Quotes of the week:"My preliminary view is to grant the motion." - U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on moving ISP Subpoena Suit to RIAA-friendly court.
“I have no particular take on [iTunes hack] QTFairUse. I simply acknowledge, accept and find delight in digits -- especially those carrying art, knowledge and creativity -- bionomically finding the shortest, most efficient and effective path from source to destination.” – Music industry executive Jim Griffin
Thanksgiving Issue
P2Ps Respond to Senate Criticism
Roy Mark
Calling congressional critics "sincere but misinformed," the principal trade group of the peer-to-peer (P2P) network industry hopes to meet in person with U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R.-SC) and other lawmakers who are considering legislation to regulate P2P activity.
On Friday, Graham sent a letter co-signed by five other senators calling on the P2Ps to "adhere to copyright laws and cease the distribution of pornography, especially child pornography, over their networks." The letter was sent to executives of Grokster, Bearshare, Blubster, eDonkey2000, LimeWire and Streamcast Networks.
"Purveyors of peer-to-peer technology have legal and moral obligations to conform to copyright laws, and end the pornographic trade over these networks," Graham wrote. "These programs expose our children to sexually explicit materials and provide an anonymous venue for child pornographers to hide behind the vale of technology."
Co-signers of the letter included Dianne Feinstein (D.-CA), Barbara Boxer (D.-CA), Gordon Smith (R.OR), Dick Durbin (D.-IL) and John Cornyn (R.-TX).
While long accused of facilitating music piracy, the P2P industry came under additional fire earlier this year as a source of readily available child pornography. The actual data on whether P2P networks have more pornography, child or otherwise, than Internet sites is vague, at best.
"We feel very strongly a meeting needs to take place in person. We actually appreciate the opportunity to get a commitment to get the actual facts out," Adam Eisgrau, executive director of the newly formed trade group, P2P United, told internetnews.com. "There is much to be learned about the real industry. We want to loudly shout it from the rooftops for people to ask us about this exciting new technology. P2P United exists to correct the record."
The charter members of P2P United are Free Peers, Grokster, Lime Wire, MetaMachine, Piolet Networks and StreamCast Networks. Kazaa, the world's largest P2P software distributor, is not a member of the new trade group.
Eisgrau, who is also a vice president at Flanagan Consulting, a political lobbying group formed by former Congressman Mike Flanagan, said vested interests such as the music and movie business have promoted misinformation about P2P networks in order to "cripple the P2P industry."
The decentralized nature of P2P networks, which allow users to download and directly share electronic files independent of a central server, has raised concerns among lawmakers and law enforcement officials that child pornography is spreading through the networks at an alarming rate. A number of reports have linked child pornography with pedophiles.
Since Napster, the first widely popular P2P program, was shut down by court order, newer file-sharing programs like Kazaa, Grokster and BearShare have all surged in popularity and have become one of the most popular applications on the Internet, particularly among children and young adults. Unlike Napster, which allowed only the sharing of music files, the newer P2P networks allow the sharing of digital images.
Graham's letter suggests P2P networks provide "meaningful and notice and warning" to users about the legal effects of using P2P software, incorporate "effective" copyright and pornography filters, and change the standard default "sharing" mechanism of P2P software.
"We strongly believe that voluntarily taking these three common sense steps would go a long way toward educating and protecting consumers," Graham wrote. "It also would clearly indicate your company's desire to become responsible corporate citizens."
Eisgrau countered that "this notion of irresponsibility is wrong," citing his members' online "Parent-to-Parent Resource Center" that provides parents information on how to protect themselves and their children from child pornography.
"Like all right-thinking people, our members are sickened by child pornography and regard misuse of the Internet for its dissemination as reprehensible," Esigrau said in September after a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. "When it comes to Web-based child porn, however, technology isn't the perpetrator -- criminals are. These deviants have misused every legitimate technology, from the printing press to telephones, video, instant messaging and Internet search engines, to satisfy their lurid and illegal appetites."
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3113461
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U.S. Judge wants suit heard in RIAA-friendly court.
SBC's Fight Against Subpoenas May Go To A Court That Has Sided With The Record Industry
Joseph Menn
A federal judge on Friday signaled her support for the record industry as it seeks to file more lawsuits against people who trade songs online, though a challenge from a North Carolina student added a new hurdle for the music companies.
The Recording Industry Assn. of America asked SBC Communications Inc.'s Internet access business this year to turn over the names of customers suspected of swapping pirated songs. SBC refused to honor the subpoenas, instead asking the court to invalidate the law under which they were issued on the grounds that it violates the due-process and privacy rights of consumers.
In a hearing in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she was inclined to transfer the suit to Washington, D.C., where another federal court rejected a similar complaint by Internet service provider Verizon Communications Inc.
"My preliminary view is to grant the motion," Illston said. She spent much of the hourlong hearing asking an SBC attorney why she should not move the case to Washington. Illston did not say how or when she would rule, but attorneys working alongside San Antonio-based SBC said they were discouraged.
SBC argues that it is improper for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to force the release of customer information based on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing and without a judge's review. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief in support of SBC.
New York-based Verizon raised similar issues in the case it lost before U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington. That ruling eventually turned more on whether the DMCA entitled the record labels to information about Internet users even when the service provider is not storing the songs itself. Bates' decision is now on appeal.
This week in St. Louis, a federal judge upheld RIAA subpoenas issued to Charter Communications Inc. despite argu- ments from the cable Internet service provider that the subpoenas were improper.
But in a sign that the battle will continue, the ACLU on Friday launched a new constitutional challenge to the subpoenas in Greensboro, N.C., on behalf of an anonymous user of the University of North Carolina's computer system. The filing seeks to quash a subpoena issued to the university seeking the student's identity, on the grounds that it violates the student's due process rights.
"We think that this particular statute, as the RIAA is interpreting it, is unconstitutional," said ACLU Senior Staff Counsel Christopher Hansen.
An RIAA spokeswoman responded that the ACLU's arguments "are legally unfounded, and we are confident that the court will agree."
