[JackSpratts]

Blockbuster Tries a Remake as Movie-Rental Business Transforms
Geraldine Fabrikant

In a recent weeknight, Andy Landsman, a lanky, dark-haired Manhattan high school senior, was checking out the DVD rentals at a Blockbuster store on Manhattan's Upper East Side that he and his girlfriend, Georgina Blackett, frequent.

But Mr. Landsman's regular visits may soon be coming to an end. "I've been too lazy to join Netflix, but I am about to sign up,'' he said, referring to the online video-rental service. The reason for his change of heart is his purchase of a DVD player, which has increased his appetite for watching films. The idea of not leaving the comfort of his living room to pick them up is increasingly appealing.

Although analysts have been predicting the collapse of video-rental chains for years, the departure of the teenager, Mr. Landsman, from Blockbuster's active customer base of 20 million is a particularly foreboding one.

The rise of online rental services like Netflix and the booming sales of DVD's at mass merchants have been eroding profitability at Blockbuster and other chains. And as cable operators put their marketing clout behind video-on-demand offerings, which allow customers to rent a movie by pushing a few buttons on their remotes - and not worry about late fees or schlepping DVD's back to the stores or the post office - the pressure appears more acute than ever.

"Blockbuster has a great brand, but it is fighting for its life,'' said Sandy Brasher, a research analyst at Rice Voelker.

So as the rental chain's parent, Viacom, prepares to spin off its 82 percent stake this October, Blockbuster is hurriedly remaking the company. To blunt Netflix's inroads, Blockbuster is testing its own online subscription program, but at a lower price ($19.95 a month compared with $21.95) and with the ability to pick up a film the same day from a store rather than wait until it arrives in the mail.

Meanwhile, the company has embraced video games. Two years ago, it bought GameStation, a chain of 64 video game stores in Britain, and has since added more than 100 stores and reconfigured existing Blockbuster stores to accommodate internal video game outlets. In the United States, it acquired Rhino Video Games, a chain of 40 stores in the Southwest, and began offering video games within Blockbuster stores under the name Game Rush. An in-store video game pass, for $19.95 a month, lets customers rent as many games as they want, one game at a time. The average cost of renting a single video game is $6.

And Blockbuster is expanding programs that let customers trade both videos and video games. The strategy is to "transform Blockbuster from a place you go to rent a movie to a place you go to rent, buy or trade movies and games: new or used, in store or online,'' Blockbuster's chief executive, John F. Antioco, said. "We want to become a complete source of movies and games."

Wall Street has yet to be impressed. On Thursday the company announced that, in part because if its plans to spend aggressively to expand these businesses, earnings for the year would be only about $1.04 a share, rather than the more than $1.20 a share Wall Street expected. Mr. Antioco also said Blockbuster's rental business would be down in the third quarter, in the mid-single-digit range, although some analysts were expecting a slight increase.

Tom Adams of Adams Media Research, said: "The business is not just mature and flat. It is declining pretty substantially.'' He estimated that revenue for the movie-rental industry was down 12 percent to 15 percent this year.

Indeed, Blockbuster's recent quarter reflects industry pressures. Revenue increased 2.1 percent, to $1.4 billion; net income fell to $46.8 million from $61.2 million in the comparable quarter last year, in part because revenue at stores open at least a year fell 4.4 percent. The stock closed Friday at $13.26 after hitting a 52-week low of $12.79 a day earlier.

The revamped strategy is too new to gauge its success. But Blockbuster can break even on its video game business at a lower revenue level than its competitors, because there is no additional rental expense and it can use existing staff.

To some critics, including Mr. Brasher of Rice Voelker, Netflix faces an even more challenging future than Blockbuster. "Blockbuster has the real estate,'' Mr. Brasher said. "The average Joe who lives in Plano, Texas, and has a $50 DVD player from Wal-Mart is not going to spend $22 a month ad infinitum at some subscription place.''

Netflix's chief executive, Reed Hastings, remains bullish, despite the fact that rapidly rising marketing costs affected the company's performance so much that, when the second-quarter results were disclosed earlier this month, its stock fell 40 percent, to under $20, in two days. Revenues nearly doubled to $120.3 million while net income fell 13 percent, to $2.9 million.

Mr. Hastings said the costs were part of the company's normal efforts to expand its subscriber base, which stands at 2.1 million. He said he thought that there was sufficient appetite for online services to let both Netflix and Blockbuster prosper.

That, of course, does not address the question of what will happen to some of the smaller video retailers like Hollywood Entertainment and the Movie Gallery. Hollywood Entertainment recently agreed to an $840 million buyout by Leonard Green & Partners, a private buyout firm. The Movie Gallery, while facing pressure from a weak rental market, operates in rural markets too small to attract Blockbuster.

All these competitors must deal with the encroaching threat of video on demand and its tantalizing option of impulse transactions. By year-end, it is expected to be in about 23 million of the 90 million American homes connected to cable, according to Kagan World Media, the research firm.

But the video-rental companies have some breathing room. The movie studios, not wanting to tamper with an increasingly lucrative revenue source, still release film on DVD and videotape before they release to video on demand, said Arvind Bhatia, who follows the industry for Southwest Securities. And the video-on-demand offerings are still relatively slim, compared with the rental chains and online services.

Some industry experts said they thought there was plenty of room for a variety of distribution outlets. "They have been saying that Blockbuster would disappear since it started in the mid-1980's, but these new technologies are always additive,'' said Scott Hettrick, editor in chief of DVD Exclusive, a trade magazine for the video industry.

Besides, the lure of a crowd and wide selection still resonates with people like Georgina Blackett, Mr. Landsman's girlfriend. "It's more fun to come to Blockbuster to look at all the movies,'' she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/26/bu...l?pagewanted=2


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Hatch, Committee Should Be More Open-Minded on P2P
Jon Newton

"Why is Congress turning a deaf ear towards learning the truth and hearing all sides of the story?" StreamCast Networks CEO Mike Weiss asks. In the past, Congress, in effect, has put stakeholders together and told them to work out compromises and solutions that Congress could then consider. "That's what should be done here," Weiss declares.

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U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and other parties with a stake in the peer-to-peer (P2P) wars should meet with commercial P2P industry companies to talk about the so-called INDUCE Act.

