Jim Griffin on the Future of Music
Jim Griffin is one of the leading thinkers when it comes to the future of digital music. Griffin once held a key position at Geffen after which he started his own company with Cherry Lane's Milt Okun. Jim Griffin is also co-founder of the most important forum for debating the future of music, Pho. Greplaw has picked Jim Griffin's brain.
# Who is Jim Griffin?
This is the very toughest question, as I am loathe to substitute my judgment for others. It's still tougher to measure the field from within the field. I will simply say that I am fascinated by the digital delivery of art, knowledge and creativity; that I believe it to be the most important issue our generation could possibly face (Gutenberg being the most important before our generation, a friction-free Gutenberg is ours to implement); and that its monetization is a special challenge that I relish.
# Okay, but provide me with five keywords that I should use at Google to learn more about Jim.
I will go a bit further than that, as I was feeling a bit playful this morning when I first addressed your questions.
I am 46 years old, my family a mix of central European and Irish. I grew up in the Chicago area, and was lucky to attend a very good high school (Rich East in Park Forest, Illinois) that has contributed much to the music and entertainment (the Zutaut brothers, Dawn Upshaw, Barry Oakley, Kim Thayil, Tom Berenger and many others). I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Kentucky. After school I went to work at a newspaper, and after three years left to represent media workers around the world from my office in the Washington, D.C., area. Twelve years of that and I moved to Los Angeles to work with Geffen, after which I started my own company with Cherry Lane's Milt Okun. I am happily married to Stacie Seifrit Griffin, ex-head of special marketing at KROQ and marketing head at Paramount television network. We have one child, Hazen Eugene Griffin, now about a month old. My father was a union leader in the mold of Chavez or Debs, my mother the head of training for Illinois Bell telephone. I am good friends with my two siblings, Michael Griffin (he works at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles) and Ellen Griffin-Stolbach (a psychologist in the Chicago area).
# That's more like it, no need to fire away at Google now. What is Pho?
Pho is Vietnamese beef noodle soup. Pho the community arose from the simple notion of sharing a bowl of soup and great conversation related to the digital delivery of art. Before I worked at Geffen I represented media workers and lived in Washington, D.C., where there many good Pho kitchens, but I couldn't find one in Los Angeles. About the time I departed Geffen to start a company, I found a nearby pho kitchen in LA's Chinatown, and invited people to join me there for lunch, and then decided it would a regular Sunday occurrence, which soon blossomed into literally hundreds of people every Sunday. An e- mail mailing list evolved from the discussion. More than five years later, we now have dozens of regular worldwide gatherings in cities as diverse as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, and so on, not to mention ephemeral gatherings whenever and where ever digital media people assemble. And the mailing list has thousands of readers, lurkers and participants representing the leadership of companies and organizations, students, music lovers -- really any one who wants to join the debate.
# Can anyone join Pho?
Yes.
# How can Greplawers join in practice?
Register at Pholist.org. If you've an aversion to database participation write me at griffin-a-t- cherrylane.com and tell me who you are and why you want to join the list.
# What is Cherrylane Digital?
Cherry Lane Digital is part of the Cherry Lane Music Group of companies. Cherry Lane was founded by Milt Okun, a renowned musicologist and music publisher. Milt and I founded Cherry Lane Digital together after I left Geffen, although for its first year or two of operation it was known as OneHouse. Cherry Lane Digital is focused on absorbing uncertainty over the transition to the digital delivery of art, especially music. We primarily consult to the technology and entertainment industries.
# You were once the driving force behind the online release of a full-length song by Aerosmith. In 1994! How did you convince the folks at Geffen in doing it?
They convinced me. Shortly after arriving at Geffen and becoming its chief technology officer, I was asked when we could enable the company to digitally deliver a full-length song to the public. I replied that we could do it now if they could clear the legal rights to a song. The key marketing, legal and artists relations people secured the right to many songs quite quickly, and we chose the one that had the best balance of length and dynamic quality from a popular artist, and that turned out to be Aerosmith. There were other choices, but the songs were either too long or not suitable for the nascent medium. I recall digitizing the songs hundreds if not thousands of times, seeking the best codec and format to balance file size and therefore transmission time. Every second mattered. For the record, it took 22 minutes to download over a 28.8 modem, and was a 22 kHz WAV file. We chose the format because it was the only one that would automatically bring up a sound player in Windows; this predated media players, and at the time relatively few computers had sound cards or even speakers. It is also important to acknowledge the role of both Luke Wood and Robert von Goeben in this historic first. Luke was the driving force behind the rights clearance -- he is a great music executive in the grand tradition of Mo Ostin and other industry leaders. Robert is now a venture capitalist, and from a graphics and media perspective is a brilliant contributor. My role was to build the digital environment at Geffen and enabling the tools and technologies that made this happen.
# While running the technology department at Geffen, did you see the future as it is today?
Surprisingly so, though the speed of friction-free delivery and its marketplace arrival and morphing has surprised even me.
# Would you have done anything different at Geffen with today's knowledge of peer-to-peer and high-speed Internet access?
Not at all. The world today mirrors what we built within the walls of Geffen. All internal information was even then delivered via Intranet (we didn't know it would be called that, but we were either the first or amongst the first to use http clients inside the company), and all external information was delivered via public web server or private FTP. This was at the time revolutionary, even heretical. I distinctly recall one conversation with our parent company, Universal, where they threatened to fire me and even sue me for employing these technologies for the movement of proprietary company information. Indeed, Universal were furious we chose to deploy Ethernet over Token Ring.
# What advice would you give the technology manager at Geffen?
There is no Geffen anymore. It is simply a marketing label Universal slaps on some employee business cards and some of the product they release. I left Geffen as this end became inevitable; David had left the company and for the rest of us it was just a matter of time before assimilation was complete. David Geffen was the ideal owner, and the executives chosen by him the ideal colleagues. It was an honor to work for him.
# So, with Geffen gone, what advice would you give the technology manager at Universal?
Internal use of technology ought mirror the customer environment. Run your network as would a college. Avoid proprietary solutions; embrace open standards, redundant arrays of inexpensive devices and follow the market without trying to lead it. It is especially important that you use inside the company all those technologies that customers are using. As an example, every desktop in an entertainment company should run at the very minimum an internal or external P2P client that lets the employees use media as do customers.