In another pending case, an alleged music pirate is fighting a subpoena in Washington.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...lines-business
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Australian RIA To Sue Net Services
Jennifer Dudley
THE Australian Recording Industry Association plans to sue Internet service providers who failed to stop consumers illegally downloading music.
ARIA's music industry piracy investigations manager Michael Speck said ISPs relied on illegal music downloads for 20 per cent of their revenue and were aware customers were flouting copyright laws but did nothing to stop them.
He said the failure of Internet companies to prevent copyright infringements left ARIA with no choice but to prosecute them.
But Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos slammed Mr Speck's comments as "provocative" and "inflammatory" and said ISPs were keen to work with copyright holders to prevent infringements.
ARIA's declaration follows its legal action against a Brisbane man and his Sydney-based Internet service provider over alleged music piracy.
The civil case, which will be heard in the Federal Court, alleges Stephen Cooper from Bellbowrie established a website which allowed Internet users to illegally download more than 140 million files at a cost of "several hundred million dollars", Mr Speck said.
He said ARIA had also sued the directors of Mr Cooper's ISP and the person who established his account.
Mr Speck said MIPI was also investigating ISPs who were ignoring and profiting from illegal music downloads, as they charged by the amount of data a user downloaded.
"It's clear they become aware of this activity in the normal course of their business and they should abide by the copyright law in this country," he said.
"We understand from employees of Internet companies that up to 20 per cent of their revenue in many cases comes from traffic created by downloading illegal sound recordings.
"There aren't many business that could survive if 20 per cent of their revenue disappeared and that's what we believe is motiving ISPs to hang on to it for as long as possible."
Mr Speck urged ISPs to halt the practice by blocking access to illegal music download sites and programs or "by other arrangements".
But Mr Coroneos said ISPs did not have any responsibility to monitor the activities of its users and should not be asked to invade customers' privacy.
He disputed Mr Speck's estimate of revenue from illegal music downloads and said ISPs were keen to work with the music and film industries to develop a solution to the problem.
"We have been working with ARIA and other copyright bodies throughout the year on an industry code of practice that will void the need for litigation," he said.
Music piracy investigator John Thackray said legal music sites could help stem the problem, but music piracy was "a growing market" and more ISPs would be prosecuted.
Mr Speck said ARIA did not plan to prosecute individual music downloaders, as the US music industry had done.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...55E462,00.html
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NZ Peer-To-Peer Service Shut Down
Paul Brislen
New Zealand's largest peer-to-peer (P2P) service has shut down, apparently for good.
P2p.net.nz, hosted on Orcon internet's servers, returns a 404 "file not found" error and speculation in the industry suggests that it won't be returning.
According to the Domain Name Commissioner's website, the p2p.net.nz domain name is owned by Seeby Woodhouse, managing director of Orcon Internet, however Woodhouse denied any involvement with the service other than having it as a client.
ISPs in Australia and New Zealand are being targeted by copyright owners trying to limit the sharing of copyright files, but Woodhouse would not comment on why p2p.net.nz has closed.
Discussion in various newsgroups centres on one of two theories. The first is that the traffic charges were getting so high that Orcon decided it couldn't maintain them any longer. The second theory is that legal pressure to close the service was brought to bear, possibly by the Recording Industry Association New Zealand.
RIANZ chief executive Terence O'Neill-Joyce did not immediately return Computerworld Online calls.
P2p.net.nz ran a series of connected hubs and several users are still using the "direct connect" DC++ software to share files. One posting to the nz.comp newsgroup offering connection to a private hub received several replies from interested users.
Because p2p.net.nz was run as a New Zealand only model, traffic to and from the site was predominantly local. Traffic on Telecom's JetStream Starter service and TelstraClear's Paradise cable network do not charge full rates for national traffic, so users weren't paying for the downloads. On top of that, connecting to other file sharers locally means the connection speeds are much faster than trying to connect to someone overseas. Orcon typically blocked international traffic to the local hubs
http://pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?...18&fp=2&fpid=1
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Latest Opus - 'DVD John' Hacks iTunes DRM, Releases Info
John Borland
The Norwegian programmer who distributed the first widely used tool for cracking the copy protection technology found on DVDs has turned his attention to Apple Computer's iTunes.
Late last week, programmer Jon Johansen posted a small program called QTFairUse to his Web site, with little in the way of instruction and even less explanation. But during the next few days, it became clear that the program served as a demonstration of how to evade, if not exactly break, the anticopying technology wrapped around the songs sold by Apple in its iTunes store.
Johansen's software isn't for technology novices. In its current form, it requires several complicated steps to create a working program from source code, and it doesn't create a working song file that can be immediately or simply played from a digital music program like Winamp or Microsoft's Windows Media Player.
But if other developers--or Johansen himself--pursue the project, it could herald the arrival of simple ripping programs that could create unprotected music files from iTunes songs as simply as from an ordinary compact disc.
Apple representatives did not return calls for comment. Johansen did not respond to an e-mail asking for comment.
Johansen's latest program, which works only for the Windows version of iTunes, is just the most recent move in the ongoing game of cat and mouse being played by digital rights management technology creators and hackers, who see the copy locks as a challenge.
The Norwegian's 1999 program, called DeCSS, ignited a debate over the legality of copying DVDs that has yet to end. Now widely distributed, DeCSS and similar tools are the foundation for much of Hollywood's fear that digital versions of movies will be copied and distributed online.
Johansen was sued in Norway for releasing the software, but a court there ruled that he had the right to decode a DVD he had purchased so that he could play it on a Linux-based computer.
Microsoft's copy-protection technologies have also come under consistent attack from hackers. One attempt was successful in breaking through the Windows Media rights management, but updates from Microsoft quickly defanged the hack.
More recently, a Princeton University student showed how to evade the copy-protection technique placed on a compact disc released by BMG simply by pushing the computer's shift key while loading the CD.
Johansen's program works by patching Apple's QuickTime software with a new software component of his own. Because he called the program a "memory dumper," programmers on message boards around the Web speculated that QTFairUse made a copy of the raw, unprotected song data from the computer's temporary memory after it was unprotected for playback, rather than simply recording the audio stream as it played. But this was not independently verified by Apple or Johansen.
