDs). You can expect to see at least a dozen personal video players on the market by the middle of next year, if not sooner.
Anyway, if Sony is smart, rather than try to fight last year's war, its marketers will look ahead and see that now's the company's chance to steal the thunder back from Apple.
It looks like they just might do that. A few weeks ago, a prototype of a Sony PVP turned up at the WPC Expo trade show in Tokyo. The sleek-looking gadget -- which has a high-resolution 3.5-inch display and the sort of design that makes you remember why you ever liked Sony in the first place -- has space for about 10 hours of video, or five full-length movies, on its 20-GB hard drive.
Besides looking good, a Sony PVP will have to make it easy for people to have stuff to watch. But here's where things get hairy. Because it's illegal to copy a DVD to a computer, and most people won't want a PVP to watch home videos, the most likely source of content will be peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Kazaa, where it's not too hard to find MPEGs of The Sopranos and The Simpsons.
I'm also guessing Sony higher-ups aren't thrilled with the idea of a gadget from their own shop that encourages piracy of Sony Pictures movies off the Net. But some recent encouraging movements show some enlightenment: Sony plans to introduce a gadget that can record TV shows onto Memory Stick memory cards for later viewing on a Sony Clié handheld computer. It requires no stretch of the imagination to see how this recorder would be a perfect complement to a Sony PVP.
Besides, Sony might not have much choice but to introduce a PVP, lest Apple come to dominate another market that would have been a natural fit. Of course, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has indicated before that he thinks a "video iPod" is a bad idea, but the company has a history of being secretive. Even with Jobs pooh-poohing, you shouldn't be surprised if Apple unveils a PVP down the line.
Now there's a tantalizing thought! An iFlicks online movie store where people could buy video files for any PVP.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60767,00.html
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My (Brief) Career As An ISP
Declan McCullagh
The FBI is convinced that I'm an Internet service provider.
It's no joke. A letter the FBI sent on Sept. 19 ordered me to "preserve all records and other evidence" relating to my interviews of Adrian Lamo, the so-called homeless hacker, who's facing two criminal charges related to an alleged intrusion into The New York Times' computers.
There are a number of problems with this remarkable demand, most of which I'll get to in a moment, but the biggest is the silliest. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II used the two-page letter to inform me that under Section 2703(f) of the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act, I must "preserve these items for a period of 90 days" in anticipation of a subpoena. So far I haven't received such a subpoena, which would invoke a lesser-known section of the USA Patriot Act.
Leadbetter needs to be thwacked with a legal clue stick. The law he's talking about applies only to Internet service providers, not reporters. Section 2703(f) says in its entirety: "A provider of wire or electronic communication services or a remote computing service, upon the request of a governmental entity, shall take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process."
Last I checked, electronically filing this column to my editors does not make me a provider of "electronic communication services." Nor does tapping text messages into my cell phone transform me into a "remote computing service," as much as I may feel like one sometimes.
Perhaps I'd be immune from the FBI's demands if I used an Underwood No. 5 typewriter instead.
I'm not the only one who's concluded that the FBI is out of control. The Justice Department's own cybercrime manual says the law applies to "network providers" and offers AOL as an example. In a recent column, former Justice Department prosecutor Mark Rasch says the law "was never intended to apply to journalist's records."
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, says the FBI demand to journalists who wrote about Lamo is more than wrongheaded. "It's stupid. Journalists are not Internet service providers. I think someone at the Justice Department just plain screwed up. Maybe they thought they were getting very creative by going after online journalists and saying they were ISPs."
Last Friday, Dalglish's group sent a letter of protest to the FBI's general counsel. The letter also was signed by the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the National Press Club.
So what are Leadbetter and his colleagues in the FBI's New York City field office trying to pull off here?
Lamo--who surrendered to the FBI last month and was released into his parents' custody until a hearing scheduled for later this month--has spent the past few years bragging to journalists about how he broke into the networks of companies such as The Times, Yahoo, Microsoft, Excite@Home and WorldCom.
Lamo does appear to be a singularly polite electronic intruder. Not one of Lamo's known targets has accused him of deleting or altering information, and at least one company thanked him for pointing out vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could have used to do great damage. But if Lamo was telling the truth, he did violate federal law.
That said, the FBI is nuts to think there's anything helpful in journalists' notes and other records that agents can't get somewhere else--like from Lamo himself, who has not denied his earlier claims. Not only would turning reporters into de facto agents of the prosecution be unlikely to result in additional convictions, it would also violate constitutional protections for the press.
That's the second problem with the FBI's letter and promised subpoena: It runs afoul of the First Amendment's protections of freedom of the press. Judges have ruled that a wide-ranging inquiry into a reporter's unpublished work is unreasonable, a protection that one federal appeals court described as reflecting "the preferred position of the First Amendment and the importance of a vigorous press." Who would confide in a reporter who was nothing but a lackey for Attorney General John Ashcroft?
Recognizing this, CNET News.com referred me to its First Amendment attorneys, Roger Myers and Lisa Sitkin. Their response to the FBI on my behalf reminds the government that, "as many courts have recognized, reporters have a privilege under the First Amendment against demands that they produce records or testify in connection with unpublished information, regardless of whether or not their sources are confidential."