# DVD-Jon, Jon Johansen, has written a program called QTFairUse, which will intercept files purchased from the iTunes Store while the file is streaming and before the Digital Rights Management system gets locked onto the file. On one hand, the program may provide fair-use, on the other hand, this may in practice be the silver-bullet to the first functioning commercial alternative to more or less illegal downloading through for example Kazaa. What is your take on QTFairUse?
I have no particular take on 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.
# Wow, it sounds like you are a true John Perry Barlow devotee - should copyright owners forget about wrapping up their material in bottles?
I am more a devotee of John Perry Barlow the man than I am the Barlow School of Thought. John Perry is a splendid person, the conscience of our industry and cause. If my son grew up to be the future Barlow in every way I'd be delighted and proud. That having been said, Barlow often says ideas and art want and need to be free, but I disagree, thinking that if they are truly free (meaning without cost) then there won't be much more of them. I think his heart is in the right place, though, and think instead that to the degree possible it is our responsibility, our opportunity, our challenge to make them feel free, especially at the moment of deciding to use them. This makes me an advocate of flat-fee buffets of art, of bundled price with unbundled choice, with many hands making light work of the fees. Ultimately, this is a path for growing the business of artistic endeavor. Granularity and control have traditionally proven themselves the enemies of creative monetization. We've typically found growth and progress in bundles: One fee to enter the amusement park instead of taking tickets for the rides; a book of 40 poems by Poe instead of buying just The Raven or The Telltale Heart; tiers of cable channels; subscriptions to the opera; the sports section with the news section and the rest of the paper, and so on.
# Are digital rights management systems the answer? Then what was the question?
Sure, if you seek to limit the audience for the content, but it is rare that there is any sense in treating mass media with digital rights management techniques. DRM, for most people, means "Did you get paid?" Essentially, you manage your digital rights best if you get paid for the digits. Are we managing our digits well if we condition their delivery on locks and keys? Of course not. Cable television has essentially no DRM. Virtually every cable recipient has a video cassette or other recorder to capture the content. Are we managing our digital rights well if we fail to sell our content into this environment on account of its obvious lack of control? Of course not. If we failed to sell it to cable, we wouldn't get paid. Are we practicing good DRM if deny our content to analog or digital radio? Of course not. If we fail to deliver content, we will not be paid. So it seems quite obvious that conditioning access on locks and keys doesn't work today, and is purely a theoretical, hypothetical suggestion that has never proven value in the marketplace.
# Should copyright proprietors be afraid of their digital future?
The financial value of art is found in its ability to draw a crowd. If you own a copyright the draws a crowd you have nothing to fear save for your own ineptitude in managing your financial affairs, and in general we manage best when we manage the least.
# I read somewhere that you would like to see laws that make authors and creators eligible for payment and at the same time warrants open access to consumers. Which are the cornerstones of such law?
I don't think government and art intersect well, so I generally oppose legal intervention, though I think we get the legal intervention we deserve when we fail to reach voluntary blanket licensing agreements. In general, the historic principles and lessons applied during the transition from acoustic to electric apply to the transition from electric to digital: It's all about a pool of money, and a fair way to divvy it up. Electricity effectively removed control from much art. The result, for public address operators, radio and television broadcasters, cable and satellite owners, webcasters, and so on, has been flat-fee payments aggregated into huge pools that are divvied on sampling methodology or other means. So the cornerstones are simple, and they apply equally to monetizing most any intersection of technology and freedom: A pool of money, and a fair way to allocate it.
# But why should anyone contribute to the pool of money, if the bits can be obtained for free through Kazaa and Bittorrent without telling the pool owner?
Actuarial economics will replace actual control, but that is difficult if not impossible to achieve without some degree of compulsion. Like automobile insurance or health insurance or similar actuarial concepts, they work best when spread across as wide a group as possible and fail when they tend to adverse, voluntary groups. I favor imposing involuntary fees across network users such that the fees become so low they are hardly worth complaining about. Worldwide, the average per capita spending on music is well under a dollar per month, likely under a quarter. The United States leads the world at somewhere between two or three dollars a month. We can replace the entire music business worldwide for less than it costs to complain about the fee, and all media can be compensated for at a fee that integrates well with monthly wireless or wired fees. This is hardly revolutionary: Europeans are accustomed to paying a mandatory annual television fee, and Americans pay still more voluntarily for cable on a monthly basis.
Copyright is actually copy risk, and the way we deal with risk generally avoids actual control in favor of actuarial, insurance-like concepts. For example, vehicles kill and maim perhaps a million people worldwide, but we do not truly control vehicles or require absolute safety. Indeed, our idea of road safety is five feet and a white line, and in fact we market vehicles by showing them soaring down the highway at high speeds, displaying their power and freedom with tiny letters at the bottom of the television screen warning us not to actually try this ourselves. How can we tolerate the marketing of such risky behavior? A pool of insurance money and relatively fair way of allocating the payments. Indeed, we don't even require you to have the money to buy the car; we accept that loaning money means some people don't pay, and we tolerate that, too, with an actuarial pool of credit absorbing the risk of loss. Against this backdrop, copyright is hardly a problem. Bob Marley said about music that "when it hits you feel no pain."
Digital networks and their attached devices, like roads and their vehicles, bring risk to rights holders. These new paths offer both good and bad consequences. Shall we predicate access on eliminating risk? If so, there would be no roads, little transportation, and no broadcast radio and television, no cable, no satellite, and certainly no digital networks. Our path to progress is clear: Tolerate risk, but anticipate its consequences and address them through actuarial means, by pooling fees and allocating their rewards to risk takers such as artists and rights holders. Paying into actuarial network funds should be no more voluntary than ought be automobile insurance.
# What drives creativity? Are intellectual property rights really important to creators?
Sure. Money drives economies, and artists need roofs, meals, cars and the means to raise families as much if not more so than any member of society. I recall hearing that Cole Porter was asked what comes first for him, the lyric or the melody? Neither, he replied. What comes first is the phone call, and by that he meant someone calling with a need to buy music.
# You are spending a lot of time in Helsinki, Finland. What are you doing for Nokia?
I respectfully decline to offer specifics, but suffice it to say that if you've read this far in the interview you understand very well what Cherry Lane Digital does for Nokia. I am definitely not here to help the Finns redress their loss to Sweden in the hockey championships, though I do enjoy sauna and jumping into the hole in the ice. And my Finnish friends are the best of friends.