If that is indeed the approach Johansen took, it's possible Apple could release an update to QuickTime that nullifies Johansen's work, much as Microsoft did for the early break of its digital rights management tools.
In several CNET News.com experiments, the unprotected file created by Johansen's program was not playable. Several people on Web message boards reported using a series of other MPEG 4 audio tools to create a usable song from the resulting file, however.
Another Windows iTunes add-on called MyTunes was released several weeks ago, which allowed computers to capture and save copies of songs streamed through iTunes from another computer on a local network. That program did not work with the copy-protected songs purchased from the iTunes store, however.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5111426.html
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The New York Times discovers spyware and surprise - it’s in KaZaA.
When Free Isn't Really Free
John Schwartz
FREE.
Is there any sweeter word? Its promise of something for nothing, and its underlying connotation of liberation, put a spring in the step and make the world seem a better place.
But lately, free isn't what it used to be, especially on the Internet, whose very history and technology are based on the notion that information and pretty much everything else online want to be free. Web giveaways increasingly come at a steep price, in the form of computer glitches, frustration and loss of privacy and security - not to mention the threat of expensive lawsuits for large-scale music downloaders.
"You often get what you pay for," said Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America. "In the case of what is so-called free, it comes along with challenges."
Of course, that is what you would expect him to say. Mr. Bainwol, after all, is the chief representative of an industry that says it has suffered grievous harm from music downloading, and that is trying to quash the free-music movement with lawsuits.
But now people from all sides of the Internet copyright debate have begun to notice that freebies often mask a multitude of possible cybersins. A report released last week by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a high-tech policy group in Washington, called for new regulations, voluntary industry measures and consumer education to combat the problem of "spyware" that often piggybacks on programs, including the software people use to download music.
The Federal Trade Commission has not tried to prosecute any companies for distributing spyware, and courts have declared the programs legal so far. But the Center for Democracy and Technology says that more should be done to protect consumers from sneaky software. "Spyware represents a serious threat to users' control over their computers and their Internet connections," the report said.
The definitions are fuzzy, but the programs fall under three broad categories: "adware," which serves pop-up ads and banners, including some for pornography; true "spyware, " which monitors Web wanderings for marketing purposes; and more insidious "snoopware," which can track everything users do on their computers, whether or not they are online. Some programs can even disable anti-virus software and hijack the results of Web searches.
The list of suspect software is long. Kazaa, the most popular program for downloading free music, comes with a cluster of software, some created by a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment. One of Brilliant's "extras," called Altnet, can even make someone's computer part of a Brilliant-owned network that harnesses a PC owner's excess computing power to distribute music. Derek Broes, a vice president at Brilliant, said that the program could be turned off by computer users and that the company's products should not be classified as spyware.
On its Web site, the company states that revenue from advertising and installed programs are part of what makes Kazaa free; you can get a version of the software without ads and other clutter, but it will set you back $29.95. Nikki Hemming, the chief executive of Sharman Networks, which owns Kazaa, said in an interview that the extra programs were not a big issue for users. "I think there is a bar not to be crossed, and we've been pretty careful to manage that," she said. With 10 million Kazaa downloads a month, "it's not a deterrent to consumers," she added.
The problem is that very few of those doing the downloading know what they are getting into. That is because most people do not bother to read the contracts that they click through when they install Kazaa - or, for that matter, any other programs and services they download.
"These user agreements that allow the downloading of spyware are Trojan horses," said Representative Mary Bono, Republican of California, at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing last week. "The average user has no idea that he or she is opening up their entire personal and financial life, down to the keystroke, to an unknown, often ill-intentioned, third party," said Ms. Bono, who introduced a bill last summer to restrict the use of spyware that operates without a computer owner's full knowledge or consent.
Sharman is not the only company giving people unwanted extras. Gator, one of the first pieces of software to be described as spyware by security and privacy experts, is made by a company now known as Claria. It is automatically installed with many free programs and can track a user's Web surfing habits - without actually identifying him or her by name - for marketing purposes. Some versions can keep even closer track of individuals, giving each one a user ID, according to the report of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Computer games available free from sites like Shockwave.com often carry a program called n-Case, which inundates online shoppers with pop-up ads promoting rival offerings. On its Web site, the company that makes the software, 180Solutions, says 16 million people have downloaded its program, which it says offers advertisers "a 360-degree view of the user's behavior - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/bu...ey/23free.html
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Could I Get That Song in Elvis, Please?
Bill Werde
Imagine having a singer with a world-class voice at your disposal, any hour of any day. She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu.
Close friends of Madonna or Mariah may already have had that pleasure, but for everyone else a new technology called Vocaloid may offer the next best thing. Developed at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and financed by the Yamaha Corporation, the software, which is due to be released to consumers in January, allows users to cast their own (or anyone else's) songs in a disembodied but exceedingly life-like concert-quality voice. Just as a synthesizer might be programmed to play a series of notes like a violin one time and then like a tuba the next, a computer equipped with Vocaloid will be able to "sing" whatever combination of notes and words a user feeds it. The first generation of the software will be available for $200. But its arrival raises the prospect of a time when anyone with a laptop will be able to repurpose any singer's voice or even bring long-gone virtuosos back to life.
In fact, in today's world of computer-produced music, who needs humans at all? Vocaloid could be used as part of an integrated music-generating machine. Start with any number of existing programs that randomly generate music. Run those files through Hit Song Science, the software that has analyzed 3.5 million songs to determine mathematic patterns in hit music. (Major labels are already taking suggestions from it — "Slower tempo, please, and a little more melody at the bridge.") Throw in a lyric- generating program, several of which can be found free online, and then route the notes and lyrics through Vocaloid to give the song a voice. It might not be a hit, but the process could provide inspiration for a lot of lonely songwriters.