The letter is addressed to Leadbetter's boss, Pasquale Damuro, and says: "We write to request your assistance, as assistant director in charge, in correcting your agent's misuse of the (Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act) and in prohibiting further efforts to obtain the threatened subpoena, which, if issued, will raise serious First Amendment concerns and result in a constitutional confrontation between the FBI and the media." It demands that the FBI withdraw its letter and not serve a subpoena.
As another example of the FBI's constitutional carelessness, government regulations say: "Negotiations with the media shall be pursued in all cases in which a subpoena to a member of the news media is contemplated." That never happened here.
The third problem with the FBI's letter is that it requests that I not "disclose this request or its contents to anyone." Those are chilling words for any journalist to read--after all, our job is to report the news, not cover it up by muzzling ourselves. That request almost certainly violates the First Amendment, but more importantly, it violates a journalist's duty to be straightforward with his or her readers.
I haven't heard anything since the original letter last month, but the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Wednesday that the FBI admits its New York field office did not follow correct internal procedures. Unfortunately, Leadbetter and his colleagues are still eyeing subpoenas, insisting that reporters should "take appropriate action to preserve relevant records and materials."
An apology is too much to ask for. An unequivocal statement from the FBI and Ashcroft that this will not happen again and no subpoenas will be forthcoming--even if proper procedures are followed--is not.
http://news.com.com/2010-7355-5089267.html
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Cable Firms Bet On Broadband Speed, Not Price
Jim Hu
Comcast broadband subscriber Ron Beman said he couldn't care less about Comcast's plan to double Internet download speeds for customers at no extra charge.
The Issaquah, Wash., customer-service representative considers himself a mainstream, e-mail- and Web-type Internet user and said the extra bandwidth, slated to jump from 1.5mbps to 3mbps, won't change his habits significantly.
"There comes a certain point where speed does matter," Beman said, "but then it gets to a certain threshold where I have enough."
Cable companies are betting raw speed will help them win the broadband race, but they may be backing the wrong horse. Slower services from rival DSL (digital subscriber line) providers are showing signs of popularity thanks to aggressive discounts. Although cable currently leads DSL by a wide margin in the United States, that gap is set to close if enough new customers vote for price over speed.
At the end of 2002, there were 5 million DSL subscribers in the United States, compared with more than twice as many--10.5 million--cable broadband subscribers, according to market-research company In-Stat/MDR. By the end of 2003, the gap is expected to remain, with 7.5 million DSL subscribers compared with 13.3 million for cable, In-Stat/MDR estimates. However, the researcher said its projections don't take into account the latest round of DSL price cuts and warned that it may revise its numbers.
Faster connections have been a major factor in convincing Americans to upgrade to broadband from dial-up Internet services, a switch that can boost download rates from 56kbps to 256kbps on the low end. That's enough to take most of the frustration out of Web surfing and much of the wait out of downloading files over the Internet, but not enough to allow for easy fetching and viewing of video or for turbocharged online gaming.
Still untested is how much demand there is for services promising top speeds well above the 1.5mbps currently offered by most cable companies.
Cable companies offer temporary discounts to first-time broadband subscribers that can cut monthly fees by more than half for the first six months or so of service. Ultimately, though, they don't want a price war. Instead, they hope customers will pay a normal price of between $45 and $55 a month for speeds up to 40 times faster than those available with standard dial-up connections.
In contrast, $26.95 a month gets subscribers to SBC Communications' industry-low promotional DSL plan speeds that are about five times those available through America Online's $23.90 a month dial-up service. The SBC price applies for the first year of service, then rises to the normal rate of $39.95.
Although there is substantial demand for dial-up upgrades, analysts said cable companies face a hard sell peddling superfast speeds.
Cable companies can jack up speeds to levels much greater than 3mbps, but that won't happen until there is a sound reason to do so.
During the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference in September, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts praised the broadband business but cautioned that its true potential has yet to be realized.
"In the last six months, more people are coming up to us and suggesting broadband applications for high-speed Internet," Roberts said, "whether that's ESPN for broadband or Xbox Live or voice-over-IP or video chat or a variety of broadband-only applications."
"We could do 50 megabits if there's a market for that, or 100 megabits," Roberts added.
The problem is there isn't a clear revenue opportunity for cable by opening up its bandwidth floodgates. The recording industry is suing consumers for downloading songs illegally through services such as Kazaa, while legal downloading businesses such as Apple Computer's iTunes are in their initial phases. Entertainment and content outlets are still figuring out how to make money off of video streaming without compromising their television assets, which leaves a limited amount of content available for Web users.
"The one thing that was forecasted to happen was a lot of streaming video," said cable veteran Hindery, recalling Wall Street's expectations. "But if you stream too much video, you destroy the core traditional video business."
The hard part for cable and DSL providers alike is figuring out the balance between speed, price and demand.