# Since you are giving the Swedish hockey team credit, I guess I should wrap this up with a less provocative question. Which is the best record - ever?
There is no best record ever, just as there is no truth, no right, no wrong, at least not that I can apply to anyone else. I will say simply that for all of us there is only what we know to be true, what we believe to be right, what we think wrong, and that the trouble starts when we try to apply this to the person next to us, to substitute our judgment for theirs. As for me, the best record ever is Brian Eno's Music for Airports, but that is simply my choice for the moment and perhaps the past decade. Pure, simple tones, conducive to all manner of dialogue and thought.
Jim Griffin was interviewed by Mikael Pawlo.
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article....3/11/28/095219
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Fears Over Singapore Hacking Laws
Correspondents in Singapore
NEW laws allowing Singapore to launch pre-emptive strikes against computer hackers have raised fears that internet controls are being tightened and privacy compromised in the name of fighting terrorism.
The city-state's parliament has approved tough new legislation aimed at stopping "cyberterrorism," referring to computer crimes that are endanger national security, foreign relations, banking and essential public services.
Security agencies can now patrol the Internet and swoop down on hackers suspected of plotting to use computer keyboards as weapons of mass disruption.
Violators of the Computer Misuse Act such as website hackers can be jailed up to three years or fined up to $S10,000.
But a vocal opposition fear the law will be abused.
"It could be misused to invade into the privacy of citizens to gather information," said Sinapan Samydorai, president of Think Centre, a civil liberties group. He said the new laws could be used as an "instrument of oppression" by the government.
An online poll by popular internet portal Yahoo Singapore showed that 70 per cent of respondents felt the new laws gave the authorities too much power, and they were afraid they were being watched.
But the Ministry of Home Affairs said "any measures to be deployed will be non- intrusive in nature."
"For example, any scanning programme deployed will not intrude into a subscriber's personal computer. It will only scan the internet passively to determine vulnerabilities in the affected network," a spokeswoman said.
Any private information about "law-abiding citizens" security agencies may come across in their hunt for hackers will be protected, she added.
The new measures have been likened by critics to the Internal Security Act, which has been used to detain political dissidents and radicals without trial.
Ho Peng Kee, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, said the new powers will be used sparingly, and warned that online saboteurs can be as dangerous as suicide bombers.
"Instead of a backpack of explosives, a terrorist can create just as much devastation by sending a carefully engineered packet of data into the computer systems which control the delivery of an essential service, say for example, a power station, thus causing it to malfunction," Ho said in parliament this month.
Ho said the authorities had noted a marked increase in successful hacking activities, from 10 cases in 2000 to 19 cases in 2001, 41 cases in 2002, and 24 cases in the first half of 2003 alone.
"The number of unsuccessful attempts is probably many times more," Ho said.
Ho vowed that the new powers will only be invoked in case of an "imminent" threat to security.
Singapore has detained more than 30 alleged members of the Jemaah Islamiyah, said to be the Southeast Asian wing of the al-Qaeda network behind the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, and is a staunch American ally. It has stepped up security on all fronts for fear of an attack.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog, called for an independent body to check the use of the additional internet security powers.
"Even if the fight against cyber-crime has become essential, it should not justify the granting of extraordinary powers to governments," said Robert Menard, secretary-general of RSF.
Experts quoted by Singapore's Computer Times noted that the new laws will not be able to stop overseas-based hackers, or truly fanatical operators.
Kit Yau, a Hong Kong-based analyst with technology research group IDC, said Singapore should spell out how the new laws are to be implemented in order to allay public fears.
"This is part of the government's job of providing security, but you have to make people know what is going on, what are the limitations," she said.
http://australianit.news.com.au/arti...-15319,00.html
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Internet Loosening Media Control in China
Patrick Casey
China's government has long controlled the information its citizens receive through official media, but that may end as the Internet burrows deeper into the fast-changing communist country, a Chinese Internet expert says.
"I won't say China is democratic, but you no longer can control information," says Guo Liang, deputy director of the Research Center for Social Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-supported think tank in Beijing.
"SARS is a good example of that," he said in a recent interview in New York. "Even 10 years ago, people could hardly criticize anything. The government could easily hide something and people would hardly dare to expose anything."
Special filters block Web surfers in China from seeing sites run by overseas Chinese dissidents, human rights groups and some news organizations, though the enforcement is spotty and often inexplicably random. Guo and others dispute the filters' effectiveness and don't think they have much effect.
"You cannot control Internet. That is my basic theory," said Guo, who recently completed a survey on Internet use in 12 smaller Chinese cities. "People can receive all sorts of information. The filters cannot scan a graphic."
As an example, he cites communications by Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government as an "evil cult."
"I still receive once a week some message from Falun Gong," Guo said. "It is Chinese characters but is like a photo. How can you filter that? No way."
Guo's survey, funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation, queried 4,100 people aged 17 to 60 in 12 Chinese cities.
Although that sample is not considered representative of the overall population, the survey's findings offer an unusual window into how the Internet is transforming politics in China - providing citizens with a platform to express opinions and a window on the outside world.
For example, 72 percent of the Internet users surveyed agreed that "by using the Internet, people have more opportunities to express their political views." Sixty-one percent think the Internet gives them more opportunity to criticize government policies and 73 percent said government officials "will learn the common people's views better" because of the Net.
Only 13 percent said they favor controlling political content.
China has about 68 million Internet users among its 1.3 billion people, according to figures provided in July by the China Internet Network Information Center.
Internet usage is highest in China's largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, with about 30 percent of residents going online.
But a similar percentage - about 27 percent - of the people surveyed in 12 of China's smaller cities go online, too. "I did not expect that," Guo said.
In Guo's survey, 63 percent said they have home access, while 41 percent, mostly in outlying areas, use Internet cafes. Smaller numbers can access the Net from work or school.
Fifty-seven percent of the Chinese Internet users questioned said they go online to browse Web sites, while 51 percent use e-mail and 49 percent download music.
Only 5.3 percent of those surveyed used the Net for online shopping. Those who do spend a yearly average of $50 on small items such as books, magazines and CDs.