At this early stage of its development, the future life of this technology is as much fun to think about as the almost-human voices could be to play with. At the very least, Vocaloid promises to bring a whole new copyright-infringing definition to the phrase "losing one's voice." We may soon know if an unmanned computer could produce hit singles or the voice of tomorrow's virtual pop hero.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/ar...ic/23WERD.html
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It's Just a Game, but Hollywood Is Paying Attention
Norm Alster
AVE KILLINGSWORTH, 33 and a former disc jockey, is so immersed in pop culture that he has images of Spider-Man and Batman tattooed on his back. In his free time, he puts that passion to work betting in an online game, guessing which films will make it big. He is so good at forecasting the public's taste that he has reaped a windfall, at least in play dollars, turning $2 million into $460 million.
Mr. Killingsworth is one of a million people who have traded on the Hollywood Stock Exchange (
www.hsx.com), where players can register at no cost to predict box office receipts for films. For him, it's a game, and it's fun.
But for Hollywood studios and entertainment executives, along with real traders and others, the game has become something to take quite seriously. Studios, along with academics, are interested in it as a way to predict which movies will succeed. Traders are working to turn the concept into an actual financial market, like those for futures in corn, oil and other commodities. It has also served as the model for a television show merging trading and music.
All this interest revolves around a fantasy game that allows online players to trade "securities" whose prices forecast the first four weeks of box office revenue for new and yet-to-be-released films. Late last week, traders could "buy" stock in "The Cat in the Hat" (released on Friday), at $130 a share, meaning that the market expected four- week box office receipts of $130 million. Or they could buy "Spider-Man 2," due for release next May, at $235 a share, or even "Spider-Man 3," which has not yet been made and won't be released for years, at $87.
The exchange's appeal lies in the premise that the collective wisdom of large numbers of traders can most efficiently determine the value of properties that would otherwise be hard to assess.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/bu...ey/23bets.html
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Staff Warned As Bosses Begin To Adopt Big Brother Tactics
Tanya Thompson
OFFICE staff are being urged to be vigilant amid claims that company bosses are launching covert surveillance operations to spy on them at work.
Employment lawyers are warning of a steep rise in the number of firms prepared to eavesdrop in the workplace, using a range of bugging devices and microscopic cameras.
David Christie, an Aberdeen-based solicitor with Proactive Employment Lawyers, said the area is difficult to police and the law was beginning to lag behind the new technology.
He added: "They have access to a bewildering array of eavesdropping technology. Employer surveillance has become big business and a lot of large companies are using sophisticated technology against their own people."
Human rights groups are increasingly concerned about bugging devices - which are not illegal or licensed in this country. Thousands of people in Britain are tapping into private conversations and surveillance equipment is traded legally through shops, mail-order firms and the internet.
Privacy International, a watchdog on government and corporate surveillance, estimates that more than 200,000 bugging devices and covert cameras are sold every year.
Stephen Grant, a partner with the Edinburgh-based investigators Grant & McMurtrie, has seen an increase in requests for corporate monitoring in the last five years.
They recently exposed an employee who was caught on camera smoking a cannabis joint, and a manual worker who was building a house extension while off work with a bad back."It is a boom area," he added. "We launch operations at work where it is feared that staff are stealing or malingering. We could use a camera if the client has grounds to suspect theft or other breaches of contract. These are tiny, pinhole cameras which you would never see."
Employment lawyers are warning a little-known code of practice from the Information Commissioner could erode privacy rights. Sending e-mails to friends, checking football scores or playing computer games on the internet could result in a written warning or dismissal.
Before the changes came into force in June, many employers were cautious about spying on their staff, even if they had genuine fears about misuse of company time and equipment. Lawyers now say the code of practice will give bosses the green light for full-scale surveillance operations, when it may not be justified.
Jim Price, an employment lawyer and partner with Ross Harper solicitors, in Glasgow, said many workers were unaware they are spied upon.
He added: "If employers only have to justify surveillance to themselves, it is very subjective. Staff could be monitored frequently and will never know."
http://www.news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1299642003
Cyberslacking:
http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=914
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Illegal File Sharing: The Times, They Are A- Changin’
By EDITORIAL BOARD
The Recording Industry Association of America has recently stepped up its fight with illegal downloading, evidenced by the flooding of peer-to-peer networks with corrupted versions of legitimate files. The approach is the latest in a long line of short-sighted strategies to combat the downloading that continues to revolutionize the music industry.
In some ways, the recording industry ought to be defended. As the copyright holder for pirated music, the industry has the moral high ground. It’s unfair to condemn the labels for finding a way to foil their most dangerous competitor — and the approach is certainly a more productive one than filing copyright infringement lawsuits against children and the elderly.
But the recording industry is responsible for fostering the unfriendly market that allowed file-sharing services to explode in the first place.
At a glance, the music market might not seem too unhealthy. Top artists can still move half a million copies in one week. But the single-driven, top-heavy CD market is troubled. One of the revelations of the file-sharing era is that consumers only grudgingly pay $18 for an album with two songs they want.
CDs cost only pennies to print, and artists make most of their money by merchandising and touring. The bloated recording industry must realize that file- sharing technologies have undercut the stranglehold they’ve had on the music world, and the industry needs to adjust its practices accordingly.
Free peer-to-peer services may not be around forever, but they will not disappear entirely. The concepts are simply too well-established for people to abandon, as are the economic interests — from MP3 players and CD burners to DSL service — that give the nation’s top technology firms a stake in a file- sharing future.
The eventual replacement for illegal services like Napster will be a compromise between industry and consumer interests — a legal way for people to pay less than they do now and get only the songs they want. The success of similar services like Apple’s iTunes shows that the concept already has a growing market.
Clearly, record executives would love to return the industry to its 1998 pre- Napster heyday, but that is simply not going to happen. No matter how many lawsuits the major labels file or how many file-sharing networks they shut down, the music industry has deeply changed in the past five years. The recording industry must change with it, or be left behind.
http://www.californiaaggie.com/?a_id=602
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Get 'Em While They're Legal
Ernest Miller
Thank goodness! The TiVo-addict friendly PVRBlog reports that HDTV-capable TiVos will be available for sale the first quarter of 2004 (HDTV-recording TiVo). See a picture of the device here:
TiVo HD DVR. What this means, of course, is that such devices will be available without broadcast flag implementation, at least until July 2005, as many of the commentators on PVRBlog note.