This is especially true for SureWest Communications, a Roseville, Calif., company that serves video, phone and broadband to a market limited to the Sacramento region. As a starting point, subscribers can get 10mbps broadband for $49 a month, both downstream and upstream.
http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5089322.html
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The recording industry has a pricing problem. People do not want to pay $15-20 for a compact disc when they can download the same music for free over the Internet. The industry’s solution appears as novel as the technology that is giving it such headaches: launch hundreds of lawsuits against otherwise law- abiding consumers who download music. But, as Wharton legal studies professor G. Richard Shell writes below, this same tactic was tried 100 years ago against Henry Ford. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work today. Shell is author of a forthcoming book on legal and business strategy.
Suing Your Customers: A Winning Business Strategy?
G. Richard Shell
The recording industry has a pricing problem. People do not want to pay $15-20 for a compact disc when they can download the same music for free over the Internet. The industry’s solution appears as novel as the technology that is giving it such headaches: launch hundreds of lawsuits against otherwise law- abiding consumers who download music.
After all, the music industry has invested billions of dollars in its product and thought it had iron-clad intellectual property protection for these investments – copyrights in recorded songs issued by the United States government. But having a strong legal claim on the merits is only one factor in legal strategy success. Indeed, this factor is often the least important one from a business point of view. Other key strategic considerations include the public legitimacy of an industry’s legal attack (i.e. how the move will play in the court of public opinion), the vulnerability of an industry’s strategic position in its market, the resources it has available to sustain a legal war, and the access an industry has to important legal decision makers such as regulators and legislators who can make new rules in the industry’s favor.
The recording industry balanced these factors well in its initial legal strategy – suing online distribution companies such as Napster. Napster was a direct threat with no legitimacy of its own. Its only appeal was whimsy: Average citizens thought its creator, Shawn Fanning, had a neat, new technology. But they also recognized that Fanning was selling the key to somebody else’s candy store. Nobody formed a “Free Fanning” committee to bail him out of legal trouble.
The recording industry, however, has gone one step too far with its latest legal move. Suing your customers is not a winning business strategy. Industries have a completely different strategic relationship with customers than they do with rivals. And this sort of strategy does not play well in the court of public opinion.
But it’s hardly the first time an industry has tried to solve strategic problems using litigation against its customers. And the strategy is no more likely to work today for the recording industry than it did 100 years ago, when the leading automobile manufacturers in 1903 tried to put down the threat of cheap, mass- produced cars by suing consumers who bought Henry Ford’s automobiles. Napster founder Shawn Fanning may have little else in common with Henry Ford, but both men sparked a wave of innovation that transformed their worlds. And both brought down the wrath of incumbent industry associations which tried to stop their new technologies with litigation. The story of Henry Ford’s eight-year legal battle with the “Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers” is a cautionary tale for today’s Recording Industry Association of America.
In 1903, when Henry Ford launched the Ford Motor Company, his third attempt at making cars, automobiles were high-priced, custom-made playthings for the rich. What’s more, the major manufacturers had figured out a way to keep it that way. They had acquired a strategic property right very much like the recording industry’s copyrights on recorded songs. It was called the Selden Patent and it gave its owners the exclusive right to sell a very basic invention: self- propelled vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Many people in the car business thought this patent was an outrage – much as some online retailers today are angry that Amazon.com received a patent on its “One-Click” checkout system. But the U.S. Patent Office had issued the Selden Patent and a group of powerful incumbents had purchased it and formed an association to enforce it. Litigation, then as now, was very expensive – especially for start-up companies with limited working capital. Nearly every car company fell into line to pay royalties to the Association for the privilege of making and selling cars.
Except Henry Ford. The association did not want another competitor in Detroit and it did not like his idea of driving prices down to where average people could afford a car. So it refused to license him. For Ford, it was either exit the industry or fight the Selden Patent in court. He decided to raise a legal war chest and fight the incumbents. The litigation lasted from 1903 until 1911 and along the way, the association launched hundreds of lawsuits against Ford’s customers to scare them away from his showrooms for buying “unlicensed vehicles.”
Most ordinary people of Ford’s era had been content to stand by and watch the automobile makers slug it out over the Selden Patent. It was just an industry cat fight. But when the big “money men” started suing ordinary people who were just trying to buy a cheap car, public sympathy shifted against the incumbents. People rallied to Ford’s side against the bullies. Editorials weighed in against the industry’s heavy- handed lawsuits, and Ford helped his own case by purchasing litigation insurance for his customers. By the time the patent litigation was over – Ford won on appeal in 1911 when the court ruled that the Selden Patent covered only cars made with a special type of engine nobody was using anymore – Ford was a hero, and the largest car manufacturer in America.
What can the Recording Industry Association of America take from Henry Ford’s story? First, you will never win your market by suing your customers. Quite the opposite: you will rally ordinary people to your opponents and alienate a generation of buyers. Exactly what has the industry gained by suing, among others, a 12-year-old girl in New York for downloading songs? A raft of bad publicity, a reputation for being a bully, and a new litigation insurance scheme devised by peer-to-peer software companies who can now cloak themselves in Robin-Hood green.
Worse still, the RIAA’s wholesale use of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to obtain the names of telephone company customers for its lawsuit program has sparked a legislative reaction based on privacy concerns. Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas recently introduced a new bill in the Senate to require judicial review of subpoenas such as those used by the recording industry to fuel its downloading cases. When Kansas Republicans start lining up with liberal Democrats against your industry, you’ve got a whole new kind of legal strategy problem.