One reason for the low number of online purchases is that credit cards are not widely used in China, though debit cards are becoming popular, and delivery systems are not well developed.
Hao Xiaolei says she sometimes lets her fingers do the shopping from her Beijing residence, buying mostly small items and paying in cash.
"I have an account with my address and after confirmation of my purchase, their account service person would deliver it in person," she said via e-mail. "When I receive it, I pay for it. They promise a maximum of 48-hour delivery delay."
According to 62 percent of the people surveyed, the primary problem with using the Internet in China is that their connection is too slow. Connection speeds are affected, many say, by the censors the government uses to block tens of thousands of sites.
Forty-five percent think their connection fees - which can be as low as about a dollar for eight hours of access - are too high, while 34 percent complain about their connections being dropped.
China has closed more than 3,300 Internet cafes in what it calls a safety crackdown since a fire in June 2002 at a Beijing cafe killed 25 people. The government says nearly 12,000 other Internet cafes closed temporarily while they made improvements.
The crackdown added to efforts by the communist government to control how Chinese use the Internet, even as it encourages the spread of online activity for business and education.
Under new rules that took effect last year, minors are banned from many Internet cafes. Managers are required to keep records of customers' identities and to close by midnight.
But Guo said many Internet cafes are unlicensed and do not track their customers or check their ages.
"One reason that young people like the Internet cafes is that after work they don't have lots of entertainment or night life, so they don't know what to do," Guo said. "Young people like Internet as a fashion thing. They can tell their friends, `I can play games on Internet.' Young people like to show off."
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/7319207.htm
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Japanese Police Make First File-Sharing Arrests
Mainichi Daily News
KYOTO -- Two people who used the file-sharing software "Winny" to offer movies and video game software to an unspecified number of people over the Internet have been arrested, police said.
Katsuhiko Kimoto, a 41-year-old self-employed businessman from Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, and an unemployed 19- year-old from Matsuyama were arrested on suspicion of violating copyright laws.
Law enforcers also searched the home of the developer of Winny, and shut down the Internet page that was offering free copies of the software.
It is the first time police have arrested people for using file- sharing software. Investigators said Kimoto used the software to release the U.S. movie "A Beautiful Mind" and one more item over the Internet without permission of the copyright holders, while the 19-year-old allegedly offered the popular video game software Super Mario Advance and another item so people could download them.
Both suspects have reportedly admitted to the allegations against them. Two companies including Nintento had launched complaints.
Winny enables people to easily download movies, games and other software that is being shared by simply typing in part of a file name. The Tokyo-based Association of Copyright for Computer Software said that there were about 250,000 users as of September this year. Distribution of obscene images and child pornography through use of the software has also become a problem.
The Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association estimates the damage in this incident of "A Beautiful Mind" alone at about 230 million yen.
"This can be described as an exposure that warns against the morals of users," an association representative said. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Nov. 28, 2003)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20031...fp007000c.html
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KaZaa Grows Asian Movie Catalogue
Bernama
Sharman Networks, publisher and distributor of the KaZaa file sharing application, said that Singaporean blockbuster film Teenage Textbook Movie will be sold to KaZaa users worldwide in a distribution deal that sees the licensed Asian movie catalogue available through the KaZaa network continue to expand.
The film will be made available through a deal between Sharman Networks' partner Altnet Inc (
www.altnet.com), a provider of secure digital media via peer- to-peer technology, and Singaporean production company Mega Media, Sharman Networks (
www.sharmannetworks.com) said in a statement.
It is the third deal for distribution of full-length movie content via KaZaa announced in the past month, including the launches of Bollywood hit movie Supari, the world's first licensed full-length feature film to be distributed using filesharing technology, and surf film 'TO' Day of Days by Australian director Jack McCoy.
The deal means that the estimated 60 million users of KaZaa (
www.kazaa.com) worldwide would be able to download Teenage Textbook Movie for US$2.99 (RM11.36).
The film is protected using Altnet technology, which allows Mega Media to have control over the rules of distribution and pricing of their product, Sharman Networks said.
Mega Media is also using KaZaa to promote the award-winning Singaporean- Vietnamese film collaboration, The Song of the Stork, the first production about the US-Vietnam war to be filmed in Vietnam.
"The release of the Teenage Textbook Movie through KaZaa has added a completely new dimension to the distribution of our films," said Mega Media managing director Jonathan Foo.
"We can now reach a truly global audience through the Internet. Our philosophy is to make Asian films for a world audience, and KaZaa is helping to make that a reality," he said.
"KaZaa offers a way for any movie company to not only market and promote new releases, but also extend the life of movies beyond the cycle of traditional theatrical release, video and cable distribution," said Sharman Networks chief executive officer Nikki Hemming.
"This means back catalogue material can be monetised using the cost efficiencies of peer-to-peer technology, and fans looking for rare or delisted content at a fair price can find it on KaZaa."
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/sto...sec=technology
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Taiwan Music Industry Rejoices Over File-Sharing Victory
Bill Heaney
A decision in the legal case against a 22-year-old man surnamed Chung who shared music files over the Internet without the permission of record labels was hailed by the music industry yesterday as a landmark in the fight against online piracy.
"This case proves that peer-to-peer file-sharing infringes copyright," International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Taiwan branch secretary-general Robin Lee told the Taipei Times in an interview yesterday.
The music industry has claimed since 2000 that peer-to-peer Web sites break the law as they allow subscribers to download music via the Internet without paying royalty fees to the rights holder.
After successfully closing only one Web site -- Napster -- the industry changed tack earlier this year and started going after site users.
"We will use this case to let everybody know that users of peer-to-peer Web sites are breaking the law, and we will bring more cases to court if peer-to-peer doesn't stop," Lee said.
In Taiwan, the IFPI -- which represents 12 local and international record companies -- launched three cases against individuals, and two against the peer-to-peer Web sites Ezpeer.com.tw and kuro.com.tw.
The decision against Chung is the first result in the court cases. Last week, the prosecutors office of the Panchiao District Court decided to defer prosecution in the case against Ezpeer subscriber Chung after he admitted that he infringed the copyright law and agreed to publish an apology in the local press. The apology appeared last Friday.
Chung also signed agreements that he would not use peer-to-peer Web sites again, or share music files without the prior permission of rights holders. Under the deferred prosecution framework, Chung could be dragged back in front of the courts if he breaks the agreement and starts sharing files again.