This is the point of view expressed by StreamCast Networks CEO Mike Weiss, one of several industry leaders who oppose the act as overreaching. He questions why no one from the industry was invited to last Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the legislation.

"Why is Congress turning a deaf ear towards learning the truth and hearing all sides of the story?" Weiss asks.

In the past, Congress, in effect, has put stakeholders together and told them to work out compromises and solutions that Congress could then consider. "That's what should be done here," Weiss declares.

Indirect Liability

INDUCE (Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation) is Hollywood's "overreaching new form of indirect liability that will force technology companies of all kinds to 'ask permission' before innovating for fear of ruinous litigation if they don't," Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lawyer Fred Von Lohmann says.

It's being spearheaded by Hatch, who also has led other initiatives on behalf of Hollywood, such as PIRATE with Sen. Pat Leahy or Hollywood-helpful acts such as Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act (ART) from Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn.

ART would establish new federal crimes for the unauthorized recording of movies in cinemas or other venues and for "other acts relating to copyright infringement." PIRATE amends federal copyright law so the US attorney general can "commence a civil action against any person who engages in conduct constituting copyright infringement."

Copyright Cartel

Some 42 major companies, including Google , NetCoalition, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) , are actively opposing INDUCE, saying it would "chill innovation and drive investment in technology (and accompanying jobs) overseas."

Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, the P2P industry trade and lobby group, says INDUCE is "the fearsome and flawed product of a perfect policy storm." P2P United's members include such companies as StreamCast (Morpheus), FreePeers (BearShare), Manolito P2P (Blubster), Grokster (Grokster) and MetaMachine (eDonkey2000).

Eisgrau says that if INDUCE is passed into law, it would be because "the raw power of America's copyright cartel has grown to the point that...Congress will have granted it control over the very climate on which our entire information economy, not just the entertainment industry, depends."

But Hatch is determined to see INDUCE enacted.

"If you help us, we just might get it [INDUCE] right, but if you don't, we're going to do it [anyway]," Hatch is quoted as saying in a Washington Post story.

Misunderstanding of P2P Software

Showing that he indeed does need help on this matter, Hatch also expressed on the Judiciary Committee Web site and during a hearing that "When used as intended, this software [P2P] automatically redistributes every file downloaded. This makes uploading and redistribution automatic and invisible to the average user."

But Weiss disagreed, saying, "At no time and under no circumstances are users' hard drives, or indeed any files in their computers, automatically made available to other users."

Hatch, who has received $159,860 in contributions from the entertainment industry, is infamous for making mistakes in representing P2P technology and practices that are picked up and quoted by the mainstream media as facts.

With him on the Judiciary Committee, and amounts they have received from the entertainment industry, are: Charles Schumer, $509,635; John Edwards, $314,547; Arlen Specter, $273,800; Dianne Feinstein, $272,316; Patrick Leahy, $221,950; Edward M. Kennedy, $200,708; Mike DeWine, $111,199; Dick Durbin, $81,100; Joseph Biden, $75,774; Chuck Grassley, $73,572; Lindsey Graham, $72,523; Russ Feingold, $45,450; and Herb Kohl, $250. The amounts come from http://www.opensecrets.org.

Accuracy of Information

Weiss contended that when Hatch introduced the INDUCE legislation, he presented a multipage indictment of P2P companies, "littered with inaccurate and misleading statements about legitimate P2P software providers."

Weiss urged the lawmakers to delve further into the issue and seek out accurate information. "I particularly urge Senator Hatch to do so before repeating inaccuracies that appear to be speaking points drafted by entertainment lobbyists and transmitting these falsities publicly and on the record in front of his Senate colleagues," Weiss said.

Hatch -- accused of using unlicensed software on his official Web site -- seems to believe people who download copyrighted songs should have their computers automatically destroyed, an attitude for which he was awarded the sobriquet "The Terminator."

Among his supporters is Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register who, among other things, wants the Betamax case, under which the movie studios tried to keep the first consumer VCRs off the market, reopened.

The U.S. Supreme Court foiled the attempt, stating: "It seems extraordinary to suggest that the Copyright Act confers upon all copyright owners collectively, much less the two [studios] in this case, the exclusive right to distribute VCR's simply because they may be used to infringe copyrights. That, however, is the logical implication of their claim."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/35400.html


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ILN News Letter

Court Rules On ECPA Claim Against AOL For Disclosing Info

A federal court in Virginia has issued its decision in a suit launched by a Connecticut subscriber against AOL after the ISP wrongfully disclosed plaintiff's subscriber information to a Connecticut law enforcement officer in response to a warrant application that had not been signed by a judge. The court ruled that the case may proceed on the question of whether AOL can rely on its good faith as a defence against the ECPA claim. Case name is Ellis v. AOL.

Korean Student Fined For Spreading Parodies On The Internet

A South Korean court has fined a college student 1.5 million won for spreading parodies on the Internet that criticized a particular party in advance of a national election. The court ruled that the parodies went beyond criticism and thus violated that country's election law.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/ht...407220040.html


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Beijing Blocks Overseas Websites, Shuts Local Ones In "War" Against Porn
AFP

Beijing has blocked 988 overseas websites and shut down 67 local ones as part of a nationwide campaign to weed out pornographic content on the Internet.

The websites shut down during the July 6-21 special operation included Hong Kong websites. The popular search tool Google was also inaccessible this week. So far, the Chinese capital has arrested 13 people suspected of operating the websites, the Beijing Youth Daily said. Police received 10,660 tips from the public, a majority of which were complaints about inappropriate sexual content on the Internet. Other complaints involved pornographic mobile phone short messages, the report said. The central Chinese government this month launched a "people's war" against pornography on the Internet, giving websites a deadline until September to rid themselves of indecent content or lose their license to publish decent material, such as news. Officials have so far identified 500 websites across China that carry pornographic pictures and film clips, the China Daily reported. Hundreds of websites, including the most influential ones, publish "indecent or even pornographic content" to attract users, the Xinhua news agency had reported. The crackdown on Internet porn reflects two top concerns of the Chinese leadership, about the ethical standards of the young and about the subversive potential of the Internet. With 80 million registered users in China, the government is finding it increasingly difficult to control the Internet, but that has not stopped it from trying. State media reported last month that the government had suspended the registration of new Internet cafes, following a three-month sweep in which it closed 16,000 existing ones.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040724/323/eyqie.html