Second, no legal rule is strong enough to overcome a radical technical innovation. Courts can delay progress but they cannot stop it. Unlike the automobile cartel that tried to stop Henry Ford, the recording industry’s copyrights are perfectly valid. But so are the speed limits on the interstate highway system. The fact that cars are designed to go faster than those speed limits explains why most people do so, regardless of the law. The Internet is designed to transfer data at zero marginal cost, so people want to download all kinds of things, including songs. Ultimately, no copyrights can stop that.
Third, innovation always drives the prices of yesterday’s technology into the dirt. The way to respond to the demise of the commercial CD is not to sue Internet-users. It is to figure out new ways to make money on music. Maybe concert ticket prices will have to rise. Perhaps groups should be giving more live performances on the web for premium prices. Innovative companies are beginning to sprout up all over the place with new ideas that incorporate digital music – such as selling customized CDs with mixes of a consumer’s favorite songs, video clips, and messages for friends. An Indian company called Saregama India is already doing this with music from old Hindi films and classical Indian artists. The U.S. music industry should be leading the way toward such new concepts, not lashing out at its customers like the angry, injured giant that chased Jack down his bean stalk.
As Henry Ford once summed it up, lawsuits against new technologies provide “opportunities for little minds ... to usurp the gains of genuine inventors ... and under the smug protest of righteousness, work a hold- up game in the most approved fashion.” What the recording industry needs now are new business models, not outdated legal strategies.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a...3&homepage=yes
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The Beginning of the End of the Internet?
Jessica Rosenworcel
Discrimination, Closed Networks and the Future of Cyberspace... Just over a month ago, Karl Auerbach asked, "Is the Internet Dying?". Today, Commissioner Michael J. Copps, of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a speech at the New America Foundation, is asking the very same question, "Is The Internet As We Know It Dying?" and warning about FCC policies that damaged media now threatening the Internet.
"The Internet as we know it is at risk. Entrenched interests are positioning themselves to control the network's chokepoints and they are lobbying the FCC to aid and abet them. The Internet was designed to prevent government or a corporation or anyone else from controlling it. But this original vision of the Internet may soon be lost. In its place a warped view that open networks should be replaced by closed networks and that accessibility can be superceded by a new power to discriminate is emerging."
"Our ill-advised Internet policy is only one piece of a tectonic shift across the whole range of FCC issues. From media to telecom to the Internet, we appear to be rushing toward breathtaking regulatory alterations. The Commission is permitting, even encouraging, competition to wither in the face of centralization. It is short changing its responsibility to protect the public interest."
The FCC may soon implement fundamental regulatory changes that would have deep and lasting effects on consumers, innovators, and business users. Copps: "Until now the big corporations that control Internet bottlenecks have been unable fully to capitalize on this power. But now we face scenarios wherein those with bottleneck control will be able to discriminate against both users and content providers that they don't have commercial relationships with, don't share the same politics with, or just don't want to offer access to for any reason at all. From the not so distant shadows of the past, old attitudes favoring industry consolidation and limited access are again seeking to reestablish themselves."
At issue are upcoming decisions at the FCC that will determine how much control companies will have over Internet access and their ability to discriminate against users, data, websites, or technologies. In the dial-up world, current protections require these companies to treat everyone equally. This equal treatment has contributed to enormous growth and innovation on the Internet. These decisions come on the heels of the FCC eliminating related media concentration protections. A federal court has stayed that decision, and Congress is now debating reversing it. In addition, on Monday, another federal court ovhttp://www.circleid.com/print/315_0_1_0/erturned aspects of the FCC's cable broadband policy.
Remarks of Michael J. Copps, FCC Commisioner -
"The Beginning of The End of the Internet?" PDF 123k.
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Penn State, Internet2 to develop authenticated P2P software
Press Release
A $1.1 million grant, recently awarded to Penn State by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, will enable the University to partner with the Internet2 consortium in the development of a technology called LionShare, an innovative tool that will facilitate legitimate file-sharing among institutions around the world through the use of authenticated Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks.
Though P2P technologies are typically associated with the well-known controversial file-swapping networks recently highlighted in mainstream media, the LionShare project has been designed to promote responsible file-sharing by providing a way for faculty, staff and students to exchange academic, personal and work-related materials on an officially sanctioned P2P network.
“It’s vital for higher education today to make a concerted effort to develop technologies that encourage responsible file sharing,” said J. Gary Augustson, vice provost for information technology. “We believe that LionShare will lead the way in this effort by providing a model for the positive ways P2P technology can be used for legitimate educational purposes.”
According to Michael J. Halm, principal architect of the project, a prototype of LionShare already has been constructed and is functioning in test form at Penn State as part of a previous University Libraries/ Mellon initiative known as the Visual Image User Study (VIUS). New funding from Mellon will be used to extend LionShare’s capabilities on a global scale, creating a collaborative networks that will enable individuals from a diverse range of institutions to connect to the same secure P2P system.