One legal expert said the decision was important, but not final.
"This represents some kind of victory for the music industry," said Liu Yen-ling , a copyright lawyer with Winkler Partners in Taipei. "It shows that prosecutors at least think Chung is guilty, but it is not a complete victory."
The news comes as Taiwan's music industry struggles to survive. Taiwan's legitimate market in recorded music has dropped dramatically in value from NT$12 billion in 1997 to NT$4.9 billion last year, according to IFPI figures.
Meanwhile, peer-to-peer sites are raking in the cash. Kuro charges its 500,000 users NT$99 per month, netting the company NT$600 million per year. Ezpeer charges NT$100 per month with 300,000 members, which means NT$360 million per year.
Officials from Ezpeer and Kuro were not available for comment yesterday afternoon, but both have repeatedly claimed that their services are legal as they do not store songs on their servers, or charge subscribers to download music.
Consumers in Taiwan can buy music over the Internet without fear of prosecution. Earlier this month, iBIZ Entertainment Technology Corp launched a music download site in Taiwan in cooperation with 14 record labels, charging between NT$10 and NT$30 for each song.
Chunghwa Telecom Co's Hinet Internet service and computer giant Acer Inc have also negotiated deals for music sites, and five other companies are in discussions, IFPI's Lee said.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/.../27/2003077458
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Fourteen Arrested for Circulating E-Mail Message Criticising Mugabe
Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
Reporters Without Borders today urged the Zimbabwean authorities to drop charges against 14 people who were arrested for circulating an e-mail message criticising
President Mugabe's economic policies and calling for his departure. They were all released on bail but have been ordered to appear in court on 26 November.
"Robert Mugabe has already gagged the traditional news media and we must now speak out so that the Internet does not meet the same fate," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. "The Zimbabwean opposition is increasingly using the Internet to distribute information criticising the regime and this right must not be denied them," he added.
The Herald, a government-controlled daily, said those detained were released after paying bail of 50,000 Zimbabwean dollars (10 US dollars). The e-mail message encouraged Zimbabweans to stage violent demonstrations and strikes to force President Mugabe to stand down, the newspaper said.
This is the first time the authorities have used a law passed last year by the parliament allowing them to intercept e-mail. An employee with a Zimbabwean Internet service provider told the BBC that no system for monitoring e-mail has yet been installed. The police therefore intervened after receiving a copy of the message.
The Zimbabwean news media use the Internet to get round government censorship. After the Daily News was banned in October, its editors decided to continue publishing on a website hosted in neighbouring South Africa. The Insider, a newspaper that has declared its intention of providing independent news, is publishing online since September to avoid the prohibitive cost of a paper edition.
http://allafrica.com/stories/printab...311240754.html
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Small Movie Production Companies Sue MPAAOver Screener Ban
ILA
A group of small movie production companies have launched a suit against the new MPAA policy partially banning the practice of sending video copies of movies to award groups. The MPAA argues the ban is needed to cut down on movie piracy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...683900,00.html
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Copyrighted Music and Movies Still Free
Tracey Meyers
Most would think that the illegal P2P (Peer-to-Peer) practice of sharing Copyrighted music and movies has dissolved in the last few months with music industries across the globe fighting ISPs and individuals for the stolen millions of sales revenue. The fact is the illegal practice still occurs and is gaining in popularity as pre-03 (before 2003) Napster like software is continually available to those who want it. Recent media coverage from ISPs confronting users of companies like Kazaa has populated their site with authorities waiting to pounce on illegal file sharers, forcing users to seek alternative services. Experiencing one of the largest surges in site traffic for P2P providers is WinMx; courtesy of word-of-mouth from their users. mIRC and other similar chat forums still remain to be a more effective methodology to obtain and share illegal files as users have an increased anonymity and ability to conceal the contents of the hard drive rather than opening a port to share everything on their PC.
Despite the development of pay-per-tune applications like Apple’s iTunes and the revamped Napster, it comes as no shock that the preference for free music still remains. Some musicians have supported the free downloading of their music as it increases their notoriety. Often these musicians are independents with little or no means to advertise their offerings. Some larger musicians have vocalised their support for free music. The stereotype would have you believe the larger and more popular artists scream and whinge when their music is repetitively downloaded, regardless of their current bank balance.
The larger-than-life Chuck D of Public Enemy offers free music for his fans on his website and believes online music has and will continue to make the band or musician into his own broadcaster. In an interview posted on Wired.com, Chuck states, “To the pirates, I say the more the merrier. Success comes from the fans first - if someone is going to pirate something of mine, I just have to make sure to do nine or ten new things. I mean, you cant download me.”
Canadian-based publication, The Globe and the Mail, provides an alternate argument, believing ‘Internet users are really willing to pay for downloading music.’ The truth to this statement rests on statistics of people buying music online and portable players doubled, and in some areas tripled, in the first half of 2003. These figures are more than likely to be the result of the numerous litigations pursued by the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) in the last 12 months. Their RIAA’s persistence has seen members of Congress, the music industry, ISPs, Colleges, Schools, and the public raise their hand to aid in the dismissal of illegal file sharing. Industry leaders in the movie and music industry have raised reward offerings for those who can deliver illegal file shares to the authorities. The most notarised example this year came around the time of the release of the Hollywood blockbuster, The Hulk. People were sharing an incomplete version of the film that featured a ‘poorly’ constructed depiction of the loved Marvel character via P2P. The result of this illegal share raised the fine to almost $2 million US and jail time.
Measures like these have been echoed between the two industries, adamant in ceasing the illegal transfer of their copyrighted material. Hollywood has addressed this problem by the implementation of Hollywood Online by 2005 to cease the popular underground practice of recording the movie on to DivX or any other stream before the DVD release date. What does the Music industry hope to implement? Will popular record labels ever succumb to the declining offline sales to deliver a downloadable format of the record for a smaller price? This proposition will result in the dissolution of a number of music middlemen that would see the reinvention of the record company to a virtual domain, and would result in the depletion of CDs, tapes, records and ultimately jobs in the industry.
Once one of the labels converts to the virtual stream, others will soon follow, creating a domino effect across the industry. When this will transpire is unsure but if the record companies want to survive, they will have to adapt, otherwise artists will offer the services themselves eliminating the need for the ‘middleman’ much like MP3.com offers its independent artists.
http://www.net4nowt.com/isp_news/new...p?News_ID=1598
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Legal Music Downloads Double
Paid music services take off, with Apple's ITunes leading the way.