Rights Group Accuses Yahoo, Google Of Aiding Chinese Internet Censorship
AFP

An international press freedom group has lashed out at Yahoo and Google -- the two most popular Internet search engines -- for allegedly cooperating with the Chinese government to crackdown on web access.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it, "deplores the irresponsible policies of United States Internet firms Yahoo! and Google in bowing directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship." It called on the United States to apply the principles of its Global Internet Freedom Act on its private sector's activities in "some of the world's most repressive regimes." The Global Internet Freedom Act, passed by the US House of Representatives in July 2003, aims to combat online censorship imposed by governments around the world. RSF said it appealed to Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel last December but received no reply. The rights watchdog claimed Yahoo had been censoring its Chinese- language search-engine for several years and rival firm Google, which recently took a share in Baidu, a Chinese search-engine that filters a user's findings, seemed ready to go the same way. In their efforts to conquer the Chinese market, the two firms are "making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression," it said in a statement. A keyword search in Yahoo's Chinese language site on "Tibet independence" Tuesday did not display any result, while "Taiwan independence" produced only mainland Chinese websites which condemn the move. The same search on Google returned no listing for "Tibet independence" but "Taiwan independence" displayed a listing which included Taiwanese sites. They were blocked however when accessed. A search of the name of one of China's most high profile dissidents, Wei Jingsheng, on Yahoo returned only mainland sites critical of him. A similar search on Google returned with a screen saying the site cannot be displayed. Neither Google nor Yahoo were immediately available for comment Tuesday. Other US high-tech firms such as Cisco Systems have also helped the Chinese government acquire sophisticated technical means to spy on the Internet, its users and the messages they send, RSF claimed. It said Cisco had sold several thousand routers to enable the regime to build an online spying system to spot supposedly subversive keywords in messages. Beijing has long censored hundreds of websites of Western media outlets, political and religious dissidents and others that are viewed as a threat to the Communist regime. RSF has also written to Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights and Earl Wayne, assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040727/323/eyw8r.html


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Millions Of Web Users Still Affected By Government Ban
Andrew Petty

Exactly a month ago, the Ministry of Information and Communication said it was blocking from viewers some 40 Web sites that could possibly contain footage of the beheading of hostage Kim Sun-il.

Now, the ministry says it has no idea how many sites are blocked and Internet viewers say millions of users are affected by the ban, due to a blanket procedure that shut off entire domains.

Despite these broad stroke efforts, the execution video still remains accessible to Internet surfers in Korea.

The ministry ordered its own ethics committee to handle the situation, in which various internet service providers were asked to close domains that could possibly contain sites with the video, an official said.

By casting this wide net, it shut off domains that offer pages to Internet users who want to maintain an online journal, also known as "blogs." Internationally popular sites like blogspot.com, blogger.com, typepad.com and several others have millions of registered authors.

The ethics committee was told by the ministry to find and block sites that contain "yeopgi," a Korean word for perverted and gruesome content. The government ordered the ban believing the footage showing Kim's murder would further anger citizens already outraged by the slaying.

Kim was kidnapped on May 31 and beheaded on June 22 by Islamic militants who demanded that Seoul scrap its plan to send an additional 3,000 troops to Iraq. He was a translator working for a supplier to the U.S. military.

Somehow, many sites which have nothing to do with Kim Sun-il have been blocked.

Bloggers wonder why the government did not take more careful measures in blocking the video so they would not suffer because of measures aimed at the voyeuristic few.

The ministry admits it did not target these or any other writers on the Internet. But it declined to say whether it made a mistake in its procedure to stop the video.

"They took the easy way out." said Charlie Reeder, who writes a blog titled "Budaechigae." He explained that it is possible to block individual Web sites but would take longer to do this procedure.

The case caught international attention with a recent article published on the issue by a leading technology magazine, Wired, causing further embarrassment to the ministry, which has not responded to bloggers' emails concerning the subject.

A month after Kim's beheading, the ministry does not know when it will remove the ban. However, the banned Web sites can still be accessed through mirror sites, or anonymous Web browsers like www.unipeeek.com.

The ministry is facing an increasing heap of criticism for its action.

Some bloggers expected better decision-making from a nation that has the highest Internet user rate in the world and proudly professes to be a leader in technology.

"By calling Korea an Internet power, the MIC is basically shooting itself in the foot with this ban. This is not going to make a good impression on the rest of the world," said Kevin Kim, who maintains a blog titled the "Big Hominid."

Many compare the measure to bans that communist China often uses to block out anti-state information.

Weeks before Kim's murder, a young American businessmen living in Iraq was also captured and beheaded. The video tape of Nicholas Berg's death was shown almost in its entirety on Korean TV networks, including MBC. Many feel that the government is being unfair by giving special treatment to a video of a Korean.

"It's different when Koreans see another Korean get killed. It's a different feeling than seeing a foreigner die," said a ministry official who did not want to be identified.
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/da...0407230027.asp


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Music Industry Taking Cues From File Sharing

Online businesses are adding features such as peer-to-peer networks to boost song lists while protecting copyrights.
Jon Healey

Having condemned file-sharing for five years, the music industry is now trying to co-opt it.

Online music businesses are adding features once found only in file-sharing networks, such as the ability to send free songs to friends and to listen to them on a variety of portable players. And a handful of companies are developing hybrid peer-to-peer networks that encourage sharing but prevent users from violating copyright law.

One example is Mercora Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., a fast-growing start-up that lets people listen to songs from other users' computers. Mercora's software turns each user's computer into an Internet radio station that any other Mercora user can tune in, enabling them to hear — but not download — a wide array of tracks.

Meanwhile, one of the leading peer-to-peer networks has agreed to transform itself from a hotbed for piracy into a haven for legal file-sharing. IMesh.com Inc., which struck a truce with the major record companies last week, pledged to revamp its network by the end of the year.

It remains to be seen whether any of these efforts can compete effectively with popular file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and EDonkey, which are used by millions of people around the world.

"You can't displace piracy with legal services by being as good as a pirate service, because pirate services have no restrictions," analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research said. Instead, Bernoff said, legitimate outlets should compete by providing more innovative, reliable and easy-to-use services.

Unlike the songs offered by legitimate outlets, which are wrapped in electronic locks to deter piracy, the music on file-sharing networks can be shared freely and played on any device without regard to copyright law.