The unique structure of Peer-to-Peer, which allows a high level of bandwidth and computing power to be shared equally among a community of network users or “peers,” will make it possible for participants to extract specific resources from fellow peer computers, while simultaneously ensuring that these interactions are secure. LionShare also will provide a means for users to access well-known, large-scale repositories that contain digital video, images and other data throughout the U.S., Europe and other locations.
Halm also points out that a critical element of the project will be the participation of university teams in the Internet2 consortium in the creation of Open Source, or freely shared and distributed, software releases of LionShare. These groups will work closely with Penn State researchers on implementing the project’s conceptual design, creating the software development plan, ensuring security and testing the completed system at their respective institutions.
“One of the best features of P2P is that it optimizes bandwidth consumption by distributing it throughout the community of network users — an aspect that will make it possible for an oceanographer, for example, to use this system to request and acquire a complex animated representation of sea floor spreading within minutes from the LionShare network. Hence, researchers and academics will be able to exchange extremely large files via LionShare that just would not otherwise have been transferable. We believe the knowledge Internet2 member institutions have acquired in this area will be essential in fine- tuning the system for academic interests of this nature,” he said.
Two additional partners under the plan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Knowledge Initiative and a Canadian group known as eduSource, will collaborate with Penn State to create bridging technologies between LionShare and the centralized international digital repositories such as Merlot, SMETE, CAREO and EdNA, so that data from these centers can be interpreted and shared universally on the system’s P2P networks.
In addition, Augustson said that project developers are designing LionShare’s services to be flexible, enabling the network to accommodate both small private groups or large public organizations depending on specific needs. He also emphasized that the system will track user identity to ensure security, so that participants will never appear as “anonymous” to fellow network members when they’re on the system.
“We envision that it will soon be possible for a physicist at Penn State to collaborate with a group of colleagues from different institutions around a specific set of scholarly resources using LionShare, and do this in an entirely secure and seamless way,” he said. LionShare will demonstrate that P2P truly provides an exciting new tool for scholarly collaboration and synergy.”
http://live.psu.edu/story/4312p
Contact
Heather Herzog
heh4@psu.edu
814-777-1454
Contact
Michael Halm
mjh@psu.edu
814-865-2159
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e-Sharing; Why Should We Pay?
Theresa Leary
Thousands of years ago, people gathered 'round to hear a bard recite Homer's Odyssey.
They didn't buy a copy to read at home, they just listened. The bard used epithets and structural devices so that he, as well as his audience, would remember the story. The idea is very similar to the chorus of a song, or the hook, if you will.
The bard, the artist, wants you to remember what he or she has to say.
Homer did not compose Odyssey to make a quick buck. Neither did the person who finally bothered to write it down.
It was about sharing the story, not finances. Poets coming down through the ages would agree—poetry is not about money, but doing something you love.
Most "real" musicians of the present day would agree. They sing because they love to make music, and if they get rich in the process, even better.
So what's all this hullabaloo coming from the record industries about?
Very seldom (not never, but seldom) does one hear a statement from a band saying, "It hurts us that you download our music."
That's because the musicians want you to listen to their music, they want to share their creation with the world. The record companies themselves are not about creation, they are about the quick buck.
When you buy a recording of Bach, who do you think gets the money? What about Bob Dylan? Do you think he is seeing any of the money? Of course not; The record industry is.
According to
www.boycoutt-riaa.com, 56.4 percent of every album sale goes directly to the record label. Two dollars from every sale goes directly to the Recording Industry Association of America, the organization that is presently suing twelve year-olds and anyone else they can get their hands on for pirating music..
Compare that to the 37.6 percent that the musicians get for each sale (you know, before recording costs, instruments, etc.). Not to say that you don't support a band by buying its music, but you're also keeping record execs in "the lap of luxury."
I'm very careful about where my money goes. I buy plenty of CDs—if I know the band needs my sales. Blink-182, Disturbed, Rob Zombie, they don't need my money. They are making more money than I can dream of having. I have burned copies of each of their CDs. However, I've also attended a concert performed by each of these bands. Not only do I get the thrill of hearing a band play live, but I support them monetarily without going through the record label.
I would much rather burn a CD, learn all their music so I can scream with them at the shows, and pay exorbitant amounts for a t-shirt than help finance the record industries' attempt at scaring people from burning music.
Let's face it. We are a bunch of poor college students. I am sure that if we had the money, we would buy every CD we own. As Evan Riley-Williams pointed out last week, we have tuition to pay.
So I say, support the bands you love. Check out
www.artistdirect.com, www.boycott-riaa.com, and
www.riaa.com to learn the facts. Do not let the RIAA execs scare you out of listening to the music you love. Oh, and read the Odyssey online for free at
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html.
I don't think Homer will mind.
http://www.spectator-online.com/vnew.../3f87653d0c006
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Outlook: File Sharing
Jeff Howe
Are the big record companies, which have begun suing computer users who share music files online, simply targeting the poor, beleaguered music lover? Absolutely not, says music journalist Jeff Howe in Sunday's Outlook section (Listen, It Isn't the Labels. It's the Law). Howe, a contributing editor for Wired magazine, defends the big labels' right to keep what's theirs. Which isn't to say that the public shouldn't be outraged by some aspects of the lawsuits. They should. But so far, he arguess, music lovers have missed the point.