Macworld.co.uk staff
Digital music download services are exploding, with the number of U.S. consumers downloading tracks doubling in the first half of 2003.
Ownership of MP3 players such as Apple Computer's market leading IPod is also climbing: 19 percent of U.S. music downloaders own such devices--up from 12 percent in December 2002.
A quarterly digital music behavior report from research firm Ipsos-Insight shows that in late June 2003, "roughly" one out of six (16 percent) of U.S. music downloaders aged 12 and older had paid to download music online. The company says this is the equivalent of 10 million people.
At that time, Apple's ITunes Music Store was setting the trend for digital music sales and consumer rights. Few of the current big-name digital music services, such as Roxio's Napster 2.0, existed at that time. Forrester Research recently asserted that digital music sales will account for one third of all music sales by 2008.
The data is contained within the company's Tempo: Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior, a quarterly research study that examines the ongoing influence and effects of digital music worldwide. Report author Matt Kleinschmit observed: "A twofold increase in the number of American downloaders exposed to for-pay music downloads in just a six-month time frame (compared to 8 percent in December 2002 and 13 percent in April 2003) signals a remarkable shift in downloader behavior."
The research also reveals that young adults aged 18 to 24 are most likely to have paid to download digital music, however, it also shows that older downloaders are getting involved--19 percent of computer users between 25 and 54 have also paid to buy digital music.
The research also shows that 12 to 17 year olds--who often don't have credit cards--are the least likely to say they have paid for digital music. Apple has attempted to address this point in ITunes 4.1, introducing gift vouchers and a parent-controlled allowance feature so people in this age group can choose to use its legal service rather than steal music.
Kleinschmit said: "Downloaders of all ages are clearly beginning to experiment with fee-based online music distribution in increasing numbers."
The analyst points out that the new data was collected in June, prior to the debut of ITunes for Windows and competing Windows-friendly services: "It will be interesting to see how these refined fee-based online music services impact this figure in futures waves of Tempo, and whether downloaders' dependence on peer-to-peer file sharing decreases accordingly."
On the increased market-share for MP3 players, Kleinschmit said: "The rise in portable MP3 player ownership among U.S. downloaders, coupled with the growth in paid downloading, suggests that digital music enthusiasts may be shifting their overall music acquisition and listening behaviors from a physical to a digital approach."
He described this as a potentially "positive sign" for associated industries: "Legitimate market opportunities are increasingly prevalent in the world of digital music, even alongside unauthorized peer-to-peer filesharing," he said.
LimeWire chief technology officer Greg Bildson recently dismissed the impact of legal services on peer-to-peer networks. Speaking to Macworld he said: "We've seen no effect on the number of software downloads we see in any given day."
Data supporting the Ipsos-Insigh's claims was collected between June 27 and 30 from a sample of 1112 respondents aged 12 and over. The analysts claim its conclusions are 95 percent likely to be accurate.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113665,00.asp
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Will Consumers Change Copyright Law?
As the music industry readies another round of lawsuits, file sharers may challenge the claims.
Rita Chang,
As the music industry continues to fight online file swapping by filing suit, digital music lovers everywhere should take pause--and, perhaps, inventory.
Just last week, another ISP--Pacific Bell Internet Services--went to court to fight a subpoena by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA, representing the major music labels, wants the ISP to disclose the names of customers it contends are uploading large volumes of digital music to peer-to-peer sites. Another ISP, Verizon, recently lost a similar fight to protect its customers.
That the RIAA is seeking more customer names indicates it may be preparing another round of suits against digital music fans. The industry association sued 261 people in September, when it launched its current copyright protection campaign.
If you're afraid the RIAA knows about your music collection, what are your best options? Will you settle or fight to the bitter end?
If you decide to fight, make sure your lawyer is well versed in U.S. copyright law. The recording industry is staking its claims on copyright infringement.
Few consumers have yet pushed back in the courts. A California man is seeking class action status for a suit against the RIAA. That case claims the RIAA is misleading consumers with its amnesty program, announced the same time as the first lawsuits. The so-called Clean Slate program urges file swappers to repent, file an affidavit promising to stop using peer-to- peer services, and destroy any illegal files.
Don't assume copyright law is stacked against the consumer, say some legal experts. To understand how U.S. copyright law applies to file sharing, it's useful to consider uploading and downloading separately. Still, provisions in the law leave several gray areas.
"The extent of the consumer's privilege to download and exchange music is terrifically unclear," says Jessica Litman, law professor at Wayne State University and author of Digital Copyright.
"The law is unambiguous," said Marybeth Peters, head of the U.S. Copyright Office at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September. "Using peer-to-peer networks to copy or distribute copyrighted works without permission is infringement, and copyright owners have every right to invoke the power of the courts to combat such activity." But Litman notes that current law allows consumers to make copies of copyrighted music for noncommercial use. She cites the 1992 Home Audio Recording Act, which permits consumers to copy a digitally recorded work.
Under that act, "consumers cannot be sued for making noncommercial copies of recorded music, and digital music recorder manufacturers are required to incorporate technology that allows the recorders to make unlimited first-generation copies but prevents the recorders from making second-generation copies (a copy of the first-generation copy)," Litman says. The makers of digital music recorders and recording media (like audio CD-Rs) must pay a fee into a fund to be divided among copyright owners, composers, and performers. In exchange, copyright owners can't sue consumers or the makers of digital music recorders for copyright infringement.
Computer manufacturers, however, were exempt from incorporating technology preventing second-generation copies and paying any fees, because "people didn't know we were going to use them as home entertainment centers," Litman says.
Now, however, the music industry argues that copies of recorded music made on computers are infringements. According to Litman, in the 1999 RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that it is legal for consumers to use their computers to make MP3 copies of recordings and transfer them to portable MP3 players.
However, in the Napster case, the Ninth District Court "declined to extend the rationale of the Diamond case to peer-to- peer file sharing," Litman says.
The issue remains rife with ambiguities. Among other things, the Ninth Circuit left the issue of "fair use" open to debate. Rather than rule on the consumer's liability, the court focused on the peer-to-peer software vendor who, the court decided, abets infringement of copyrighted material.