Some legal services are hoping to win over customers by offering the same features — to the extent they can.

MusicMatch Inc. of San Diego, which operates a downloadable music store and an online radio service, is planning a $10-a-month offering that will let subscribers play as many songs as they wish from the company's online jukebox. They will also be able to make songs available to their friends for free.

There's a catch, of course — non-subscribing friends can only play each track three times. If they want to hear a song again, they'll be invited to subscribe to the monthly service.

For Mercora, sharing songs is fundamental to the business.

Like Kazaa and EDonkey, the start-up relies on users to provide the free songs that are the lifeblood of its network. As more users sign on, more songs become available, attracting more music fans.

To keep everyone on the right side of the law, Mercora doesn't let users copy songs from each other. Instead, they merely listen to tracks from other users' collections. The tracks are chosen by Mercora's software, which tailors playlists to meet restrictions that Congress imposed on Internet radio stations. That way, the service qualifies automatically for a broadcasting license.

"Our whole premise was based on the fact that the reason people went to peer-to-peer networks was the unlimited discovery of music," said founder Srivats Sampath, who previously served as chief executive of computer security software maker McAfee.com.

The 2-month-old Mercora service is free today, but the company may decide to charge its most active users a small monthly fee to cover the royalties it pays to labels, artists and music publishers. Sampath said the company also planned to generate fees by selling advertisements and running an online marketplace for Mercora members to buy and sell music-related goods.

Bridgemar Services Ltd., which owns IMesh, could bring the music industry even closer to embracing peer-to-peer technology. But it has yet to reveal how its users will find and share songs legally, and the major record companies have not said how they will support the new service.

The most likely approach for IMesh, according to music-industry executives, is to use technology that manages what users share and download to prevent them from copying songs without permission. That sort of technology is being pitched by several companies, including Audible Magic Corp. of Los Gatos, Calif., Kokopelli Networks Inc. of Ottawa and Snocap Inc. of San Francisco, which was launched by former Napster creator Shawn Fanning.

Of course, clamping down on what users can share would rob IMesh of one of the most compelling features of today's file-sharing networks: the virtually unlimited selection of songs, including bootlegged and homemade versions of songs that were never officially released.

Nevertheless, Audible Magic Chief Executive Vance Ikezoye said he was encouraged by the labels' and IMesh's stated wish to blaze a trail to new business models.

"The industry I think has gotten some criticism for not supporting digital media and new models," he said, "and I think this is a positive direction."

In the meantime, RealNetworks Inc. is trying to chip away at another advantage of the pirate networks by making it easier to play legally downloaded songs on any device the consumer chooses, provided it uses anti-piracy technology from Real, Apple Computer Inc. or Microsoft Corp.

On Tuesday, the Seattle company is expected to unveil software that can transfer songs bought from Real's store to any MP3 player or other gadget. Other stores support only one kind of anti-piracy technology; for example, Apple's iTunes Music Store works only with Apple's iPods.

Real's "Harmony" technology will give people who buy music the same flexibility as those who download it illegally, said Richard Wolpert, Real's chief strategy officer.

Harmony will initially be available only with RealPlayer software, and the company is hoping to persuade rivals to use it with their music services as well, Wolpert said.

In the short term, analyst Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research said, the primary beneficiary of the new technology is Real, whose store lags far behind Apple's.

"It solves a huge problem for Real, which is the fact that there simply aren't that many devices on the market that support Real's music store," he said, adding that the success of Apple store has been driven by the popularity of the iPod.

Musicmatch and at least three other online music outlets — Roxio Inc.'s Napster, MusicNet Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc.'s MusicNow — also plan to add more flexibility to their subscription services. Starting this year, their subscribers will be able to take hundreds of songs with them wherever they go for about the price of one CD a month.

The key is new software from Microsoft that enables subscribers to move the songs they rent to portable music players. Microsoft found a way to satisfy the major record companies, which insisted that portable players be able to disable songs if the user's subscription lapsed.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,4128712.story


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Apple Investigates RealNetworks' Software
AP

Apple Computer Inc. said the company is ``stunned'' at a move by RealNetworks Inc. to distribute software that lets customers play music from Real's song download store on Apple's iPod.

Apple said it is investigating the implications of RealNetworks' actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws.

The company said it was ``stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod.''

Apple said it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods when the company updates the music player's software.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/tech...orks-IPod.html


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Cellphones, Say Hello to iTunes

Starting next year, users of Apple Computer's iTunes music service will be able to play songs on some Motorola cellphones, the companies said late Monday.

The agreement is the first for the cellular phone industry, which is eager to add functions to phones to bring in additional revenue.

For Apple, the deal could help it keep the lead in the online music market, which promises to get even more competitive later this year with the arrival of Microsoft.

Customers of iTunes will be able to transfer possibly a dozen to a few dozen songs from their PC or Mac to their phone over a cable or wireless connection, said Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive.

The new cellphones will ship with new Apple software, called iTunes Mobile Music.

Mr. Jobs said he called Motorola's chief executive, Edward J. Zander, soon after Mr. Zander took over in January to suggest that the two companies work together on the project.

The new music phones are just one example of next-generation phones Mr. Zander said the company has planned.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/te...y/27music.html


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Verizon's Earnings Jump Five Times Higher
AP

A 25 percent surge in wireless services sales helped boost Verizon Communications Inc.'s second-quarter profit five times higher from a year ago, the company said Tuesday. The results beat Wall Street expectations.

The nation's largest telecom company, based in New York, earned $1.8 billion, or 64 cents a share, up from $338 million, or 12 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenues for the quarter were $17.84 billion, compared with $16.83 billion a year before.

Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had been expecting earnings of 60 cents a share.

The nation's largest telecom company, based in New York, said about 50 percent of its residential customers buy ``bundles'' of service, which package Verizon's local service with either long-distance or DSL. Rival AT&T Corp. announced last week that it would stop competing for residential customers, saying a recent regulatory ruling would increase its costs of providing local service and make it impracticable to bundle services together.

During the quarter, however, Verizon restated and reduced the number of its long-distance customers by 1.5 million, following an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Despite the reduction, the company still reported a year-over-year increase, to 16.8 million long-distance customers, from 13.8 million for the same period a year ago.