Howe was online to discuss his article, file sharing and the rights of major record labels.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guessts and hosts; guessts and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Alexandria, Va.: An RIAA lawyer was part of a Live Online chat last week, and I felt he ducked a good question about why the RIAA had spent so much time fighting against the boogeyman of file sharing and hadn't (at least publicly) appeared to even look at the prospect of finding ways to take advantage of these new technologies and successfully proven sales/distribution methods like iTunes. Do you have any insight on this? My impression is that most people are willing to pay for songs they really want.
Jeff Howe: This is an excellent question, and I wish I had a better answer. The conspiracy theory for some time has been that the music industry is just trying to stall until it can get hold of the distribution channels and get a bigger slice of the resulting pie. I don't doubt that there is some truth to this. It's only natural that a company undergoing a technological cataclysm would attempt to get the best deal it can under the new paradigm, if that makes sense.
That said, the labels also have an excellent defense that they rarely seem to articulate clearly. Before individual tracks, albums or an artist's body of work can be offered in digital form, the labels, artists and song publishers need to negotiate new licensing agreements, ie, decide who gets what cut of the pie. If everything I've heard is true, this has been time consuming, fractious and onerous, for everyone involved.
This gets to another beef I have with the labels. I think they've failed to discuss these licensing difficulties with their consumers because these issues are incredibly complex and, let's face it, skull-crushingly boring. But that doesn't mean it's not the right course. The labels have really treated much of the media as antagonists for many years now. My pitch to the labels for some time has been to let us in on the process they're going through, and lift the hood on the whole rights-negotiation process, so we can at least offer the reading public a look at what sort of obstacles the labels are facing in trying to offer consumers an appealing alternative to KaZAa, et. al. Until they do that, I think it's understandable that consumers question their motives, and are frustrated with the delays. For what it's worth, I also believe that most consumers would gladly pay 99 cents a track (providing they have some manner of flexibility over how they use that track, see above response) or a subscription fee for a COMPREHENSIVE, user-friendly, legitimate service.
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Washington, D.C.: Great piece in yesterday's paper. Here's my frustration as a music consumer:
I like to use my music in ways that are legal, not yet typical, but which I think will become increasingly common. When I buy a CD the first thing I do is pop it into my Mac, and use iTunes to make AACs (MP4s basically) of all the tracks. From there, they get loaded onto my iPod and/or used to burn mix CDs for the car. Once TiVo starts supporting the AAC format they will also get streamed into my stereo system downstairs thru my home network. (Yes, I am gadget boy -- but these are all pretty run of the mill consumer electronics devices, and I think I'm not that far ahead of the curve in terms of using them.)
So along comes the music industry playing with all kinds of new copy protected formats that make my legal ways of listening to music impossible. If other people start using music the way I do - and I think they will, thought the brands and systems of devices may change -- there's a major problem.
The practical effect of this is simple: I buy 95 percent of my music from the iTunes music store, and when I can't find some there there my first stop is a used CD store/Web site. Two reasons: one, I don't want to buy a CD that I can't use. Two, I resent the record labels using technology to remove my legal fair use rights, and so I don't WANT to give them money for CDs.
Full disclosure -- I played with Napster and downloaded some stuff a year or so back. It was a big pain and I am happy to just pay 99 cents at iTunes to quickly and easily get a high quality copy of a song. I actually have replaced most or all of the stuff I downloaded -- maybe 30 tracks -- with legal, higher quality copies.
Jeff Howe: Thanks for these two provoking posts. This is an excellent real-world scenario of the kinds of media environments most of us will come to inhabit in the coming decades. The transition from analogue to digital is inevitable, which makes it all the more important that we understand the kinds of business models the entertainment conglomerates are constructing, and the laws that make them possible.
The celestial jukebox, a term I clumsily use to represent a future when all our media arrives in digital form, on-demand, could be a magical thing. But as Washington DC poster points out, the reality of the celestial jukebox home will require a fair amount of flexibility from our digital media. I recently had drinks with a DRM guru at one of the major labels, who admitted that as advanced as DRM (digital rights management) schemes are, they still don't allow for the kind of flexibility that different consumers will require. Time-shifting and space-shifting, which are protected reasons for making copies, might require making three or four copies of a song/book/movie, so that digital file can be used in different devices, etc. When everything we consume is "copy-protected," the effect will be to dampen the otherwise great incentive to create these kinds of media environments in our homes. We should all -- consumers as well as media companies -- be concerned about a scenario in which legitimately purchased digital media is so inflexible that the incentive to create unlicensed copies is too strong for most consumers to ignore.
I include the Ft. Wayne post because I believe it touches on these themes. You do indeed rent the content contained on whatever media vehicle (CD, Book, VHS tape, whatever) you purchase. But this has been the case long before the emergence of digital media. If you buy Catcher in the Rye, you don't own Salinger's story, you just own a physical medium for the ideas. I believe it's important for consumers to understand this relationship, but not reason to stop buying music, movies or books. What IS crucial is that consumers demand the kind of "rental agreement" they deserve, one that provides for fair use and conforms to the kinds of consumer behavior (such as that elucidated by Wash DC poster) that are increasingly emerging.