"Just to make everything more complicated, we have 12 circuit courts of appeals in the U.S., and none of them is required to follow the rulings of the others, so issues often remain unsettled even after one or two courts of appeal have spoken," Litman says. "That's why the Supreme Court often takes cases to resolve conflicts in the circuits."
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113645,00.asp
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Open-Source Audio in a Proprietary Universe
David Halperin
Even before we could send recorded sound reliably over the Internet and a file-sharing revolution set the music industry in an uproar, the large size of digital audio files was causing headaches. A minute of raw stereo sound at CD quality -- or 16-bit, 44.1 KHz sampling -- occupies 10.5 MB on a hard drive. Obviously, files of song-length recordings at that size can quickly get unwieldy.
Compression proved to be the answer. In 1987, technicians at the Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen in West Germany began working on a sophisticated compression algorithm, one that could achieve compression ratios of 10:1 and better while preserving high-quality sound.
The original test bed for this technology was a box of electronics the size of a refrigerator, but by 1992 the Fraunhofer team, working with Deutsche Thomson Brandt, had reduced it to software and it became part of the MPEG standard. Officially known as MPEG-1 Layer III -- also endorsed by the ISO -- the new kid on the block soon became known as MP3 , and the rest, as they say, is history.
Players, both software and hardware, were created to play MP3s. Combined with Napster's peer-to-peer file-sharing network, the compact new codec -- or compression-decompression algorithm -- helped overturn the traditional relationship between music publishers and consumers, a confrontation now being played out in the courts.
Fraunhofer and Thomson still own the copyrights to MP3 and charge developers to use it in their authoring packages and players. A refinement, MP3Pro, has recently hit the streets, and the new MPEG-4 standard incorporates Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) developed by Dolby and used by Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) for its iTunes pay-per-track online music store.
Meanwhile, other developers have not been idle. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) incorporated a proprietary audio codec into its Windows Media Audio (WMA) format, and RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) used its own codec in its RealPlayer systems. Like MP3, these formats must be paid for by developers wishing to use them. Both the authoring applications used to create music in these formats and the players themselves are usually charged fees.
Those fees typically vary with the number of units to be produced and, in some cases, the nature of the use. The numbers are serious: 100 million MP3 players, for example, are expected to be in use worldwide by the end of this year, and a billion music tracks are said to be downloaded every month.
Open-source developers have been busy, too. As Christopher Montgomery, founder and lead programmer at Xiph.org, an open-source development project, puts it, "Open source is not a fad any more than the Internet is; it is a necessary force driving innovation and the Internet forward while protecting the interests of individuals, artists, developers and consumers."
Several open-source audio encoding-decoding formats have been created, and they are supported by many authoring and player packages. There's LAME. There's Monkey's Audio and a voice-oriented codec called Speex.
There's also Exact Audio Copy, software written by a student at the University of Dortmund in Germany. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, there's the oddly named Ogg Vorbis, which could be the strongest challenger yet to the proprietary music formats.
"We are seeing Ogg Vorbis adopted by MP3 player manufacturers and chip manufacturers who, as the market grows and as the lower end becomes increasingly commoditized, are looking for ways to boost their feature sets," IDC senior analyst Susan Kevorkian told TechNewsWorld.
"One way for them to do that is to support a greater number of codecs," said Kevorkian. "The crux of the matter is how many people are using it and how much music is available encoded in that format."
DRM might be the critical issue. "The question is, are the music labels actively supporting [Ogg]?" Kevorkian said. "Because if digital rights management isn't a part of it, then it's certainly not the direction that the music industry's going. In fact, [open-source developers] are proponents of unprotected codecs."
However, said Kevorkian, the major record labels are experimenting more actively with CD content protection technologies that include both a protected set of Red Book audio files -- the standard audio CD file format -- plus Windows Media Audio files, which are protected so that you'd be able to transfer them to your PC's hard drive but not distribute them online.
"Also," she said, "as the music industry supports paid music services more actively, we expect the majority of paid music services to support Windows Media Audio because the codec and the DRM are closely integrated, so every music service provider doesn't have to think about combining the two like Apple did."
Whether or not open-source audio standards will threaten the dominance of MP3 and WMA remains to be seen. Open-source audio developers -- opposed by aggressive commercial giants, ideologically committed to nonprofit but needing development capital -- seem to face unbeatable odds. Perhaps they'll take heart by looking at open source's recent progress in the corporate world.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32192.html
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Schools to Avoid: University of Florida
Posted by michael
from the vote-with-your-dollars dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The University of Florida has apparently come up with a technological approach to deal with P2P file sharing on their campus networks. According to this article on wired.com they have developed a program that scans the PCs of students in the UF dorm rooms. The program, dubbed 'Icarus' not only detects P2P applications but viruses, worms, and other trojans. If a P2P application is found then an e-mail is sent to the user, a message is popped up on their screen, and their internet connection is disconnected. First time offenders lose their connection for 30 minutes. The second offense results in a 5 day loss. The third strike results in an indefinite loss of connectivity. An editorial in The Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper, called the use of Icarus 'an invasive and annoying system that further deters students from living in dorms.'"
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/10/03....shtml?tid=146
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DMCA News
Fatwallet Files Lawsuit Challenging Both Retailers’ Demands For Removal Of Thanksgiving Sales Price Web Postings And Subpoena Seeking Posters’ Identities
Press Release
Faced with demands by national retailers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to remove Thanksgiving sales information from its web site for the second year in a row, FatWallet, Inc. filed a lawsuit yesterday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking a declaration that these demands constitute an abuse of the DMCA and violate the First Amendment rights of both FatWallet and its users (FatWallet, Inc. v. Best Buy Enterprise Services, Inc., et al., Case No. 03C50508).
The lawsuit was a response to “takedown” notices received by FatWallet over the last few weeks from Best Buy, Kohl’s Department Stores, and Target Corporation, each of whom demanded that FatWallet remove from its web site user postings containing Thanksgiving sales price information on the grounds that the information was protected by copyright. Best Buy took things a step further, sending FatWallet a subpoena requesting that it identify the person who posted the information. Because the subpoena was not properly served and suffered from other procedural defects, FatWallet notified Best Buy that it would not identify the poster. Shortly before Thanksgiving 2002, FatWallet received a similar subpoena from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., as well as takedown notices from retailers including Best Buy, Target, K-Mart, Inc., and Jo-Ann Stores.