Sales in the company's wireless division were 25 percent higher than they were for the year-ago quarter. Verizon said its wireless division, which it jointly owns with the United Kingdom's Vodafone Group PLC, has 40.4 million wireless customers. The division's profit margin widened and its customer churn rate, a measure of how many customers leave each month, hit a company record-low.

The company said it also installed 52 percent more DSL lines than it had in the year-ago quarter. It now has more than 2.9 million DSL lines in service.

For the first six months of the year, the company had profits of just under $3 billion, or $1.07 per share, up from $2.75 billion, or 99 cents per share, a year ago. Its revenues were $34.97 billion, up from $33.32 billion for the first six months of last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/busi...s-Verizon.html


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German Software Pirate Sent To Prison
AP

A German software dealer was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in jail Thursday for selling cheaper versions of products at inflated prices, which
the court said cost Microsoft euro4.5 million (US$5.5 million) in lost revenues.

Ralf Blasek, 38, a software dealer in the west German town of Willich, purchased cheaper educationally priced versions of software in Belgium, then mislabeled them to sell at higher prices to dealers in Bochum, according to prosecutors.

Microsoft welcomed the sentence, which it said was the longest jail sentence ever in Germany for software-related fraud.

``We ... see this as evidence that software piracy will be increasingly taken seriously as a grave crime,'' said Microsoft spokesman Hans-Juergen Croissant.

``This is a clear signal to everyone who would like to profit in grand style through software crime, and thus hugely damage the state, business and customers. ``

Microsoft spokesman Thomas Baumgaertner said he believed losses estimated by the court were on the low side when factoring in money lost to state governments in taxes and to resellers.

'We have opinions that say even euro20 million (US$25 million) would be low,'' he said.

Judge Wolfgang Mittrup of the Bochum state court said that Blasek had a ``deeply criminal personality'' and used the money from the piracy to live a luxurious life, buying around 40 pieces of property and several expensive cars.

Mittrup said he took Blasek's confession into account in setting the sentence. Blasek has no plans to appeal.

In November, police assisted by Microsoft specialists raided dozens of homes and offices across west Germany, arresting eight people, including Blasek, for suspicion of copyright offenses, including producing copied or faked CD-ROMs of popular programs on a commercial scale and passing off cheaper versions of programs as the more sophisticated editions.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9216381.htm


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More Police Raids To Nail Copyright Violators In Brunei
Azian Othman

Bandar Seri Begawan - Copyright violators beware! The Commercial Crime Unit is ready to carry out more raids to nail culprits as copyright infringements are believed to be rampant in the country.

A senior police officer gave the warning yesterday following a raid on an Internet cafe in the Serusop Commercial Complex Wednesday to curb the unlawful use and reproduction of PC games in Internet cafes, Local Area Network (LAN) gaining centres and retail outlets in the country.

The officer said, the unit has received many inquiries especially from Malaysia pertaining to cyber games. However, they will only act and assist if the copyright owner or the authorised company lodges a formal complaint and produces evidence for any offender to be produced in court.

He said, since early this year the unit has conducted many raids pertaining to such violation.

Asked about the penalty pertaining to Wednesday's raid, the officer said the offender could be charged under the Copyright Act Section 204 and 205 carrying a penalty of an imprisonment of not more than six months, a fine of not more than $5,000 or both.

The officer said, the recent raid was the "first case and the first test". Asked whether US companies would take similar actions against those who violate the copyright act in this country, he said the US companies look at the pirated market in Brunei as small compared to other countries.

From VCD, DVD, game software to daily food items, pirated goods are sold everywhere in Brunei. Interestingly, pirated copies of the reality television show Akademi Fantasia (AF), which has hit Brunei by storm, are also allegedly sold openly at $5 per copy. It is learnt that copies are readily available in less than 24 hours after the show is aired on pay-TV channel Astro every Saturday night.

"It is unbelievable that copies of the show are available at shops Sunday morning within hours after the show is aired Saturday night starting 8.30pm," said a concerned member of the public.

It's not just VCDs or DVDs that are pirated. Not long ago, the Commercial Crime Unit had raided shops over pirated ink for printers following a formal complaint from the authorised company.

In early July this year, the authorised owner of an instant noodle brand had stated in a newspaper advertisement that they would not hesitate to take legal actions under the trademark copyright and passing of law against any person, firm or company who/which without their consent, imports, distributes or sells instant noodles bearing the instant noodle trademark or any mark or packaging which is confusingly similar thereto. -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin
http://www.brudirect.com/DailyInfo/N...704/nite05.htm


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TiVo Battles Hollywood Over Copyrights Of TV Programming
AP

A plan by TiVo Inc. to let its users transfer recorded TV shows to other devices is running into opposition from Hollywood studios and the National Football League, which fear their copyrighted content could get loose on the Internet.

The studios and the NFL filed papers with the Federal Communications Commission last week seeking to block the agency's approval of TiVo's proposed new service.

TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., is the leading provider of digital video recorders, which let users easily record TV shows onto hard disks, skip commercials and pause live broadcasts. The company's plans to introduce TiVo To Go, which will allow users to shuttle recorded programs to other TiVo-compatible devices, including laptops and personal computers, have been long awaited.

TiVo officials declined to comment on the copyright objections Thursday but issued a statement: ``We are hopeful (the FCC) rules in favor of technology innovation that respects the rights of both consumers and artists.''

TiVo has said it wants to give users more flexibility in how and where they view their recorded shows -- on an airplane or a road trip, for example -- and to let them share the content with a few friends. The company says it plans to incorporate copy-restriction technologies to limit the number of devices to which the shows can be transferred, preventing unfettered Internet distribution.

The content companies don't think TiVo's proposed safeguards are adequate enough to block users from sending their recorded shows to strangers' devices across the globe, said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president and legal counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, the Hollywood lobbying arm that filed the opposition papers.

``We don't have a problem if you want to move the content to your summer home, or your boat, but the TiVo application does not require any kind of relationship with the sender,'' Attaway said Thursday. ``It could be to a nightclub in Singapore.''

Many consumer electronics companies say such networked devices are bound to become standard in the ever-more-digital world, but they acknowledge that they must first appease Hollywood and other content providers' concerns over copyrights.

Content companies have been fighting hard on Capitol Hill for rules that would restrict what they consider illegal distribution of copyrighted works. The industry's successful lobbying led to the FCC rule forcing electronics companies to certify that their recording gadgets have technologies to prevent mass distribution.