Interestingly, PVRBlog is selling a home-modified TiVo (extra capacity, wireless connectivity) on eBay (Upgraded Series 2 188hr TiVo, HMO & wireless). Pretty good price right now, too. Unfortunately, under the current regime we won't be seeing too many home-modified devices after July 2005.
Comments
won't do much good. Tivo requires a subscription and frequent software updates. As soon as the deadline passes, boom, broadcast flag compliant. As for me, I'll keep by pre-repeal of 17 usc 107, pre-DRM, and pre-macrovision Sony (v. Universal) VCR as long as it lasts.
Posted by:
patentbuster@msn.com at November 20, 2003 12:14 PM
http://importance.typepad.com/the_im..._while_th.html
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Chip Implant Gets Cash Under Your Skin
Declan McCullagh
Radio frequency identification tags aren't just for pallets of goods in supermarkets anymore.
Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla., is hoping that Americans can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify themselves when going to a cash machine or in place of using a credit card. The surgical procedure, which is performed with local anesthetic, embeds a 12-by-2.1mm RFID tag in the flesh of a human arm.
ADS Chief Executive Scott Silverman, in a speech at the ID World 2003 conference in Paris last Friday, said his company had developed a "VeriPay" RFID technology and was hoping to find partners in financial services firms.
Matthew Cossolotto, a spokesman for ADS who says he's been "chipped," argues that competing proposals to embed RFID tags in key fobs or cards were flawed. "If you lose the RFID key fob or if it's stolen, someone else could use it and have access to your important accounts," Cossolotto said. "VeriPay solves that problem. It's subdermal and very difficult to lose. You don't leave it sitting in the backseat of the taxi."
RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which some manufacturers have managed to shrink to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting a unique ID code, typically a 64-bit identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. Most RFID tags have no batteries. They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.
When embedded in human bodies, RFID tags raise unique security concerns. First, because they broadcast their ID number, a thief could rig up his or her own device to intercept and then rebroadcast the signal to an automatic teller machine. Second, sufficiently dedicated thieves may try to slice the tags out of their victims.
"We do hear concerns about this from a privacy point of view," Cossolotto said. "Obviously, the company wants to do all it can to protect privacy. If you don't want it anymore...you can go to a doctor and have it removed. It's not something I would recommend people do at home. I call it an opt-out feature."
Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said implanted RFID tags cause an additional worry. "When your bank card is compromised, all you have to do is make a call to the issuer," Hoofnagle said. "In this case, you have to make a call to a surgeon.
"It doesn't make sense to go from a card, which is controlled by an individual, to a chip, which you cannot control."
ADS shares have slid from a high of about $12 in 2000 to 40 cents, and the company is now fighting to stay listed on the Nasdaq. "Our common stock did not regain the minimum bid price requirement and on Oct. 28, 2003, the Nasdaq Stock Market informed us by letter that our securities would be delisted from the SmallCap," ADS said in a Nov. 14 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also warned that its implantable microchips are manufactured solely by Raytheon without a "formal written agreement," and any price increases or supply disruptions would have serious negative consequences.
MasterCard has been testing an RFID technology called PayPass. It looks like any other credit card but is outfitted with an RFID tag that lets it be read by a receiver instead of scanned through a magnetic stripe. "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs," MasterCard Vice President Art Kranzley told USA Today last week. "It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything--someday, maybe even under the skin."
ADS is running a special promotion, urging Americans to "get chipped." The first 100,000 people to sign up will receive a $50 discount.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5111637.html
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Death of a Friend
Glenn H. Reynolds
I'm losing a friend, and it's time to say goodbye. The friend is MP3.com, the online music distribution site. Although it had a market capitalization of a billion dollars when it went public just four years ago, it will be shutting its doors, er, servers, on December 2. CNET, which has bought up much of what remains of MP3.com, will be introducing some sort of new service, but at the moment the details aren't clear. Most likely, though, it will be something very different: a platform for selling commercial tunes, under some sort of copy-protection scheme, not a platform for distributing independent music for free. I hope I'm wrong about that, and MP3.com's email announcing the change suggests, without actually promising anything, that I might be, but I'm not very optimistic. Finding new ways to sell me the latest Britney Spears song seems to be the goal of most new online music services. But what I'm looking for is a way to find music I like from
bands I'd otherwise never know about.
That's what MP3.com did best. And -- I'm not a disinterested party here -- I know because I was one of those artists. Actually, I was several of them: my techno band Mobius Dick, for example, which was able to put up a song, have it hit the charts in a few days, and wind up the subject of a story in Salon within the week. Other bands ranged from jokes (Eco-folkies The Meadowlarks, who protested the "brutal" customs of Valentine's Day with a song entitled How Many Flowers Must Die) to more serious efforts, like the Nebraska Guitar Militia, for whom I wrote some songs and whose new CD will sell independent of MP3.com anyway. And I discovered a lot of other bands that I liked via MP3.com. Los Angeles-based Salsoul act Cecilia Noel and the Wild Clams rules -- I bought her CDs immediately after streaming some of her songs, as I did with Nashville-based new wavers Audra and the Antidote. And if you're following these links (and you should be), don't miss bands like the Hector Qirko Band, Terry Hill's Balboa, and Digital Ritual. You may like them. I know that I found a lot more good and interesting artists through MP3.com than I've found via listening to the radio. I don't know where I'll look now.
Most of these bands will still be around in some form, of course: lots have their own websites, and there are other opportunities to market music over the internet, and other hosting sites like IUMA, PeopleSound, and so on.
But none have the reach, or the ambition, that MP3.com offered. It was even possible to make money
on MP3.com, with some artists earning six-figure incomes -- though most didn't make much. I made a few hundred bucks a month for a while, and thought I was doing well for having music on the Internet. And I was. So were quite a few other people. But more than the money, it was the opportunity to get music in front of a lot of people, and to be part of a community of musicians and fans. MP3.com did that better than anybody else, too. I'll miss it.