Hope all that was clear -- Jeff
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Ft. Wayne, Ind.: If I go out and pay $10 - $15 for a music CD, at what point do I own it? I know I can't make money off it, but when is it mine? when I die do they have someone to come around and retrieve the CD from my estate? If all I'm getting is a rental agreement for my CDs, then I want out. The RIAA can re-purchase all my CDs at the price I paid for them and we can terminate the rental agreement. I'm sure they have lots of money for the re-purchase from all the lawsuits.
Jeff Howe: This is the other post I reference in the response to Wash DC poster ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Oct3.html
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“DRM” Players
Dan Kaufman
Portable digital audio players.
The phrase doesn't exactly roll off your tongue, does it? They may be small, sexy and have the ability to make your friends envious but the name leaves a lot to be desired - and while you could call them MP3 players, this is rapidly becoming inaccurate.
This is because a number of competing file formats are beginning to emerge, with the most significant being Windows Media Audio (WMA). Developed by Microsoft, it not only has better sound quality than MP3 but also better compression, meaning that each song takes less of your player's memory. It also has another advantage, at least for artists and record companies: the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.
This can limit the distribution of songs so that, for example, a file can only be played once, or for the first 30 days after being downloaded, or after the user pays. Other rival formats include AAC, WAV, OGG and ATRAC3, which is the only file format used by Sony Network Walkmans.
As if this wasn't confusing enough, the players are also becoming more complex. It may not have been long ago that most took the form of glorified CD players that also recognised MP3 tracks burned onto CD-R discs, but now they have features such as voice recording, radio tuners, cameras and external storage for other files. Apple's latest iPod, for example, not only plays games and acts as an organiser but also has a hard-disk capacity of up to 20GB - a specification many desktop PCs would have been proud of only a few years ago.
Even non-hard-disk-based players offer more storage capacity than before. Whereas it's standard for flash media players to offer 128MB, only a few years ago 32MB was the norm. More players also use FireWire instead of USB.
Both are technologies for transferring data and while USB ports can be found on every computer, FireWire is considerably faster. Developed by Apple, it's not surprising the iPod uses it but other players, such as JNC's Haas player, are also moving to it (although you can generally buy USB adaptors if your PC doesn't have FireWire).
However, the latest trend has more to do with the law than actual hardware - namely the push by record companies and industry bodies to punish individuals.
Both the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have said they would target people who pirate music files en masse and the prosecutions have already begun. ARIA, for example, recently began court action against three university students in Sydney for alleged file-swapping while RIAA has generated bad publicity overseas by, among other actions, fining both a 71-year-old grandfather and a 12-year-old girl.
Yet even with the law on its side the music industry has an uphill battle - a recent survey by research firm Quantum found a third of all music obtained by teenagers was pirated and that a quarter of people aged under 25 regularly used file-sharing services. It's hard to imagine that changing anytime soon.
Not all downloadable music requires you to break the law, however. As well as some artists offering songs free as samples or promotions, people are increasingly becoming used to paying for downloadable songs - as the recent success of Apple's iTunes Store, which sold more than 1 million songs during its first week, shows.
TIMELINE
1979 Sony Walkman
OK, it wasn't digital, but Sony's tape-based Walkman set the standard for portable audio players in terms of size and functionality and remained the market leader for more than a decade.
2000 Napster
Most of its files may have been pirated but Napster, an Internet service that allowed people to download thousands of MP3 songs, certainly kick-started the industry.
2001 Apple iPod
Not only did it hold up to 8000 songs and act as a removable storage device, the iPod injected style and mainstream appeal into the market.
2003 Sony Network Walkman
The name's the same but not the technology - Sony's NW-MS70D Network Walkman is no larger thana matchbox and stores 256MB (about 11 CDs) of music in its flash memory.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...676145040.html
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File-Sharing Lawsuits Show Industry Ineptitude
Christopher Rodkey
It’s almost sad, the level to which record companies are stooping to harass those pesky little college students.
They’ve been suing us here and there, in some kind of “shock and awe” campaign that will try and intimidate us into being afraid to trade songs online.
If they send out enough carefully planned subpoenas and summons in just the right places, they might have an effect, they think.
How about a 12-year-old girl? That’ll show even the young are eligible.
Maybe a 53-year-old Rolling Stones fan? All ages are encompassed in this scare tactic.
And, of course, a smattering of lawsuits are hitting college campuses all across the country. It was almost a surprise that the University of Montana didn’t have a student who received the downloading death knell.
The Recording Industry Association of America must have a pretty short short-term memory. Remember when they went nutso on Napster and shut it down? They missed a chance to work with the current base of Napster users and integrate a pay service. No, they had to flip out and take the most 5-year-old-like action they could: Shut it all down. All or nothing.
They’re missing this chance again. Instead of finding a way to truly embrace the digital revolution — and by all accounts this is a true rebellion — they are acting like the totally uncool parent who thinks its more important to discipline than to fix the problem.
And just like the child of that uncompromising parent, file swappers will find a way around the petty rules and the RIAA will always be playing catch-up.