That's why TiVo is now seeking the FCC's approval.

A dozen other companies, including Sony Corp., RealNetworks Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have similar product applications pending. Attaway said Hollywood so far does not object to those proposals because they appear to mostly limit the movement of copyrighted works to a user's own home network.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...al/9219078.htm


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Share Music Online With P2P Radio

Mercora.com Allows Users To Stream Music To Anyone
Rick Ellis

If you're a rabid music fan, you've probably harbored a secret desire to run your radio station. All that stands in the way is the $40 million or $50 million it requires to buy a traditional radio station. Or the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to stream music online to a large audience. One new site may have the solution, albeit not the perfect answer. Mercora.com, a derivation of a Latin word meaning "to trade," is a self-described "peer-to-peer radio" program, and it allows users to easily stream music to anyone who also has the software. One reason to use the software is that the company has paid the license for the non-interactive webcasting of digital audio. Which in layman's terms means that you can broadcast music to as many people as you wish, without cost and without fear of annoying the copyright police.

The Merora software is easy to download and set-up, although there are a couple of annoying wrinkles. If you allow the software to search your hard drive for files, it will automatically lump your music into categories, which may or may not be relevant. It's also not easy to point outsiders directly to your "station," in the same way that Live365.com allows you to do. Overall, Mercora is an interesting experiment. But it's ultimate success may depend on how many people decide to give it a try.
http://www.thebakersfieldchannel.com...12/detail.html


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Are P2P Networks Leaking Military Secrets?
John Borland

A new Web log is posting what it purports are pictures, documents and letters from U.S. soldiers and military bases in Iraq and elsewhere--all of which the site's operator claims to have downloaded from peer-to-peer networks such as Gnutella.

The "See What You Share" site has been online for a week and has published photos ranging from a crashed military jet to a screenshot of a spreadsheet file that appears to include names, addresses and telephone numbers of marines.

The site's operator, a 30-year-old named Rick Wallace, wrote in a blog posting that he is trying to help the military understand how serious a security risk unmonitored peer-to-peer file sharing can be. CNET News.com could not independently verify the authenticity of the documents posted on the site.

"I want everyone to know that we can be our own worst enemies when we don't understand the full power of our technology," Wallace wrote in a posting explaining the site. "I want every military and government agency to see firsthand what is being shared with anyone who has a computer. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I can save myself some talking."

Among the items appearing on the site were documents from a transportation unit at Fort Eustis in Virginia. A Fort Eustis spokesperson contacted could not immediately comment.

The issue of unmonitored file sharing has been a problem since the release of Gnutella, which allowed people to share the entire contents of their hard drives, rather than just MP3 files, as had been the case with Napster.

Network watchers quickly noted that some people appeared to be sharing much more than they realized, including personal information and Web "cookie" files that sometimes included passwords for credit cards and e-commerce accounts.

Critics of file-sharing companies, including the Recording Industry Association of America, have often pointed to this accidental sharing of personal information as a rationale for tighter regulation of the networks.

Wallace told CNET News.com that he first downloaded a zipped file of classified documents a few months ago on Gnutella, with stamped security clearances ranging from "For Official Use Only" to "Secret/NO FORN." (NOFORN typically stands for "not for release to foreign nationals" in military parlance.) The documents contained real-time information about operations in Iraq, "stuff that could kill people," he said.

In an interview from Germany, where he lives with his wife, a U.S. Army officer, Wallace said he had contacted local military intelligence about the issue. They forwarded the information to a higher level, but there was little further response until he contacted the office of Sen. Conrad Burns, who represents Wallace's home state of Montana, Wallace said.

Burns' office confirmed that the conversation had taken place.

"We did send a letter to the secretary of the Army," Burns spokesman J.P. Donovan said. "We are monitoring this as it goes along."

Shortly after Wallace got in contact with Burns' office, the file of classified documents disappeared from Gnutella. But many other potentially sensitive files remain on the sharing network, ranging from confidential military documents to internal information on public safety authorities procedures, Wallace said.

"If you're a terrorist, imagine the damage you could do with that," Wallace said. "I don't really care if people share their love letters online. The only things I care about are when people share information that could hurt people."

Wallace said he now calls agencies once before posting information on his blog but sees the site as a way to spotlight a problem that could cost lives in the future. He said he blacks out information that could be classified before posting a file.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5285918.html


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Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon
Chris Thompson


Susan Spann for The New York Times

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - LIKE most cities in Silicon Valley's outer stratosphere, Santa Cruz has a district dedicated to an odd marriage of high and low tech, where lumber mills and cement factories squat beside gleaming software business parks. But the geeks and hipsters who parked their bikes on this slab of broken land and sneaked past the "no trespassing" sign were not here on business. They were going to the movies.

Few theaters consist of dead weeds and a mound of gray slag squeezed between a laboratory and an alloy manufacturing firm. But these movie buffs have brought their own theater with them. For three years, cult-movie buffs have been organizing "guerrilla drive-ins" in a number of cities, rigging together a nest of digital projectors, DVD players, and radio transmitters or stereo speakers, spreading the word online, and assembling on parking lots or fields to watch obscure films beneath the stars.

They project the image onto warehouses or bridge pillars, tune their car stereos to a designated FM frequency, and sit back and enjoy the show. The only thing they do not do is ask for permission.

As dusk crept over the hills on a Friday night, a 1964 Ford pickup careened to the curb, and out jumped Wes Modes, the impresario behind the Santa Cruz guerrilla drive-in collective. Dressed in black and distinguished by a shock of frizzy red hair, Mr. Modes, 37, reached into the truck bed and began hauling out milk crates bristling with surge protectors and extension cords, a DVD player wired to an amplifier, and two 50-pound golf-cart batteries.

The police had broken up two showings in the last few weeks, so he kept his eyes peeled for patrol cars. As about 100 slackers, electrical engineers and graduate students unfurled blankets and waited for the opening credits to Richard Linklater's 2001 movie "Waking Life," Mr. Modes checked his equipment. "I don't know how good the batteries are going to be," he fretted. "So I think I want to run backup." With a few sidelong glances, he strung out 300 feet of extension cord, crept down to the adjacent lab, and plugged into a socket he found in the driveway.