It's true, of course, that MP3.com has been sick for a long time. They foolishly bet the company on a music "storage" system called "Beam-it" that was really a filesharing system, were nearly put out of business by the resulting lawsuit, then rescued by Vivendi, a company that's in pretty bad shape itself. But the original idea was a great one: Easy to use, easy to upload music and art, lots of networking and music-finding capabilities, and a real sense of community. That lived on, to a degree, even after the takeover. Now it's soon to be gone, and it's not at all clear that the replacement will be similar.
I can't help but notice that this change seems to be working to the advantage of big record companies. It's not just that they're cracking down, with mixed success, on file-sharers. It's that the environment for independent music on the Web seems to have grown more inhospitable, too. And I've always had a suspicion that shutting down these independent channels for music distribution, more than cracking down on piracy, has been the real goal of big record labels. The
technology for making music, after all, has gotten steadily cheaper. Where once their control of big studios gave them an economic advantage, now record companies' chief asset is their control of distribution and marketing channels. The Internet threatened an end-run around that process. It still does, but the end of MP3.com bodes poorly for the future. Its replacement is likely to be something that ought to be named DRM.com., based on Digital Rights Management, and aimed not at facilitating the spread of music, but at limiting it.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic, here. Cheaper bandwidth and hosting, coupled with the explosion in wi-fi, probably mean that we haven't yet entered the Golden Age of Internet music, and that MP3's experience was just a sort of false dawn -- a musical Leif Ericsson to some future online Columbus. I certainly hope that's right. But it's hard to be optimistic when a friend dies.
My gloom aside, I recommend that you spend some time poking around and checking out the music while you can. MP3.com's collection of independent music, millions of songs available for free download with the artists' permission, is an enormous store of common wealth -- for a little while longer. The best place to start is probably by picking a genre from the charts page, and then checking out the artists there. Take advantage while you still can, because it's not (quite) dead yet.
http://techcentralstation.com/111903C.html
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Vivendi To Destroy MP3.com Archives?
Charles Farrar
Tech news Website CNET bought MP3.com from Vivendi earlier this month, but there now seems a question as to whether or not CNET's intentions include destroying MP3.com's music archive. At least, that is what the founder of MP3.com fears, according to an essay he published during the week at P2P.net.
"(Vivendi) sent out the announcement that...MP3.com had been sold and the new owner was not taking possession of the music and band pages. This means the music will die, disappear, and vanish forever," wrote MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, who added that MP3.com was the largest music site in the world.
"And...it contains a diversity of music found nowhere else," he continued. "If you want Britney Spears, there are lots of places to go. If you want Brittany Bauhaus, Brittany Lacy, Brittany Frompovich, or even Lymp Brittany, MP3.com is the one place in the world you'll find them. On December 2nd, their sites there will no longer exist."
CNET announced November 14 that it had a deal with Vivendi Universal to buy MP3.com's assets, saying they planned to relaunch MP3.com, though they didn't say when. They did say, however, that they would retool MP3.com as a source of information for digital music, not as a direct competitor to other music download services, including the resurrected former giant whose original peer- to-peer star helped eclipse MP3.com in the first place: Napster.
"CNET Networks believes MP3.com can attract an audience similar to visitors of its GameSpot Web site, which features video game reviews and downloads," CNET said when announcing the MP3.com deal. "The company did not announce a timeframe for its planned relaunch of MP3.com, but said it is interested in connecting with artists and record companies that have previously distributed their music via the site."
Other reports have suggested December 2 as the possible relaunch date. Robertson's essay said December 3 would be what he called "another fire...actually scheduled to take place in San Diego," an allusion to the recent wildfires which devastated much of San Diego's surrounding area. "(A)nd it will burn to the ground the largest collection of digital works ever assembled. We're certain this blaze is scheduled to happen; the question is, can we stop it in the next 2 weeks?"
Robertson started MP3.com six years ago in an extra room in his house, he said, with just a few Web pages offering less than twenty songs, until Robertson and his colleagues created an automated way for people to add their own music "in a self-serve manner" - and within a short time of that, MP3.com became a world Internet phenomenon. Until the rise of Napster and other peer-to-peer file- swapping networks, MP3.com looked like the unchallenged leader in getting music in cyberspace, with MP3.com encouraging both established musicians and unknown artists to contribute their music and get it heard by a growing audience.
"At virtually any event that had at least 100 people in attendance, I could ask the crowd if anyone had music on MP3.com and a few shy hands would be raised," Robertson said. "For some it was all business, for some it was a way to share music with family, and for others it was a place to get feedback from the community to improve their musical ability and to connect with fans. Today, MP3.com has more than 1 million full-length songs from more than 250,000 artists, available for people to listen to and download. The majority of this music cannot be found anywhere else in the world."
MP3.com also spurred the development of early, popular MP3-playing programs like Rio, Winamp, and MusicMatch, the third an easily-used MP3 creation program. The P2P phenomenon eventually overtook MP3.com's original leadership position, but MP3.com's music archive - particularly its archive of unknown artists - remained one of the Internet's broadest. And that, Robertson said, was the likely biggest loss of all if indeed CNET should destroy MP3.com's catalog.
Robertson also rejected suggestions that Vivendi intended all along to just shut down MP3.com, erase the MP3 file format, and the collection of music. "You don't spend nearly $400 million on property you intend to destroy," he wrote. "In fact, VU deployed the technology and people from MP3.com throughout their media empire. VU now uses a customer tracking system across its media properties to manage email campaigns and profile music listeners in a scientific way.
"They took the digital publishing engine MP3.com perfected, and now have the most advanced digital publishing architecture in the world," he continued. "Music goes from the recording studio directly into a digital library, where it can be sent to the CD pressing plant, music subscription systems, publishing libraries, and much more -- all digitally and precisely tracked."
Vivendi underwent a recent company shakeup and began selling of a number of digital music assets, including and especially Pressplay to Roxio, which used the program to operate the re-launched Napster earlier this fall.
Robertson, meanwhile, has a new project, SIPphone, an Internet telephone service which has competition from another early dot-com legend, Ed Cespedes's Voiceglo. Cespedes was formerly the president of TheGlobe, one of the Internet's earliest portals and one of the dot-com bust's earliest and highest-profile collapses, when its stock hit the stratosphere and then crashed and burned almost as spectacularly.
