Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – March 15th, '03

[JackSpratts]

Don’t Believe the Hype

Expect to hear a lot of noise in the coming weeks about peer-to-peer and kiddie porn. The U.S. House of Representatives is taking a look at the issue and these boys and girls usually find whatever it is they’re after – even if some of the time whatever it is they’re after…isn’t really there.

This is one of those times.

The House’s investigative arm, the GAO, took a “look” at the problem and decided there’s real kiddie porn all over the networks, up to 30 percent of the so named files under some circumstances. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Problem is, they didn’t actually open those files and look at them, so they don’t really know if the files are porn or just titled that way, and that’s the extent of their investigation.

Leave it to somebody else then to actually peer beyond the lurid statistics and see what’s what, like the First Amendment Project in Oakland, California. After examining 177 files it turns out that only 2 of them, or about 1%, were illegal kiddie porn. The rest were other types; misnamed music, adult erotica, legal stuff - ok to have, ok to share.

Now maybe 1% is too much, but if so get ready for a real shock: according to government sources you’ll find a lot more than that being swapped in other, more common places. Websites, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo’s instant messenger services, IRC and other similar applications, email and of course the U.S. mail all carry massive amounts of the illegal material and infinitely more than the peers ever have or will. That’s because it’s much too dangerous to up or download anything really controversial on unshielded services like KaZaA, Gnutella and the other P2Ps. These are people after all who for their own survival must operate deep in the shadows, and the last thing they want is someone shining a spotlight on them like an anonymous file sharing “friend” who’s really an undercover G-Man running a simple instant trace through their ISP. With penalties for the possession and distribution of kiddie porn exceeding that for first-degree murder the idea that unsecured P2Ps are hotbeds of this kind of risky behavior is a concept absurd on its face, a fantasy cynically dreamed up by people who should know better and probably do.

Attempt to stop change

This is yet another attack on P2P’s, albeit from an unsettling direction but still propelled by the same old businesses and enabled by the same politicians who desire their favor. We’ve seen these attacks against peer-to-peers again and again, and even against other mediums in other times, like books, magazines, recordings and even against Hollywood and the movies they’ve distributed in the past.

Make no mistake: the exploitation of the defenseless is appalling and must be dealt with severely. But showboating is a waste of resources. This rankest form of grandstanding is not about protecting children and never will be. It is nothing more than a very old and very ugly practice of exploiting people’s genuine fears about their children in order to control their behavior – painting what in this case is a new and constructive activity into something it is not, because this positive enterprise threatens regressive regimes, institutions and corporations - and the obsolete and deplorable practices they are unable or unwilling to change.

It sure does grab those headlines but it will not stop this movement.




Enjoy,

Jack.





China Internet Surveillance Slows Access
AP

China's Internet users are suffering sharp slowdowns in access because of the communist government's heightened efforts to police online content, industry experts say.

Some experts say problems have worsened this week, suggesting Beijing is tightening surveillance during the annual meeting of China's parliament.

China is trying to reap the Internet's benefits while also controlling what its people read and hear. Authorities have invested both in spreading Internet access and in installing technology to scan Web sites and e-mail for content deemed subversive or obscene.

Beijing has essentially built an online barrier around China, requiring traffic in and out to pass through just eight gateways — a step that heightens official control. Banned topics include human rights and the outlawed Falun Gong (news - web sites) spiritual group.

Problems emerged in October after the installation of "packet-sniffer" software that briefly holds chunks of data for screening.

Each item emerging from China bears the same Internet return address, showing that all are held up at the same location rather than coming directly from their senders, said Michael Iannini, general manager of Nicholas International Consulting Services Inc. in Beijing.

Iannini compares it to all of China's Web surfers — a population that the government says hit 59 million in January — breathing through the same tiny air hole.

"Through this hole the government has set up many filters," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ernet_slowdown

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Copyrights: More Work, More Headaches
Bob Liu

I think I should clarify that I do support copyright enforcement. But I also stand for due process.

Much has been said of the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) pending court battle to learn the identity of a Verizon DSL user that knowingly and repeatedly infringed on copyrights. The stigma of peer-to-peer file-sharing is now about the same as stealing cable and perhaps rightfully so. To this extent, RIAA's campaigns have served as effective deterrents. But what deserves more attention is the impact those campaigns are having.

While the RIAA is well armed with its arsenal of lawyers, it lacks the technical expertise to implement its policies. Rather, it relies on network administrators from the public and private sector to do much of the work to enforce the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"Welcome to the new world of copyrights," said William Brawley of Dartmouth Computing Services, the central computing group for the Ivy League school. "What the industry has done with DMCA is shifted a lot of the policing to people like me."

Dartmouth is a school of only about 5,500 students. For schools like Michigan or Ohio State, the task must be enormous. And with absolutely no incentive provided to administrators aside from legal threats, the RIAA is facing a seemingly endless, uphill battle. Still, network administrators like Brawley want to protect their institutions so they do the grunt work.

He now receives takedown notices from the entertainment industry on a daily basis. When he gets one, it takes him 15 to 30 minutes to root around on his network's records to find the perpetrator. Without ever notifying the complainant, the "perp" is then ferreted out and adequately dealt with -- either via warning or purging files. Once completed, Brawley can then go back to what he was hired to do: publish manuals and/or handouts or communicate general interest information such as security postings.

Recently, outgoing Chairman and CEO Hilary Rosen added fuel to its fire testifying on Capitol Hill about the "growing epidemic" of copyright infringement on our nation's college campuses. "Last week, Universal Studios decided to turn on the juice. Other schools were getting them in the hundreds. We were getting them in batches of six," Brawley explained.

But in the cases of 2,300 colleges and universities across the country, the RIAA and the industry might be overstepping their legal boundaries. What works in the Verizon case might not work when dealing with colleges and universities because of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA http://www.ed.gov/offices/OM/fpco/ferpa/ ).

According to FERPA, school officials are permitted to access student records but outside organizations like RIAA would need "to comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena." Currently, all takedown notices originate from industry lawyers, not a judge or a court of law.

It's not clear if IP addresses or ISP records are included in FERPA's provisions. It's also not clear if any student has yet challenged the entertainment industry's latest barrage under FERPA. If FERPA does apply, one thing is certain -- the legal process is being usurped.
http://www.internetnews.com/commenta...le.php/2106391

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Ground Control To Major Shawn
New P2P Launches

EarthStation 5, the latest in a line of next generation modified peer-to-peers is scheduled to ship any minute. Beta testers report favorable impressions and high speeds.
http://forums.es5.com/

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Morpheus Boss Resigns
John Borland

The chief executive officer of StreamCast Networks, parent of the Morpheus file-swapping software, has resigned "to pursue other opportunities," the company said late Friday.

Outgoing executive Steve Griffin had headed the company throughout its years-long incarnation as one of the most popular file-trading software companies on the Net. The company's terse statement gave no indication as to why he was leaving, but said it would continue operating.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027-992783.html

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New Cornell U. System Will Meter Network Use and Charge for 'Extreme' Amounts
Florence Olsen

Cornell University officials have developed a new "pay by the drink" billing system that will charge students and employees incrementally for Internet use as a way of controlling what officials call "irrational consumption" of bandwidth.

Cornell's costs for providing Internet services -- currently about $1.4-million a year -- are going up by more than 40 percent annually, and the university says it had to do something to moderate that spending, or at least find a fairer way to recover its expenses. Too many users have found an enterprising way to avoid paying their full share of the network's cost, says R. David Vernon, director of information-technology architecture.

The new billing system, which Cornell expects to begin using July 1, is more equitable than the one it replaces, officials say; it is also more complicated. The new system incorporates data collected from network-router logs. The logs provide an irrefutable record of which departments and users are consuming the most Internet bandwidth.
http://chronicle.com/free/2003/03/2003030601t.htm

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Lucas leads anti-piracy campaign

US film studios and cinemas are teaming up to launch an ad campaign to deter people from copying and swapping movies on the internet. Members of the industry from cinema workers to Star Wars director George Lucas will feature in the advertisements, to be screened in cinemas across the country. They will warn that swapping films online could endanger a business which employs tens of thousands of people.

While US cinemas took $9.5 billion (£5.9bn) in revenues last year - the highest since 1957 - industry executives fear a huge jump in the number of films being copied.

In the advertisement, Lucas warns: "If people keep taking for free, it will cease to exist. It's as simple as that." The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents the major studios, estimates between 400,000 and 600,000 films are downloaded every day. The music industry has complained that file-swapping is leading to a slump in CD sales.

While slower dial-up connections have meant Hollywood has avoided the same fate, improved technology and faster broadband connections now mean more PC users have the storage space and the capability to download movies. "Piracy is the single most pressing issue facing our industry," Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Jim Gianopulos said at the ShoWest cinema trade convention.

He added that while the movie industry has faced many challenges over the past century, "what we can't compete with is free".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...lm/2824973.stm

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Tiny Firm Loads MP3 Song Files Onto Cellphones
Sue Zeidler

A tiny company called Xingtone on Thursday said it has developed technology to enable users to load digital songs onto cellphones for the first time, but admits the software may hit a sour note with the embattled music industry.

The software converts MP3 files, or compressed digital music files, onto wireless phones, which would take the current ring-tone phenomenon one step beyond providing the robotic sounding renditions of tunes currently playing on phones.

Selling ring-tones, or musical jingles on cellphones, is giving the music industry, entrenched in a prolonged sales slump, a little boost as it struggles amid a booming black market for illegal online file-swapping.

And with the ring-tone market expanding, many companies are now expanding into polyphonic ring-tones -- which consist of more than just one note -- as well as preparing for the time when actual songs can be played on the cellphones.

Some of the world's biggest music labels, like EMI Group Plc EMI.L have already licensed master recordings to wireless operators across Europe and Asia, which are expected to roll out in services on new handsets expected to be available by consumers this spring.

But Xingtone, which employs eight people in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Amsterdam, said it has already gone live with its service that enables users to take an audio clip of a recording they own, load it through the conversion filter and deliver it to their phone.

"It's a simple choice, do people want their phone to sound like an old arcade game or a radio playing their favorite songs?" said Brad Zutaut, who currently has a clip of the Rolling Stones' hit "Get off of My Cloud," on his phone.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=2340628

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MMO2 trials ‘music over mobile’ service

UK-based mobile group MMO2 has announced that it is to trial the world's first 'music over mobile' service using existing mobile data networks. The O2 music service will enable customers to select, retrieve and store the latest chart hits via their GPRS-enabled mobile handset onto a specially designed 'digital music player' - and start listening in around 12 seconds.

The trials, starting in May in the UK and Germany are expected to lead to the launch of a commercial service later this year. MMO2 has partnered with MTV and music companies, including BMG, who will provide track listings for new chart releases as well as pre-releases.

A customer plugs the digital music player into his or her handset, and selects the 'get new music' option to view a menu of track listings and charts. During the trial, these charts will be provided by MTV and include the UK or German top 20, the European top 20, top ten pre-releases, top ten dance chart, top ten hip-hop and R ’n B, top ten rock, top ten pop and top ten chill-out.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15338

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Mobile music: The sound of silence?
Ben Charny

Record label Sony Music Entertainment on Wednesday unveiled a new "mobile music" service for cell phones that's missing something: tunes to download.

Instead, AT&T Wireless mMode subscribers can buy cell phone ring tones based on Sony songs. Customers also get tiny renditions of album covers as screensavers and can have music news e-mailed to their cell phones, said J.J. Rosen, a vice president of Sony Music's mobile products.

U.S. carriers, cash-starved and burdened by billions of dollars in debt, expect downloadable music to create a healthy new revenue source, especially from the teenage market. Entertainment companies agree. On Wednesday, MTV announced it inked a $75 million pact with Motorola to develop a mobile music service for cell phones.

But the initial rollouts of services from Sony, America Online and soon MTV are missing actual music to download, something much more lucrative for carriers than ring tones, which usually sell for about $1 each. And it's not that the technology to download music to phones hasn't been developed; most major carriers sell downloadable games powered by Sun Microsystems' Java or Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless.

Rosen said poor audio quality on cell phones is the reason Sony, for one, is staying away from selling its artists' songs over the air. Most cell phones don't have enough memory to download an entire song. So it has to be compressed, a process that strips away the same digital elements that give a song "studio" quality, he said. The result is a scratchy, less-than-stellar experience.

"A goal of ours is to deliver that kind of quality experience," Rosen said. "But most of the handsets out today don't have the ability to download and store music files beyond polyphonic ring tones."

MTV's service, which is expected to debut in a few weeks, is similar to what Sony launched on Wednesday. MTV is providing content for screensavers and ring tones. Handset maker Motorola is building a way for MTV to deliver the content to cell phone owners, according to MTV spokesman Mark Levine.

"At the moment, it's just being limited to those things," he said. "As things develop, who knows."
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-992347.html

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EBay Plans to Shut Down Half.com Unit
AP

EBay Inc. said Thursday it would shut down Half.com, its fixed-price subsidiary for used books, CDs, videos and other common household items, in late 2004.

Half.com founder Josh Kopelman also said he would leave the company's office in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., effective April 15.

The San Jose, Calif.-based online auction company purchased Half.com in a June 2000 stock swap. The acquisition of Half.com, which at the time listed about 1 million items and had about 250,000 registered users, significantly increased eBay's operating expenses for several quarters.

Founded in October 1999, Half.com sold previously owned products such as books, DVDs and board games for at least half the retail price. Sellers typed in a number corresponding to a bar code on most products, automatically providing them with the official list price.

The company gained fame in May 2000, when it persuaded politicians in tiny Halfway, Ore., to change the town's name to Half.com. Despite complaints from many residents who considered it a silly marketing gimmick, the city erected a sign that said, "Welcome to Half.com Oregon, America's first dot-com city."

Half.com's 65 employees in suburban Philadelphia may relocate to other eBay offices by the end of next year, or they will be eligible for severance packages, eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...lf_com_closure

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Copyright Guardian Raises Piracy Flag
Pamela McClintock

Weighing in for the first time, U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters said Thursday that Hollywood has good reason to "insist" that something be done to protect digital TV from piracy, even if that means changing the rules governing what a consumer can or can't do.

Peters' comments came during a House Judiciary Subcommittee on controversial technology known as the broadcast flag. Such a flag would prevent free, over-the-air broadcast programming from being uploaded to the Internet.

Without such a flag, the major studios say, they won't license high-quality programming to broadcast networks for fear the programming will be pirated.

But Silicon Valley and consumer electronics manufacturers say Hollywood shouldn't be allowed to infringe on existing "fair use" rights, which allow consumers to record programming for home viewing.

In her Capitol Hill testimony, Peters cautioned both sides to tread carefully when making assumptions about fair use as it relates to the digital age.

Unlike analog programming, digital content doesn't degrade when copied, meaning the 100th copy is as good as the original.

The Federal Communications Commission is studying whether to adopt the broadcast flag technology.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Internet, cautioned the FCC not to overstep its jurisdiction as it considers the flag issue.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...c&sid=95573372

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Judge Discards F.B.I. Evidence in Internet Case of Child Smut
Benjamin Weiser

A federal judge in Manhattan has thrown out the government's evidence in an Internet child pornography case involving a Bronx man, in a ruling that could imperil scores of related prosecutions around the country.

The judge, Denny Chin of Federal District Court, ruled that the F.B.I. agents who had prepared a crucial affidavit had "acted with reckless disregard for the truth." The ruling, dated Wednesday, was released yesterday, the same day that a federal judge in St. Louis, Catherine D. Perry, ordered evidence suppressed in a related case. Judge Perry, too, cited false statements in the affidavit.

The F.B.I. affidavit claimed that anyone who had signed up to join the Internet group at the center of the investigation automatically received child pornography from other members through an e-mail list.

This claim was used to obtain search warrants for the homes and computers of people who had joined the group, known as Candyman. The bureau later conceded that people who had signed up for the group — which also included chat sites, surveys and file sharing — could opt out of the mailing list and did not automatically receive pornography.

As a result, Judge Chin ruled, investigators would not have been justified in searching the home and computer of the Bronx man, Harvey Perez, who had signed up for the Candyman group but did not send or receive e-mail messages containing images.

"In the context of this case, a finding of probable cause would not be reasonable," Judge Chin wrote. Most subscribers to the group — part of a larger site known as eGroups — elected to receive no e-mail, Judge Chin said. The eGroups site, which was acquired by Yahoo, and the Candyman group are no longer in operation.