VCR's and specialty video stores may have exported art films to every corner of the country, but to Mr. Modes and his friends, they also left people stranded in their living rooms, starved for the community and fun of rep houses and B-movie drive-ins. In the mid-90's, cultural pranksters like David Krzysik, who runs the annual Brainwash Movie Festival in Oakland, Calif., experimented with replicating the ambience of old drive-ins, organizing movie showings in empty lots and open-air art spaces. But 16-millimeter projectors were too bulky and expensive for any but the most dedicated movie lover.

Now, high-quality DVD players, digital projectors and iPods have put the technology of drive-in movies into the hands of anyone with $1,500 to spare, giving rise to outdoor movie nights in locations from warehouse packing districts to suburban cul-de-sacs. Instructions on converting iPods into radio transmitters are available at Web sites like engadget.com, many DVD players cost less than $100 and any blank wall will work as a screen.

In cities like Tampa, Fla., and West Chester, Pa., as well as Santa Cruz, people are pirating a piece of that old Hollywood magic and challenging conventions on the role of public space in the process. "The one I used last week was unbelievable," Mr. Krzysik said of the latest liquid-crystal-display projector he set up in Oakland. "And it's cheap, too. I think it cost $1,200, whereas in the old days it would have cost $30,000."

Even $1,000 was too steep for John Young, a technophile in West Chester who became infatuated with guerrilla drive-ins after reading about them in a hobbyist magazine. So Mr. Young decided to build his own projector and found step-by-step instructions after just a few minutes of Web research.

"There's a community out there for some serious home theater geeks," he said. "They're using parts from old rear-projection video systems, from sports bar televisions from back in the day." Within a few weeks, Mr. Young had assembled his Commando Projector, a mass of circuit board and liquid crystal encased in an old heating duct mounted on the handlebars of his motorcycle.

For a year, Mr. Young has cruised the roads of Pennsylvania, scouting sites and tipping off his friends when he finds a winner. His Web site, www .tikaro.com/gdi, is emblazoned with an image of Che Guevara wearing 3-D glasses. "There's no novelty in watching a movie by yourself anymore," Mr. Young wrote in a recent e-mail. "It's way more fun to watch 'The Bad News Bears Go to Japan' on the back of the old Y.M.C.A. building than it is to watch reruns of 'Jerry Maguire' on cable by yourself."

Unlike Mr. Young, most guerrilla drive-in ringmasters seem to have come up with the idea by themselves and for their own reasons. In Florida, a pirate-radio enthusiast, Kelly Benjamin, staged a series of drive-in screenings to raise money for a quixotic 2003 Tampa City Council race. A Los Angeles filmmaker, Lawrence Bridges, has used guerrilla drive-ins to get around traditional distribution networks.

Mr. Bridges, an advertising executive who heads the digital design company Red Car, spent 12 years and $300,000 making a movie about ancient Greek demigods condemned to live in Los Angeles and act as characters from "The Importance of Being Earnest." By the time he finished his project, he decided that the best showcase for this elegy to his hometown would be in the open air, with the cityscape as a living backdrop. So his staff spent a year sneaking onto parking lots and projecting his film against a wall on Saturday nights.

Red Car employees are currently showing his film at various locations in Dallas and plan to take the movie to an empty lot somewhere in Brooklyn. "We don't say, 'Can we use the space?' " said Mr. Bridges's executive assistant, Destiny London, in a telephone interview. "But we've never had any problem."

Mr. Modes and his Santa Cruz friends started showing movies in the backyard of the house they shared (their "collective" is largely a grander reference to their former living arrangements) before taking their act on the road, as it were. But Mr. Modes aspires to more than a good time on a Friday night: he wants to change the way people use public space, and return the commons to an idealized past untainted by money.

"Part of why we're doing this is to reclaim public space and give people a way to use the nighttime that's not mediated by commerce," he said. "In our town, the parks close at sundown, you have to buy something at coffee shops. We wanted to give people a way to interact with each other outdoors without having to spend any money."

Of course, he is also organizing guerrilla drive-ins for the thrill of being naughty. Not only are Mr. Modes and his friends trespassing when they set up their events, they are not exactly clearing their project with the companies that own the rights to the films they show, either.

Michael Bergman, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer, said the fact that Mr. Modes does not charge admission does not diminish his basic violation of copyright law. "The copyright proprietor for the film has the exclusive right to publicly perform the work," he said in a telephone interview. "Projecting a rented DVD onto the side of a building, where anybody who wants to can come and watch it, is certainly a violation of the copyright act."

But whether Hollywood would bother to crack down on a few enterprising movie fans is another question. Breena Camden, a spokeswoman for Fox Searchlight Pictures, which owns the rights to the Linklater film that Mr. Modes showed here in mid-July, refused to comment, if only because her company has never encountered this situation before. "This is the first I've heard of it," Ms. Camden admitted.

So for now, Mr. Modes and his friends seem safe. Even the police do not really care; the Santa Cruz deputy police chief, Patty Sapone, said her officers had shut down the previous movie because Mr. Modes was using public property; as far as trespassing at the new site, it is not a matter for the police unless the property owner complains.

As the ocean breeze took the edge off the summer heat, Becca Anderson, 24, sat on a blanket and waited for the show to start. Ms. Anderson moved in May from Wisconsin to San Mateo, south of San Francisco, looking for work and a taste of the Bay Area's counterculture, she said, but found herself surrounded by computer geeks who talked endlessly about gaming.

The San Francisco club scene was too fast for her, she said, so she and her friends logged onto www .squidlist.com, the local Web clearinghouse for subversive culture, and found out about Mr. Modes's labor of love. "They show some awesome movies," Ms. Anderson said. "You don't often see a drive-in with 'Waking Life.' Or 'Dr. Strangelove.' "

Just before the main feature, Mr. Modes showed a few experimental short films as appetizers. The clear crowd favorite was "Round and Round," a 1939 General Motors educational cartoon about the laws of economics. After all, buying and selling was exactly what these people have come here to avoid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/te...ts/29driv.html


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Laws Regarding Copying Music Need Fine Tuning
Dave Toplikar

My teenage daughter was singing as she walked into the kitchen.

"Hey, Julie, that reminds me, can you make me a new CD?" I asked.

I told her I wanted a mix that would help me get revved up for my early morning workouts.

She seemed a little puzzled at my request.

"I can't download anything," she said.

That's when I realized that I'd been away from the peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet for a while.

Thanks to a crackdown by the music and motion picture industries, the fear of lawsuits and prosecution have put an end to a lot of the free-wheeling music piracy that was going on two years ago when Napster was in full swing.

Suddenly, I wondered if I had just asked my daughter to break the law by copying some songs on a CD for me.

Drawing the line

"Surely, you can copy songs from a CD, a cassette tape or an album that you already own, for personal use, can't you?"

I didn't want to break the law, so I presented the question to some experts.

I had read that U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was trying to put a stop to illegal file sharing through his proposed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, otherwise known as the "Induce Act."

The legislation would go after companies that, through software and other products, induce our children to engage in illegal music swapping and downloading over the Internet.

"It is illegal and immoral to induce or encourage children to commit crimes," Hatch, a Utah Republican, has said.

Opponents of the Induce Act worry that it would go after such products as the iPod, Apple's popular MP3 player that can hold
10,000 songs or more. They're also afraid it would stifle the creation of technology.

Critics say that, in its current form, the Induce Act would undermine the Supreme Court's Sony Betamax decision.

In that decision, the court ruled that if a device, such as the old Betamax video recorder, is used for a legal purpose, then it is legal to make and sell it, even if some people figure out how to use it illegally.

I called Hatch's office and reached Margarita Tapia, a media contact.

Tapia told me she was hesitant to answer my question about whether making a copy of music I owned on a CD would be illegal.

Tapia was helpful, but explained that she didn't want to be in the position of giving me legal advice.

Finding the line

Because of her hesitancy, I sensed that the issue was cloudy among those who have been involved in the thick of the debate.

"Even those who work in this area are really perplexed," said Mike Kautsch, a Kansas University law professor who studies media-related law.

Kautsch said the old rule of thumb was that making a backup copy of your music CD for the purpose of what used to be called "time shifting" or "space shifting" is considered fair use.

But if you start buying your music or software or movies online and downloading it to your computer, you're subject to the fine print in the "click agreement" that you approve before you download it.

Because of the different licensing agreements these days that are put into such click agreements (which few people read), it's difficult to say what is and isn't allowable, he said.

"The range of restrictions is beyond what most people imagine when they click that button and agree to it," he said.

Policing the 'Net

I checked into how the music and motion picture industry is policing illegal file sharing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

Enforcers for the motion picture or recording industries most often file lawsuits against groups of "John Does." The enforcers then try to find out their identities by issuing subpoenas to the defendants' Internet service providers.

The defendants are then given the option of settling out of court. If they decline, they're subject to being sued again, only this time by name.

Stephen Figgins, assistant systems administrator for Sunflower Broadband, a local Internet service provider owned by the World Company, which also owns the Journal-World, said that sharing copyrighted material over the Internet was a violation of Sunflower's terms of service.

However, Sunflower only responds to offenses reported to it by copyright enforcers for the motion picture industry or the music industry or if the activity of a customer threatens the integrity or performance of the company's network.

Legal quagmire

Kautsch said that Hatch's Induce Act is something of a response to the recent MGM Studios v. Grokster case. A district court ruled that Grokster and Morpheus, two file-sharing programs, were not liable for copyright infringement made by those using their P2P (peer-to-peer) services because there was no centralized index that they could use to control abuses. The case is now under appeal before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Part of the Grokster suit claims that software designers have a duty to build their software in such a way that it can't be used illegally, Kautsch said.

Defendants in the Grokster case, like the opponents of the Induce Act, say building in such designs will tend to have a chilling effect on new technology in the United States.

The decision the court makes "is just enormous," Kautsch said. "This could just, either way, change the course of technological history."

Meanwhile, consumers like me aren't too sure what to do.

"It's just an incredible war between the consumers and the copyright owners," he said.

But there is a starting point you can take to be legally safe, Kautsch said, laughing.

"You start out with the assumption that everything that you want to do is probably wrong."

Many people try to do their own research, but they can't get any clear definition of the law, other than the hard line of the copyright enforcers of the motion picture or music industry, Kautsch said.

"It is just a nightmare."

He suggested going to the U.S. Copyright Office Web site to see if what you want to do is legal.

I couldn't find anything specific about copying a CD. But I did find a frequently asked question on whether it's possible to copyright your photograph of an Elvis sighting. It is.

Stop the music

As I was heading out to go for a run, a song that Julie had been humming popped into my head.

I started humming it.

Then I began wondering how far copyright would ever go.

After all, I don't think we actually owned a copy of the music. She had heard the song on the radio and had "copied" it into her own memory.

Then I had heard her singing it, and I had unknowingly "copied" it into my own head -- sort of a biological file sharing.

Feeling a bit guilty about enjoying someone else's intellectual property, I was trying to think of something else.

But I just couldn't get the tune out of my head.
http://www.ljworld.com/section/toplikar/storypr/176934


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Private Picture for All
Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell

Most people who use file-sharing networks are looking for music. Rich Vogel uses them to find photos, many of which were never meant to be shared with the world.

One day while searching for new MP3 audio files, Mr. Vogel, a 31-year-old musician in Grand Rapids, Mich., browsed through a user's shared folder on the Soulseek network. He was surprised to find some photographs. "It was like landing in the middle of someone's life," he said.

He began searching other peer-to-peer, or P2P services, using the phrase "my pictures," and found that thousands of photo folders had been made available to the public, most of them, he suspects, inadvertently. He selects the more interesting examples and exhibits them at his site as found photos (www.10eastern.com/foundphotos.html). More than 300 have been posted there so far. The photos - of parties and their aftermaths, wounds, kisses, infants - reflect Mr. Vogel's sensibility but also offer a window into the lives of the P2P generation.

Several people whose photos were used have protested, prompting Mr. Vogel to remove their images. What surprised him, though, is how few have complained, given the ease of monitoring what others download from your shared folder, he said.

"I've struggled with the larger moral issues, but what keeps me motivated is how great these photos are - how much life and spontaneity is in them," Mr. Vogel said. "I reject the idea that I'm a snoop."

While some might argue that these photos are searched for rather than found, Jason Bitner, editor of Found Magazine (www.foundmagazine.com), is enthusiastic about the site.

"There's a sprawling universe of images that grows each time someone puts their digital photos into a shared folder,'' he said by e-mail. "And it's usually the photos that are accidentally shared that are the most interesting.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/te...ts/29diar.html

















Until next week,

- js.














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