It’s time for the record labels to figure it out. Mp3 files are here to stay, and any attempt to stop their trade and use will result in even more hard-to-track file sharing.
Instead of constantly feuding, record companies should holster the lawsuit guns and come up with a creative way to sell artists’ products without being unreal about it.
Apple got a head-start with its iTunes software this summer, where customers pay 99 cents to download a song of perfect audio quality for unlimited use.
The program has since been a success, and shows that if the RIAA is able to give up just a little bit of its ego for the sake of working out a solution, it might find a resolution that works.
Artists will still get paid, but the labels probably fear they might not rake in as much cash as when they were making a $15 profit off a $16 CD.
But so long as they keep sending out ineffectual lawsuits from sneaky, back-door monitoring techniques, they will always be an enemy to fight.
And there’s nothing young people like to do more than anger the establishment.
http://www.kaimin.org/test2.php?ardate=20030916&id=1724
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End The Agony Of CDs And MP3s
Christopher Hutsul
I was sitting around a campfire with some old high school friends when I first heard the word MP3. I remember not really getting it.
They told me that an MP3 was a compressed music file that sounded "almost as good as CD" that could be traded over the Internet.
At the time, I shook my head and wrote it off as geek talk.
I was still weary of the whole thing a few months later when a friend convinced me to download Napster ? a file sharing program that was said to be popular with university students and computer hacks.
But before long, the program was magically channelling sweet precious music on to my hard drive and something stirred inside ... I was hooked.
Maybe it has something to do with the timing. I was totally broke and my girlfriend had just departed for an internship in England.
What I did have was an Apple G4 tower (purchased in better days) and a high-speed Internet connection (spliced illegally throughout the apartment).
I hardly slept that winter. I just cruised the Web, exploring, sampling, and discovering music in a way that was intuitive and natural. By spring, about 4,000 songs had streamed into my computer.
I'd loved music my whole life, but this simple piece of software was renewing my vows.
I don't even think I stopped to consider the legal or moral implications of my burgeoning music collection. I was too geared up about all the great artists I was learning about to question my new hobby. I'd tapped into genres of music I didn't even know existed. My friends and I took turns playing our most recent discoveries for each other. We analyzed lyrics and contemplated the lineage of musical genres ...
Who knew at the time we were up to such evil?
And it is evil, according to the music industry and to some of its more surly pawns.
In September, the family of a 12-year-old New York girl who downloaded music using the Kazaa network agreed to a $2,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America. The high-profile legal action served as a warning to file sharers ? big and small ? of an ensuing large-scale crackdown.
I won't try to debunk the anti-file sharing movement. Their stance is obvious, and easily defended.
To defend free music sharing, on the other hand, requires a certain degree of rationalization. But without endorsing one side or the other, I'd like to propose a solution that would put an end to the reactionary lawsuits and whiny Metallica press conferences:
A return to analog.
That's right, a return to cassettes and vinyl records. Now realistically, neither the music industry or the music audience would be willing to fully embrace these formats. But on some level, it makes a lot of sense.
If all new albums were to be released on vinyl and cassette formats exclusively, file sharing would pretty much shrivel up.
Because nobody, well, almost nobody, is going to bother encrypting a record or a tape. To do so would be a hassle ? and file sharers are a lethargic breed who have to rest up to do a double-click.
Look, we already know that vinyl is the choice of DJs and audiophiles. The sound is softer, deeper and more satisfying. And has there ever been a more durable music format than cassettes?
Remember what it was like to pop a cassette into a player and hear that long tone at the beginning ... remember what it was like to have different feelings about the two sides of the tape? Side one of Morrissey's Viva Hate, for example, had some grit. Side two faded gently into melancholy ...
A switch to vinyl would also open the door for new technologies: Imagine slipping the new Interpol album into an in-dash record player.
And in some way, records and tapes are more durable than CDs. A record can get a little scratchy, and a tape can develop a wobble. But I'd take that any day over a scratched CD. I don't even have to elaborate on this, because I know you know what I mean.
Look, I'm not trying to say records and tapes were perfect.
But as long as the music industry churns out music in digital platforms, free music will flow through the Web freely. Transferability is the very nature of digital information, so it begs to be uploaded and downloaded.
If the music industry was serious about ending file sharing, it might consider switching back. That it hasn't, tells me there's still plenty of money to be made from people like me.
That's because I'm still buying CDs from artists that I discovered during a fleeting affair with a simple program that opened my computer, and my heart, to music.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=991479973472
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Finns May Track Youths On Cell Phones
Reuters
Finland has proposed a new law that would let parents track the movements of their young children via mobile phone, even without their consent, in a move that could set an European Union benchmark in privacy and handset use. Finland's parliament will likely start discussing the proposal early in November.
According to the draft, individuals aged 15 or older could only be tracked after giving their consent, but for children under 15 such consent could also be given by their parents or guardians. In emergency situations people can still be tracked without their consent regardless of their age. Finland's top two mobile operators, TeliaSonera and Elisa, currently offer positioning services that locate the phone user based on the mobile base station he or she is nearest to.
http://news.com.com/2110-1039-5092915.html