“The posting on a web site of sales price information is not the proper subject of a subpoena or a takedown notice under the DMCA. Hopefully, by filing this lawsuit, FatWallet will be able to put an end to this repeated misuse of the DMCA’s special subpoena and notice provisions and ensure that its First Amendment rights, and the First Amendment rights of its users, are fully protected,” said Rachel Matteo-Boehm, an attorney with Steinhart & Falconer LLP, one of the law firms representing FatWallet in the suit.
“Our users should be able to freely post and discuss factual information, like sales prices, without being sued or accused of copyright infringement, and we hope that by filing this lawsuit, we will be protecting these important consumer rights,” said Tim Storm, FatWallet’s founder and President.
FatWallet, Inc. is a venue for consumer-to-consumer communication as well as business-to-consumer marketing.
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...hreadid=245808
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MPAA, RIAA Seek Permanent Antitrust Exemption
Andrew Orlowski
Just weeks after an antitrust suit was filed against the RIAA by webcasters, the music labels' lobby group, is, along with Hollywood, seeking a permanent exemption from similar litigation. The proposal seeks to extend the exemption to anything covering mechanical copyright: a sweeping extension of the copyright cartel's immunity.
It's buried away in a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch called the EnFORCE Act, or the Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003. With 12-year old girls being threatened with $150,000 fines, and the computer industry embracing social engineering technologies such as locked music, you would think the last thing that the nation's cultural heritage needs is stricter enforcement by the copyright cartel.
Hatch said the big studios and major record labels need the exemption because of "market realities...The bill authorizes appropriations to ensure that all Department of Justice units that investigate intellectual property crimes have the support of at least one agent specifically trained in the investigation of such crimes," he said last week.
Hatch was a former critic of the RIAA, and advocate of compulsory licensing, who was seduced by the lobbyists, as Joe Menn describes in his book All The Rave. "Online systems provide a cheaper and easier method of self-publishing," Hatch said. He compared the musicians' predicament on major labels to "it's kind of like paying off your mortgage, but the bank still owns the house."
Hatch had discovered this because he had become a songwriter and performer of inspirational Christian music. At a gala awards dinner in March 2001 hosted by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Hatch was awarded a "Hero Award" and the diners heard Nashville star Natalie Grant perform one of his songs, "I Am Not Alone".
The flattery certainly proved inspirational to Hatch, whose own view of "market realities" has changed substantially since then.
"Any bill that further increases the RIAA's power over consumers is extremely disconcerting to us," president of the Webcaster Alliance, Ann Gabriel told us today.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34191.html
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Record Label Sings New Tune
Katie Dean
Record labels have long been accused of stealing musicians' copyrights as soon as the ink is dry on the contract. Now, one small independent label in Great Britain is doing the opposite: It's giving the rights to the artists -- and anyone else who wants to use the music, too.
Loca Records wants to foster experimentation and freedom in music by building a stable of free music which can be shared, remixed and manipulated by anyone. Songs are not locked by digital rights management technology.
The music is available for free in MP3 format, but the company sells its CDs and vinyl in retail stores throughout Europe. Artists earn a percentage of any record sales; Loca Records makes its money through record sales, gigs it promotes and merchandise.
"You're free to copy it, give it to your friends and you can play it. If you're really interested, you can sample it and then re-release it," said David Berry, managing director of Loca Records and an artist himself, known as Meme. "Because at the end of the day, if you sample the work and create a fantastic remix, we think you're entitled to try and make some money from it."
Loca Records licenses its music using Creative Commons. The organization offers free copyright licenses to anyone who wants to share his or her work with the public while reserving some rights. Using these licenses, Loca Records permits anyone to copy and distribute the content, make derivative works and sell it, as long as they attribute the work to the original creator and distribute it under the same "share alike" license.
"I do worry that copyright is getting out of control. This gives us an opportunity to create a new culture and a new sound. If we are greedy and we lock down our culture now, there will be nothing for the next generation," Berry said.
The company has published the work of six musicians so far. In January, it will release its first album complete with added music source code, including samples, MIDI files, the score, drum sounds, any text files and the arrangement itself.
Berry said that Loca Records, which does not sign exclusive contracts with its artists, is investing in musicians by giving them the freedom to experiment and build on each other's creations.
"The record labels don't invest in new artists, which I think is a tragic thing," Berry said. "Now they are more interested in polished, produced, manufactured music ... essentially dancing school graduates."
Some artists are initially hesitant to work with this unfamiliar type of contract, but once they understand how it
works, the response has been positive, Berry said.
"This is like a natural progression for electronica," said ML, an electronica musician and DJ in Brighton, England. "It seems like an obvious thing to do. Personally, I find it very liberating."
"It requires someone to take my music and tear it apart -- to re-create something and interpret it," ML said.
Still, the label is very small-scale. Berry said Loca is not designed to be a multinational record label and the company expects its artists to outgrow the label as they get more attention.
It's also not the only label experimenting with new forms of music distribution and collaboration. Magnatune, an
independent label in Berkeley, California, also offers music for download and sharing, and Opsound invites any musician to submit songs to its website, where others can listen, share and remix them. Both labels license the music using Creative Commons.
"I think it's a wonderful idea," said David Kusek, associate vice president of the Berklee College of Music, which recently announced a plan to distribute music lessons for free over peer-to-peer networks.
Historically, building upon one another's music was common, Kusek said. Jazz, in particular, was based on improvisation, theme and variation and "who could outdo each other" with each interpretation of a piece.
"It was the differences that were more interesting," Kusek said. "We lost a lot of the spontaneity that was inherent in music when it became a package that could be stamped a million times and resold."
"The existing labels of the last 50 or 60 years have been all about controlling the expression, the packaging, the distribution and the scarcity of the music in order to turn a profit," he said. "That forced music to be defined as a product. It can be a product, but in its pure form it's entertainment."
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,61282,00.html
Until next week,
-
js.
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Current Week In Review.
Recent WIRs -
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17092 November 22nd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17925 November 15th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17877 November 8th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=17835 November 1st
Jack Spratts Week In Review is published every Friday. Please submit letters, articles, and press releases in plain text English to jackspratts at lycos.com. Include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.