Robertson won't have nearly as much dot-com baggage to overcome as Cespedes, given that TheGlobe's collapse continues resonating around mainstream cyberspace. He admits TheGlobe flew too high on too many borrowed wings, though he also points out that, unlike many other dot-com collapses, TheGlobe never filed bankruptcy and eventually repaid every one of its investors and settled all of a number of class-action lawsuits.
"TheGlobe became iconographic of the dot-com bubble burst," Cespedes acknowledged in a recent interview. "It was exacerbated by the fact that we had two young co-CEOs who were a little too enamored of the limelight. But it's also easy to say the limelight was enamored of them. When we went public, and the stock jumped from nine to 90 on its first trade, it put us on the map across the world forever...It was the stratospheric craziness of the dot-com era. When the dot-com era ended, it was easy to pick on the guy you knew."
He also said the Internet telephony field would only benefit with players like Robertson and other former peer-to-peer movers entering. In fact, he predicted in the same interview that voice-over Internet protocol telephony might eventually replace cellular telephony.
http://www.avnonline.com/issues/2003...112203_4.shtml
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Australia.
CD Burning Okay: Musicians
Chris Jenkins
WHILE record companies prepare for the sentencing of three Sydney men convicted of music piracy by the Federal Court, a new survey shows most musicians and other music professionals believe copyright laws are too harsh.
The survey, entitled "Music - The Business, Law and Technology report," was conducted by music industry services firm Immedia at its Australasian Music Business Conference in August.
It found that 81 per cent of the 200 respondents felt that the Copyright Act should be changed to allow the copying of a user's own legally purchased CDs, but not borrowed or downloaded music.
Less than half (48 per cent) of respondents felt that downloading free music constituted theft from artists and composers, while only 25 per cent felt it was theft from record labels. Twenty seven per cent of respondents did not feel downloading music was theft.
More felt burning CDs was theft from artists (57 per cent) and record labels (29 per cent), while 55 per cent considered the illegality of copying a legally bought CD, making a compilation or ripping music to a digital device "an iniquity".
Seventy-seven per cent of respondents had a CD-burner and 47 per cent said they had burned up to 50 CDs in the past year.
Forty-two per cent considered music file-sharing to be "a bad thing". However, half of the 45 per cent who said they had downloaded music had only downloaded free content, with 31 per cent downloading a mixture of free and paid-for content and 8 per cent downloading only music they had paid for. Peer-to-peer networks were used to sample music before purchasing by 21 per cent of respondents.
Fifty-four per cent of the respondents also admitted to illegally copying software, while 26 per cent admitted to copying games.
Immedia managing partner Phil Tripp said the results showed those working in the industry believed "people who support the music industry by buying music or owning their own albums should have the right to transfer tunes to other playback media without breaking the law".
Mr Tripp said he supported lobbying the government to change the law "so that the industry does not further alienate consumers who buy their own music".
Forty-two per cent of the respondents were musicians or songwriters, 16 per cent were artist or band managers, 14 per cent music business students, 6 per cent record company staff, and 14 were in the 'other' category, including music publishers, agents, lawyers, producers, engineers and copyright association staff.
However, the Music Industry Piracy Initiative's chief investigator, Michael Speck, said the survey "confirmed what the music industry has been saying about the problems associated with peer-to-peer piracy".
He said the survey could suggest "that because lots of people break a law, as a matter of fact it should be repealed". This may "unwittingly assist" peer-to-peer pirates.
Mr Speck said a debate over the copying of legally purchased music for personal use would be "extremely difficult" to have until peer to peer piracy was under control. Pirates within the music industry would be equally subject to prosecution should it be warranted, he said. "You don't get any special consideration because of your disposition or profession."
"Suggesting consumers should remain criminals simply because they are copying their own stuff is fallacious," Mr Tripp said, saying that other countries, notably the US, gave consumers "fair use" rights over music they had purchased.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html
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“Sledge hammer to crack walnut.”
Privacy Commissioner Slams Music Enforcers, Cautions On DRM
Julian Bajkowski
Federal Privacy Commissioner Malcom Crompton has attacked the tactics of the music antipiracy lobby, saying that those who ride roughshod over privacy in the hunt for pirates occupy the same moral ground as those they seek to have jailed.
Addressing the 11th Biennial Copyright Law and Practice Symposium, Crompton warned a dangerous "asymmetry" between "vigorous protection of intellectual and vigorous invasion of personal information" now existed.
"One of the things that is potentially happening here, and around the world, is that if you want to go after one person for their alleged misuse or wrongful distribution of IP, what [copyright holders] do is that they manage to get hold of all the log files of an ISP or server.
"This has the potential to invade the privacy not of the person being chased, but of all the people that have ever used that ISP. [It's] not appropriate, it's a sledge hammer to crack a walnut," Crompton said.
While stopping short of demanding jail terms for premeditated or systemic invasions of privacy by commercial interests, Crompton said that it was in the public interest to make sure "the cure is not worse than the disease".
“I challenge both the digital industry and software pirates to recognise that Digital Rights Management includes both the right of protection for Intellectual Property (IP) and the right of protection for personal information (PI),” Crompton said.
The Privacy Commissioner also cautioned defenders of defend intellectual property rights must demonstrate transparency as to the way personal information is collected by commercial interests.
"DRM technologies allow very fine-grained customer profiling [and must] allow individuals the choice of not participating. This includes the need for new technologies to be consciously designed as privacy enhancing technologies that prevent accumulation of such data for this kind of secondary purpose," Crompton said.
The Commissioner noted Microsoft's Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) was "at the crossroads" in terms of building privacy into technology.
"NGSCB has great privacy enhancing potential, and deployments by developers, not just Microsoft will be the real test. Microsoft has recognised there is a privacy issue in here, that privacy can be got right and in that sense we should all work with them, give them the benefit of the doubt and urge them to do the right thing because they recognise the right thing needs to be done" Crompton said.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company would need to examine the Commisioner's musings in their full context prior to making a comment.