Operation Candyman was announced with great fanfare a year ago by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/nyregion/07PORN.html

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AOL in Talks to Sell CD-DVD Maker
David Kirkpatrick

AOL Time Warner is in talks about selling the CD and DVD manufacturing business of its Warner Music division as part of continuing efforts to pay down its roughly $29 billion in debt, executives briefed on the talks said yesterday.

One executive said the company hoped to make as much as $1 billion from the sale. The business, which also produces DVD's for AOL Time Warner's film division, has been the fastest-growing part of Warner Music's income as the music industry has slid into a downturn.

The company has not disclosed the amount of its manufacturing revenue, leading to some uncertainty about the strength of its core music sales. Some analysts say that manufacturing could make up as much as $100 million of Warner Music's roughly $480 million in operating profit last year.

Executives briefed on the talks said the company had decided on the sale because manufacturing is a low-margin business that is ancillary to the core media and entertainment business. Selling the manufacturing business could raise enough money to reduce pressure to sell the rest of the music division. But removing the faster-growing manufacturing business from Warner Music is likely to make the rest of the division appear less valuable.

A likely bidder for the manufacturing business is Cinram International of Toronto, the largest company specializing in making CD's and DVD's. Cinram has said it is seeking to expand through acquisitions, and it signed an agreement last month with Warner Music to distribute its CD's in Canada. Cinram makes some CD's for Warner Music as well. A spokesman could not be reached for comment. Another possible bidder is Matsushita Media Manufacturing, a partnership of Matsushita of Japan and Eastman Kodak.

In a speech at a Bear, Stearns investors conference this week, Richard D. Parsons, chairman of AOL Time Warner, said the company hoped to raise as much as $4 billion this year from selling businesses to pay down its debts.

The company is also seeking to sell its book-publishing division, its half-interest in two cable channels and its three professional sports teams, possibly raising about $3 billion. It hopes to raise as much as $2 billion more by spinning off a minority stake in its cable division.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/business/07AOL.html

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Got a (Legal) Concert Recording? Pass It On
Nancy Gohring

MUSIC fans are keeping a venerable tradition of the 1960's alive: following their favorite bands around the country, making recordings of concerts, and trading those recordings. But the tradition has been given new life through vastly improved technology that allows recordings to be duplicated without the loss of the sound and feeling of the original, and through the Internet's role as a meeting place for fans seeking to exchange their favorite performances.

It is not just that the recordings of live performances are of far better quality than the scratchy cassettes of 40 years ago. It is that copies of such a recording, and subsequent copies of the copies, are better.

Some fans have set up Web sites -- www.etree.org, www.furthurnet.org, www.phishhook.com, www.gdlive.com, www.shns.net are just a few -- through which anyone can gain access to the improved recordings at no charge. Some of the sites allow users to download directly; others connect users with fans who maintain their own servers with recordings to trade. The sites' mailing lists allow collectors to exchange information about how and where to download recordings of shows.

There is no official tally of such sites or of how many concerts are in circulation. But Steve Hormell, one of the founders of Etree, said the site had 25,000 active traders. One of those traders, Chris Mahovlic of Cleveland, said he had about 10,000 files of live recordings available for exchange.

The most heavily traded groups are jam bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish, the Allman Brothers and the Dave Matthews Band, which improvise long sections of their concerts. Other bands whose concerts are frequently recorded and swapped include U2, Metallica and Ben Harper.

Mr. Hormell said artists had not objected to the new forms of recording or to the Web sites because the sites generally follow informal ground rules. One is that collectors may not trade recordings made without a band's permission; many sites ban people who try to do so.

"The whole thought is, why would we do anything to put us in jeopardy?" Mr. Mahovlic said.

Another rule is that no fan should make money from trading.

"If we so much as put a banner ad on our site, we're done," Mr. Hormell said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/te...ts/06swap.html

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Vivendi Posts Huge Loss; May Shed Assets
Music Group Is A Stellar Performer
John Tagliabue

Vivendi Universal reported today that it lost more than $25 billion for 2002, largely as a result of huge write-offs on investments made in the heady years of the 1990's.

Vivendi's board, meanwhile, gave its chairman, Jean-René Fourtou, the green light today to explore shedding its American entertainment assets.

Vivendi's loss of 23.3 billion euros — more than expected and nearly double its loss of 13.6 billion euros a year earlier — was the largest corporate loss in French history, breaking a record set just Wednesday by France Télécom, which reported a loss of $23 billion.

Vivendi narrowly escaped a liquidity crisis last year. Today, however, the company said that it expected to return to profitability, before exceptional items, by 2003 and reaffirmed its pledge to shed assets worth 7 billion euros this year.

The results were announced after a much-anticipated meeting of the company's directors. While the entertainment businesses were discussed, senior managers gave no hints on their future at a news conference today. Mr. Fourtou said only that Vivendi was examining options for the entertainment assets, which include Universal's film and music businesses, its cable channels and television production businesses, and that Vivendi had been approached by several potential partners.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/bu...ss/07VIVE.html

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Microsoft speaks, site goes dark
Joe Wilcox

In an uncommonly harsh application of a widely used Internet enforcement tool, a Windows news site was taken offline for nearly 24 hours this week after Microsoft accused the site of infringing its copyrights.

Neowin was shut down late Thursday and came back online Friday afternoon.

Microsoft's Internet investigator sent a takedown notice on Tuesday, alleging the site was infringing the company's copyrights relating to its recently released Windows XP Peer-to-Peer Software Development Kit (SDK), apparently due to a message posted by a reader in an online feedback forum.

Such legal filings are routine. But in this case, the request turned into a nightmare for Neowin when it was sent not to the site but to the upstream Internet service provider responsible for Neowin's Web connection. That provider responded by pulling the entire site offline. Neowin declined to name the ISP, but a traceroute on the Neowin.net address showed Williams Communications Group, now known as WillTel Communications, as its furthest upstream provider. Sources later confirmed that Microsoft contacted the closer upstream provider, Hurricane Electric Internet Services of Fremont, Calif.

Neowin and its Web host, Invision Power Services Hosting (IPS), blamed Microsoft for the incident, saying the software giant gave them no chance to fix the problem before referring it to the ISP for more draconian measures.

"Neowin and IPS did not have the chance to remove the said content before the provider deleted (access to) the contents of the server without contacting Neowin or IPS," according to a post on the Web site just before it returned until normal Friday. "(IPS) received a copy of the e-mail that Microsoft sent and we can confirm it was a standard 'remove content' e-mail that did not warrant a total shutdown."

Takedown notices have become common under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants ISPs immunity from liability if they promptly remove material upon notice of alleged infringement from a copyright holder. Large ISPs may routinely receive and comply with hundreds of takedown requests a month. Sites subject to takedown actions have no immediate recourse, but can later appeal for reinstatement.

The Neowin shutdown is unusual, however, since such complaints typically result in the removal of specific infringing material, rather than entire sites.

"(Microsoft) should have contacted Neowin directly," said a spokesman for IPS. "This was like going three levels up the command chain."
http://news.com.com/2100-1025-991624.html

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Holding back the flood
Kevin Werbach

The media industries are under siege. The reason is simple: these industries depend on forms of control and artificial scarcities that are incompatible with digital distribution. Hillary Rosen understood this. The much-hated CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who just resigned, spent almost as much energy badgering her own industry behind the scenes as she did fighting peer-to-peer file-sharing. Unfortunately, she had more success on the
latter front. Many of the leaders of the content industries want to fight rear-guard actions as long as they possibly can.

The old guard won a victory when the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to uphold the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In effect, the court allowed copyright to be extended indefinitely and retroactively, keeping countless works out of the public domain. The decision, along with the RIAA's effectively in crushing Napster, seems to suggest that the content industries are winning. Not so fast.

In fact, we're now in a transitional phase. Reformers such as Larry Lessig, who challenged the copyright extension before the Supreme Court, are pushing new models. In December, Lessig and others launched Creative Commons, which wants to make it easier for content creators to distribute their works with less-restrictive licenses. Meanwhile, the music and movie industries are trying out a variety of licensed digital distribution services, including PressPlay, MusicNet,
MovieLink, and most recently Echo, a joint venture of music retailers. In recent months, established companies have acquired the key digital rights management technologies and patents of InterTrust and Liquid Audio, no doubt with similar goals.

Most of these efforts will fail. They don't provide a good enough user experience, especially given the alternatives. Over time, though, the great Darwinian force of the market will produce better options.
http://www.europemedia.net/showfeatu...ticleID=15307#

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Time to end online music battles
Record labels need to think again about how to deal with the phenomenon of file-sharing over the internet, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson.

It looks like the battle over online music is going to continue for some time, but it is at least becoming clearer that even the big corporations realise something has to be done to break the deadlock between licensed and unlicensed download services.

The current situation is getting ridiculous. In Australia, the police turned up with a warrant at the offices of the country's largest ISP, Telstra, and searched its servers for evidence of subscribers who have been downloading unauthorised music files.

The record industry claims that music worth over $35 million has been downloaded through peer-to-peer services accessed over Telstra's network and is looking for evidence to mount a prosecution.

In the United States, Verizon, another ISP, is still in court arguing that it should not be forced to tell the music companies the name of one of its subscribers, whether or not the person in question has been hosting unauthorised copies of music files on their computer.

Sharman Networks, who run the Kazaa file-sharing service, is about to be sued in the US even though its headquarters are in Australia and it is incorporated in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.

And the Recording Industry Association of America has admitted attempts to fill P2P servers with corrupt or empty files in order to make the networks less attractive to users.

All in all, the unlicensed services are under serious attack, legally and technologically.

Yet file-sharing continues to thrive. Grokster claims 10 million users a month.

A recent survey commissioned by the company found that far from being stereotyped US college students, 71% of its users are between the ages of 25 and 54, their average household income is over $50,000,and 53% have a college degree.

At the same time, digital broadcaster pseudo.com has announced plans for a weekly one-hour TV show about rap music that will be distributed for free over the Kazaa file-sharing network.

The programme will include adverts, and provides an interesting alternative to stuttering streamed video from MTV.com or the other online TV stations.

And this week BT's dotmusic service announced that it will offer "unlimited" downloads to its subscribers - although the quotes around unlimited seem to be an important part of the offer, since you can only listen to the music you get on your PC and have to pay if you want to burn it to a CD.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2828565.stm

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Reeves to develop Canadian rights management system

Reeves Communication, a communication agency for new media specializing in interactive marketing consulting and services, Web production, and multimedia, has announced it will work with Canadian rights-management groups to develop an open-source digital-management of rights system tailored to protecting Canadian cultural and artistic works on the Internet. Reeves said the system wants to design is in reaction to U.S.-dominated digital-rights management systems, which it says threaten distribution of digital works by Canadian artists even before they are created.

The company says its initiative is being supported by a number of Canadian artists and organizations, including pianists Louis Lortie and Angela Hewitt, the La La La Human Steps dance company, Pierre Gendron from Christal Films and the Société de soutien aux projets en imagerie numérique pour le cinéma. The system Reeves wishes to design will use "metadata" that stamps each work's digital envelope, and monitor distribution of each work over the Internet, generating detailed reports of on-line usage. These electronic reports will help rights-management agencies collect royalties in a national and international context, in real time.

Opting for an open-source technology is expected to reduce the cost of placing them on-line. Reeves Communication is currently developing a distribution portal for works by Canadian artists that digitizes works and handles their on-line administration.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...gtreev/GTStory

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Q&A: Sun's Software CTO Talks Shop

We discussed Sun's initiatives with CTO John Fowler, one of the key drivers behind technologies such as Java and Solaris.

What exactly is JXTA? What do I get if I download it?
John Fowler: JXTA was originally conceived to be a protocol to allow peer-to-peer (P2P) applications development—the ability for applications to talk to each other and exchange information. It went from being a network protocol exercise to including programming libraries for JXTA applications which are in Java, C, and even in PERL.

So you get a runtime environment you can install on your system, which allows you to implement the peer-to- peer capabilities, and use the programming libraries. There are also sample applications. It's aimed at developers.

And this is all open-source and cross-platform?
Yes, unlike many other P2P technologies, this is completely open-source and royalty free. It's implemented not only in Java but for multiple environments so it really can be deployed anywhere. The last part of it is that the prior P2P technology libraries have focused on programming tools, but we're focusing on the underlying network protocol. That's what's durable over a long period of time. We're going to standardize the protocol.

If you look at TCP/IP, for example—the base protocol of the Internet—the key with that was getting it standardized and then having the code available for people to implement it on various operating systems. For P2P, we're going down the same path.

[bb]What was the impetus for Sun's Orion initiative?[/b]
In the world of middleware—such as portal servers, app servers, directory servers—the current product cycle works such that you get a lot of separate products released and licensed at various times with various features. We've learned that what looks to product teams like a reasonable proposition is really unreasonable at enterprise sites. There are simply too many disparate pieces of technology licensed too many different ways.
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0...a=38183,00.asp

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Peer-to-Fear
Foad Fadaghi

The recording industry has extended its war on the illegal trade of MP3s by now starting to target ISPs in Australia. This follows similar action by music industry heavyweights Sony, EMI, and Universal in taking to court Melbourne University, Sydney University and the University of Tasmania in an effort to obtain information which may contain evidence of copyright infringement. Not only is this unprecedented in this country, it signifies that the war on copyright infringement is starting to gain pace and may eventually proceed to the next step of targeting individuals.

If the ISPs cave in, the fear is that individuals may soon be targeted for legal action and not just those who have downloaded and distributed large quantities of copyright material for commercial gain.

In the USA, the approach has been to evoke fear and apply moral pressure. You probably have heard of ads screening with the likes of Britney Spears claiming that downloading songs from the Internet is like "stealing". Well thankfully we have been spared the television commercials but the recent raids on Telstra and Eftel fall in line with the music industry's attempts to not only make ISPs accountable, but put fear into ISP subscribers. By targeting Telstra, the industry has targetted 1.4 million subscribers, but this is expected to be just the beginning.

However, it is unlikely the music industry will seek out the average or casual copyright infringer, as the risk of consumer backlash will be too high. The bad publicity that will follow the prosecution of a music lover, someone who after many years of loyally buying CDs, and contributing to the industry's profitability, is not necessarily what the publishers want. After all, the casual infringer is usually also an important music consumer, according to research from Jupiter.

Research shows that the impact of technologies such as broadband, CD writers and peer-to-peer software has had both a negative and positive effect on CD sales. The findings suggest that the industry must stop looking for scapegoats for the decline in profitability and look to emerging business models such as those using digital rights management to create new opportunities.
http://australia.internet.com/r/arti...cked=hottopics

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Audio-video player to sport phone
John Lui

A Taiwanese electronics maker plans this year to begin selling a portable device that's half digital audio-video player and half cell phone.

"Movie playback is one of our major targets with this device," said Rick Lei, general manager of sales at Benq, which spun off from computer giant Acer a year ago to concentrate on high-tech consumer products.

The device will sport Microsoft's as-yet-unreleased Media To Go operating system. The OS is designed for multimedia on mobile devices, said Lei, and is a good fit for Benq's upcoming product.

He added that their engineers in Taiwan are working with Microsoft to ensure that the device can play stored music, photos and movies, compressed in formats such as MPEG-4.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as Kazaa have been explosively popular in the past year, with millions of users downloading MP3 music, movies or TV shows into PCs. Each movie typically consumes around 1 gigabyte of hard drive space.

The as-yet-unnamed Benq multimedia player/phone will sport a 10GB or 20GB hard disk of the 1.8-inch variety made by Toshiba or Hitachi--the same type found in Apple Computer's iPod.

When launched in August or September, the device will cost $399 for the 10GB version and $499 for the 20GB version.

Since Benq spun off from Acer, it has had to compete with rivals such as Sony and Samsung, which like Benq sell both IT and consumer products, with some of them blurring the line between the two worlds.
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-991545.html

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UPenn swamped by illegal file sharing claims
Penn was one of several schools that saw a surge in copyright complaints from Universal Studios.
Elizabeth Rossi

Penn's Office of Information Security was one of an unknown number of universities across the nation to receive an abundance of complaints from Universal Studios in the last week regarding students who were illegally sharing movie files.

Penn received 100 allegations of misuse of copyright material. This reflects an upward surge from an average of five to 10 complaints that the University typically receives from media companies each week, according to University Information Security Officer David Millar.

Millar said that his office has contacted the owners of the offending machines and referred the cases to the Office of Student Conduct.

"Students, generally speaking, are contacted, told of the complaint, informed about copyright law and the vulnerability that they are exposed to if they are found in violation and asked to cease the activity and correct the problem," Office of Student Conduct Director Michele Goldfarb said. "Ordinarily, that's the end of the matter."

More serious cases, such as repeat offenses by the same users, can result in more comprehensive follow-ups by the OSC.

According to Millar, machines from which files are being shared have been linked to both students and faculty on Penn's campus.

In addition to Penn, Universal Studios also sent a large volume of complaints to a number of other colleges, including Michigan State University, which received 500 complaints, Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, according to Wisconsin technology official Brian Rust. The University of Maryland at College Park received a large volume of complaints from Universal as well.

According Rust, movie and music companies obtain users' IP addresses -- which serve to identify computers -- by searching the databases that people use to download movies and music. An IP address can also be used to obtain the e-mail address of the computer's user as well as its location. As a result, production companies are able to track who is sharing files and cite them for copyright violations.
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vn.../3e6863f68a876

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Bang for your Bandwidth
Demir Barlas,

Computing networks are constantly being overloaded in ways that technology vendors and IT administrators can't foresee. Just ask Will McDermott, network administrator for the West Virginia University (WVU) Institute of Technology.

"The first problems we noticed were when [peer-to-peer music sharing service] Napster got popular," McDermott observes. "WVU was getting letters from lawyers about movies and songs being shared from our IP addresses."

The legal brouhaha began not long after WVU Tech put connectivity in its dorms. The school didn't have much recourse. It couldn't rip out that connectivity, and it didn't immediately see a way to optimally manage the network in such a way as to deal with the new strains being put on it.

"Bandwidth is always a limited resource," observes McDermott. "In our campus, we share bandwidth with WVU and some other regional campuses, and it was becoming difficult for the learning and administrative side of the school to transfer information across the Internet."
http://www.line56.com/articles/defau...ArticleID=4458

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15x faster than dialup downloads, Sat-Speed offers satellite internet access

German internet access provider Sat-Speed is to launch pre-paid broadband internet access via Astra satellite, a European first. The company is offering the service across the continent, with the pre- paid cards allowing 357 minutes online.

The connection only works downstream, at a speed of up to 768 kbps, with upload offered via traditional telephone lines.

Users need a digital satellite receiver, a DVB card and telephone internet access.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15332

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Scottish Hydro-Electric offers power- line broadband to rural Scotland

Scottish Hydro-Electric has launched a service providing broadband internet access via electric sockets, with its commercial roll-out beginning with the town of Stonehaven.

The electric company has been trialling the service in Crieff and Campbeltown, two rural villages in the north of Scotland, for the last year, which will continue to receive the service.

The company is calling the technology behind the service Powerline Communication, and it offers high-speed internet access in any room of the house via any standard electrical outlet without any new wires or cables.

As they are so remote, neither of the communities that hosted the trials previously had any broadband internet access, and Scottish Hydro-Electric is hoping that they will be able to fill this rural gap in high-speed internet access service provision where traditional ADSL or cable internet access offerings are absent.

Subscriptions will cost roughly E36 (£25) for a month’s service, including the necessary plug and modem.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15329

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Netherlands No Hacker Haven
Daithí Ó hAnluain

Contrary to implications in recent media reports, Dutch lawyers say their small European country shouldn't be held up as the poster child for file-sharing and copyright violation.

A court case against file-sharing service Kazaa helped stir up the confusion. Dutch royalties agency Buma/Stemra sought an injunction against Kazaa to stop it from distributing a file-sharing utility and allowing copyrighted material to be swapped on its network. But the judges in the case said Kazaa could not be responsible for the illegal actions of others. Buma/Stemra has appealed the decision to the Dutch Supreme Court.

But in the meantime the rumor has spread that the Netherlands is a shelter for file-sharing companies. Lawyers on both sides of the Dutch Kazaa case say that's just not true.

"The Netherlands is no haven for peer-to-peer computing," said Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, a partner at Solv, the Dutch law firm representing Kazaa.

Thijm's opponents in the court action agreed. "This case does not mean that the Netherlands is a legal-free haven," said Buma/Stemra spokesman George Knops.

No matter the outcome of the Kazaa case, other file-sharing companies could still face legal action in the Netherlands. And even if Kazaa wins the appeal, the judgment would apply to Kazaa alone and won't prevent the company from being sued by someone else.

Moreover, the European Union Copyright Directive has begun work to synthesize copyright law throughout the union's 15 member countries, including the Netherlands. That, too, could affect the legal status of file-sharing companies.

As Dutch case law stands, file sharing is legal and companies that distribute file-sharing utilities are not responsible for how people use the services -- at least in the Netherlands.

"The Netherlands is the only country in the world where that issue is clear, but I'm very much against describing the country as a (piracy) 'haven,'" said Thijm. "It's not."

The confusion seems to have arisen largely thanks to Steven Phenix, publicist for a Dutch company called the Honest Thief who has been described as the "P.T. Barnum of tech" by his employer, the Alliant Group, an Austin, Texas, PR company.

The Honest Thief, a trade name for Dutch company PGR (an offshoot of construction consultancy CBB), announced its launch thus:

"Call (file sharing) shoplifting if you want. In the Netherlands we call it good business," said Pieter Plass, CEO of CBB, in a statement. Coached by Phenix, Plass declared that he wants to make the Netherlands to file sharing what "Switzerland is to banking."

In fairness to Phenix and Plass, they never suggested the Netherlands was already a shelter for file-sharing companies. Phenix simply came up with a hugely successful way to announce his client's new product -- the media stampede did the rest.

In the meantime, the stunt has resulted in widespread coverage, logging more than 100 stories.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58007,00.html

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OIT copes with illegal file sharing
An information security officer helps deal with copyright violations
Sara Gundell

With the rising popularity of file sharing, universities such as Portland State have taken on the responsibility of stopping the transfer of illegally procured files on, or within, campus computer systems.

The PSU Acceptable Use Policy states, "Copying software protected by copyright" is a violation of that policy, which could result in disciplinary action.

The recent actions against file sharing have been brought about since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, which obligates Internet providers and universities to report any found copyright abusers.

PSU was forced to start dealing with file-sharing and copyright violators when the DMCA went into effect.

However, according to PSU's information security officer Cory Bell, they did not begin to get a significant amount of complaints from copyright holders until last year.

Bell was hired by the university in May 2002 to develop an information security program. The program's tasks include ensuring the campus is in complete compliance with state and federal laws and regulations, including those established by the DMCA.
http://www.dailyvanguard.com/vnews/d.../3e682a6576717

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Fiber optic for your castle
That’s what I call “High-Speed” – 75x faster than DSL/Cable!

How High Are You? How ‘bout a blinding 100 Mbps? But lot’s of fine print and usage restrictions including automatic cut-offs every eight hours and a five gig limit. But still, 100Mbps! http://www.donobi.com/services/inter...cess/fiber.php

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Coax Rules Broadband
Mary Jander

The ongoing popularity of so-called "master planned communities" (MPCs) in the U.S. heralds growth in broadband services to home users, according to a recent report from In-Stat/MDR.

Sadly, though, this growth could be hampered by several factors, including a lack of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) facilities.

Nearly 75 percent of residential MPC developers surveyed for the report said the homes they're building in new developments contain broadband links. But most access links are cable-based, in part because the cost of FTTH is still comparatively high.

Upshot? Even though service revenues in MPCs are set to grow on average more than 60 percent annually for the next five years, most services will run over hybrid fiber coax (HFC) networks.



"Currently fiber accounts for ~18% of deployments. I expect to see HFC deployments account for a larger share of connected homes than FTTH throughout the forecasted period," writes In-Stat/MDR analyst Amy Cravens, in an email today.

There are other potential roadblocks to the provisioning of sophisticated "triple play" voice, data, and video services in MPCs, according to the report. These include developers' lack of expertise in broadband services (which may in turn lead them to opt out of fiber on price alone) and the traditionally slow pace of development buildouts. Another deal-stopper is the absence of the kinds of services that might encourage the use of fiber.

Indeed, some observers have expressed concern about the slow stateside adoption of residential broadband. Compared with other nations, such as China and Korea, the U.S. is far behind. Some FTTH proponents say recent legislation could help promote the use of fiber, but this view has met with skepticism in other quarters.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=29462

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Who's getting burned?
Unauthorized copying of CDs is a blessing or a curse, depending on which part of the business you're in
Maurice Bridge

It's a lovely image, and it makes Ric Arboit crazy. Swollen Members, the hip- hop crew whose records are distributed by Vancouver-based Nettwerk Productions, where Arboit is president, show up for an autograph session in a record store. The Members, to put it mildly, have an image that suggests they do things their own way, and if you don't like it, tough. Knee-jerk respect isn't in it, and they pride themselves on their underground cred. But when a kid proudly hands band member Mad Child a home-burned CD to autograph, it's a struggle. "He gets pissed off," admits Arboit, "but he ends up signing it because these are his fans."

Arboit gets a little choked himself. "We've had unbelievable success at MuchMusic with these artists. We've had great radio play, but I just barely sold a hundred thousand [CDs] in this country," he laments. "A record like that should be two hundred thousand, on its way to three hundred thousand."

No market or industry player has escaped the heat from the explosive growth of unauthorized music file-sharing over the Internet and home-burned CD copying, and Nettwerk has felt its share. "The first thing is that catalogue doesn't mean what it used to mean, so you're always looking for that instant hit so you can get the cash-flow running again. "Overall we're down 20, 25 per cent in sales [of recorded music]."

Brian Thompson, category manager for the A&B Sound chain, which sells recorded music from Victoria to Winnipeg, supports Arboit's figures. He cites retail-industry numbers showing CD sales across Canada down 15 per cent in 2002 from the previous year.

While he's concerned, he's not panicking.

"It's not the first time the business has flattened out," he says. "It's the most it's ever been, but a lot of people just automatically point the finger at downloading, and what they're not realizing is that in the '70s and the '80s, the same kind of copying existed with blank tapes."
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/news...BE4DB98BCFA%7D

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No Short List To Be Valenti's Successor, Yet
City's Top Lobbyist Says Plan Requested
Frank Ahrens

Jack Valenti, long considered Washington's top lobbyist as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said recent speculation that he is stepping down is premature but acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he has asked the major movie studios to put a succession plan in place.

"I told them that I didn't have a date in mind on which I was going to leave but I think it's wise -- every corporate chieftain wants to have some kind of plan in place for succession," Valenti said. "I may be here at the end of this year, I may be here at the end of next year. My contract is evergreen and I'll stay as long as the companies want me to stay on, and I choose to stay as long as I can do 15-hour days without collapsing."


As head of the MPAA and its international arm, the Motion Picture Association, since 1966, Valenti lobbies Capitol Hill on behalf of Hollywood's seven major motion picture studios -- 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal Studios Inc., Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures Corp.

"I have some ideas [about potential successors] I'm going to be talking with our companies about over the next few months," he said.

With a salary of more than $1 million per year, Valenti has managed over the years to unite the frequently warring studios into a potent political force. He helped establish the movie ratings system in 1968 and, in recent years, has focused his attention on copyright protection for movies, particularly stopping piracy of movies over the Internet and illegal overseas DVD-copying.

Although Valenti remains widely respected in Washington and in Hollywood, sources said yesterday that there is frustration with the MPAA's focus on DVD piracy at a time when illegal distribution of films over the Internet is a rising problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2003Mar7.html





Digital Rights
Rep. Zoe Lofgren

Peer-to-Peer Networks

There is growing consensus that advanced peer-to-peer applications are the next “killer app” that will drive growth in the sagging computer hardware, software and equipment industries, as businesses and consumers demand faster and more powerful PCs. Peer-to-peer applications also have the potential to finally give consumers a reason to embrace broadband.

Given this potential, I cannot support efforts to grant copyright holders the power to sabotage peer-to-peer networks. Illegal file-sharing is a major problem. But we should not create one problem to solve another.

One of the most disturbing parts of the current “self-help” proposal is that once again, the interests of the consumer are being overlooked. According to the RIAA’s own figures, there have been 120 million downloads of KaZaA and 70 million downloads of Morpheus. To some, that simply means there are millions of “pirates.” But what it really says is that consumers want digital distribution.

We can continue to debate the legality of “spoofing,” “decoys” and “interdiction,” but the problem of online piracy will not be solved until consumers are given what they want – digital distribution that is affordable, secure and user-friendly.
http://www.house.gov/lofgren/congress/peer_to_peer.htm


Balance Act of 2003

For over one hundred years, copyright law meant to strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright holders and the interests of society. On the one hand, copyright seeks to encourage and reward an author’s creative works. But as the Supreme Court stated in Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, “[p]rivate motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts….”

The challenge today is to maintain the traditional balance in the digital age by finding ways to prevent and punish digital pirates without treating every consumer as one. Digital technology lets pirates make perfect copies of copyrighted works to distribute over the Internet. At the same time, digital technology lets copyright holders control how consumers enjoy the books, music and movies they lawfully purchase.

Contrary to the intent of Congress, the DMCA has been used to legitimize this control over consumer uses. It’s been used to prohibit lawful users from circumventing technical restrictions, even to pursue their fair use rights.

This conduct altered the balance. My bill, H.R. 1066, the Balance Act, seeks to restore it. Without utilizing government mandates or other prescriptive measures that will ultimately only stifle innovation, it gives lawful consumers the tools to enjoy digital entertainment in their home or car, or on their favorite mobile device. Consumers have demanded this flexibility. It is time to heed their demands.

Ultimately, this ideal will also help copyright holders. The only lasting solution to digital piracy is a legitimate alternative that is affordable, reliable, secure and respectful of consumer rights and expectations. Providing room for technological innovation will also spur economic growth and lead to more jobs.

This is the start of a long discussion. Consumers are poised to work with the technology and entertainment industries to ensure that in the future, copyrights are protected, innovation is encouraged, and legitimate rights and expectations are respected.
http://www.house.gov/lofgren/congres...tal_rights.htm

Balance Act PDF
http://www.house.gov/lofgren/congres...alance2003.pdf

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Holding back the flood
Kevin Werbach

The media industries are under siege. The reason is simple: these industries depend on forms of control and artificial scarcities that are incompatible with digital distribution. Hillary Rosen understood this. The much-hated CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who just resigned, spent almost as much energy badgering her own industry behind the scenes as she did fighting peer-to-peer file-sharing. Unfortunately, she had more success on the
latter front. Many of the leaders of the content industries want to fight rear-guard actions as long as they possibly can.

The old guard won a victory when the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to uphold the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In effect, the court allowed copyright to be extended indefinitely and retroactively, keeping countless works out of the public domain. The decision, along with the RIAA's effectively in crushing Napster, seems to suggest that the content industries are winning. Not so fast.

In fact, we're now in a transitional phase. Reformers such as Larry Lessig, who challenged the copyright extension before the Supreme Court, are pushing new models. In December, Lessig and others launched Creative Commons, which wants to make it easier for content creators to distribute their works with less-restrictive licenses. Meanwhile, the music and movie industries are trying out a variety of licensed digital distribution services, including PressPlay, MusicNet,
MovieLink, and most recently Echo, a joint venture of music retailers. In recent months, established companies have acquired the key digital rights management technologies and patents of InterTrust and Liquid Audio, no doubt with similar goals.

Most of these efforts will fail. They don't provide a good enough user experience, especially given the alternatives. Over time, though, the great Darwinian force of the market will produce better options.
http://www.europemedia.net/showfeatu...ticleID=15307#

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Few U of Washington students show up to discuss dorm bandwidth caps
Kyle Arnold

A group of only about a dozen students showed up at McMahon Hall last night to discuss the bandwidth caps that were placed on the residence halls last spring. According to student senate Chair Sean Kellogg, there seemed to be virtually no public notification about the event.

Kellogg voiced a similar concern about the original implementation of the bandwidth cap on the dorms.

At the forum, the few students who were there sounded off on Computing and Communications (C&C) and Housing and Food Services’ (HFS) decision to cap bandwidth to the dorms without first consulting students.

“I just felt like I plugged in my Internet one day and certain things didn’t work,” said Kellogg. “It would have been nice if we had more notification and opportunity for input into the decision.”

The controversy over capping bandwidth to the dorms started last spring when C&C discovered that about 40 percent of the campus’ bandwidth was being consumed by the dorms.

“In hindsight, we would have probably had student input on the decision,” said HFS Director Paul Brown. “But we felt that we could have hours and hours of discussion and come to the same decision.”

Part of the cap limited peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing, making it much less efficient and practically unusable.

“We wanted to make sure that the cap didn’t hinder educational uses for the Internet, so we limited the [p2p] sharing,” said Oren Sreebny, assistant director of client services for C&C.

According to Sreebny, p2p file sharing is still present, but now a majority of the bandwidth from the dorms is used by Internet browsing.
http://thedaily.washington.edu/news....-Token.Count=6

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Antiwar Song, With Whimsy
Neil Strauss

"Now how many people must get killed?" begins the latest antiwar refrain from the pop world. "For oil families' pockets to get filled?" The song is "In a World Gone Mad," which was released yesterday with no advance fanfare by the Beastie Boys. Though not commercially available as a single, the song is available free at the Beastie Boys Web site (www.beastieboys.com) and is being distributed to disc jockeys, who were unaware of it until they began receiving copies yesterday.

"We were working on our record, and we realized that by the time we finished a record that it might be a bit late to get out some of the things we wanted to comment on," said Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, speaking by telephone yesterday. "So we figured we'd finish the song and post it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/ar...ic/12POPL.html

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Net pirates outsmart record labels
Jane Wakefield

Slowly but surely the music industry seems to be losing its grip on its most precious asset as illegitimate online services continue to attract millions of its consumers.

Music is now not just a packaged commodity to be bought with well-earned pocket money on a Saturday morning, but a 24-hour service, available free from hundreds of online sources at the touch of a mouse, albeit illegally.

And when a self-confessed "accused, international internet pirate," such as Wayne Rosso, head of file-sharing firm Grokster is invited to a conference hosted by the Financial Times, then it would seem the music industry's greatest bete noir has definitely gone mainstream.

The music industry is alienating its own customers, Mr Rosso told delegates at the conference.

Legitimate services struggling

I think they deserve to be pirated against. Any business that complacent and arrogant towards the market doesn't deserve the support of loyal customers

"The record industry has become the National Rifle Association of showbusiness. It has declared jihad on its customers who it calls pirates," he said.

File-sharing services such as Grokster now boast millions more customers than Napster, the original file-swapping music service, had at its peak.

"Last year, around about the stage that file-sharing was ramping up, there was a huge window of opportunity for the record industry to do something before it became too ingrained but that moment has disappeared," said Mark Mulligan, senior analyst at Jupiter Research.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2826111.stm

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Time to end online music battles
Record labels need to think again about how to deal with the phenomenon of file-sharing over the internet.
Bill Thompson.

It looks like the battle over online music is going to continue for some time, but it is at least becoming clearer that even the big corporations realise something has to be done to break the deadlock between licensed and unlicensed download services.

The current situation is getting ridiculous. In Australia, the police turned up with a warrant at the offices of the country's largest ISP, Telstra, and searched its servers for evidence of subscribers who have been downloading unauthorised music files.

The record industry claims that music worth over $35 million has been downloaded through peer-to-peer services accessed over Telstra's network and is looking for evidence to mount a prosecution.

In the United States, Verizon, another ISP, is still in court arguing that it should not be forced to tell the music companies the name of one of its subscribers, whether or not the person in question has been hosting unauthorised copies of music files on their computer.

Sharman Networks, who run the Kazaa file-sharing service, is about to be sued in the US even though its headquarters are in Australia and it is incorporated in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. And the Recording Industry Association of America has admitted attempts to fill P2P servers with corrupt or empty files in order to make the networks less attractive to users. All in all, the unlicensed services are under serious attack, legally and technologically.

Yet file-sharing continues to thrive. Grokster claims 10 million users a month.

A recent survey commissioned by the company found that far from being stereotyped US college students, 71% of its users are between the ages of 25 and 54, their average household income is over $50,000,and 53% have a college degree.

At the same time, digital broadcaster pseudo.com has announced plans for a weekly one-hour TV show about rap music that will be distributed for free over the Kazaa file-sharing network. The programme will include adverts, and provides an interesting alternative to stuttering streamed video from MTV.com or the other online TV stations.

And this week BT's dotmusic service announced that it will offer "unlimited" downloads to its subscribers - although the quotes around unlimited seem to be an important part of the offer, since you can only listen to the music you get on your PC and have to pay if you want to burn it to a CD.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2828565.stm

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"Like martial arts, where you use the opponent's force against them, we want to use the pirate networks' software against them."
Digital Decoys Are Making Frustrated Pirates Say 'Arrr'
Gil Kaufman

If you've tried to download Linkin Park's new single, "Somewhere I Belong," on peer- to-peer networks like KaZaA or LimeWire lately, chances are you downloaded files that looked legit but sounded like — well, something that rhymes with "legit."

File traders are used to weeding through the chaff to get to the wheat, but over the past year a new tactic, "spoofing," has emerged in the fight against file trading. Spoofing is the practice of spamming trading networks with decoy files in an effort to frustrate traders, and, hopefully, drive them to seek music from one of the industry's legitimate downloading destinations.

Not only is spoofing on the rise, but a new company called Covenant is recruiting file traders to post bogus files for them on peer-to-peer networks with the promise of cash and prizes.

Bogus downloads have been around for years, but in the old days it was usually the result of unskilled traders posting corrupted files. As major labels increase the pressure on networks where files are traded illegally and try to drive traffic to legal download services such as MusicNet, Pressplay and Rhapsody, spoofing has emerged as an effective, legal means to combat pirating, industry sources say.

"We certainly are using a number of different countermeasures to make sure people aren't downloading illegally," said Jeanne Meyer, a senior vice president at EMI, whose parent company's roster includes Coldplay, Norah Jones, Kylie Minogue and Radiohead.

Though Meyer wouldn't say whether EMI has hired spoofers, she said she was "aware" of industry leader Overpeer. EMI's goal, she explained, is to deter people from using illegal file-sharing networks while also giving consumers the music they want, the way they want it, and making sure artists are compensated for their work.

One band whose label appears to be taking an aggressive tack on the spoofing front is Linkin Park. On a recent afternoon, attempts to download "Somewhere I Belong" from the LimeWire network resulted in about 60 percent bogus files. Additionally, songs from upcoming Madonna and Blur albums appear to have been heavily spoofed.

The spoofs featured looped messages from Linkin Park bandmembers in which they mention the title of the album and single, its release date and discuss the making of it for approximately the same duration as the three-and-a-half- minute single. The band's label, Warner Bros., would not comment on the bogus files.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/147...headlines=true

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Microsoft Complaint Leads to Site Shutdown

According to reports released Monday, Windows news site Neowin was shut down for nearly 24 hours last week after Microsoft accused the site of infringing on its copyrights.

Microsoft's Internet investigator sent a take-down notice on Tuesday, say reports, alleging that the site infringed on copyrights relating to the recently-released Windows XP Peer-to-Peer Software Development Kit, apparently as a result of a posting in an online feedback forum.

In this unusual case, instead of the routine legal filing being sent to the site, it was delivered to the upstream Internet service provider responsible for Neowin's connection. The provider responded by pulling the entire site from the Internet. Neowin declined to identify the ISP, but sources reportedly confirmed that Microsoft had contacted Neowin's upstream provider Hurricane Electric Internet Services.

Neowin and its Web host, Invision Power Services Hosting, said the incident was Microsoft's fault for denying the site a chance to fix the problem before taking the matter to the ISP.

Takedown notices are common under 1998's Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which offers ISPs immunity from liability if they remove material after receiving notice of alleged infringement from a copyright holder. The Neowin case is unusual, however, because take-down requests generally result in the removal of the offending material, rather than the entire site.

Microsoft says the removal of the entire site was not the company's intent, and says it communicated that to the ISP in a second email. The company has said it is working with Neowin to see the situation resolved.
http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/neo031103.cfm

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Project JXTA passes "million downloads" milestone
Robin 'Roblimo' Miller -

JXTA is a Sun-sponsored Open Source project that is the very embodiment of the company's oft-repeated "the network is the computer" mantrum. The idea of the project is to allow different many computers and computer-like devices to share information directly instead of using a central server. And JXTA is starting to get used in practical ways, so this is not just hot air or a "someday" dream.

I listened to part of a Sun "executive briefing" and telephone press conference about JXTA on March 4, held to boast about the "million downloads" number and announce the relase of JXTA 2.0. Some of the reporters' questions showed that the JXTA P2P concept is not as well-understood as it could be. My favorite was the one about why one million downloads should be considered a big number when P2P programs like Napster and Gnutella and their many variants have had many, many millions of downloads. I could almost hear the expressions on the faces of the Sun people on the other end of the phone as they tried to explain that the number of downloads for an enterprise-oriented developer product like JXTA cannot rationally be compared with the number of downloads for an end-user "consumer" product like a music-sharing program.

Apparently the confusion came about from the fact that both Napster and JXTa do "peer to peer filesharing." Except JXTA does not have the same purpose as Napster, Gnutella or their workalikes. It is something entirely different.
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/03...2.shtml?tid=11

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Using common tax filing software could be hazardous to your identity.
Becky Worley

Security Firm PivX Solutions has released two advisories warning users that the data entered into tax programs H&R Block's TaxCut and Intuit's TurboTax is stored as an unencrypted file on the user's hard drive.

The H&R Block files with .sbr extensions can be opened with a plain text editor, and easily viewed in programs such as Notepad or Wordpad. The .tax files from TurboTax can only be fully viewed if opened in TurboTax with no password necessary. Opening the TurboTax .tax files with a text editor will only net a name and social security number, which can itself be fodder for an identity thief.

Last year, some 15 million people filed their returns electronically using TurboTax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Tonight on "Tech Live," find out how to protect yourself from identity thieves who could prey on taxpayers using these programs, which are critical to electronically filing tax returns to the IRS.

PivX Solutions' Geoff Shively warned of a worst case scenario in which a misconfigured peer-to-peer file-sharing application could make tax data files available to anyone searching for the correct file extensions.

"If someone made their entire drive available to file-sharing services or accidentally put the .sbr or .tax files in their shared folder, an identity thief would have all the information they needed to open a line of credit in a victim's name," Shively said.

Opening your data up to such theft would be a major oversight, and something all users of P2P applications should be wary of.
http://www.techtv.com/news/security/...420432,00.html

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SurfControl Unveils Instant Messaging and Peer-to-Peer Strategy
Press Release

SurfControl (London: SRF; Nasdaq Europe: SRFC), the world's number one Web and e-mail filtering company, today highlighted the need for organizations to have in place a total content security management solution combining Web and e- mail filtering with artificial intelligence and next generation technologies. SurfControl shared this vision at the Lehman Brothers Global Software & IT Services Conference at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Half Moon Bay, California.

Unveiling the Company's strategy for helping enterprises manage Instant Messaging (IM) and peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, SurfControl advised companies that their businesses are at risk without a comprehensive filtering solution that addresses all aspects of Internet usage in the workplace. Codenamed "Project Blackbeard," SurfControl said its new product will provide companies with powerful and easy-to-deploy content filtering tools to manage the growing network security risks posed by the adoption of IM and P2P file sharing in the workplace.

SurfControl pointed out the importance of the continual evolution and development of filtering software so that customers have the most advanced filtering solution available. This approach has enabled the company to further extend its market leadership position.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030311/dctu035_1.html

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Software pioneer Kapor quits Groove Networks

Mitch Kapor, a software pioneer and privacy advocate, has quit the board of Groove Networks Inc. after it sold collaboration software to a controversial Department of Defense surveillance project.

Groove has sold its eponymous software to the Total Information Awareness Office, which is developing a data-mining system to identify potential terrorists.

Kapor helped launch the computer software revolution in the 1980s by co-founding Lotus Development Corp., which developed trailblazing programs such as Notes and the 1-2-3 spreadsheet. Kapor left Lotus in 1987, and the company was purchased by International Business Machines Corp. in 1995.

Since then, Kapor co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyberspace civil liberties group, and invested in several companies, including Massachusetts-based Groove.

More recently, Kapor has been developing an open-source information manager called Chandler through his nonprofit Open Source Applications Foundation.

Groove, founded in October 1997, has raised a total of $155 million. Its software employs peer-to-peer networking technology to allow users to collaborate with colleagues over the Internet. Documents can be worked on by several people at once and are instantly updated with any changes.

Last week, the company announced it had raised $38 million in new venture capital from Microsoft, Intel and Accel Partners. At the same time, it announced it was cutting 58 jobs, or 20 percent of its work force.

The Total Information Office, led by former Reagan administration national security adviser John Poindexter, is attempting to develop a terrorist-identification system that could sift through financial, telephone, travel and medical records of citizens.

A figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, Poindexter was convicted on charges of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing a congressional investigation. The verdicts were overturned on appeal.

Last month, the TIA effort ran into resistance in Congress because of privacy concerns. Congress passed an amendment barring the system from gathering information on Americans without prior authorization from Congress.

Kapor said he is troubled by the project.

``I'm a very committed civil libertarian, and along with other civil libertarians, I have significant concerns about the potential damage to our freedoms from the TIA project,'' he said.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5367733.htm

At a benefit dinner during the CodeCon 2003 convention, Kapor was asked why he was increasingly involved in civil rights and the open source software movement, and less on the commercial side.

"I lost my taste for it," he said.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29712.html

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Flashbacks for free
Marc Saltzman

— Most seasoned computer gamers grin ear to ear when asked to recall the most memorable moments in PC gaming history, be it taking over the world in Civilization,
going back in time in Day of the Tentacle or rescuing the princess in Prince of Persia.

But most, if not all, of the aforementioned "old skool" computer games from the late '80s and early '90s are no longer sold - not even in those value-priced compilation packages.

So, are players out of luck if they'd like to take Ultima IV for another spin? And how exactly do you plan to load Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards on that 5.25-inch floppy disk you snagged at a garage sale?

Even though they were "abandoned" by their respective publishers years ago, thousands of computer games from yesteryear are still alive today - in cyberspace, and for free.

If you know where to look, that is.

Introducing "abandonware." Coined roughly five years ago, abandonware simply refers to computer software - such as an operating system, application or PC game -- that is no longer marketed, distributed or supported by the company that published it.

Once the software has been discontinued and cannot be easily purchased through retail channels or on-line stores, it should become public domain, argue abandonware advocates.

Therefore, these "software saviors" (as they'd like to be considered), take it upon themselves to use the Internet as an effective distribution medium to share the now- defunct programs, be it via Web sites, newsgroups or peer-to-peer file-swapping programs such as Kazaa.

The abandonware providers claim companies are not losing any revenue, since the software is no longer accessible, so it should be freely distributed for those who want to enjoy it. Some believe software must also be at least five years old to become truly "abandoned", though not all share this common addendum to the definition.

But in the eyes of the law, the act of sharing abandonware is no different than "piracy" or "warez" -- the unauthorized duplication and distribution of computer software. Those opposed to abandonware claim the providers of old programs are false in the assumption that the software becomes "freeware" over time, or if a company stops supporting it.

But that doesn't stop players with a penchant for the games of yesteryear.

"Game fans download and play classic games out of nostalgia" explains Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with Jupiter Research (www.jup.com).
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...zmar11/GTStory

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No Means No!
Yikes - Brigham U. PR Machine Takes No Prisoners
Joshua Giguiere

During the age of black and white movies, great ships sailed the seven seas. Most of the ships carried cargo and voyagers eager to settle a new continent. Others carried men bent on theft and murder. These men were known as pirates.

Among the crew there was usually one with a wooden leg who hobbled about using words like “matey.” Another wore an eye patch, and don’t forget the parrot that screeched “walk the plank” perched atop the shoulder of the ship’s captain.

Today’s pirates dress a little different. They usually don blue jeans and a T-shirt, and can be found sitting quietly in front of a computer waiting for their file to download.

They don’t use swords or great booming cannons either, instead their chosen weapon is software such as KAZAA.

Some of these modern day swashbucklers even carry a BYU-Idaho ID card in their wallet.

It is no secret that media piracy is against the law, yet many BYU-I students continue to defy the law and download music and movies, assistant dean Michael Lehman said.

Most recently a stolen version of the movie, The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers has been circulating among students, Shane Cole, university copyright agent, said.

According to law, those who willfully infringe copyright law can be fined up to $150,000 for each act of piracy. If the plaintiff, or suing party, can prove that the violation cost their company more than the preset amount, they can sue for a larger amount.

“A student would spend 30 years paying off the fine” Cole said.
http://www.byui.edu/scroll/031103/031103/news5.html

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Martian NetDrive offers wireless file sharing
Peter Cohen

Martian Technologies LLC is aiming squarely at home networks with its new Martian NetDrive, a cross-platform, networked storage device that provides about 40GB worth of file sharing capacity along with integrated wireless networking.

Network Attached Storage (NAS) eschews the traditional dedicated computer model for a file server with a consolidated, sole-purpose device that typically occupies less space, consumes less power and costs a lot less than the traditional server. NAS is certainly nothing new -- several vendors offer solution for SOHO, workgroup and enterprise environments -- but what makes Martian's solution special is its out-of-the-box support for IEEE 802.11b, the same protocol used by Apple's AirPort products. The company claims the Martian NetDrive is the first wirelessly-connected network storage device.

The Martian NetDrive supports Macs, PCs and Linux boxen with the ability to share files or make backups. The device is self-configuring with DHCP, and uses a Web-based interface that makes it possible for you to configure it from a standard browser. You can also add password protection for extra security.

The Martian NetDrive measures about 2.5 inches high, 11.5 inches wide and about 10.5 inches deep. It works without a fan, also. If you're not on a wireless network but you're planning on adding one soon, there's a built-in 10/100Mbps Ethernet port that can jack into a wired network. What's more, the company makes available a "Basic" model without the wireless networking all together.

The Martian NetDrive Wireless costs US$399, and the Martian NetDrive Basic is $379. Both are available now; visit the Web site for details.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0303/11.martian.php

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The Proffesor Is In

You asked Stanford Law professor, author and general voice of reason Lawrence Lessig some great questions about rights, law, and the electronic world. Lessig has has gotten back with some fittingly thoughtful answers -- some optimistic, some discomfiting, some biting. Read on to find out what he's got to say.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/inter....shtml?tid=158

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Wrapped up in Crypto Bottles
Stefan Krempl
A talk with cyber-rights pioneer John Perry Barlow about Digital Restrictions Management and the future of human knowledge

John Perry Barlow or JPB for short is maybe best known for three things: he was the song writer for the Grateful Dead and is still supporting music bands. He wrote the Cyberspace Independence Declaration seven years ago during a visit to the World Economic Forum. And he tried to define a brand new way of thinking about copyright in an well-received article that was published in Wired magazine. Recently, the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to Berlin to fight the German version of the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DMCA) together with the civil rights organization privatkopie.net. Stefan Krempl sat down with him to look forward and back in the history of Cyberspace and copyright.

There are new laws for copyright in the digital age drafted here in Europe everywhere at the moment. What do you think is at stake? Why is this an important issue people should care about?

John Perry Barlow: There are three things at stake. The first is, extending a monopoly to a few large organizations about what people can or cannot know and express. This is really about the control of information and it has the potential to become over time a kind of private totalitarianism. That is not an exaggeration since it has already happened in the United States. The reason that the U.S. is behaving in the completely irrational and dangerous way that it is, is because we have erected private totalitarianism and are suffering a reality distortion field that is as dangerous as the one erupted in Germany in the 1930s. But not being driven by the government, but being driven by the media. Being driven by ourselves. I fear erecting a system which highly advantages a very few corporate channels for human intellectual exchange.

What are the other points?

John Perry Barlow: Secondly, I fear that Digital Rights Management today is Political Rights Management tomorrow. That embedding these kinds of technological controls into the very architecture of computing has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future. Because you're putting at a very basic level surveillance capacity, control over what information may or may not travel, and a whole range of things in the architecture that can be very easily used to suppress dissent. Third, I am very afraid, that by wrapping a large amount of human knowledge up into bottles that can no longer be opened except at a price, much of it will be wrapped up in crypto bottles that in a very fairly short time cannot be opened even at a price. A huge amount of human creativity will simply be lost for future generations.

So you're mainly worried that the content industries in cooperation with the help of hardware and software makers and their DRM techniques are taking over control of the data universe?

John Perry Barlow: It's not the data universe only, it's human conversation. They want to turn it into a one-way flow that they have entirely monetized. I look at the collective human mind as a kind of ecosystem. They want to clear cut it. They want to go into the rainforest of human thought and mow the thing down.

Many people are worried about the efforts of the computer industry to establish a new computing model based on TCPA and Microsoft's Palladium.


John Perry Barlow: They should be.

More –
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/14337/1.html

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A Real Hollywood Horror Story
New technologies may do to movies what MP3 did to music

Picture a fellow named George sitting in his living room on Sunday evening. He's watching a digital playback of the latest episode of The West Wing. Zapping through commercials, he starts yawning and decides to finish watching it in bed. With a flick of his remote, he wirelessly dispatches the show to the bedroom TV. He also sends a copy via the Internet to his sister and asks her in an e-mail to make a DVD of the show to pass along to their mom.

This vision of the future is closer than you think. To date, Napster and its music-sharing offspring have reigned supreme as Hollywood's biggest headache. But four insurgent technologies that will make George's Sunday possible are fast picking up steam. Together, they promise to turn the gamut of copyrighted programming into convenient files that can be downloaded, stored, and shared almost as easily as e-mail. And this shift could happen quickly--within 18 months--because early forms of these technologies are here now.

The insurgency starts with compression, a new system to shrink digital files into smaller packages that are easier to send through networks. Step two is storage: Advances there put enough memory for shelves of movies into laptops or even handheld gizmos. The third technology is digital recording, such as the one used by TiVo Inc. (TIVO ), which is now being jammed into a host of devices and computers. And to link all of this programming, whether in a house or on campus, a new high- speed wireless system is emerging that can zap an episode of The Simpsons between laptops 50 times faster than most broadband connections. Add it all together, and Hollywood will be reaching for a bigger dose of aspirin.

The danger is evident. Unchecked, these advances spell the Napsterization of movies and the scorching of TV ad revenues. The threat already is pushing Tinseltown to raise two levels of defenses. The industry is hurrying to build safeguards into networks and computers to limit copying or transmission of copyrighted fare. And entertainment companies are pressing cases in court, suing companies, and pursuing individuals. "It's not just one fight," says Clay Shirky, a tech consultant and professor at New York University. "The entire [technology industry] is playing against music and movie companies."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3088_mz063.htm

[JackSpratts]

Paid to peer
Gerald Wee

I could get to love peer-to-peer computing.

Put simply, P2P computing is the sharing of computer resources and services by direct exchange between systems. These resources and services include the exchange of information, processing cycles, cache storage, and disk storage for files. It takes advantage of existing desktop computing power and networking connectivity, allowing economical clients to leverage their collective power to benefit the entire enterprise.

The heart of peer-to-peer computing (and the challenge) lies in the ability to actually harness these idle CPU cycles and excess storage capacity and convert them into useful, meaningful labour.

In these tough economic times (a common refrain, I know), I discovered that one can actually rent out one's computing power to entities who actually need it (yes, one actually gets paid!).

It seems that Porivo, a web site performance measurement company, offers a testing service called peerReview that measures the end-to-end performance of web applications from the customer's perspective. Rather than just rate performance within the backbone, it uses actual PCs logged onto the Net to give performance visibility all the way to the desktop.

While the amount paid isn't much (maybe a couple of dollars a month), it also doesn't cost you any time or money to use it, especially if you have your computer always turned on and hooked into an unlimited broadband account.
http://computerworld.com.sg/pcwsg.ns...D?OpenDocument

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A Metaphor's Metaphors
Arnold Kling

"Since the Internet has lowered distribution and reproduction costs, bad IP laws are more costly now than they were in the past. 150 year copyright terms just didn't matter much before Napster. A new IP regime needs to understand the economics of production for different types of ideas and tailor the right laws for the right circumstances. Personally, I'd like to see shorter copyright, no patents on business processes or software, and longer patents for drugs."

--Zimran Ahmed

Ahmed's intuition about intellectual property (IP) closely accords with my own. However, it is difficult to provide a rigorous justification for my thinking.

One tends to use metaphors when talking about IP. In fact, the very term "intellectual property" is itself a metaphor. Physical property is something that you can feel, touch, and take away from someone else. Knowledge has none of those characteristics. So why treat ideas or creative works as property at all?

As James DeLong points out, the philosophy that was influential in America at the time of our nation's birth emphasized "natural rights," including the right of a man to the fruits of his labor. Within that philosophical framework, the effort spent composing a creative work or developing an idea is labor, and the creator has a natural right to a reward for that labor. That remains a morally compelling argument for IP.

Another rationale for IP is purely utilitarian. Taking the existence of a creative work as given, the social optimum is to make it available to everyone, for nothing more than the cost to copy and distribute the work. With the Internet, the marginal cost of accessing digital music and text approaches zero, so that all else equal, creative work ought to be available for free.

However, all else is not equal. If creative works were available for free, there would be no reward for creators, and this would reduce the supply of creative works. Therefore, even if we were strictly utilitarians and had no belief in "natural rights," we might still support the concept of intellectual property in order to ensure the development of creative works.

Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine developed a theoretical argument suggesting that copyright laws are not necessary in order to protect IP. Douglas Clement provides a nice survey of the controversy surrounding their view.

The Boldrin-Levine argument is couched in mathematics, which makes it a bit unclear what is going on. My understanding of it can be articulated using a metaphor from horse racing.

A couple years ago, Laura Hillenbrand wrote what turned out to be a best-selling book about a racehorse named Seabiscuit. The horse's owner and trainer clearly had to go to considerable effort to evaluate and develop their racehorse.

People attempt to make copies of horses, in the process known as breeding. Because a champion like Seabiscuit is valuable for breeding purposes, the owner is able to earn rewards for selling the breeding services. Thus, the fact that a racehorse can be "copied" enhances rather than detracts from the wealth of the original owner.

The Boldrin-Levine paper makes a similar argument about copies of creative works. They suggest that because the first people to buy a creative work will capture value from copying that work, what they will pay for the first copy will be very high. Thus, copyright is not necessary. The owners of Seabiscuit did not need a copyright in order to capture the breeding value of their horse.

If Seabiscuit, the horse, does not need a copyright, why do we need a copyright for Seabiscuit the book? My guess is that the publisher, Ballantine Books, could not be sure ahead of time whether Seabiscuit would be a winner or an also-ran. The book was available to be copied before this uncertainty was resolved. Without copy protection, another publisher could wait for Ballantine's full line-up of books to come out, observe how they sell, and then choose to copy only the popular titles.

In contrast, the owner of the horse could wait until the quality of the horse was established before making the horse available to others to make copies. I can see how the Boldrin-Levine mechanism works for horses, but I have a hard time seeing it work for books.

I believe that music publishers should not be entitled to take legal action against file swappers. The metaphor I use for this is popcorn.

When I go to a movie theater, I never buy popcorn there. Even though I can afford the four bucks, I am offended by the price.

There are movie theaters that will not allow you to bring your own popcorn into the theater. Clearly, what they are thinking is that if they forbid you from bringing your own popcorn, then you will buy their popcorn. My reaction, however, is that this is just one more reason not to go to the movies (along with the deafening sound, obnoxious patrons, and Hollywood's predictable story lines).

Music publishers who go after file swappers are like movie theater owners who won't let you bring your own popcorn to the theater. They are simply alienating their customers while trying to protect a revenue stream that they were not going to get, anyway.

Baseball players and coaches always work on hitting technique. For example, a popular current saying is "short to, long through" meaning that hitters should try to drive directly into the ball as opposed to starting with a backswing or looping motion.

Suppose that I had been the person who came up with the concept of "short to, long through." Should Barry Bonds be required to get a license from me in order to use it? If you believe that, then you support the idea of business process patents.

Because business processes, like hitting techniques, depend so heavily on execution, the idea of granting them status as intellectual property is abhorrent. Patents on business processes make a mockery of the game and serve only to create opportunities for lawyers.

Drug companies go to considerable effort and expense in order to develop pharmaceuticals. The reward for this is a patent on the drug. The patent gives the developer control over the manufacturing license for a fixed period of time. The value of this license is the prize for finding the drug.

An alternative mechanism would be to offer prizes for drug development. There are foundations that are dedicated to dealing with particular diseases, such as breast cancer or diabetes. These foundations could offer prizes for the development of pharmaceuticals that achieve certain objectives. Money from the private foundations could be supplemented by government funding for prizes. My guess is that reducing the role of patents and increasing the role of prizes as incentives for drug research would help to shift resources away from research into solutions for hair loss and erectile dysfunction and toward research into solutions for illnesses that many people would regard as more important to address.

I think that the public policy issues that surround ideas and creative works require more than one metaphor. In fact, for many creative works, my controversial metaphor Content is Crap applies. That is, until the works have been sifted by a filter, they have no value.

For me, the overall topic is too complex to be resolved with a single formula or policy. The term "intellectual property" is overly broad. We need multiple metaphors.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/10...D=1051-030303B

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Keeping Honest People Honest
Edward W. Felten

At today's House committee hearing on the broadcast flag, Fritz Attaway of the MPAA used a popular (and revealing) argument: the purpose of the broadcast flag is "to keep honest people honest." This phrase is one of my pet peeves, since it reflects sloppy thinking about security.

The first problem with "keeping honest people honest" is that it's an oxymoron. The very definition of an honest person is that they can be trusted even when nobody is checking up on them. Nothing needs to be done to keep honest people honest, just as nothing needs to be done to keep tall people tall.

The second problem is more substantial. To the extent that "keeping honest people honest" involves any analytical thinking, it reflectss a choice to build a weak but conspicuous security mechanism, so that people know when they are acting outside the system designer's desires. (Mr. Attaway essentially made this argument at today's hearing.) The strategy, in other words, is to put a "keep out" sign on a door, rather than locking it. This strategy indeed works, if people are honest.

But this is almost never the kind of security technology that the "keeping honest people honest" crowd is advocating. In my experience, you hear this phrase almost exclusively from advocates of big, complicated, intrusive, systems that have turned out to be much weaker than planned. Having failed to build a technologically strong system, they say with cheerful revisionism that their goal all along was just to "keep honest people honest." Then they try to sell us their elaborate, clunky, expensive system.

The problem is that it's cheap and easy to build a "keep out" sign. If that's all you want -- if all you want is to help honest people keep track of their obligations -- then simple, noncoercive technology works fine. You don't need a big, bureaucratic initiative like the broadcast flag if that's your goal.

The funny thing here is that the MPAA is getting out in front of the curve. Usually vendors wait until their security technology has failed before they change their sales pitch to "keeping honest people honest."
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000306.html

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EU court hears opinions in landmark copyright case
David Lawsky

The European Court of Justice on Thursday weighed limits on the right to protect ideas through copyright, in a case that may have broad implications for intellectual property in Europe.

The case involves two United States companies which gather drug sales data in Germany and sell them to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

NDCHealth lawyers argued before a five-judge panel at the European Court of Justice that it should be allowed to license part of the intellectual property of its bigger, more established rival, IMS Health.

IMS Health lawyers said that if the firm were forced to license its intellectual property then every company could be forced to license away its competitive advantages. NDCHealth said circumstances in this case were special.

The European Commission, which has taken the side of IMS Health's rivals and has a separate case on the matter, backed up NDCHealth's views.

At issue is the collection of data for pharmaceutical companies. It is so important to drug firms planning sales strategies that IMS Health (nyse: RX - news - people) of Fairfield, Connecticut last year made $1.4 billion in the business world-wide. NDCHealth Corp (nyse: RX - news - people) of Atlanta, Georgia, made $150 million.

The companies combine data from several pharmacies in a single geographical area, allowing them to report the data anonymously.

IMS Health copyrighted its geographic survey areas and does not want to share them with NDCHealth, which has been trying to become competitive in the German market.

"The refusal to grant a license does not constitute an abuse," Stephen Barthelmess, the lawyer for IMS, told five members of the high court. He said copyright law gives firms temporary monopolies.

IMS Health sued NCDHealth in Frankfurt, accusing the upstart of poaching on its intellectual turf by copying the design of its geographic areas in Germany.

It was the Frankfurt regional court, Langericht Frankfurt Main, which asked the ECJ to resolve some of the thorny European Union legal issues in the case.
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/ne...rtr899117.html

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Anti-piracy swords drawn in theaters
A new trailer says film theft harms lower-rung industry workers.
Lorenza Munoz

After targeting colleges and companies and their computer users, Hollywood is taking its battle to curb illegal downloads to people who watch movies the old-fashioned way -- by purchasing a ticket.

When studio executives and movie theater operators gather this week at ShoWest in Las Vegas, 20th Century Fox will unveil a movie trailer intended to educate U.S. filmgoers about piracy, in particular illegal file-trading via services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

Initially, the two-minute trailer that puts a human face on the victims of piracy will be shown at most Regal Cinemas, the nation's largest theater chain. It will be unveiled Wednesday at ShoWest, which runs today through Thursday.

Fox, which had disclosed plans to create the trailer last fall at a conference in Aspen, Colo., declined to comment, but Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said the trailer will make the case that downloads and other piracy are really theft that takes an economic toll on individuals working in the movie industry such as makeup artists and set builders -- not just multimillion-dollar movie stars or directors.

"These are just hard-working people on the movie set," said Valenti. "They are not fat with compensation," and their livelihoods are at stake.

Among some students, the notion that a trailer could persuade anyone to stop downloading movies seems naïve, like the "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign. "It's become so acceptable to download movies and music off the Internet that people don't think it's wrong," said USC sophomore Jacqui Deelstra, 19. Added sophomore Art Priromprintr: "Nobody's going to think 'Oh, I'm hurting the movie industry right now' -- they don't care."

Despite the estimated 400,000 to 600,000 copies of movies downloaded daily, relatively few people choose to watch films on computer monitors and even fewer, for now, have the technical facility to play downloaded material on regular TV screens.
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/c...ore%2Dchannels

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Spill Over Effects between Media
Paul Szynol

Broadcast Flag technology, in order to stem the spread of online piracy, aims to prevent the unauthorized transmission of data across the Internet by embedding in the transmission "a sequence of digital bits . . . that signals that the program must be protected from unauthorized redistribution."

The pure principle argument against the Broadcast Flag is that it would "give Hollywood unwarranted control over the development of digital television (DTV) and related technologies to the detriment of creators and consumers of the technologies" (EFF.org).

A technical counterargument to the Broadcast Flag is the Internet's technological inability to sustain the kind of piracy envisioned by the entertainment industry. Downloading an entire DVD via a dial up connection, for instance, would be painfully slow, and few - if any - individuals would attempt to transmit an entire DVD through a telephone line. And current broadband transmission speeds, though faster, are still too slow to facilitate a convenient transmission of, say, an entire DVD. The relatively slow speed of transmission, in other words, is a solid argument against the use of the Broadcast Flag - there is no need for legal or technological devices that protect against unlikely crimes.

Indeed, Professor Felten has registered with the FCC this very objection: "It is easier and cheaper to record a movie on a VHS tape and send it through the mail than to record a digital broadcast and transmit it over the Internet, said Edward Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University." (Entertainment and computer industries face off over digital television copy protection).

CNN has just reported, however, that Stanford Linear Accelerator Center researchers have managed to send 6.7 gigs of data across 6,800 miles in just 58 seconds. And the article uses an apropos measuring cup: 6.7 gigs equals approximately 2 DVDs.

However far in the future this technology may be for the Internet proper, the general spirit of the innovation is, for Internet surfers, great news. Faster transmission speeds mean more information flow, easier access to data, and so on.

To Hollywood, however, faster transmission speeds are a threat, for they make possible the kind of online piracy the Broadcast Flag aims to prevent. Once a DVD can be delivered via the Internet in 30 seconds, online transmission will be far easier than sending a VHS tape in the mail.

If courts and legislatures are willing to anticipate a future with blazing online transmission speeds, then -- particularly given the current legal-political predisposition to overprotect copyright holders -- they will likely condone restrictive technologies like the Broadcast Flag. Developments in one medium will create spill over effects in another (a phenomenon which the Supreme Court recognized over half a century ago -- "[l]aws which hamper the free use of some instruments of communication thereby favor competing channels", the Court wrote in 1949). In this case, progress in one channel of communication -- the Internet -- might very well lead to the creation of laws that, at least for consumers, hamper a competing channel -- viz., broadcast.
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/mod...rticle&sid=984

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Entertainment and computer industries face off over digital television copy protection
David Ho

Hollywood and Silicon Valley carried their battle over Internet piracy to Capitol Hill on Thursday, debating the need for technology to prevent the illegal trading of movies and television shows online. The entertainment industry told lawmakers that without copy protection the threat of extensive piracy will force the industry to move its best programming to pay services such as cable and satellite TV. "Over-the-air television as we know it today will be a thing of the past," said Fritz Attaway, an executive vice president with the Motion Picture Association of America. He testified before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Internet. The entertainment industry has proposed technology called a "broadcast flag," an electronic marker in digital programming that could thwart or limit copying or distribution of pirated broadcasts over the Internet. Many in the industry fear high-quality broadcasts could be sold online. The Federal Communications Commission is studying whether to require the marker, but it is unclear when its review will be finished, said Kenneth Ferree, chief of the FCC's media bureau. Congress has set a goal of December 2006 for TV broadcasters to switch from analog to digital signals, which offer more vivid pictures and crisper sound. The FCC is concerned the piracy issue could slow that transition. Opponents of the broadcast flag say it won't prevent piracy, but will restrict consumers who want to make copies for personal use. "The more we restrict how our customers can use our products, the more likely they are to be annoyed," said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. The association represents technology companies, including one that develops software used by people who share music files online.

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Tech's love-hate relationship with the DMCA
Declan McCullagh

When it comes to the subject of copyright protection, neither Intel nor Hewlett-Packard can make up its mind what to do.

The two companies seem to simultaneously love and loathe the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that's famously unpopular among hackers, programmers and the open-source crowd.

Last week, Intel and HP's names appeared on a press release circulated by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) opposing crucial changes to section 1201 of the DMCA. Specifically, the BSA lashed out at a bill that would make it legal to bypass copy-protection mechanisms--as long as you're not planning to circulate the resulting file to tens of thousands of your closest friends.

The BSA, likely the world's most influential antipiracy group, offered the following warning: "Of particular concern, provisions of this legislation allowing the disablement of technological protection measures on copyrighted materials would provide safe harbor for pirates who could easily claim that the 'intent' of their actions were legal even if it resulted in knowingly unlawful infringement and economic loss to copyright owners."

That means researchers like Ed Felten at Princeton University and companies like Static Control that sell toner cartridge chips will remain vulnerable to civil or even criminal prosecution. So will people who sell patches to DVD-burning software or distribute descrambling utilities that let legally purchased DVDs be watched on a Linux computer.

In other words, the BSA, speaking on behalf of its members including Intel and HP, thinks these DMCA prohibitions should remain intact. So it opposes two related bills in Congress--one championed by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and the other by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-991676.html

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Universities cracking down on students who download on campus
Adam Klawonn

They don't wear badges or recite Miranda rights, but tech staffers at the three state universities are the campus network police when it comes to enforcing music and movies pirated from the Web.

And Alicia Fremling, an honors college freshman, was in the wrong place on the wrong dime. Her university-funded Internet privileges were yanked temporarily last week after members of the tech staff were notified that she had downloaded the 1978 comedy classic movie Animal House.

"I think it was the luck of the draw," said the political science major from Fargo, N.D. "I had the wrong thing on my computer."

Fremling's case is an example that the message is getting clearer: Students are there to learn, not download.

The enforcement of campus copyright policies comes two years after Napster was shut down, and six months after the entertainment industry made a plea to 2,300 universities. They asked them to curb Internet piracy of movies and music by users who swap them electronically.

It also follows a blanket e-mail sent out to honors college students Feb. 19, warning them to stick to policies established by the federal government and adopted by ASU.

And it coincides with a glimpse that movie industry insiders had recently of a two-minute, anti-piracy movie trailer created by 20th Century Fox.

It will be released internationally later this year, in several languages. It claims that downloading films and music using Web services like Kazaa and Morpheus hurts makeup artists and set builders, not just the stars.

"There are a number of fronts that need to be fought," said Rich Taylor, a Motion Picture Association of America's spokesman in Washington, D.C. "That includes reaching out to university students and corporations through the trailer."

Universities that provide high-speed Internet connections to students are practically forced to respond to the industry. They are, essentially, the Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, using monies from a variety of sources, including tuition.

This is what concerns April Ellis, an ASU pre-business freshman from Willcox.

"If I'm paying for it through my dorm fees, I should be able to use it however I want," Ellis said. She said she quit downloading after receiving the honors college e-mail last month.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...wnload-ON.html

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College CIOs face unique demands
Must balance security and legal issues with free exchange of ideas
Hiawatha Bray

Daniel Moriarty oversees a Boston-area computer network that connects 100,000 computers and handles a half -million e-mail messages a day. Like any corporate chief information officer, Moriarty has to keep the servers up and running, and configure the network to handle the data with maximum efficiency.

But few corporate CIOs must respond to a steady stream of mail from music recording companies and movie studios, complaining that someone is using an Internet address on their network to swap music and movies without paying. Moriarty does, and it's his job to stop them.

''It's not a huge number,'' Moriarty says of the letters. But the number he receives has doubled since last year. And dealing with each letter takes up an inordinate amount of time.

If Moriarty were the CIO of an ordinary business - a bank or a computer company, say - it would be easy for him to simply rig the network to block all file swappers. But Moriarty is the CIO of Harvard University, a place dedicated to the free exchange of information. Completely banning a particular way of sharing information would seem almost sacrilegious to many of Harvard's students, faculty, and staff.

Yet Moriarty has to do something. Swapping music and movie files without paying is a violation of federal law, and the recording and film industries are demanding action against college students, who are among the worst offenders. Even Congress is chiming in. Last month, at a hearing in the House of Representatives, lawmakers urged universities to crack down on the practice, unless they want to see students hauled away in handcuffs.

So each time a letter arrives, Moriarty and his staff identify the student or faculty member who's been abusing the network and gently warn him to cut it out. That's not quite the iron-fisted crackdown favored by many members of Congress, but then the lawmakers don't work at Harvard.

If there's a computer job more challenging than being a corporate CIO, it's the job of the college CIO. Colleges, after all, perform most of the same functions found at any business, and need the same kind of robust, reliable hardware and software that businesses use. But colleges are also places where students live and study, and where faculty members teach and conduct research. Which means that the campus CIO routinely copes with problems and challenges that his corporate colleagues rarely have to consider.

''Think about what a research university is,'' said Moriarty. ''It's all about discovering knowledge, about disseminating knowledge. And so access to information ... kind of [dominates] the way you think about the appropriate use of technology, rather than trying to secure, prevent, and protect as the dominant thing.''

That's why Harvard and other schools tolerate file-swapping software that would be banned in any workplace, why they risk hacker attacks by letting students and faculty members plug insecure computers into the network, why they reject strict standardization of hardware and software, preferring to let a hundred digital flowers bloom.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/06...demands+.shtml

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Technology leads to battle for control of artistic property
New devices change or share media content that is copyrighted.
Christian Berg

No one would call a parent a criminal for fast-forwarding through a movie's sex scene while their children were in the room.

But some were calling Bill Aho a criminal after his company developed software that automatically filters nudity, graphic violence and foul language from popular DVD movies.

Aho is chief executive officer of ClearPlay, a Salt Lake City firm that's being sued by the Directors Guild of America and eight major Hollywood movie studios, including Sony, Walt Disney, Universal and Warner Bros.

ClearPlay's opponents claim the company's software violates their copyrights because removing objectionable material creates new versions of the movies without directors' permission. They also say the software infringes on directors' artistic integrity and imposes ClearPlay's values on the public.

''This is a choice families ought to have,'' said Aho, a father of seven. ''Consumers are well within their rights to experience a movie in their homes in the way that they choose.''

ClearPlay attorney Andrew Bridges said the company's software is merely a tool to help parents do what they're already doing.

''If ClearPlay is illegal, then so is the remote control,'' Bridges said. ''What Hollywood is essentially saying is, 'Watch the movie our way or don't watch it at all, even when you've bought and paid for the DVD.'''

ClearPlay's fight against Hollywood is among a growing number of copyright debates spawned by new digital technologies that allow consumers to easily modify, copy and share media content.

While the specifics vary from case to case, the battle lines are clearly drawn. On one side is the power of technology. On the other is the desire of copyright holders to protect their intellectual property.

ClearPlay's legal battle is a potentially groundbreaking case that could vastly expand the power copyright holders can exert over how their work is used by the public, said Bridges, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, Calif.

''What's at stake here is whether copyright law gets expanded…to control all aspects of a user's experience, and that's just way too far,'' he said.

''The way I see it, ClearPlay is getting sued for actually fulfilling the promise that digital technology brought to the world, which is that was going to offer consumers new convenience, choice and control over how they enjoyed things like motion pictures.''

Attorney Justin Hughes, a professor at Cardoza Law School in New York City, said digital technology ''has opened up some huge new questions about the relationship of copyright law to the area of fair use.''
http://www.mcall.com/business/local/...ghtmar09.story

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"I understand that the larger labels are just interested in the projects that can generate the most capital for their quarter," she continued. "But I didn't want to subject the music to that kind of corporate boardroom and radio censorship. Why subject myself and the work that I do to that kind of environment when it really doesn't matter any more?"

Natalie Merchant, No Strings Attached
Jon Pareles

Natalie Merchant has stepped off the pop treadmill. After 17 years with Elektra Records, first as the main songwriter and singer of 10,000 Maniacs and then with million-selling solo albums of her reflective folk-rock, Ms. Merchant decided to go it alone.

When her Elektra contract expired in August 2002, she chose not to renew it or to seek a deal with another major label. "I would make a big-budget pop album, followed by a year of touring and promotion and then some downtime for recovery," she said. "I don't even know if I was writing music that was appropriate for that mold." Instead she will release her next album, a collection of traditional songs called "The House Carpenter's Daughter," on her own label, Myth America Records. It is to be released June 1 through Ms. Merchant's Web site, nataliemerchant .com, and July 1 in stores.

Recorded on a modest budget, marketed primarily to existing fans and not relying on radio exposure, "The House Carpenter's Daughter" breaks free of the commercial pressures that have turned major-label releases into risky gambles that can cost a million dollars in promotion alone. In contrast, Ms. Merchant's transition suggests the model of a sustainable career for a musician who is no longer eager to chase hits.

"The business is going one way, and Natalie's going another," said her manager, Gary Smith, also the general manager of Myth America.

Ms. Merchant paid for recording and packaging "The House Carpenter's Daughter," including the $3.50 manufacturing cost of an elaborate box for the first 30,000 copies. (The CD will sell for $16.95.) The special package "was printed in America for three times the price in Hong Kong," Ms. Merchant said.

"It's just not in keeping with American business practice right now," she added.

Even so, "The House Carpenter's Daughter" needs to sell only 50,000 copies to break even, less than 15 percent of what "Motherland," her last album for Elektra, sold.

"We're not trying to recoup some enormous debt," Mr. Smith said. "The economics of making this record are very prudent. When we sell 200,000 copies, we'll be standing on our chairs, hollering. If we released this record with these kinds of goals on a major label, we would look like a failure. At Elektra, if you just sell 1.5 million, everyone goes around with their heads down."

"This is the kind of record I want to make, going forward," Ms. Merchant said. "I've been writing things that are much more obscure and sort of shelving them, thinking I can't get this past a corporate boardroom and I won't even try."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/ar...ic/13NATA.html

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Songs to Start Out on Video Games
Lynette Holloway

In a first for the music industry, a major record label will introduce new songs on a new video game, not the radio. The goal is to lure young, male consumers into buying entire CD's when they are released to stores up to four months later.

The company, Island Def Jam, a unit of Universal Music Group, has joined forces with Electronic Arts, the world's largest game maker, and will create video games to capitalize on two hugely popular forms of entertainment among boys and young men ages 11 to 25: hip-hop and video games. Universal Music Group is owned by Vivendi Universal.

The first game, Vendetta, one in a series of three, will be released on April 1. Vendetta, a wrestling game, will contain 12 Def Jam artists, including DMX, Scarface, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Ludacris, Redman, N.O.R.E., Capone and Christina Milian, who will choke-hold and drop-kick their opponents around the ring.

The games will allow players to take on the role of their favorite artists in wrestling matches, which will take place against the backdrop of upbeat new singles by each of the artists, said Lyor Cohen, chairman and chief executive of the Island Def Jam music group. All the artists in Vendetta will release albums by the end of the summer, he said.

"You would have to be totally disconnected from the street to not realize how important gaming is for kids," Mr. Cohen said. "And you have to be equally disconnected not to see the value in leveraging music along with this boom in gaming."

Industry executives are scrambling to come up with new ways to sell music at a time when CD sales have reached a low. In 2002, about 62.5 million fewer CD's were sold than in 2001 — a 9 percent drop to 649.5 million, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks record sales.

The video game industry is lucrative. The market for consoles and video games is worth more than $9 billion a year. Video games typically sell at retail for $50. Demand for video games continues to grow. In January, sales for Nintendo's GameCube console went up 31 percent, Microsoft Xbox sales went up 29 percent and Sony Corporation's PlayStation 2 went up 24 percent in contrast to the previous January.

Joining forces with a game company is a bold departure from the usual business model that music industry executives are using increasingly to try to improve revenue. Most industry executives have focused on selling online music. But it may take years to map a profitable plan.

Analysts say that the joint venture of Def Jam records and Electronic Arts is a good intermediate step that will help the label improve earnings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/te...gy/10VIDE.html

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Verizon, RIAA spar over second subpoena
Declan McCullagh

Verizon Communications and the major record labels will face off again before a federal judge on April 1. That's when U.S. District Judge John Bates will hear arguments over a second subpoena the Recording Industry Association of America sent to Verizon under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Bates ruled the first subpoena seeking the identity of a Kazaa user was valid, but Verizon has appealed. The case pits the reach of copyright law against Internet users' right to privacy.
http://news.com.com/2110-1028-991899.html

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Technology Briefing: Internet

U.S. CHARGES AUSTRALIAN WITH COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT The federal government charged a leader of one of the largest Internet piracy "warez" groups yesterday as part of a continuing two-year investigation by the Customs Service, called Operation Buccaneer. Hew Raymond Griffiths, 40, of Bateau Bay, Australia, was charged on one count of copyright infringement and one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Mr. Griffiths is expected to be extradited in a few weeks. The indictment said Mr. Griffiths, who was known by his screen nickname, Bandido, was a leader of DrinkOrDie, an Internet piracy group that started in 1993. The other leader, John Sankus Jr., pleaded guilty last spring, but Mr. Griffiths had proved elusive for the United States government because of his Australian residency. As part of Operation Buccaneer, 10 defendants have already each been sentenced to prison terms of 33 to 46 months in the United States.

HOUSE TO HOLD HEARINGS ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY The House Government Reform Committee will hold hearings today on the risk to young Internet users posed by the volume of pornography available on peer- to-peer networks. The hearing is prompted in part by a General Accounting Office report scheduled to be released today. The report says that peer-to- peer networks are a growing source of child pornography, though they are still exceeded by Web sites. The report also found that more than half of the material found when searching for common keywords like the names of cartoon characters or celebrities was pornographic in nature. "G.A.O.'s findings are very disturbing, especially because file-sharing programs are becoming increasingly popular with kids," Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the committee, said in a statement. "We need to alert parents to this problem and learn what they can do about it."
Amy Harmon (NYT)

BLACK BOX STOCK FALLS TO 4-YEAR LOW Shares of the Black Box Corporation, a networking services company, fell about 31.6 percent to a four-year intraday low yesterday, a day after it warned that weak technology spending would push results for its fourth quarter substantially below forecasts. Shares fell $12.36, to $26.78. Stock in the company, a reseller of networking equipment based in Pittsburgh, has fallen more than 40 percent in the last year. Black Box's outlook for the quarter ending March 31, issued after the market close on Tuesday, followed last week's warning by Dimension Data, the network equipment reseller, as well as a lowered sales forecast by the 3Com Corporation. Black Box said demand in early January was weak, but late January and February remained soft and March was acting the same. It added that network overcapacity and the threats of terrorism and war in Iraq were depressing technology spending in the short term. "We believe the announcement and commentary from Black Box is another confirmatory data point for subdued demand trends on networking equipment," Tim Luke, a Lehman Brothers analyst, said in a research note to clients yesterday. (Reuters)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/te...y/13TBRF2.html

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Dear Big Music, you are cut off-singed, college students everywhere

There's a revolution afoot - and if you're in doubt, go check out a typical college dorm. Almost all U.S. colleges and universities are now wired for high-speed Internet access, which means that students can download music files in a matter of seconds (if they couldn't already at home). According to a recent study conducted by research firm Ipsos-Reid, 28 percent of the American population 12 and older have downloaded a music file off the Internet. That translates to 60 million downloaders.

So here's a news flash for Big Music: It's over. We have cut you off, and guess what? We don't feel the least bit guilty.

Why? Because the overwhelming majority of the artists who fill our hard drives are considerably well off, as are the people and companies who manage them.

"Why should I feel guilty?" asks Princeton University freshman Molly Fay. "Most of the artists I download make more money than I ever will. Who am I to care if I cheat them out of a couple of bucks?"

Another reason there's no chance of us returning to the music stores: making our own CDs is just way too convenient.

"The majority of my CDs are definitely my own mixes," says University of Pennsylvania freshman Merrill McDermott, adding that since she likes a lot of different genres of music, "downloading is the only way to obtain that eclectic mix" she's after. And Merrill isn't alone. None of us want to have a decision as important as what to put on a CD made for us by a bunch of executives in a California conference room.

We aren't revolting against the artists. We are revolting against the non-artists, the people who take art and make it fit into a Doritos commercial. For those of us who have the money, supporting the little-known groups remains an important cause.

"The only reason I would ever buy a CD," says Brown University freshman Janis Sethness, "would be to support the music groups that I like. But if a group is on and I like what I hear, I go to Kazaa, not Tower Records."

Our revolution doesn't threaten the future of music. In fact, we have high hopes for what these changes could bring to our ears. University of Pennsylvania freshman Kevin Collins recently wrote in Wharton's First Call newspaper: "File sharing systems will force the resurrection of the album." Programs like Kazaa, Collins argued, will "force the artists to return to the album to sell music" instead of going on MTV to promote a single song.

Fay captures a prevailing sentiment: "If having MP3s means that some in a suit won't be able to buy that third BMW he was craving, along with the house in the Hamptons, because the rest of the population saves necessary money by not purchasing music from a store, then I'm all for it."
http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/vne.../3e70c51d2decc

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It’s just business.
Big Blue, meet Big Brother
Paul Roberts

Looking to cash in on an increased demand for video surveillance and other security- related services, IBM said today that it will offer services to help companies deploy digital video surveillance and security systems.

The new services are designed to help companies make a transition from older, videotape-based surveillance systems to IP-based surveillance networks, IBM said in a statement.

As opposed to analog video equipment, digital video makes possible new, more flexible systems that can store images electronically while communicating with the rest of an organization's IT and security infrastructure, such as badge readers and intrusion-detection systems, IBM said.

IBM will also be offering consulting, system design and integration services, as well as hardware and software installation and maintenance.

Switching from videotape- to IP-based surveillance enables a company to add intelligence to the images captured by digital video cameras, according to IBM. For example, customers could deploy systems that recognize a brandished weapon or suspicious movements in a customs line, or allow security professionals to index and quickly review the faces of all individuals who used a particular entrance to a building.

In addition to providing its consulting expertise, IBM plans to tie a variety of products into its digital video surveillance offerings, including the company's eServer servers, WebSphere application servers, storage systems and Tivoli storage management software, it said.

Accordingly, IBM is showing uncharacteristic pluck in entering the market. "IBM is known for being conservative -- moving into a market when it's more mature," Latham said. "With [video surveillance], they've been more aggressive than usual about getting out in front of the curve."

As for the inevitable questions about encroaching on civil liberties, Lipton said IBM is sensitive to such concerns and hopes to "work on issues like those as well." For the time being, she said, the company's security offerings are targeted squarely at meeting market needs.
http://www.computerworld.com/managem...,79253,00.html

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RIAA's 'Hide The Website' game moves to Virginia
Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco

The RIAA's travelling "Hide The Website" gameshow rolled into
Virginia this week, with a new hosting company given the privilege (or curse) of looking after one of the world's most reviled web destinations.

But this strange story gets even stranger.

A few minutes after we reported on Monday that the RIAA's website had flickered back to life (see RIAA website now routable and public), it was down again. The RIAA had given the job to a first- time hoster, a 'Small Disadvantaged Business' whose owner was maintaining the site from his home in Rockville, Maryland.

The following day a new company was given the responsibility of Hiding The Website.

This time, it's an accounting firm in Arlington, VA called Kilday CPA. The accountancy firm - whose front page motto is "We're ... NOT ... What ... You'd ... Expect" also runs a Techology Services operation.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29653.html

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Senate to Hold P2P Hearing
Ciarán Tannam

A Senate hearing is set to take place on P2P. The informational hearing is set to take place at Sacramento, California on March 27th. Those who will attend will include representatives from Sharman Networks (kazaa owners), Streamcast Networks (Morpheus owners), the MPAA, the RIAA, Eartlink and others.

The Senator Kevin Murray and the senate entertainment committee will host the hearing. Details of how to contact Kevin Murray in advance of the hearing can be found at his website.

P2P companies such as Sharman Networks have taken part in several closed- door discussions with representatives of the RIAA previously. What will be different about this hearing will be that it will be one of the first times that such discussions will be on an open platform. It will also be a key opportunity for those involved with P2P to influence the Senate.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=112

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Support wanes for antipiracy chips while increasing for software solutions
John Borland

Plans to hard-wire copy protection into popular digital music and video devices are being shelved as the consumer-electronics industry grapples with interminable battles over antipiracy policies, standards and consumer rights.

Until recently, many makers of chips for consumer-electronics devices hoped to build anticopying technology into the chips themselves, a process known as "hard coding." That technique speeds up a device, saves on battery power, and makes the antipiracy technology harder to break through. Prominent security researchers say that hardware-based rights management technologies are more secure than alternatives that rely primarily on software.

Chipmakers have not completely abandoned efforts to create such copy protection features, but developers now say that they're ready to move ahead with what some call a second best alternative in order to feed surging demand for chips bound for new multimedia devices such as MP3 players, cell phones, and PDAs. This so-called soft coding--putting antipiracy rules into software that is more accessible to users--is slower and less secure, but lets companies adapt to rapid changes in the market more easily, developers say.

"In the past we've invested in hardware security that has not borne fruit," said Michael Maia, vice president of marketing for Portal Player, a company that makes multimedia chips focused on portable devices. "But there's a big risk there, because the market changes so much. Until it stabilizes enough, we will be soft coding."

The impasse over copy protection has stretched on for years, feeding distrust between the entertainment industry and consumer-electronics makers swept up in the digital technology revolution. Delays in hammering out antipiracy features for MP3 players and other devices have led to at least one proposal for legislation that would mandate the creation of a government-backed copy protection standard--a plan that was greeted with a standing ovation in Hollywood and catcalls in Silicon Valley.

That doesn't mean chipmakers oppose hardwired copy controls. Indeed, the trend toward software- based protection is at odds with the longer-term direction of companies such as Intel and Microsoft, and their so-called trusted computing initiatives. Under both companies' plans, a hardware-based authentication system would let computers guard against hackers' intrusions and viruses, as well as potentially block use of pirated software, songs or movies.

Hard coding has proven extraordinarily elusive, however, making software-based copy controls the best alternative for bringing passable, but not perfect, antipiracy features to the coming generation of digital devices.

"For the average user, soft coding is sufficient. For the hacker, soft coding leads to a wide-open hole," said Maia. "But that's the reality right now, because the business is in flux."
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-991936.html

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The fast track to queue-free CD selection
Sue Cant

Ever get sick of waiting in line to listen to a song off a CD in a music store? Well, the United States-based book and music retail chain Borders regards itself as queue-free, thanks to its digital music system.

The proprietary system, developed by the US company Advanced Communication Design, has been rolled out in the US, Britain and Australia during the past two years.

Customers can pick up a CD, scan the barcode at a station, and start listening. The music is part of an original 40,000-title database, updated each week with the latest tracks. ``We have gone with digital music because it provides a better customer service,'' says Sam Hosen, Borders IT manager in Australia. ``It's like having a recording studio at the corporate offices.''

Hosen says the system has been ``pretty stable''. The main issue seems to be an occasional missing song.

The first six weeks of the implementation was spent burning CDs onto the database to get some Australian music into the system.

The system includes a JVC Jukebox Player, which is like a huge CD burner, standing 1.5 metres high, on which up to 800 CDs can be loaded at a time.

The ``recording studio'' has a number of dedicated components, including a scanning module on which the ACD software scans the CD's barcode to create a catalogue of the music. Once
the catalogue has been generated, the recording module burns the catalogued CDs off the Jukebox and then adds the recorded material to the data server, which stores the master database.

The data server runs on a Linux operating system and the recording and scanning modules run on Windows 98 machines.

Each store has its own database, which is an image of the master database.

A dedicated employee is needed for the constant updates of new releases. Each week, head office sends out new CDs to the nine stores in Australia, including Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney, which have their own PCs and burners used for updating their music databases.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...144904664.html

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BT 'unlimited' audio offer contested

Wippit, the music download service, has complained to trading standards officers at Westminster City Council, that BT’s claim that its new online music-on-demand service is ‘unlimited’ is misleading.

Paul Myers, the wippit founder, told The Register: "We've already had a conversation with trading standards officers who are as concerned as we are that the BT claim is more than a little misleading."

BT last week launched its ‘dotmusic on demand’ service with much fanfare that users could take ‘unlimited downloads’ and 10 CD burns all for roughly E15 a month. These downloads, however, are not transferable to other device unless paid for in full and will also be lost in the user decides to terminate their account.
http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=15309

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Mickey D’s Serves Up Wi-Fris
AP

Would you like super-sized Internet access with that burger and fries?

In a further sign of the spread of wireless Internet technology, McDonald's restaurants in three U.S. cities will offer one hour of free high-speed access to anyone who buys a combination meal. Ten McDonald's in Manhattan will begin offering wireless WiFi, or 802.11b, Internet access on Wednesday, McDonald's spokeswoman Lisa Howard said.

By year's end, McDonald's will extend the access to 300 McDonald restaurants in New York City, Chicago and a yet-unannounced California town, Ms. Howard said.

"You can come in and have an extra value meal and send some e-mail," Ms. Howard said. Window signs will alert customers to the restaurants with WiFi access, she said.

Besides McDonald's, Internet surfers will also be able to tote their laptops to 400 U.S. Borders book stores, hundreds of hotels and a pair of U.S. airports where WiFi access will be available by summer, companies announced Monday.

And computer maker Toshiba and chipmaker Intel say they'll set up wireless "hot spots" in coffee shops, hotels and convenience stores across the United States and Canada.

For those who roost with their laptops in McDonald's, Internet surfing could affect the waistline.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl...imar11/GTStory

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Quiet Hush makes big noise about PCs
Savior of soft Music

HUSH TECHNOLOGIES claimed that its introduced quiet PC cases that won't scream at you as your working. The firm is launching a range of mini-ITX PC cases at CeBIT tomorrow and will use Via' Epia boards as the basis of the machines.

The firm says it will produce custom machines for people that don't want a racket drowning out their PC experiences.

The cases use a fin design and what Hush describes as an intelligent cooling system, with the parts built by German engineers.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8201

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Dog's dinner boosts broadband

A businessman in Derbyshire has come up with a low-tech solution to a hi-tech problem. David Taylor has used dog food cans to connect his home through the airwaves to the internet. The cans work as an antenna, boosting the internet radio signal and bouncing it from his office to his home.

Mr Taylor, information technology manager with Derbyshire-based consultancy Equation, was fed up with being cut off from the broadband revolution. So he set out to find a neighbour in an area where you can get broadband willing to help him with the initial connection. "People were a little suspicious at first but it didn't take long to find a willing household," he told Computing magazine. Other tins ended up rusting but the dog food tin has worked very well

When he found a good neighbour, he set up a connection through a wireless transmitter to send the internet signal the two and a half kilometres to his office. Mr Taylor was so impressed with the new super fast connection that he decided to boost the signal even further to beam it to his home at a nearby Travelodge hotel. At first he tried using a milk powder tin as a transmitter but found that it was not waterproof. Other tin trials also ended in disaster as the metal could not withstand the elements of the Derbyshire weather. Eventually he hit upon the idea of dog food cans to send the internet signal to his home.

"Other tins ended up rusting but the dog food tin has worked very well," he said. "Now not only do the 20 staff in the office have internet connectivity, but I also have full access from my home even with the entire area lying off the broadband grid," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...gy/2826617.stm


Top 10 Downloads – singles

BigChampange


PlayStation 3 chip nears completion
John G. Spooner

Collaborating engineers from IBM, Sony and Toshiba have wrapped up the design for the inner workings of a mysterious new chip called "Cell."

The new multimedia processor, touted as a "supercomputer on a chip," is well on the way to completion, IBM says. The chip could end up inside the PlayStation 3, and elements of its design will be seen in future server chips from IBM.

Cell has nearly "taped out" -- an industry term meaning that the chip's pen and paper design and layout have been completed. Soon these will be handed over to engineers in manufacturing, who will craft samples. Meanwhile, engineers have been testing various sub-elements of the processor, both separately and together, before the manufacturing unit connects them inside actual Cell chips. At this rate, commercial production of Cell could come as soon as the end of 2004.

While details remain vague, Cell will differ from existing microprocessors in that it will have multiple personalities. The chip will not only perform the heavy computational tasks required for graphics, but it also will contain circuitry to handle high-bandwidth communication and to run multiple devices, sources say.

Ultimately, Cell will provide a "much more interactive way of delivering content, including advertising, sports and entertainment such as video," to a wide range of Internet- ready devices, said Jim Kahle, director of broadband processor technology and a research Fellow at IBM.

This esoteric approach is possible because a single chip will contain multiple processing cores (hence Cell), a design concept rapidly gaining steam, sources said. Communications features expected to be in the chips will also allow devices to form powerful, peer-to-peer like networks, some analysts believe.

"It's sort of like having a group of handymen who are able to raise the roof (on a building) or do plumbing if it's needed," said Richard Doherty, analyst with Envisioneering.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2120395,00.html

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Analysis: Germany's copyright levy
Sam Vaknin

Based on the recommendation of its patent office and following fierce lobbying by VG Wort, an association of German composers, authors and publishers, Germany is poised to enforce a 3-year-old law and impose a copyright levy of $13 plus 16 percent in value added tax per new computer sold in the country.

The money will be used to reimburse copyright holders -- artists, performers, recording companies, publishers and movie studios -- for unauthorized copying thought to weigh adversely on sales.

This is the non-binding outcome of a one-year mediation effort by the patent office between VG Wort, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Germany's largest computer manufacturer and other makers.

VG Wort initially sought a levy of $33 per unit sold. But Fujitsu and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, known as Bitkom -- including Microsoft, IBM, Alcatel, Nokia, Siemens and 1,300 other member firms -- intend to challenge even the more modest fee in court.

They claim that it will add close to $80 million to the cost of purchasing computers without conferring real benefits on the levy's intended beneficiaries. They made similar assertions in a letter they recently dispatched to the European Commission.

The problems of peer-to-peer file sharing, file swapping, the cracking and hacking of software, music and, lately, even e-books, are serious. Bundesverband Phono, Germany's recording industry trade association, reported that music sales plunged for the fifth consecutive year -- this time, more than 11 percent.

According to figures offered by the admittedly biased group, 55 percent of the 486 million blank CDs sold in Germany last year -- about 267 million -- were used for illicit purposes. For every "legal" music CD sold, there are 1.7 "illegal" ones.

Efforts by the industries affected are under way to extend the levy to computer peripherals and, where not yet implemented, photocopying machines. Similar charges are applied already by many European countries to other types of equipment: tape recorders, photocopiers, video-cassettes and scanners, for instance.

Blank magnetic media, especially recordable CDs, are -- or have been -- taxed in more than 40 countries, including Canada and the United States.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...2-120912-6894r

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Shareaza 1.8x open for bidness. Check this controversial but quickly growing Gnutella “update”. While other developers Gnash their teeth, this G2 protocol rolls along converting users with features and speeds unavailable at the old school. http://www.shareaza.com/

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Group resumes Xbox cracking project
David Becker

A group of computer hobbyists has resumed its effort to crack the main security code for Microsoft's Xbox video game console.

The Neo Project, a group that uses distributed computing techniques to crack security challenges, on Wednesday began offering software for its "Operation Project X."

Distributed computing, best known by the Seti@Home project searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, divvies up complex computing tasks among myriad computers. The Neo Project software will use thousands of PCs to try to guess the 2,048-bit encryption code used by the Xbox, an approach that could take years to yield results.

A cracked encryption code could allow hackers to run homemade Linux software on an unmodified Xbox, satisfying a $100,000 Xbox hacking challenge by Michael Robertson, chief executive of Linux software company Lindows.

The Neo Project began working on the Xbox security code late last year but abruptly dropped the project, citing unspecified legal concerns.

Project founder Mike Curry said in an e-mail interview that after consulting with lawyers, he was confident the new project was on solid legal ground as an educational research project. "We will not actually break any laws until we crack the code," he said.

Microsoft zealously has fought efforts to crack security systems built into the Xbox, particularly "mod chips," gray-market add-ons that can be installed in consoles to bypass security measures. The company has changed the Xbox configuration, sued a leading mod chip distributor, and used its Xbox live online gaming service to thwart mod chips. The U.S. Department of Justice entered the fray late last month, shutting down a mod chip reseller for allegedly violating provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043-992252.html

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TiVo doubles revenue for quarter
Richard Shim

Digital video recorder service company TiVo said on Thursday that revenue was up for its fourth quarter and reported a lower-than-expected net loss.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company said for its fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, revenue was $13.7 million, up twofold compared with the same period a year ago when revenue was $6.8 million. TiVo reported a net loss of $14.7 million, or 25 cents per share, which improved on last year's fourth-quarter net loss of $41.6 million, or 92 cents per share.

The figures beat analysts' estimates of a loss of 32 cents per share, according to financial research firm FirstCall.

TiVo also said it signed up about 115,000 new subscribers in the fourth quarter for a total of about 624,000 subscribers as of Jan. 31. Its base of subscribers grew 64 percent during its fiscal year.
http://news.com.com/2100-1047-991415.html

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They didn’t actually look at the stuff…
Congress has fit over supposed P2P porn
Declan McCullagh

The U.S. Congress is targeting peer-to-peer networks again--and this time politicians aren't fretting over music and software piracy.

A pair of government reports scheduled to be released at a hearing on Thursday warn that file-swapping networks are exploding with pornography--much of which is legal, and some of which is not.

Searching for words such as "preteen," "underage" and "incest" on the Kazaa network resulted in a slew of images that qualify as child pornography, the General Accounting Office said in a 37-page report, one of two obtained by CNET News.com. The second report, prepared by staff from the House Government Reform Committee, concluded that current blocking technology has "no, or limited, ability to block access to pornography via file-sharing programs."

Using this technique, GAO did not open the image files, which means that mistitled images could be erroneously classified. The GAO's auditors chose not to open them because under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly possess child pornography. The GAO did not disclose which 12 keywords its auditors typed in, except to say they were supplied by law enforcement.

The auditors did, however, ask the U.S. Customs' CyberSmuggling Center to test a smaller number of images found using three keywords related to child pornography. "The CyberSmuggling Center analysis of the 341 downloaded images showed that 149 (about 44 percent) of the downloaded images contained child pornography," the report says. "The center classified the remaining images as child erotica (13 percent), adult pornography (29 percent), or non-pornographic (14 percent)."

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act, which banned any image that "appears to be" of an unclad youth in what could be viewed as an erotic or sexually suggestive pose. "First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end," a 6-3 majority of the justices wrote. "The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought."

David Greene, director of the First Amendment Project in Oakland, Calif., said the two reports use the old definition of child pornography that existed before the Supreme Court's ruling. "They don't indicate that the images they identify as child pornography would meet the (Supreme Court's) definition of child pornography," Greene said. "So it's hard to assess the significance of the finding without knowing (whether) what they found would be illegal child pornography, or whether it's legal computer-generated images that appear to be child pornography...which would be a waste of money to direct law enforcement funds. That is potentially an enormous hole in the report."

Green added: "It's hard to assess the methodology, because we don't know the search terms that they used. That makes it difficult to assess how likely it is that a child will stumble across pornographic images inadvertently."

Of the 177 images the CyberSmuggling Center downloaded from Kazaa using "three keywords representing the names of a popular female singer, child actors and a cartoon character," it classified only two as falling into the category of child pornography. The remainder would be legal to possess--and legal to distribute assuming they did not violate other restrictions such as obscenity or copyright laws.
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-992371.html

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Yes to Internet music swapping
Downloading free music like MP3s is a current trend that record labels say is adding to their downfall.
Frank Bojazi

I always wonder why the music industry dislikes peer-to-peer file sharing and bootlegging. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) fights to close websites/applications that promote the modern trading of MP3s. Don’t you think file sharing and bootlegging will assist musicians in promotion and increase their development of an appreciative fan base?

Bootlegging has been around for ages. Recordable cassettes are what everyone used to trade music until the Mp3 was formally introduced in 1992 by the Industry Standards Organization (ISO).

The modern means of file sharing may be more expensive, but most definitely better because you can be a fat lazy American and download all the MP3s you desire, all while you eat a cheeseburger and drink a diet soda.

Experts say that CD sales have been low, and I don’t think it’s due to file sharing. I think its because most new music is terrible. For example, new rap music is horrible, bands selling out like Limp Bizkit, musical junk by Creed, and the played out and predictable trance/club covers of 80’s music. Ja Rule and J Lo are the worst of it. All Ja Rule does is say “Yeaaaaaah” in his scratchy cheese-grated voice, while trunk-of-funk J-Lo wobbles her intrusive rear and occasionally sings. She was much better before she met up with the wrong crowd. Rap music stopped being cool when Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace passed away.

If record labels didn’t pay radio stations so much to play audible trash, then how else would people find out about Ja Rule and J Lo? File trading. And because of file trading, Ja Rule would have new mindless groupies. J Lo would have more borderline-stupid people gasping at the two basketballs in her pants that are most commonly referred to as her buttocks.

File sharing is what helps bring the audience closer to the musicians. Even if CD sales are low, what about concert sales? I haven’t purchased a CD in at least half a decade, but if I have a burned CD, or downloaded MP3s of a band I like, and I find out they’re coming to town near me – you better believe I’ll see that show.

If the RIAA had any brains, they would develop an Internet browser used primarily for trading files of artists who permit free downloads, develop an RIAA MP3 player, develop a brand of RIAA blank CDrs, and maybe that would make up for lost CD sales.

I think the RIAA is all about money, and they exist because jerk-off artists cry about people sharing the music they enjoy. Any musician who becomes angry over people sharing enjoyable music is not worth listening to anyway. If an artist/s cares only about money, then they’re in the music business for the wrong reason. Sure it’s a job, but when you selling platinum and you crying like a fat kid who dropped his triple scoop ice cream cone – you need to be put in your place, and your ‘fans’ need to become fans of an artist/s who is down to Earth and appreciative of fans.
http://keystoneonline.com/story.asp?Art_id=549

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Glenayre Unveils Versera High Density Messaging Platform
Press Release

Glenayre Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: GEMS) today unveiled its Versera(TM) High Density Messaging (HDMu) solution platform, the next phase of the Company's evolutionary path to a next-generation IP-based communications platform.

With three times the density of the Company's successful MVP(R) product, Glenayre believes that the Versera HDMu can help service providers reduce operating expenditures by:

· Decreasing peripheral equipment requirements (including spares, power supplies and voice drives) while increasing overall capacity;
· Working with existing provisioning interfaces, alarming interfaces and switch translations;
· Reducing total need for installation and maintenance staff;
· Decreasing overall power requirements and;
· Freeing valuable central office space for other networking needs.

Glenayre's Versera High Density Messaging unit will be commercially available in approximately one week and can be deployed in stand-alone configurations, clustered in peer-to-peer environments or deployed as part of Glenayre's Large Solution platform. The Versera High Density Messaging solution platform enables service providers to increase competitiveness while protecting their capital investments.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...2003,+09:00+AM

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Apple's Chance to Get Online Music Right
Alex Salkever

If Steve Jobs joins with the record industry to create a Mac-friendly service, he should think radically different about its terms.

It's an incredible technological irony: Apple's iPod is the best-selling and most acclaimed digital music player on the market -- but iPod owners can't legally use big-label music sites to download tunes. That because the recording industry has basically shunned Jobs & Co., resulting in the ridiculous situation where the big labels' commercial download sites aren't compatible with the No. 1 MP3 player.

That may be about to change. If the rumors floating around the techsphere last week are to be believed, Apple users will soon have a bona fide legitimate online music service of their own, on par with PressPlay, MusicNet, Listen.com, and other PC-only sites that offer vast catalogs of legal tunes.

Naturally, Apple (AAPL ) wouldn't comment for this story on the rumors allegedly leaked by loose-lipped record execs. Those accounts, which appeared everywhere from music and tech trade magazines to wire services and the big local dailies (see last week’s WIR – Jack), claimed that Steve Jobs had talked the beleaguered music business into backing an Apple service. It would provide at least comparable terms to the PC-based sites, many of them owned directly by the labels themselves and operated by subsidiaries. That means Apple users could listen to libraries of music for a monthly fee in the $10 range. Or they could pay a buck or so to download a tune and burn it to a CD.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...9271_tc056.htm

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Now They're After You: Music Cops Target Users
Recording industry expands focus and guns for file traders.
Dylan F. Tweney

Millions of people download copyrighted songs and even movies from the Internet with little fear of being caught. That's about to change.

"[The music industry is] starting to move down the food chain," says Lawrence Hertz, a partner at New York law firm Hall Dickler Kent Goldstein and Wood, and a specialist in online law.

He predicts that music publishers and other content owners will soon use 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act much more aggressively--prosecuting not only companies like Napster but also individuals who download copyrighted content--and that they will start with the biggest users of peer-to-peer networks.

The new strategy became evident last year when the Recording Industry Association of America served Verizon with a subpoena demanding that the service provider disclose the identity of a user who uploaded more than 600 songs while connected to the company's Internet service.

Verizon protested, but recently a U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the RIAA and ordered Verizon to reveal the user's identity.

Verizon asked for a stay of the judge's order; at press time this was still pending, but approval seemed unlikely.

"If this ruling stands, consumers will be caught in a digital dragnet," says John Thorne, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel. If the stay is denied, Verizon says it will seek a stay at the appeals court level.

"It's going to have quite a huge impact on privacy," says Gwen Hinze, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF argues that the ruling lets copyright holders get users' identities merely by alleging copyright infringement (a fairly easy standard to meet)--without review by a judge and without giving users any chance to protect themselves or their identities.

The music industry says that it's just defending itself from digital piracy, which has contributed to two successive years of declining CD sales.

"Most consumers are getting what they want on the Internet, and it's really hurting this industry," says Brian Dunn, senior VP of corporate development for Macrovision, a provider of copyright-protection technologies. Dunn predicts that cash-strapped music labels could start paring promotion budgets for new artists in the coming year, while moving to include copy protection on all of their CDs. (So far, only a handful of major-label releases in the United States use copy protection.)
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109584,00.asp

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All Het Up

Fritz Attaway… Jerry, you once again mention free speech, despite the fact that court after court after court has said that free speech does not mean you have the right to take someone else’s speech and use it. The first amendment has nothing to do with what we are talking about here.

Pam Samuelson… I’ve read those cases and that actually isn’t what they say. (laughter)

Fritz Attaway…What monopoly problem do you see? (laughter) We are not in the business of creating the essential material. We make entertainment. If you don’t like the entertainment, and quite frankly, sometimes we make movies we can’t subpoena people to see…

Mozelle Thompson… You fly to Washington and tell us how important your industry is, and now you come here and play, like oh, we’re just fluff that comes out of [Hollywood]?
Transcript.

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Lessig Petitions Court for Rehearing. Bases Argument on Harm To Public Domain

“Petitioners believe the cause is their own failure to make plain the profound harm to vital speech interests that this continued tolling of the public domain will effect. That failure allowed the Court to believe that the only real consequence from term extension is higher costs for commercially available works.

This is a mistake. The harm from extensions is not just that prices are higher. The real harm is the removal of a vast amount of our recent past from a domain where it might be usefully or easily cultivated. Because of this extension, for example, a museum cannot freely post an exhibit about the New Deal until 2030—not because the costs of a license are too great, but because it would be impossible to trace the rights necessary to avoid potential liability. Nor can publishers freely reprint now out-of-print books until at least a century after their initial release—again, long after any reasonable effort to locate a copyright owner could be undertaken. These extensions will therefore not simply mean that work that would be “free” will now have to be sold. They will mean instead that much of the culture from the early part of the 20th century will be lost long before the copyrights expire.”
PDF.








Until next week,

- js.







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Current Week In Review


Recent WIRs -

http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15437 March 8th
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15348 March 1st
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15292 Feb. 22nd
http://www.p2p-zone.com/underground/...threadid=15219 Feb. 15th



Submit articles, press releases and letters in English - plain text only, no HTML - to jackspratts at lycos dot com. Please include contact info. Submission deadlines are Wednesdays @ 1700 UTC.

[ssj4_android]

"EBay Inc. said Thursday it would shut down Half.com, its fixed-price subsidiary for used books, CDs, videos and other common household items, in late 2004. "
That was a good service.