The Australian Recording Industry Association said it was still without a media spokesperson, thus unable to comment at time of publication.
http://pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?id=1749605766
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Telcos, ISPs At Odds Over Net-Phone User ID
Kate Mackenzie
PRIVACY and security are the main sticking points in plans for an Australian trial of ENUM, which meshes phone numbers with internet addresses.
Australia's biggest telcos are getting involved in the debate over ENUM, or e164, which has a number of potential uses, such as unified messaging and voice-over-IP.
However, the complexity of melding vastly different internet and telecommunications systems and cultures is proving a challenge.
The Australian Communications Authority issued a discussion paper on the system last year and is facilitating a discussion group involving telecoms and internet industry representatives.
A trial, expected to cost about $1 million, will be run by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and supported by the Australian Telecommunications Co-operative Research Centre.
The ACA will call tenders to run the address registry for the trial early next year, and ACA numbering assistant general manager Rowan Pulford said the trial was expected to be up and running before April.
The concept of a single number or address that could locate an individual by any method of communications raises privacy, security and authentication issues that a separate working group is looking into.
Mr Pulford and Mark Gregory, an RMIT lecturer who is heading the university's trial, said agreement was needed on these issues before the trial went ahead.
Few countries that were examining ENUM had looked into these issues, they said.
Telstra is understood to have raised several objections to security and privacy proposals from the security working group this month.
However, a Telstra spokesman was circumspect on ENUM security and privacy, saying it was a concern shared by all participants, but the telco had not "reached any firm position".
Telcos prefer a thin approach to number and address directories — keeping personal information separate from numbers, whereas the internet domain name system is fat, including personal profiles in whois databases.
"There is a different view between telcos and internet companies," Mr Pulford said.
"In many ways that's typical of ENUM, because it is like a culture clash between the unregulated internet and the highly regulated telcos."
Optus industry technical regulation manager Sam Mangar contributed a list of possible uses for ENUM, including a single contact number, unified messaging, call preferences and applications using the voice-over-IP and SIP (session initiation protocol).
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html
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Canadian Music Group Aims To Charge Internet Users
David Akin
A group representing Canada's songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians.
The case has broad ramifications for the Internet industry in Canada, legal experts say.
"This is the big case for the Internet. This will set the position on how we are going to treat Internet service providers, whether they are going to be seen as people who are responsible in some way for content that goes through their services," said Mark Perry, a professor of law and a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.
If successful, the legal pleadings of the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) could open the door to other rights holders -- groups as diverse as software publishers or Hollywood movie distributors -- who could use SOCAN's precedent to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect royalties for their members.
Although those groups are prompted to seek new sources of revenue because of what they say are illegal downloads of copyrighted content, SOCAN is asking ISPs to pay a blanket annual royalty regardless of whether the ISP is transmitting legal or illegally downloaded music.
"This is a huge case for Canada and the Internet and whether we're part of the global Internet community or on the outside looking in," said Jay Thomson, president of the Ottawa-based Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). "Consumers could very well see an increase in their Internet costs and they could see a slowdown in the transmission speed of their Internet communications."
CAIP is one of the parties to the case. Its main opponent, SOCAN, and many other parties to the case declined to comment before the court hears the matter.
Legal experts say the Supreme Court has been looking for a case like the one involving SOCAN and the ISPs because they will be able to clarify several key issues involving Internet use in Canada by ruling on a narrow technical question involving some technology ISPs use to speed up performance of their networks.
For example, legal experts say the justices of the Supreme Court will be aware that what they say on the technical issue at hand will apply to the broader issue of the responsibility ISPs have for any content that passes through their systems. That could affect the liability ISPs have for some kinds of objectionable content such as pornography, hate propaganda or computer viruses.
"We've always taken the position that we are the conduits of other people's content. We simply provide the network over which other people communicate with each other," Mr. Thomson said. "It's the people who are doing the communicating who should be responsible for that content."
The Supreme Court will also be asked to adjudicate on a jurisdictional issue, specifically whether Canadian law ought to apply to organizations which operate Web servers physically located outside the country but which deliver content to Canadians.
There is some case law already in Canada that supports the idea that business activities aimed at or used by significant numbers of Canadians ought to be subject to Canadian law even if the organization behind those activities is located outside the country.
"This case is terrifically significant," said Richard Owens, executive director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto. "From an Internet law point-of-view, it'll have effects around the world. Legal academics have been waiting for [this] for a long time. The Supreme Court is finally stepping in and giving us some guidance for the digital age."
So far, SOCAN has had partial success in convincing a Canadian court of the justice of its cause. SOCAN had originally asked the Copyright Board of Canada to impose a royalty on Canadian ISPs but the Copyright Board ruled that ISPs ought to be granted an exemption from paying royalties because they were, like telephone companies, simply a carrier or transmitter of the music files. SOCAN appealed that decision to the Federal Court of Canada and, there, found some success.
The Federal Court agreed with the Copyright Board that ISPs were indeed carriers or transmitters of content except when ISPs engaged in caching content to speed up the performance of their systems. Caching (pronounced cash-ing) is a common procedure used by ISPs in which copies of popular Web pages are stored on a computer close to a group of end users. When an end user in Toronto, for example, requests the home page of search site Google, the Google search page is retrieved from a computer in Toronto rather than from Google's main computers in California.
The Federal Court held that the act of creating a cache of content means that ISPs are moving from their role as carrier to a role in which they actively decide what kind of content will exist on their systems. And that means, under Canadian copyright law, they should be responsible for that content.
The ISPs disagreed with that interpretation of the Federal Court and were granted leave to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for SOCAN, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and a host of interested parties, such as the Canadian Cable Television Association, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and several ISPs will argue their case Wednesday. A ruling on the matter is typically made months after oral arguments are presented.
SOCAN is proposing that ISPs pay a royalty of 25 cents per subscriber per year as well as 10 per cent of any gross profit ISPs make through the sale of advertising.
"The tariffs are actually quite large," Mr. Perry said.
If adopted at that rate, SOCAN could receive several million dollars a year.
In 2002, SOCAN received a total of $32 million in royalties paid by Canadian radio stations which play music written by SOCAN's members.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories